Executive Functioning as a Potential Mediator of Age-Related Cognitive Decline in Normal Adults.

Salthouse, Timothy A.; Atkinson, Thomas M.; Berish, Diane

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.132.4.566

Cited by 832 publications

(749 citation statements)

References 163 publications

(201 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

668

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…We addressed this issue in the context of the verbal fluency task, using mixed effects regression techniques to identify fluency task components. Another approach has been taken by Miyake (Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter, & Wager, 2000), Salthouse (Salthouse, Atkinson, &Berish, 2003), andHull (Hull, Martin, Beier, Lane, &Hamilton, 2008) to use structural equation modeling to identify the subcomponents of EF. Our measures of EF most closely map onto the inhibition and shifting parameters of these models.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding verbal fluency in healthy aging, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

McDowd¹,

Hoffman²,

Rozek³

et al. 2011

Neuropsychology

155

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract: Objective: Verbal fluency measures are frequently part of batteries designed to assess executive function, but are also used to assess semantic processing ability or word knowledge. The goal of the present study was to identify the cognitive components underlying fluency performance.  Method: Healthy young and older adults, adults with Parkinson's disease, and adults with Alzheimer's disease performed letter, category, and action fluency tests. Performance was assessed in terms of number of items generated, clustering, and the time course of output. A series of neuropsychological assessments were also administered to index verbal ability, working memory, executive function, and processing speed as correlates of fluency performance.  Results: Findings indicated that regardless of the particular performance measure, young adults performed the best and adults with Alzheimer's disease performed most poorly, with healthy older adults and adults with Parkinson's disease performing at intermediate levels. The exception was the action fluency task, where adults with Parkinson's disease performed most poorly. The time course of fluency performance was characterized in terms of slope and intercept parameters and related to neuropsychological constructs. Speed of processing was found to be the best predictor of performance, rather than the efficiency of executive function or semantic knowledge.  Conclusions: Together, these findings demonstrate that the pattern of fluency performance looks generally the same regardless of how performance is measured. In addition, the primary role of processing speed in performance suggests that the use of fluency tasks as measures of executive function or verbal ability warrants reexamination. Text of paper begins on next page:McDowd, J., Hoffman, L., Rozek, E., Lyons, K., Pahwa, R., IntroductionExecutive function (EF) is increasingly recognized as an important factor in the functional status of older adults. This association has been observed in generally healthy community-dwelling older adults (e.g., Carlson et al., 1999; Grigsby et al., 1998;Royall et al, 2004), as well as in people with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) (Swanberg, Tractenberg, Mohs, Thal, & Commings, 2004) and Parkinson's Disease (PD) (Rochester, Hetherington, Jones, Nieuwboer, Willems, Kwakkel, & Van Wegan, 2004). A number of authors have suggested that an individual's executive abilities might be used to anticipate care needs or to plan rehabilitation programs (e.g., Carlson et al., 1999; Kahokehr et al., 2004;Royall et al, 2000). However, a better understanding of measures of EF is necessary in order to realize this potential for clinical significance.The tasks typically used to assess EF are complex, often involving a number of different cognitive processes. Verbal fluency measures are frequently part of batteries designed to assess EF but are also used to assess semantic processing ability or word knowledge. Since both semantic and executive processes may contribute to performance, it is of interest to isol...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding verbal fluency in healthy aging, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

McDowd¹,

Hoffman²,

Rozek³

et al. 2011

Neuropsychology

155

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A measurement burst study therefore inevitably involves a trade-off between the number of assessments necessary to obtain a reasonable estimate of variability and the pragmatic difficulties associated with extensive testing. The design implemented in a recent project in my laboratory involves administering three different versions of 16 tests in three sessions within a period of about 2 weeks (see, e.g., Salthouse et al, 2006).The cognitive tests have been described in other reports (e.g., Salthouse, Atkinson, & Berish, 2003;Salthouse & Ferrer-Caja, 2003;Salthouse et al, 2006) and are briefly summarized in Table 1. Unlike many previous studies of within-person variability, our studies examined a broad variety of cognitive variables and not just various types of reaction time.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of within-person variability in cognitive and neuropsychological functioning for the interpretation of change.

Salthouse

2007

Neuropsychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Samples of adults across a wide age range performed a battery of 16 cognitive tests in 3 sessions within an interval of approximately 2 weeks. Estimates of within-person variability across the 3 assessments were relatively large and were equivalent in magnitude to the cross-sectional age differences expected over an interval of 15-25 years. These findings raise questions about the precision of assessments based on a single measurement and imply that it may be difficult to distinguish true change from short-term fluctuation. Because there were large individual differences in the magnitude of this variability, it is proposed that change might be most meaningfully expressed in units of each individual's own across-session variability. Keywords cognition; aging; longitudinal change; measurement burstSeveral recent articles have reported the existence of substantial within-person variability in performance on the same cognitive and neuropsychological tests across multiple occasions. To illustrate, in studies by Salthouse and colleagues, the within-person (across-session) standard deviation averaged about 50% of the between-person standard deviation for a variety of different cognitive variables (e.g., Nesselroade & Salthouse, 2004;Salthouse & Berish, 2005;Salthouse, Nesselroade, & Berish, 2006). This phenomenon of sizable within-person variability is interesting for at least three reasons. First, measures of within-person variability could have unique diagnostic significance compared with measures of central tendency. That is, how much a person's performance varies around his or her average level on a specific test could be an early predictor of impending change to a different level of functioning. Consistent with this interpretation are several reports of significant relations between measures of within-person variability and neurological status (e.g., Burton, Strauss, Hultsch, Moll, & Hunter, 2006;Hultsch, MacDonald, Hunter, Levy-Bencheton, & Strauss, 2000;Murtha, Cismaru, Waechter, & Chertkow, 2002;Strauss, MacDonald, Hunter, Moll, & Hultsch, 2002) and even risk of death (Shipley, Der, Taylor, & Deary, 2006).A second reason why within-person variability is important is that it suggests that single assessments may not be sufficient for accurate evaluation of an individual if another assessment with the same test could lead to a different level of performance and, possibly, to a different diagnostic classification. Little is currently known about the potential impact of this type of problem, but it will likely depend on both the magnitude of the variability and the range of variables that exhibit within-person variability.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Timothy A. Salthouse, Department of Psychology, 102 Gilmer Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400.. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptNeuropsychology. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2013 November 25. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptA third reason why the phenom...

