Jarosław Orzechowski

Working Memory Capacity and Individual Differences in Higher-Level Cognition

Let’s start with a riddle: what are the Authors referring to? “[It] is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human mind; it makes possible planning, reasoning, problem solving, reading, and abstraction.” (Conway, Jarrold, Kane, Miyake, & Towse, 2007, p. 3) “This concept [of it] and its limits is a key part of human condition. […] We need [it] to in language comprehension, […]; in arithmetic, […]; in reasoning, […]; and in most other types of cognitive tasks.” (Cowan, 2005a, p. 2) If it was not for the names of the authors of the above quotes, which no doubt for majority of readers indicate unambiguously the context of “it,” one could think that they are referring to terms like consciousness, abstract thinking, or the g factor. It is even more interesting that these quotes come from first pages of multipage books, where – in accordance with the rule “from the general to the particular” – one gives basic information about one’s subject matter. However, as Necka (in print) felicitously says in a paper concerning this concept: “[…] for some 2,500 years of psychology as a branch of philosophy, and then for almost 100 years of its independent development […], it was not considered necessary to use [this] term.” Thus, it is a concept of equal importance in psychology as consciousness, thinking, and intelligence, but much younger.

The (In)significance of Executive Functions for the Trait of Self-Control: A Psychometric Study

Self-control (SC) is an individual trait defined as the ability to pursue long-distance goals in spite of the obstacles generated by current desires, innate or learned automatisms, and physiological needs of an organism. This trait is relatively stable across the life span and it predicts such important features as level of income, quality of social relationships, and proneness to addictions. It is widely believed that the cognitive substrate of SC involves the executive functions (EFs), such as inhibitory control, shifting of attention, and working memory updating. However, the empirical evidence concerning the relationships between trait SC and EFs is not convincing. The present study aims to address two questions: (1) what is the strength of relationships between trait SC and EFs, and (2) which aspects of SC are predicted by particular EFs, if at all. In order to answer these questions, we carried out a psychometric study with 296 participants (133 men and 163 women, mean age 23.31, SD 3.64), whom we investigated with three types of tools: (1) a battery SC scales and inventories, (2) a battery of EFs tasks, and (3) two general intelligence tests. Structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the data. We found that the latent variables representing SC and the latent variable representing EFs did not show any relationship. The standardized path coefficient between EFs and general intelligence turned out rather strong. We conclude that the trait of SC, measured with questionnaires, does not depend on the strength of cognitive control, measured with EFs tasks.

Individual Differences in Working Memory and Higher-Ordered Processing: The Commentaries

Executive functions (EF) are those higher-level cognitive activities that include the monitoring and self-regulation of attention, thought, and action, and the ability to plan behavior and to inhibit inappropriate responses. These cognitive control processes are voluntary and effortful and have been described as providing a system for overriding routine or reflexive behavior in favor of more situationally appropriate and adaptive behavior (Shallice, 1988). As such, these processes are integrally tied to the functioning and development of working memory (WM) (see Cowan & Alloway, 2009). The significance of EF is evident in developmental conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, and fetal alcoholism spectrum disorder that are characterized by poor executive functioning across a variety of behavioral domains. Executive functioning activities are immature in infancy and toddlerhood but develop slowly over the preschool years and continue to be fine-tuned into adolescence. For example, research shows that 2-, 3-, and most 4-year-olds consistently perform poorly on a variety of tasks that require the ability to inhibit a prepotent but inappropriate response in a conflict task (e.g., dimensional switching), to demonstrate the theory of mind reasoning (e.g., false belief task), to mentally represent an object in two different ways simultaneously (e.g., the appearance-reality distinction task), or to execute a plan (e.g., motor sequencing tasks). In contrast, 5- and 6-year-olds succeed on these tasks, although some of the more sophisticated iterations of these will not be successfully performed until later childhood or adolescence (for a discussion see Goswami, 2007).