Miyake A, Friedman N P, Emerson M J, Witzki A H, Howerter A, Wager T D
Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder, 80309-0345, USA.
Cogn Psychol. 2000 Aug;41(1):49-100. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1999.0734.
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.
这项个体差异研究考察了三种常被假定的执行功能——心理定势转换（“转换”）、信息更新与监控（“更新”）以及对优势反应的抑制（“抑制”）——的可分离性，以及它们在复杂的“额叶”或“执行”任务中的作用。137名大学生完成了一组相对简单的实验任务，这些任务被认为主要用于考察每种目标执行功能，此外还完成了一组常用的执行任务：威斯康星卡片分类测验（WCST）、河内塔（TOH）、随机数字生成（RNG）、运算广度和双重任务。验证性因素分析表明，这三种目标执行功能彼此之间存在中度相关性，但明显可分离。此外，结构方程模型表明，这三种功能对复杂执行任务的表现贡献不同。具体而言，WCST表现与转换功能关系最为密切，TOH与抑制功能相关，RNG与抑制和更新功能相关，运算广度与更新功能相关。双重任务表现与这三种目标功能均无关联。这些结果表明，认识到执行功能的统一性和多样性很重要，并且潜在变量分析是研究执行功能的组织和作用的一种有用方法。
