Psychology Commons^™

Event-Related Potentials, Inhibition, And Risk For Alzheimer’S Disease Among Cognitively Intact Elders, Kathleen Hazlett Elverman, Elizabeth Rose Paitel, Christina Marie Figueroa, Ryan J. Mckindles, Kristy A. Nielson

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Background:

Despite advances in understanding Alzheimer’s disease (AD), prediction of AD prior to symptom onset remains severely limited, even when primary risk factors such as the apolipoprotein E (APOE) ɛ4 allele are known.

Objective:

Although executive dysfunction is highly prevalent and is a primary contributor to loss of independence in those with AD, few studies have examined neural differences underlying executive functioning as indicators of risk for AD prior to symptom onset, when intervention might be effective.

Methods:

This study examined event-related potential (ERP) differences during inhibitory control in 44 cognitively intact older adults (20 ɛ4+, 24 ɛ4-), …

Temporal Dynamics Of Event-Related Potentials During Inhibitory Control Characterize Age-Related Neural Compensation, Elizabeth Rose Paitel, Kristy A. Nielson

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Aging is accompanied by frontal lobe and non-dominant hemisphere recruitment that supports executive functioning, such as inhibitory control, which is crucial to all cognitive functions. However, the spatio-temporal sequence of processing underlying successful inhibition and how it changes with age is understudied. Thus, we capitalized on the temporal precision of event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess the functional lateralization of N200 (conflict monitoring) and P300 (inhibitory performance evaluation) in young and healthy older adults during comparably performed successful stop-signal inhibition. We additionally used temporal principal components analysis (PCA) to further interrogate the continuous spatio-temporal dynamics underlying N200 and P300 activation for …

The Benefits Of Adding A Brief Measure Of Simple Reaction Time To The Assessment Of Executive Function Skills In Early Childhood, Michael T. Willoughby, Clancy B. Blair, Laura J. Kuhn, Brooke E. Magnus

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Early childhood represents a period of rapid cognitive developmental change in executive function (EF) skills along with a variety of related cognitive processes, including processing speed. This leads to interpretational challenges in that children’s performance on EF tasks reflects more than EF skills per se. We tested whether the inclusion of a brief measure of simple reaction time (SRT) during EF assessments could help to partially address this challenge. Data were drawn from a cross-sectional convenience sample of 830 preschool-aged children. Individual differences in SRT were significantly associated with performance on all tasks (R²s = .09–.26); slower …

Integrating Item Accuracy And Reaction Time To Improve The Measurement Of Inhibitory Control Abilities In Early Childhood, Brooke E. Magnus, Michael T. Willoughby, Clancy B. Blair, Laura J. Kuhn

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Efforts to improve children’s executive function are often hampered by the lack of measures that are optimized for use during the transition from preschool to elementary school. Whereas preschool-based measures often emphasize response accuracy, elementary school-based measures emphasize reaction time (RT)—especially for measures inhibitory control (IC) tasks that typically have a speeded component. The primary objective of this study was to test in a preschool-aged sample whether the joint use of item-level accuracy and RT data resulted in improved scoring for three IC tasks relative to scores derived from accuracy data alone. Generally, the joint use of item-level accuracy and …

Developmental Delays In Executive Function From 3 To 5 Years Of Age Predict Kindergarten Academic Readiness, Michael T. Willoughby, Brooke E. Magnus, Lynne Vernon-Feagans, Clancy B. Blair

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Substantial evidence has established that individual differences in executive function (EF) in early childhood are uniquely predictive of children’s academic readiness at school entry. The current study tested whether growth trajectories of EF across the early childhood period could be used to identify a subset of children who were at pronounced risk for academic impairment in kindergarten. Using data that were collected at the age 3, 4, and 5 home assessments in the Family Life Project (N = 1,120), growth mixture models were used to identify 9% of children who exhibited impaired EF performance (i.e., persistently low levels of …

Neurocognitive Predictors Of Treatment Response To Randomized Treatment In Adults With Tic Disorders, Amitai Abramovitch, Lauren S. Hallion, Hannah E. Reese, Douglas W. Woods, Alan Peterson, John T. Walkup, John Piacentini, Lawrence Scahill, Thilo Deckersbach, Sabine Wilhelm

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Tourette's disorder (TS) and chronic tic disorder (CTD) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by involuntary vocal and motor tics. Consequently, TS/CTD have been conceptualized as disorders of cognitive and motor inhibitory control. However, most neurocognitive studies have found comparable or superior inhibitory capacity among individuals with TS/CTD relative to healthy controls. These findings have led to the hypothesis that individuals with TS/CTD develop increased inhibitory control due to the constant need to inhibit tics. However, the role of cognitive control in TS/CTD is not yet understood, particularly in adults. To examine the role of inhibitory control in TS/CTD, the present study …

Executive Functioning And Risk For Alzheimer's Disease In The Cognitively Intact: Family History Predicts Wisconsin Card Sorting Test Performance, Kathleen Hazlett, Christina Marie Figueroa, Kristy A. Nielson

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research typically focuses on memory. However, executive functioning (EF) deficits are also common among AD patients; these deficits are associated with decreased functioning in activities of daily living, an important criterion in diagnosing AD. A classic test of EF ability, the Wisconsin Card Sort Test (WCST), has demonstrated sensitivity to differentiating individuals with AD from healthy controls, discriminating AD groups based on disease severity, and distinguishing AD from other types of dementia. Such sensitivity to AD raises the possibility that the WCST is also sensitive to very early, preclinical differences between those who have heightened risk for …

Infant Responding To Joint Attention, Executive Processes, And Self-Regulation In Preschool Children, Amy V. Van Hecke, Peter Mundy, Jessica J. Block, Christine E.F. Delgado, Meaghan Venezia Parlade, Yuly B. Pomares, Jessica A. Hobson

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Infant joint attention is related to behavioral and social outcomes, as well as language in childhood. Recent research and theory suggests that the relations between joint attention and social–behavioral outcomes may reflect the role of executive self-regulatory processes in the development of joint attention. To test this hypothesis two studies were conducted. The first, cross-sectional study examined the development of responding to joint attention (RJA) skill in terms of increasing executive efficiency of responding between 9 and 18 months of age. The results indicated that development of RJA was characterized by a decreased latency to shift attention in following another …

Frontal Recruitment During Response Inhibition In Older Adults Replicated With Fmri, Scott Aaron Langenecker, Kristy A. Nielson

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Recent research has explored age-related differences in multiple areas of cognitive functioning using fMRI, PET, and SPECT. However, because these studies used different tasks, subjects, and methods, little is known about whether the results of these studies are generalizable or repeatable. The present study replicated a previous study [Psychol. Aging 17 (2002) 56] using the same Go/No-go task with a subset of 11 of the original older adult subjects, and using the same fMRI scanner and imaging methods. A direct comparison was made between these participants at Time 1 and Time 2 for both behavioral and functional data. These participants …