Date of Completion

7-31-2013

Embargo Period

7-31-2013

Keywords

Executive function, multi-scale measures, fractal, diffusion

Major Advisor

Dr. James A. Dixon

Associate Advisor

Dr. Marie Coppola

Associate Advisor

Dr. Heather Bortfeld

Field of Study

Psychology

Open Access

Open Access

Abstract

Cognitive control is a central issue in developmental psychology. Traditional theories of psychology solve this problem by positing a top-down central executive, which coordinates cognitive resources in pursuit of goals. We propose an alternative explanation: cognitive control arises from physical interactions across many different timescales within the system. We examined whether measures of individual differences of these multi-scale interactions could predict individual differences in executive function development. Preschool-aged participants were asked to complete a series of executive function tasks while we tracked the motion of their dominant hand. We found that multi-scale interactions differed depending on experimental constraints. We also found that individual differences on multi-scale interactions correlated with individual differences of behavioral measures. These results suggest that multi-scale measures can be used to measure executive function, and that changes in multi-scale effects may be the drivers of change in cognition.

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