Typical Executive Functioning

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Miyake (2000) Model of EF
Unity and Diversity model suggests that EC is composed of three EF: shifting, updating and inhibition. These three models combine to create executive control during Executive tasks
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Miyake et al (2000) Task
Gave adults 9 different tasks and correlated performance on these tasks, tasks included stroop task, letter memory, local-global perception, tone monitoring
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What three different EF tasks did they come up with?
Updating, Inhibition and Cognitive Flexibility
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What is updating?
Related to working memory; holding important information and being able to manipulate information e.g. mental arithmetic, shopping lists
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What is inhibition?
Ignoring distracting information; suppressing unwanted responses; ignoring messages during work time
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What is cognitive flexibility?
Responding to the same thing but differently under different contexts. EG: passwords/pin numbers
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Miyake et al (2000)
Adult participants were asked to complete a stroop task.
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Gerstadt et al (1994)
Inhibition in children aged 4.5-6 years. Day/night stroop was conducted where pictures of a sun/moon were shown to children. If a sun was shown, children had to say night Vise versa
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What was found?
They found that inhibition (measured by % of correct responses) rose from 4.5-6 years steadily, showing an increase in inhibition control through childhood.
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Holmboe et al (2007)
Infants (9months) conducted a freeze-frame task to measure inhibition. In this task an animation is shown in the middle of the screen, followed by distractor stimulus. Look at distrator = animation freezes, inhibit response = animation moves on.
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What was found?
Children learnt to ignore the distractor stimulus and inhibit the response of looking, and this was significantly different if that animation was ‘interesting’ (e.g. a cartoon character) than ‘boring’ (e.g. a rotating shape).
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What was problems with this study?
Didnt use eye tracking methods to assess whether the child was looking at the animation/distractor. Assessed on video and researcher decided. No accurate due to fidgeting/crying
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Bunge et al (2002)
fMRI was used on children aged 8-12 and adults while they completed a go-no-go task. Must inhibit motor response on no-go trial. Found a sig positive correlation between pre-frontal lobe activity and childrens success in inhibition.
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What did they conclude?
They concluded, therefore, that inhibition improves with age due to the development of pre-frontal cortex
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Adleman et al (2002)
Conducted a stroop task on participants aged 7-22 and found that increased performance associated with increased activity in the frontal lobe
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Therefore
The unity and diversity model does seem to account for inhibition executive function in childhood and this is supported by brain development, in particular the frontal lobes
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What does updating refer to?
Holding information of a goal
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Miyake et al (2002)
letter memory task to assess updating in adults. In this task, participants are presented with letters one at a time, and are asked to recall the last four letters presented
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Hughes and Ensor (2007)
Investigated updating in children aged 4-6. They used the spin the pots test, where children had to find stickers under the pots. They measured errors, which is where the child goes to a pot that they have already checked, a measure of working memory
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What did they find?
That the number of errors decreased as age increased, suggesting that the executive function of updating and working memory improved with age
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Crone et al (2006)
Investigated ability to manipulate information in WM developed through childhood and how this linked to the brain. Used 3 age groups (8-12,13-17and 18-25) in fMRI machines.
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What were participants required to do?
participants were shown objects, and then had to say the order of the objects either forwards or backwards. They then were shown one of the objects and had to press a button to indicate where in the sequence the object was shown.
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What was found?
Results found that ages 8-12yrs performed worse than 13-17 and 18-25 conditions. Additionally, this condition failed to activate the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
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What does this evidence suggest?
updating abilities in children, but these do not seem to be as advanced as adults and performance doesn’t seem to correlate with the brain regions. This could be a limitation of the model
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Cognitive flexibility?
refers to the ability to switch performance on a task rapidly - How is this witnessed in adults
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Miyake et al (2000)
plus-minus task. In this task participants were given 3 lists of 2-digit numbers. In the first list they had to add 3 to all the numbers, second list subtract 3, and third list alternate between adding and subtracting 3
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Zelazo (2006)
shifting task known as the Dimensional Change Card Sort. In this task children are presented with cards that have two shapes that are different colours. In first sort: objects, Second Sort: Colours but not shape
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What did results find?
Results found that at 3yrs children were more likely to fail at the second task, thus indicating that they were unable to switch. However, performance greatly increased at 4 years
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Chelune and Baer (1986)
Shifting abilities develop in childhood to adulthood. Conducted Wisconsin card sort test, cards based on diff categories. 105 school aged children and compared their results to adults who completed the same task.
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What was found?
performance increased throughout childhood, however by age 10 the performance was no better than adults. This suggests that the ability to shift attention and this executive function develops fairly rapidly in childhood
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What is a weakness of this model?
Not all children perform well on the tasks
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Huizanga et al (2006)
384 children and adults (different age groups; 7, 11, 15, 21) who completed 9 EF tasks. They then used factor analysis to determine the function.
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What was found?
working-memory and shifting did appear as separate functions, but inhibition tasks failed to load onto the same factor
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What does this suggest?
This suggests that children do not have a 3 factor model, but instead 2 factors with inhibition maybe affecting both
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In response to this criticism, Miyake and Friedman (2012) suggested?
updating, shifting, and inhibition all contribute to a single common executive function as well as an updating-specific and shifting-specific domain
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Miyake et al (2000) Task

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Gave adults 9 different tasks and correlated performance on these tasks, tasks included stroop task, letter memory, local-global perception, tone monitoring

Card 3

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What three different EF tasks did they come up with?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

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What is updating?

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Card 5

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What is inhibition?

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