E219 Week 18 Representation in Adolescence
intro audio
Kathryn Mills, a doctoral student in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London.
adolescences are different not inferior to adults.
different approaches to gaining rewards (slow down)
various areas of brain engaged for certain thinking and they are still developing at this age.
Sally-ann test too basic...her test more advanced
Chapter 13: Representation in adolescence
David Messer
not yet an agreed definition of EF, but it can be considered as a set of high-level cognitive functions that enable people to plan, initiate and carry through goal-directed behaviour in an organised and ‘thought out’ way.
EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING (EF)
INTEGRAL AREAS OF BRAIN IN EF: The prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex and motor cortex
Risky behaviour more common
is it?? I think it's freedom and lack of experience of consequence. (chuck alcohol in !!)
EF in childhood linked to adolescence. Moffit et al. (2011) cited in Messer 2019
of course !!
previously thought (due to animal testing) most cognitive dev happens in infancy - but still going in adolescence!
continued and significant change in brain physiology and structure (Blakemore and Choudhury, 2006), particularly in relation to the prefrontal cortex,
set of related cognitive functions. For this reason EF is referred to as ‘fractionated’ (Shallice and Burgess, 1991)
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Miyake and Friedman (2012) define EF as a set of general-purpose control processes that regulate thoughts and behaviours. They consider the following as important components of EF:
Updating – weird name last 3 words- not reliable
Set shifting –adapting strategy
Inhibition – which involves the deliberate overriding of dominant or prepotent responses: for example, stopping yourself from being aggressive if someone insults you (survival technique!).
VARIETY OF DEFINITIONS/BELIEFS
Adele Diamond (2013) -a* set of top-down mental processes that are brought into play when you have to concentrate and pay attention, for example, where just behaving on impulse is either likely to fail or not possible.
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Working memory –.
Inhibitory control – do what might be more appropriate..
Cognitive flexibility – builds on working memory and inhibitory control- much later in development. One aspect involves being able to change perspectives spatially or interpersonally. To change perspective, we need to inhibit our previous perspective and load a different one into our working memory
Tower of London task
Comment- You could have suggested that working memory, cognitive flexibility and updating are involved in this task, and maybe other EF abilities as well.
eg of multi implementation of EF
2.1 Brain processes and the prefrontal cortex
WW2 injuries to front of brain helped in research - fine functioning but did not get EF facets of behaviour
a growth in the density of synapses at puberty (connections between neurons) in the prefrontal cortex and a later reduction (pruning) of the number of synapses. Such changes are assumed to be part of a significant reorganisation of cognitive functioning.
the working memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (1974),
short-term memory for sounds (phonological loop) and for visuospatial information,
- number of research findings that indicate impairments of EF in clinical groups. For example, a meta-analysis by Mulder et al. (2009) of children born prematurely revealed that the extent of the prematurity, which we can consider to have a significant effect on a range of physiological processes, was related to later EF impairments.
impairments in EF linked to autistic-spectrum disorders, communication impairments, dyslexia, ADHD, to name but a few conditions.*
when on auto pilot not engaging EF
consequences for children whose development is atypical?
inhibition
4 year olds 1 biscuit now or 2 in 15 mins- study how long look away from cookie &at bell
how act at 4 linked to 18 !
'training' such as ‘Handgame’- based on work by Alexander Luria (1973).
3 yr olds fail, 4 yr olds pass
Stroop task
words in diff coloured ink
3 yr olds no use as cannot read!
left prefrontal cortex and related regions
higher levels of activation were found in young adults (18–22 years) than in adolescents (12–16 years), and in adolescents than in children (7–11 years)
adolescent EF is affected by the social context
Gardner and Steinberg (2005) video driving game alone or in the presence of two friends... more risks in the presence of peers than when alone, but this difference was far less in adults (24 and older) : :
Chein et al. (2011) used a similar design and at the same time obtained measures of brain activation
- Guyer et al. (2009) reported that female adolescents, (virtual chat room) show increased brain activity in brain regions associated with emotion and reward processing when talking to a person that they thought was socially desirable to them. Other research suggests that these effects may be due to adolescents giving immediate rewards a higher value in the decision-making process (Chein et al., 2011).*
‘executive loaded working memory’ (ELWM)
term ELWM used to distinguish executive tasks from non-executive tasks in the working memory model. eg, phonological short-term memory, which is a component of the working memory model (see Figure 4), is not usually considered to be a form of executive functioning because the process only involves memory abilities.
true/false remember final word.
last 4 letters when updated (Miyake and Friedman (2012).
St Clair-Thompson and Gathercole (2006) found that, in children aged 11–12 years old, there were significant correlations between verbal and non-verbal assessments of ELWM and two updating tasks (one of which was letter memory). In contrast, ELWM mostly had non-significant correlations with assessments of inhibition and shifting.
highly related to measures of intelligence in adults (Friedman et al., 2006), and evidence indicates that ELWM performance is correlated with school performance in English and maths (St Clair-Thompson and Gathercole, 2006). Furthermore, poor performance on central executive tasks is a characteristic of children with dyslexia (Booth et al., 2007) and specific language impairment, such as having difficulty remembering words that they want to say (Henry et al., 2012).
must be in ZPD
successful intervention programmes (eg on computer) disprove EF is a stable characteristic of individuals.
directing items from boxes- performance of participants stable. direction improved with age.- ability to see things from another's perspective
Grant and Berg’s (1948) Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) ?
*psychometric testing’ ...any task that is administered with the aim of measuring some psychological aspect of a person, such as ability (as in intelligence tests), personality or some other feature. Standardised tests can indicate whether a person is typical or atypical, relative to a large representative group of other people of a similar age and background.*
standardised tests-
training on how to carry them out.
only a snapshot of that day's performance!!
Range- they add standard error up and down
Sally- Ann task
link back to week 4- https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1446329§ion=7.2
theory of mind- where will sally look for marble?
Binet scales, the term ‘mental age’ was commonly substituted for ‘mental level’. Since mental age is such a simple concept to grasp, the introduction of this term undoubtedly did much to popularize intelligence testing. Binet himself, however, avoided the term ‘mental age’ because of this unverified developmental implications and preferred the more neutral term ‘mental level’.
Binet-Simon test
1905 scale
testing 'retarded' children compared to 'normal'
1908 scale- more tests & refined the 1905 test
pie charts ok if 6 or less categories