执行功能可分离性及与年龄关系的潜变量分析

THE DIVERSITY OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS IN NORMAL ADULTS: A LATENT VARIABLE ANALYSIS

应用潜变量分析研究抑制优势反应、记忆刷新和注意转换三种执行功能的可分离性以及与年龄的关系.被试为18～85岁的健康成年人142名,完成九项执行功能任务.结果显示:本研究设计的九项执行功能任务有较好的信度;验证性因子分析显示,九项任务与对应执行功能间的因子负荷较高(汇聚性效度好),而不同执行功能间的相关较低(鉴别性效度好);在此基础上建立了三种执行功能及其与年龄关系的潜变量分析模型.研究结果表明,执行系统不是单一的认知结构,可以分离为若干相对独立的执行加工过程.

The diversity of three executive functions (inhibition of prepotent responses, memory updating, and attention switching) was studied with latent variable approach. One hundred and forty-two adults between 18 and 85 years of age performed nine computerized tasks that are considered to tap each corresponding target executive function. The results indicated that 1). Reliabilities of those tasks are relatively high. 2) Confirmatory factor analysis showed that nine executive function tasks have strong loading on the hypothesized constructs, indicating a good convergent validity of the three executive functions, and the correlations between the three executive functions are rather low when age are controlled, indicating a good discriminant validity of the three executive functions. Altogether, these results were better than those of Miyake et al. (2000), and provided a strong evidence for the diversity of executive functions.