show abstract

“…Conceptualizing abilities as latent constructs That is, when researchers study isolated variables there is no way to determine whether the age-related influences on those variables are distinct from the age-related influences on other variables. Unique effects associated with age in a contextual analysis are particularly informative in this respect because, by definition, they are statistically independent of agerelated influences on other variables and constructs included in the analyses.The reference cognitive ability variables used in earlier contextual analyses have been found to have good internal consistency reliability (e.g., Salthouse, 2005b;Salthouse, Atkinson & Berish, 2003;Salthouse, Berish & Siedlecki, 2004;, and to have parallel factor structures across studies. Evidence relevant to the robustness of the structures is summarized in Table 1, where it can be seen that the patterns of construct-variable and construct-construct relations were similar in four independent data sets.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If neither variable is found to have a Gf influence, then it is reasonable to infer that none of the aspects of processing involved in either of the tasks reflect Gf. However, the model in Figure 1 controls for effects on the complex variable that are mediated through the simple variable, and thus a discovery of significant effects of Gf on the complex variable would signify that there is a unique, or incremental, influence of Gf on the complex variable, above and beyond that on the simple variable.The same cognitive ability reference constructs listed in Table 1 and portrayed in Figure 1 have been used to investigate the convergent and discriminant validity of latent constructs postulated to reflect executive functioning (Salthouse, Atkinson & Berish, 2003;Salthouse, Berish & Siedlecki, 2004;Salthouse & Davis, 2006), inhibition, updating, and time-sharing , source memory (Siedlecki, Salthouse & Berish, 2005) and prospective memory . However, there were two reasons for focusing on observed variables rather than latent constructs as the target variables in the current project.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual analysis of fluid intelligence

2008

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The nature of fluid intelligence was investigated by identifying variables that were, and were not, significantly related to this construct. Relevant information was obtained from three sources: reanalyses of data from previous studies, a study in which 791 adults performed storage-plusprocessing working memory tasks, and a study in which 236 adults performed a variety of working memory, updating, and cognitive control tasks. The results suggest that fluid intelligence represents a broad individual difference dimension contributing to diverse types of controlled or effortful processing. The analyses also revealed that very few of the age-related effects on the target variables were statistically independent of effects on established cognitive abilities, which suggests most of the age-related influences on a wide variety of cognitive control variables overlap with age-related influences on cognitive abilities such as fluid intelligence, episodic memory, and perceptual speed.The finding that nearly all cognitive variables are positively related to one another has been described as one of the most replicated results in psychology (cf. Deary, 2000), and one of the most replicated results in research on aging and cognition is that a very large number of cognitive variables are negatively related to adult age (e.g., Salthouse, 2001a;2004;Salthouse, Atkinson & Berish, 2003;Salthouse & Davis, 2006;Salthouse & Ferrer-Caja, 2003). Interestingly, these two sets of results are linked because the degree to which a given cognitive variable is related to other cognitive variables (as reflected by the variable's loading on the first principal component in a principal components analysis) has been found to predict the magnitude of the age correlation on the variable (e.g., Salthouse, 2001a,b, c). To illustrate, in an analysis of 30 different data sets, Salthouse (2001a) found a median rank-order correlation of .80 between a variable's loading on the first principal component and the absolute magnitude of the variable's correlation with age. Another intriguing outcome of these analyses was that the variables with the strongest associations with other variables and the strongest associations with age were frequently measures of reasoning or fluid intelligence (Gf).Relations among cognitive variables are often represented in terms of an organizational structure based on the patterns of correlations. There is considerable agreement that a particularly meaningful correlation-based organization is a hierarchical structure, with observed variables at the lowest level, various cognitive abilities at intermediate levels, and a g factor at the highest level (e.g., Carroll, 1993;Gustafsson, 1988;Jensen, 1998). A consistent finding of analyses investigating where in the hierarchical structure age-related influences operate is the discovery of significant negative relations of age on the highest-order factor in the structure (e.g., Salthouse, 2004;2005a;Salthouse & Ferrer-Caja, 2003). Moreover, these © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights r...

show abstract

Executive Functioning as a Potential Mediator of Age-Related Cognitive Decline in Normal Adults.

Cited by 832 publications

References 163 publications

Understanding verbal fluency in healthy aging, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

Understanding verbal fluency in healthy aging, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease.

Implications of within-person variability in cognitive and neuropsychological functioning for the interpretation of change.

Contextual analysis of fluid intelligence

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About