Executive control in spoken noun-phrase production: Contributions of updating, inhibiting, and shifting

Abstract

The present study examined how the updating, inhibiting, and shifting abilities underlying executive control influence spoken noun-phrase production. Previous studies provided evidence that updating and inhibiting, but not shifting, influence picture-naming response time (RT). However, little is known about the role of executive control in more complex forms of language production like generating phrases. We assessed noun-phrase production using picture description and a picture-word interference procedure. We measured picture description RT to assess length, distractor, and switch effects, which were assumed to reflect, respectively, the updating, inhibiting, and shifting abilities of adult participants. Moreover, for each participant we obtained scores on executive control tasks that measured verbal and nonverbal updating, nonverbal inhibiting, and nonverbal shifting. We found that both verbal and nonverbal updating scores correlated with the overall mean picture description RTs. Furthermore, the length effect in the RTs correlated with verbal but not nonverbal updating scores, while the distractor effect correlated with inhibiting scores. We did not find a correlation between the switch effect in the mean RTs and the shifting scores. However, the shifting scores correlated with the switch effect in the normal part of the underlying RT distribution. These results suggest that updating, inhibiting, and shifting each influence the speed of phrase production, thereby demonstrating a contribution of all three executive control abilities to language production.

Social Maturity and Executive Function Among Deaf Learners

“…Language ability and the development of EF are related (e.g., Kronenberger, Colson et al, 2014;Sikora, Roelofs, Hermans, & Knoors, 2016;Vygotsky, 1978), although it is difficult to ascertain whether there is only one direction of causality between them or (more likely) whether they are constantly interacting and cumulative in development. In any case, both language and EF are related to children's learning of social and cultural values and the extent to which they are acquired early on, through parent-child interaction, through later peer interaction, and in particular settings (e.g., classroom, public places, and workplace).…”

Executive control in language production by children with and without language impairment

“…In the context of language production, the shifting ability plays a role, for example, in switching between planning one utterance to planning another utterance (Sikora et al . ).…”

“…Sikora et al . () observed that all three components of executive control correlated with the speed of more complex language production by adults, namely noun–phrase production. We discuss this study and its design in some detail because we used the same design in the present study on children.…”

“…Second, we assessed their performance on a noun–phrase production task, as previously used in adult studies (Sikora et al . ), to investigate whether the engagement of all or only some of the executive control abilities will be reflected in differences in language production performance between children with SLI and TD children.…”

Switching between spoken language-production tasks: the role of attentional inhibition and enhancement

“…Recently, asymmetrical switch costs were obtained for switching between more complex nondiscrete tasks, in particular, for switching between types of noun phrases in spoken picture description Sikora, Roelofs, Hermans, & Knoors, 2016). Participants switched between short and long phrases (e.g.…”