College 1: Development of Executive Functions

• Executive Functioning


  Umbrella term for various cognitive processes that give rise to goal-directed behavior
• Executive Functioning

  • Concentration
  • Juggling multiple demands
  • Adapting to changing circumstances
  • Working with others
  • Dealing with setbacks
  • Inhibiting immediate rewards
• Consequences of low executive functioning
• Early identification and intervention by a school psychologist can reduce the chances of children with (e.g.) ADHD suffering poor outcomes
• Executive Functioning

  • Flexible adjustment
  • Adaptive behavior
  • Creativity
• Executive Functioning


  Novel & demanding situations
• Three core components of executive functioning


  • Working memory
  • Inhibitory control
  • Cognitive flexibility
• Working memory


  The ability to hold information in mind (maintenance) and mentally work with it (manipulation)
• Inhibitory control


  The ability to suppress interfering thought and actions that are not relevant to the task at hand
• Cognitive flexibility


  The ability to change one's perspective or approach to a problem, flexibly adjusting to new demands, rules, or priorities
• The three core components of executive functioning are not entirely independent
• More complex executive functions


  • Planning
  • Reasoning
  • Problem solving
  • Performance monitoring
• Measures of executive functioning are used in research to gain insight into typical development
• Measures of executive functioning are used in clinical or school settings to identify executive functioning impairments in clinical groups such as ADHD, learning disabilities, and depression
• Go/NoGo Task


  Measure of simple executive functioning, specifically inhibition
• Go/NoGo tasks are child-friendly measures of inhibition
• Measures of simple executive functioning


  • Better predictor of executive functioning problems in daily life
  • Better predictor of school performance
• Measures of complex executive functioning


  • More difficult to identify disability
  • More difficult to track development
• Measures of complex executive functioning

  • Tower of London
  • Spatial working memory task
• Executive functioning


  • Often impaired in clinical groups like ADHD, learning disabilities, depression
• Measures of simple executive functioning

  • Go/NoGo Task
• Go/NoGo Task

  Measures of simple EF inhibition
• Measures of simple EF

  • Inhibition
• Measures of simple EF


  Better predictor of EF problems in daily life, better predictor of school performance
• Measures of complex EF


  More difficult to identify disability, more difficult to track development
• Tower of London


  • Spatial problem solving, planning, task difficulty increases with number of moves needed to solve
• Measures of complex EF

  • Go/NoGo Task
  • Stroop Task
  • Day and Night Task
  • Delayed Gratification Task
  • Delay Discounting Task
  • Dimensional Change Card Sorting Test (DCCS)
  • Wisconsin Card Sorting Task
• Stroop Task

  Automatic response inhibition
• Dimensional Change Card Sorting Test (DCCS)


  Cognitive flexibility, switching, shifting
• Wisconsin Card Sorting Task


  More difficult than DCCS, no explicit instructions about rule, no instruction when rule changes, you have to infer sorting rule based on feedback, feedback learning (performance monitoring)
• Screening of executive functioning

  • BRIEF/BRIEF-2
• BRIEF/BRIEF-2


  Often used in clinical practice or school setting to assess executive functioning in 5-18 year olds, filled out by teachers and/or parent, BRIEF-2 also 11-18 year olds can fill out a form
• Executive functions rely mostly on prefrontal cortex function
• Neuroscience methods

  • Patients with frontal lobe damage
  • NFL players
  • Imaging healthy brains of children and adolescents (developmental neuroscience)
  • Brain structure
  • Brain function

  
• Feedback learning


  Learning from previous behavior, essential to learn from feedback on your behavior in order to learn, relies on multiple executive functions like working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibition, predicts real-world learning
• Feedback learning performance


  Predicts reading fluency and mathematics 2 years later
• Adolescence

  Characterized by impulsivity, not thinking about long-term consequences, difficulty planning, but executive function is better than in childhood (although not fully developed yet), peak in emotional sensitivity
• Structural brain development


  • Changes in gray matter differ per region, DLPFC is one of the areas to mature relatively late
• Adolescents have better EF compared to children, not worse, but driven by immediate rewards, systems balance out again in adulthood as development of PFC 'completes'
• Marshmallow test performance at age 4


  Predicts inhibitory control 40 years later