ArticlePsychological research2024
The common factor of executive functions measures nothing but speed of information uptake.
Article in Psychological research, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Less systematic decision-making during delay discounting, but not discounting rate, is robustly linked to psychopathology.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2026Article
- Task-specific theta enhancement and domain-general alpha/beta suppression as oscillatory signatures of cognitive flexibility.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Bayesian distributional models of executive functioning.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Development and validation of a self-report questionnaire to assess executive functions in healthy adults: the executive functions in healthy adults questionnaire (EFHAQ).Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Developing a psychological test battery to measure cognition in daily life.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Childhood Material Hardship Linked to Adolescent Neurocognition: A Computational Modeling Approach.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Subdomains of executive function correlate with accuracy on a change detection task.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Model-based analysis of stop-signal data reveals robust neural and clinical correlates of evidence accumulation but not inhibition.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Joint Cognitive Models Reveal Sources of Robust Individual Differences in Conflict Processing.Computational brain & behavior · 2026Article
- The diffusion model's drift rate parameter primarily reflects efficiency, rather than speed, of evidence accumulation.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Day-to-day fluctuations in cognitive precision predict the domain-general intention-behavior gap.Science advances · 2026Article
- A comprehensive psychometrics of cognitive ability measures: Reliability, practice effects, and the stability of latent factor structures across retesting.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- The evolution of phonemic verbal fluency test: bridging tradition with contemporary insights.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Neither measurement error nor speed-accuracy trade-offs explain the difficulty of establishing attentional control as a psychometric construct: Evidence from a latent-variable analysis using diffusion modeling.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Pitfalls in using ML to predict cognitive function performance.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Leveraging bifactor modeling to test prospective direct and indirect effects of adolescent alcohol use and externalizing symptoms on the development of task-general executive functioning.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Efficiency of evidence accumulation as a formal model-based measure of task-general executive functioning in adolescents.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2025Article
- Inhibition and updating share common resources: Bayesian evidence from signal detection theory and drift diffusion model.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Embodied cognitive evolution and the limits of convergence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Evidence for response inhibition as a control process distinct from the common executive function: A two-study factor analysis.Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition · 2025Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
There is an ongoing debate about the unity and diversity of executive functions and their relationship with other cognitive abilities such as processing speed, working memory capacity, and intelligence. Specifically, the initially proposed unity and diversity of executive functions is challenged by discussions about (1) the factorial structure of executive functions and (2) unfavorable psychometric properties of measures of executive functions. The present study addressed two methodological limitations of previous work that may explain conflicting results: The inconsistent use of (a) accuracy-based vs. reaction time-based indicators and (b) average performance vs. difference scores. In a sample of 148 participants who completed a battery of executive function tasks, we tried to replicate the three-factor model of the three commonly distinguished executive functions shifting, updating, and inhibition by adopting data-analytical choices of previous work. After addressing the identified methodological limitations using drift-diffusion modeling, we only found one common factor of executive functions that was fully accounted for by individual differences in the speed of information uptake. No variance specific to executive functions remained. Our results suggest that individual differences common to all executive function tasks measure nothing more than individual differences in the speed of information uptake. We therefore suggest refraining from using typical executive function tasks to study substantial research questions, as these tasks are not valid for measuring individual differences in executive functions.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.