Executive function in daily life: Age-related influences of executive processes on instrumental activities of daily living.

Vaughan, Leslie; Giovanello, Kelly S. · 2010 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1037/a0017729

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Summary

This dissertation investigates the relationships between specific executive processes and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) in community-dwelling older adults. Motivated by the need to determine whether experimental measures of executive function (EF) possess ecological utility, the study aims to specify the construct validity of EF and IADL and model the relationships between three executive processes—inhibition, task-switching, and updating—and domains of IADL, including home, financial, and health management. The research addresses gaps in prior literature where neuropsychological tests often failed to isolate individual executive processes or distinguish between self-reported and performance-based daily living abilities. The study employed a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach with a sample of 75 older adults. Researchers utilized experimental tasks from cognitive psychology to measure inhibition, task-switching, and updating, alongside self-report and performance-based tests from the medical literature to assess IADLs. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was first used to establish the construct validity of EF and IADL. The analysis compared nested models, ultimately endorsing a three-factor model for EF (inhibition, updating, and task-switching) and a two-factor model for IADL (distinguishing between self-report and performance-based items). These validated latent constructs were then used in a structural model to examine the direct relationships between executive processes and IADL performance. The results demonstrated that executive processes had a significant relationship with performance-based IADLs but not with self-report IADLs. Among the executive processes, updating showed the strongest and most significant relationship with performance-based IADLs (standardized path coefficient of .40), followed by task-switching (.22) and inhibition (.10). These findings align with predictions based on greater age-related differences observed in experimental measures of updating and task-switching. The study confirms that a multi-component model of EF provides a better fit for the data than unitary models and highlights that specific executive processes, particularly updating, are critical predictors of real-world functional performance. The significance of these findings lies in the demonstration that experimental measures of executive function have direct ecological utility, linking laboratory-based cognitive processes to daily life activities. By identifying updating and task-switching as key drivers of IADL performance, the study points to specific areas for cognitive rehabilitation that may strategically impact older adults’ ability to maintain independence. The results support the view that EF is a distinct, multi-component construct and provide evidence that performance-based assessments of daily living are more sensitive to underlying cognitive deficits than self-report measures.

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