Elsevier

Cognitive Psychology

Volume 41, Issue 1, August 2000, Pages 49-100
Cognitive Psychology

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

https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1999.0734Get rights and content

Abstract

This individual differences study examined the separability of three often postulated executive functions—mental set shifting (“Shifting”), information updating and monitoring (“Updating”), and inhibition of prepotent responses (“Inhibition”)—and their roles in complex “frontal lobe” or “executive” tasks. One hundred thirty-seven college students performed a set of relatively simple experimental tasks that are considered to predominantly tap each target executive function as well as a set of frequently used executive tasks: the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Tower of Hanoi (TOH), random number generation (RNG), operation span, and dual tasking. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the three target executive functions are moderately correlated with one another, but are clearly separable. Moreover, structural equation modeling suggested that the three functions contribute differentially to performance on complex executive tasks. Specifically, WCST performance was related most strongly to Shifting, TOH to Inhibition, RNG to Inhibition and Updating, and operation span to Updating. Dual task performance was not related to any of the three target functions. These results suggest that it is important to recognize both the unity and diversity of executive functions and that latent variable analysis is a useful approach to studying the organization and roles of executive functions.

References (105)

  • G.D. Logan

    Executive control of thought and action

    Acta Psychologica

    (1985)
  • R.G. Morris et al.

    The effect of goal-subgoal conflict on planning ability after frontal- and temporal-lobe lesions in humans

    Neuropsychologia

    (1997)
  • D. Navon

    Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception

    Cognitive Psychology

    (1977)
  • E. Perret

    The left frontal lobe of man and the suppression of habitual responses in verbal categorical behavior

    Neuropsychologia

    (1974)
  • R.J. Schachar et al.

    Inhibitory control, impulsiveness, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

    Clinical Psychology Review

    (1993)
  • H.A. Simon

    The functional equivalence of problem solving skills

    Cognitive Psychology

    (1975)
  • J.N. Towse et al.

    A reevaluation of working memory capacity in children

    Journal of Memory and Language

    (1998)
  • M.L. Turner et al.

    Is working memory capacity task dependent?

    Journal of Memory and Language

    (1989)
  • Allport, A, &, Wylie, G. Task switching, stimulus-response bindings, and negative priming. In, S. Monsell & J. Driver,...
  • J.C. Anderson et al.

    Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and recommended two-step approach

    Psychological Bulletin

    (1988)
  • S.W. Anderson et al.

    Wisconsin card sorting performance as a measure of frontal lobe damage

    Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

    (1991)
  • P.A. Arnett et al.

    Executive functions in multiple sclerosis: An analysis of temporal ordering, semantic encoding, and planning abilities

    Neuropsychology

    (1997)
  • A.D. Baddeley

    Working memory

    (1986)
  • A.D. Baddeley

    Exploring the central executive

    Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

    (1996)
  • A. Baddeley et al.

    Testing central executive functioning with a pencil-and-paper test

  • A. Baddeley et al.

    Random generation and the executive control of working memory

    Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

    (1998)
  • A.D. Baddeley et al.

    Working memory: The multicomponent model

  • E.A. Berg

    A simple objective technique for measuring flexibility in thinking

    Journal of General Psychology

    (1948)
  • P.A. Bourke et al.

    A general factor involved in dual-task performance decrement

    Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

    (1996)
  • P.W. Burgess

    Theory and methodology in executive function research

  • P.W. Burgess et al.

    The ecological validity of tests of executive function

    Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society

    (1998)
  • P.A. Carpenter et al.

    What one intelligence test measures: A theoretical account of the processing in the Raven Progressive Matrices Test

    Psychological Review

    (1990)
  • B.J. Casey et al.

    A developmental functional MRI study of prefrontal activation during performance of a go-no-go task

    Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

    (1997)
  • J. Cohen et al.

    Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences

    (1983)
  • A.R.A. Conway et al.

    Individual differences in working memory capacity: More evidence for a general capacity theory

    Memory

    (1996)
  • A.R. Damasio

    Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and human brain

    (1994)
  • M. Daneman et al.

    Working memory and language comprehension: A meta-analysis

    Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

    (1996)
  • M.B. Denckla

    A theory and model of executive function: A neuropsychological perspective

  • M. D'Esposito et al.

    The neural basis of the central executive system of working memory

    Nature

    (1995)
  • K. Dunbar et al.

    Toward a cognitive account of the frontal lobe function: Simulating frontal lobe deficits in normal subjects

    Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

    (1995)
  • J. Duncan

    Attention, intelligence, and the frontal lobes

  • J. Duncan et al.

    Frontal lobe deficits after head injury: Unity and diversity of function

    Cognitive Neuropsychology

    (1997)
  • R.B. Ekstrom et al.

    Manual for kit of factor-referenced cognitive tests

    (1976)
  • M.J. Emerson et al.

    Individual differences in integrating and coordinating multiple sources of information

    Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

    (1999)
  • R.W. Engle et al.

    Individual differences in working memory capacity and what they tell us about controlled attention, general fluid intelligence, and functions of the prefrontal cortex

  • R.W. Engle et al.

    Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent variable approach

    Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

    (1999)
  • L.R. Fabrigar et al.

    Evaluating the use of exploratory factor analysis in psychological research

    Psychological Methods

    (1999)
  • P.S. Goldman-Rakic

    The prefrontal landscape: Implications of functional architecture for understanding human mentation and the central executive

    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London

    (1996)
  • Hegarty, M, Shah, P, &, Miyake, A. Constraints on using the dual-task methodology to specify the degree of central...
  • L.-T. Hu et al.

    Evaluating model fit

  • Cited by (10521)

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    We thank Anna Ficken, Timi Iddings, Silvie Kilworth, Vandana Passi, Juan Quezada, Bob Slevc, and Neal Wolcott for their help in running the experiments and scoring data. We also thank Greg Carey for his statistical advice; John R. Crawford, John Duncan, Priti Shah, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on a draft of this article; Dan Kimberg and Jim Parker for making the versions of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Stroop task programs, respectively, available to us; and Ernie Mross for programming the Tower of Hanoi task. This research was supported in part by a National Science Foundation (NSF) KDI/LIS Grant (IBN–9873492), a University of Colorado Council of Research and Creative Work Grants-in-Aid award, and an NSF Graduate Fellowship. A preliminary version of this research was presented at the 11th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Society, Denver, Colorado in June 1999.

    Correspondence and reprint requests concerning this article should be addressed to Akira Miyake, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Campus Box 345, Boulder, CO 80309–0345. Electronic mail may also be sent to [email protected].

    View full text