Gain and loss modulation of different aspects of executive functions (EF) has been studied under changing conditions. However, the nature of this effect varies in different EF tasks, as both gain and loss were found to improve performance in specific EF tasks while hindering performance in others. The current study examines the influence of gain and loss stimuli on arithmetic performance. Since...

This study examined the developmental trajectories of three frequently postulated executive function (EF) components, Working Memory, Shifting, and Inhibition of responses, and their relation to performance on standard, but complex, neuropsychological EF tasks, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), and the Tower of London (ToL). Participants in four age groups (7-, 11-, 15-, and 21-year olds)...

An ongoing debate surrounds whether bilinguals outperform monolinguals in tests of executive processing. The aim of this study was to investigate if there are long-term (10 year) bilingual advantages in executive processing, as indexed by dual-task performance, in a sample that were 40-65 years at baseline. The bilingual (n = 24) and monolingual (n = 24) participants were matched on age, sex, e...

Previous research has demonstrated that stereotype threat induces a prevention focus and impairs central executive functions. The present research examines how these 2 consequences of stereotype threat are related. The authors argue that the prevention focus is responsible for the effects of stereotype threat on executive functions and cognitive performance. However, because the prevention focu...

A longstanding debate in psychology concerns the relation between handedness and cognitive functioning. The present study aimed to contribute to this debate by comparing performance of right- and non-right-handers on verbal and spatial Stroop tasks. Previous studies have shown that non-right-handers have better inter-hemispheric interaction and greater access to right hemisphere processes. On t...

Cognitive control is essential to flexible, goal-directed behavior under uncertainty, yet its underlying mechanisms are not clearly understood. Because attentional functions are known to allocate mental resources and prioritize the information to be processed, we propose that the attentional functions of alerting, orienting, and executive control and the interactions among them contribute to co...

Despite the importance of executive function (EF) in both clinical and educational contexts, the aetiology of individual differences in early childhood EF remains poorly understood. This study provides the first longitudinal intergenerational analysis of mother-child EF associations during early childhood. A group of children and their mothers (n = 62) completed age-appropriate EF tasks. Mother...

The present study examined age differences in executive functioning, using an externally cued task-switching paradigm. Two components of task switching were assessed: the ability to maintain and select among task sets (general switch costs) and the ability to switch between task sets (specific switch costs). In contrast to previous findings, we found large age-related differences in specific sw...

Although performance on laboratory-based implicit bias tasks often is interpreted strictly in terms of the strength of automatic associations, recent evidence suggests that such tasks are influenced by higher-order cognitive control processes, so-called executive functions (EFs). However, extant work in this area has been limited by failure to account for the unity and diversity of EFs, focus o...

A recent meta-analytic review by Shields, Sazma, & Yonelinas (2016) brings to the fore several conceptual issues within the stress and executive function (EF) literatures. We present a critique of these issues, using the review as an exemplar of how stress and EF are often examined empirically. The review summarizes research suggesting that EF is not only trait-like, but can be also state-like,...