Executive Functions and Improvement of Thinking: An Intervention Program to Enhance Deductive Reasoning Abilities.

Empirical and theoretical advances and application to society are moved at different speed. Application work is frequently developed later because it requires the integration of knowledge from different research areas. In the present paper, we integrate literature coming from diverse areas of research in order to design a deductive reasoning intervention, based on the involved executive functions. Executive functions include working memory (WM)'s online executive processes and other off-line functions such as task revising and planning. Deductive reasoning is a sequential thinking process driven by reasoners' meta-deductive knowledge and goals that requires the construction and manipulation of representations. We present a new theoretical view about the relationship between executive function and higher-level thinking, a critical analysis of the possibilities and limitations of cognitive training, and a metacognitive training procedure on executive functions to improve deductive reasoning. This procedure integrates direct instruction on deduction and meta-deductive concepts (consistency, necessity) and strategies (search for counterexamples and exhaustivity), together with the simultaneous training of WM and executive functions involved: Focus and switch attention, update WM representations, inhibit and revise intuitive responses, and control the emotional stress yielded by tasks. Likewise, it includes direct training of some complex WM tasks that demands people to carry out similar cognitive assignment than deduction. Our training program would be included in the school curriculum and attempts not only to improve deductive reasoning in experimental tasks, but also to increase students' ability to uncover fallacies in discourse, to automatize some basic logical skills, and to be able to use logical intuitions.

Executive Functions and Improvement of Thinking: An Intervention Program to Enhance Deductive Reasoning Abilities

Empirical and theoretical advances and application to society are moved at different speed. Application work is frequently developed later because it requires the integration of knowledge from different research areas. In the present paper, we integrate literature coming from diverse areas of research in order to design a deductive reasoning intervention, based on the involved executive functions. Executive functions include working memory (WM)’s online executive processes and other off-line functions such as task revising and planning. Deductive reasoning is a sequential thinking process driven by reasoners’ meta-deductive knowledge and goals that requires the construction and manipulation of representations. We present a new theoretical view about the relationship between executive function and higher-level thinking, a critical analysis of the possibilities and limitations of cognitive training, and a metacognitive training procedure on executive functions to improve deductive reasoning. This procedure integrates direct instruction on deduction and meta-deductive concepts (consistency, necessity) and strategies (search for counterexamples and exhaustivity), together with the simultaneous training of WM and executive functions involved: Focus and switch attention, update WM representations, inhibit and revise intuitive responses, and control the emotional stress yielded by tasks. Likewise, it includes direct training of some complex WM tasks that demands people to carry out similar cognitive assignment than deduction. Our training program would be included in the school curriculum and attempts not only to improve deductive reasoning in experimental tasks, but also to increase students’ ability to uncover fallacies in discourse, to automatize some basic logical skills, and to be able to use logical intuitions. (AU)

¿El Retén Episódico de Baddeley es independiente del Ejecutivo Central? Una nueva medida del Retén Episódico / Is the Episodic Buffer of Baddeley independent of the Central Executive? A new measure of the Episodic Buffer

El Retén Episódico (RE) está tomando un creciente papel central en las explicaciones sobre el funcionamiento de la memoria operativa. De hecho, los últimos estudios de Baddeley y sus colaboradores sitúan al RE en el corazón del sistema de memoria. Recientemente la discusión también atañe a si este componente de la memoria operativa presenta una naturaleza independiente respecto a los recursos del ejecutivo central. Algunos estudios muestran como en tareas automatizadas, la construcción y mantenimiento de elementos almacenados en el RE no requieren de recursos desde el ejecutivo central. El presente trabajo pretende analizar esta cuestión para lo que se toman diferentes variables y se ha diseñado un nuevo test para medir el EB. En este test de doble tarea, la tarea secundaria consiste en la lectura de textos sencillos que contienen palabras ocultas. Los resultados muestran como a pesar del aumento del procesamiento debido al incremento de la longitud de los textos, no se produce un aumento en la carga demandada por el ejecutivo central, ni en la creación de los agrupamientos de información ni en su mantenimiento. Es por ello, que pensamos que el RE bajo ciertas circunstancias es independiente del ejecutivo central

The Episodic Buffer (EB) is taking a growing central role in explanations regarding the functioning of working memory. In fact, in the most recent studies by Baddeley and his collaborators, the EB has situated itself at the core of this memory system. Recently, the discussion also concerns whether this component of working memory seems to demonstrate an independent nature with respect to central executive resourcing. Some studies show that in automatic tasks the creation and maintenance of elements stored in the episodic buffer do not require resources from the central executive. The current work attempts to evaluate this assumption for what different variables are taken and a new test has been developed to measure the EB. In this double task test, the processing task consists of reading short simple texts that contain missing words. The results show that further processing due to increasing the length of the texts does not correspond to higher load demands made on the central executive, nor in the creation of chunks or their maintenance. Thus, we think that the EB is under certain circumstances independent of the central executive