Neuropsychological investigation of executive function using repetition blindness, negative priming, and directed forgetting tasks

本研究以学龄儿童、大学生、额叶损害患者和酒精性柯萨科夫综合征患者为被试，对重复盲、负启动和定向遗忘三种记忆现象进行了分析。理论分析表明，根据行为反应、被试的抑制意图和对无关信息的激活，抑制现象可分为三个层次。对测量这三种记忆现象的任务的性能进行比较，有望让我们澄清不同类型的抑制性加工的性质。实验分析确定了在大学生中引发这三种抑制现象的材料和程序。通过对儿童抑制指数与教师注意力不集中等级之间关系的考察发现，与年级匹配的对照组相比，被评为注意力不集中的一至四年级儿童在需要故意抑制和持续注意的任务上表现较差；相反，五年级和六年级的注意力不集中儿童的选择性注意较差，但其持续注意与其他儿童没有显著差异。额叶损伤和Korsakoff遗忘症患者执行侧翼和通道干扰任务。额叶患者在负性启动中显著受损，但在干扰中无明显损害。Korsakoff患者的反应非常慢，但他们的负面启动和干扰都很显著。这些实验结果表明，本研究开发的实验任务将有助于阐明抑制功能的发展轨迹，并有助于评估几种类型的抑制功能障碍。

The present study attempted to analyze three kinds of memory phenomena, repetition blindness, negative priming, and directed forgetting, by employing school-age children, college students, patients with frontal lobe damage, and those with alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome as subjects. Theoretical analysis revealed that inhibitory phenomena are classified into three levels according to behavioral response, subject's intention of inhibition, and activation of irrelevant information. Comparisons of the performance on the tasks that measured the three kinds of memory phenomena were expected to permit us to clarify the nature of different types of inhibitory processing. Experimental analysis identified the materials and procedures that induced the three types of inhibitory phenomena robustly in college students. From an examination of the relation between children's inhibitory index and their teachers' ratings of inattention, it was found that, in comparison with grade-matched controls, first- to fourth-graders who were rated as inattentive showed poorer performance on the tasks that required intentional inhibition and sustained attention; in contrast, inattentive fifth- and sixth-graders' selective attention was inferior, but their sustained attention was not significantly different from other children's. Flanker and modality-interference tasks were taken by patients with frontal lobe damage and Korsakoff amnesics. Frontal patients were found to be significantly impaired in negative priming, but not in interference. Korsakoff patients were extremely slow in making responses, yet their negative priming and interference were both significant. These empirical findings suggest that the experimental tasks developed by the present study would help in elucidating the developmental trajectory of inhibitory functions and in assessing several types of inhibitory dysfunctions.