Central Executive Component of Working Memory

摘要

A distinction between voluntary/controlled and stimulus-driven/automatic behaviorhas been separately applied to the effects of frontal lobe lesions, individual differences in general intelligence or Spearman's g, and interference between dissimilar, concurrent tasks. We suggest that these three problems are indeed closely linked, all concerning a process of selection between alternative goals or abstract requirements on behavior, especially under conditions of novelty and /or weak environmental cues to action. Among our findings are: (1) Executive deficits following frontal lesions are specifically associated with losses in fluid intelligence. (2) Conventional frontal tests have little in common besides g. (3) Across a wide range of spatial and verbal tasks, dual task interference is closely related to both g correlations and frontal lobe involvement. This may only be true, however, when the secondary task is random sequence generation, designed to avoid stereotype. (4) Frontal patients and people from the lower part of the g distribution share a tendency to goal neglect, or disregard of a task requirement even though that requirement has been understood. Neglect is confined to novel behavior, eliminated by verbal prompts, and sensitive to the number of concurrent goals. (5) In speeded stimulus classification, switching classification rules produces high g correlations. Correlations rapidly decrease, however, with practice on a fixed rule. The results begin to clarify the role of executive control in the organization of behavior. Working memory, Central executive, Frontal lobes, Intelligence.