LeFevre-executive function

Executive function, theoretically, there’s a lot of overlap with what executive function is but you always have to end up measuring a particular construct, right? So the way that we measured our attentional pathway was with a task where children were shown, well we called it the ‘lily pad task’.  

So, they were shown some green circles and invisible frog jumping from one circle to the next. And they had to remember where the pathway that the frog went and they had to reproduce it. And, you know, it seems like kind of a strange task in a way but children don’t seem to mind having imaginary frogs that they’re following around.  

It measures what you could call spatial attention, which is a component of executive function. Why is it executive function? Because you have to keep track and you have to remember where the frog went and then you have to reproduce it. So, you’re doing this the very much back and forth between what we usually refer to as working memory and sort of the pulling in all the other information that you need to do that particular task.