Flowchart Information

Frontal lobes

Provide top-down control, generate cortical tone, prepare other regions for goal-directed behavior, support endogenous attention, suppress exogenous attention, regulate sequencing, monitoring, and voluntary action.

Frontal lobe damage

Reduces cortical tone, weakens endogenous attention, strengthens exogenous attention, increases distractibility, increases automatic responding, produces disorganized, stimulus-driven behavior.

Automatic schemas

Support routine actions.

Non-routine situations

Require the Supervisory Attentional System to override automatic schemas, supporting inhibition, set-shifting, and novelty handling.

Damage to SAS

Removes top-down control, produces perseveration when schemas dominate, produces distractibility when external cues dominate, explains rigidity and impulsivity in frontal patients.

Executive functions

Show unity through general control processes and diversity through Shifting, Updating, and Inhibition, measured with low inter-correlations, proving partial independence.

Guided Activation Theory

Explains top-down control where PFC maintains goals and biases other neural systems.

Working Memory

Foundation for higher executive skills, divides into maintenance (VLPFC) and manipulation (DLPFC).

Maintenance

Relies on holding information, measured by simple span tasks.

Manipulation

Relies on transforming or reordering information, measured by complex span tasks.

Dopamine

Sets the signal-to-noise ratio in PFC; too little reduces stability, too much increases noise, both extremes impair WM, first affecting manipulation because it depends on DLPFC.

Development of WM

Strengthens during childhood, especially manipulation, enabling later development of IC and Cf (Diamond's hierarchy).

Inhibitory Control

Filters irrelevant sensory input, suppresses irrelevant thoughts, stops prepotent actions.

Response inhibition

Measured with Go/No-Go and Stop-Signal tasks; SSRT reflects stopping latency; lengthened SSRT indicates weaker inhibition.

Think/No-Think tasks

Show suppression reduces later recall, demonstrating cognitive inhibition as a distinct mechanism.

Early IC failure

Shown in A-not-B error, inability to override habitual motor response.

Cognitive Flexibility

Requires WM to hold a new rule and IC to suppress an old rule, allowing rule-shifting.

Impaired flexibility

Produces perseveration, continuing an old rule despite feedback, measured by WCST and DCCS, linked to left DLPFC dysfunction.

Theory of Mind (ToM)

Requires cognitive flexibility, involves second-order representations, depends on shifting perspectives.

ASD

Involves difficulty forming second-order representations, weak joint attention, impaired flexible shifting between mental states.

Planning

Depends on WM, IC, and Cf, follows the sequence: goal articulation, plan formulation, marker creation, marker triggering.

Effective planning

Uses more planning time, results in shorter execution time.

Poor planning

Shows minimal planning time, leads to long execution time, linked to IC deficits and DLPFC dysfunction.

Strategy Application Disorder

Arises when planning steps cannot be executed in sequence, leads to rule breaks, inefficient strategies, and mis-ordered behavior.

DLPFC activation

Increases with task complexity; right DLPFC stimulation improves Tower of London performance, showing causal involvement.

Fluid Reasoning

Identifies relations in novel problems, depends on DLPFC for relational processing and RLPFC for relational integration.

Relational integration

Highest-level reasoning, requires comparing multiple relations simultaneously, depends on RLPFC (Area 10).

Children and Relational Integration

Struggle with RI; faster incorrect response crosses threshold first, explained by the Passive Dissipation Model.

RLPFC

Last to mature, supports abstraction, long-range planning, and complex reasoning.

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

Shapes EF development; lower SES weakens attentional control, influences school readiness more than IQ.

Stress and EF outcomes

Harm PFC systems, weaken WM, IC, Cf, reduce real-world regulation.

Addiction

Linked to reduced ACC/PFC activity and weakened ACC-striatum connectivity, impairs control over reward-driven urges.

EF Training

Effortful practice builds EF skills, requires continuous challenge and reflective monitoring.

Reflection on uncertainty

Strengthens metacognitive control, supports transfer of EF training.

Growth mindset

Encourages persistence, enables long-term improvements in EF.

Diamond's hierarchy

Ties everything together: WM supports IC, supports Cf, supports planning, supports reasoning, explains the clustering of deficits in frontal conditions.