Messer David, Bernardi Marialivia, Botting Nicola, Hill Elisabeth L, Nash Gilly, Leonard Hayley C, Henry Lucy A
Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom.
Language and Communication Science, City University of London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2018 Jul 13;9:1179. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01179. eCollection 2018.
There has been considerable debate and interest in the factor structure of executive functioning (EF). For children and young people, there is evidence of a progression from a single factor to a more differentiated structure, although the precise nature of these factors differs between investigations. The purpose of the current study was to look at this issue again with another sample, and try to understand possible reasons for previous differences between investigations. In addition, we examined the relationship between less central EF tasks, such as fluency and planning, to the more common tasks of updating/executive working memory (EWM), inhibition, and switching/shifting. A final aim was to carry out analyses which are relevant to the debate about whether EF is influenced by language ability, or language ability is influenced by EF. We reasoned that if language ability affects EF, a factor analysis of verbal and non-verbal EF tasks might result in the identification of a factor which predominantly contains verbal tasks and a factor that predominately contains non-verbal tasks. Our investigation involved 128 typically developing participants (mean age 10:4) who were given EF assessments that included verbal and non-verbal versions of each task: EWM; switching; inhibition; fluency; and planning. Exploratory factor analyses on EWM, switching, and inhibition produced a structure consisting of inhibition in one factor and the remaining tasks in another. It was decided to exclude verbal planning from the next analyses of all the ten tasks because of statistical considerations. Analysis of the remaining nine EF tasks produced two factors, one factor containing the two inhibition tasks, and another factor that contained all the other tasks (switching, EWM, fluency, and non-verbal planning). There was little evidence that the verbal or non-verbal elements in these tasks affected the factor structure. Both these issues are considered in the discussion, where there is a general evaluation of findings about the factor structure of EF.
关于执行功能（EF）的因素结构，一直存在大量的争论和研究兴趣。对于儿童和青少年而言，有证据表明其执行功能结构从单一因素逐渐发展为更为分化的结构，尽管不同研究中这些因素的确切性质有所不同。本研究的目的是使用另一组样本再次审视这个问题，并试图理解先前研究结果存在差异的可能原因。此外，我们还研究了流畅性和计划等相对不太核心的执行功能任务与更常见的更新/执行工作记忆（EWM）、抑制和转换/切换任务之间的关系。最后一个目标是进行一些分析，这些分析与关于执行功能是受语言能力影响还是语言能力受执行功能影响的争论相关。我们推断，如果语言能力影响执行功能，那么对言语和非言语执行功能任务进行因素分析可能会识别出一个主要包含言语任务的因素和一个主要包含非言语任务的因素。我们的研究涉及128名发育正常的参与者（平均年龄10岁4个月），他们接受了执行功能评估，其中每个任务都包括言语和非言语版本：EWM、转换、抑制、流畅性和计划。对EWM、转换和抑制进行探索性因素分析，得出的结构是一个因素包含抑制任务，另一个因素包含其余任务。出于统计考虑，决定在对所有十个任务的后续分析中排除言语计划任务。对其余九个执行功能任务的分析产生了两个因素，一个因素包含两个抑制任务，另一个因素包含所有其他任务（转换、EWM、流畅性和非言语计划）。几乎没有证据表明这些任务中的言语或非言语元素会影响因素结构。在讨论部分会考虑这两个问题，并对执行功能因素结构的研究结果进行总体评估。
