The Unity and Diversity of Executive Functions and Their Contributions to Complex “Frontal Lobe” Tasks: A Latent Variable Analysis

Miyake, Akira; Friedman, Naomi P.; Emerson, Michael J.; Witzki, Alexander; Howerter, Amy; Wager, Tor D.

doi:10.1006/cogp.1999.0734

Cited by 11,893 publications

(13,109 citation statements)

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“…In a recent study, Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki and Howerter [78] used latent variable analysis to determine to what extent different executive functions can be considered to be unitary (in the sense that they are a reflection of the same underlying mechanism or ability) or nonunitary. The principle of latent variable analysis is to extract statistically what is common among several tasks selected to tap a putative executive function and use that purer latent variable factor to examine how different executive functions relate to one another.…”

Section: The Central Executive Of Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain imaging of the central executive component of working memory

Collette

Linden

2002

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

492

291

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Section: The Central Executive Of Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain imaging of the central executive component of working memory

Collette

Linden

2002

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

492

291

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“…In contrast to short‐term memory, which is the ability to keep a small amount of information in mind for a short period of time, working memory requires monitoring and coding of incoming information and updating the information held in the working memory (Miyake et al, 2000). A commonly used measure of working memory is the digit span backwards (Lezak, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How phonological awareness mediates the relation between working memory and word reading efficiency in children with dyslexia

2018

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This study examined the relation between working memory, phonological awareness, and word reading efficiency in fourth‐grade children with dyslexia. To test whether the relation between phonological awareness and word reading efficiency differed for children with dyslexia versus typically developing children, we assessed phonological awareness and word reading efficiency in 50 children with dyslexia (aged 9;10, 35 boys) and 613 typically developing children (aged 9;5, 279 boys). Phonological awareness was found to be associated with word reading efficiency, similar for children with dyslexia and typically developing children. To find out whether the relation between working memory and word reading efficiency in the group with dyslexia could be explained by phonological awareness, the children with dyslexia were also tested on working memory. Results of a mediation analysis showed a significant indirect effect of working memory on word reading efficiency via phonological awareness. Working memory predicted reading efficiency, via its relation with phonological awareness in children with dyslexia. This indicates that working memory is necessary for word reading efficiency via its impact on phonological awareness and that phonological awareness continues to be important for word reading efficiency in older children with dyslexia.

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“…Again, these more established measures often involve simple stimuli, whereas our aim was to induce the need to inhibit processing of a to‐be‐ignored stimulus in a more ecologically valid task setting. Furthermore, the inhibitory control component of executive functions is not thought to involve only response inhibition, but also interference control (i.e., selective attention and cognitive inhibition) (Diamond, 2013; Lehto et al., 2003; Miyake et al., 2000). Our distracted attention task can therefore be argued to tap into inhibitory control processes even though it did not require response suppression in the classical sense, as it involved selective attention to a stimulus while suppressing a to‐be‐ignored stimulus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is commonly held that a “frontoparietal control network” is crucial to all executive processes (Badre & D'Esposito, 2007; Fedorenko et al., 2013; Vincent et al., 2008). In addition to this shared brain circuitry, brain imaging studies have repeatedly observed a differential functional organization or unique response patterns within shared brain regions between different executive control components (Marklund et al., 2007; Miyake et al., 2000; Stiers, Mennes, & Sunaert, 2010; Wager & Smith, 2003). It is therefore likely that the neural networks recruited by executive functions demonstrate both unity and diversity (Friedman & Miyake, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although evidence suggests that executive functioning can be thought of as a unitary, subordinate system of cognitive control (Niendam et al., 2012), low correlations in task performance between different executive task types imply that executive functions form a collection of at least partly distinguishable top‐down mental processes (Duncan, Johnson, Swales, & Freer, 1997; Shallice & Burgess, 1996). Although varying conceptualizations have been offered regarding the exact nature of executive sub‐processes, most accounts describe three core functions: inhibition (including behavioral inhibition, selective attention and cognitive inhibition), monitoring and updating of working memory representations, and cognitive flexibility or set shifting (e.g., Diamond, 2013; Lehto, Juujärvi, Kooistra, & Pulkkinen, 2003; Miyake et al., 2000). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neural activity patterns between different executive tasks are more similar in adulthood than in adolescence

et al. 2018

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BackgroundAdolescence is a time of ongoing neural maturation and cognitive development, especially regarding executive functions. In the current study, age‐related differences in the neural correlates of different executive functions were tracked by comparing three age groups consisting of adolescents and young adults.MethodsBrain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) from 167 human participants (13‐ to 14‐year‐old middle adolescents, 16‐ to 17‐year‐old late adolescents and 20‐ to 24‐year‐old young adults; 80 female, 87 male) while they performed attention and working memory tasks. The tasks were designed to tap into four putative sub‐processes of executive function: division of attention, inhibition of distractors, working memory, and attention switching.ResultsBehaviorally, our results demonstrated superior task performance in older participants across all task types. When brain activity was examined, young adult participants demonstrated a greater degree of overlap between brain regions recruited by the different executive tasks than adolescent participants. Similarly, functional connectivity between frontoparietal cortical regions was less task specific in the young adult participants than in adolescent participants.ConclusionsTogether, these results demonstrate that the similarity between different executive processes in terms of both neural recruitment and functional connectivity increases with age from middle adolescence to early adulthood, possibly contributing to age‐related behavioral improvements in executive functioning. These developmental changes in brain recruitment may reflect a more homogenous morphological organization between process‐specific neural networks, increased reliance on a more domain‐general network involved in executive processing, or developmental changes in cognitive strategy.

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The Unity and Diversity of Executive Functions and Their Contributions to Complex “Frontal Lobe” Tasks: A Latent Variable Analysis

Cited by 11,893 publications

References 80 publications

Brain imaging of the central executive component of working memory

Brain imaging of the central executive component of working memory

How phonological awareness mediates the relation between working memory and word reading efficiency in children with dyslexia

Neural activity patterns between different executive tasks are more similar in adulthood than in adolescence

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