Executive Functioning and Health: Introduction to the Special Series
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INTRODUCTION
Executive Functioning and Health: Introduction to the Special Series Paula G. Williams, Ph.D. & Julian F. Thayer, Ph.D.
Published online: 17 April 2009 # The Society of Behavioral Medicine 2009
Introduction Advances in the fields of neuropsychology and neuroscience have fueled a renewed interest in the association between brain functioning and health. This burgeoning activity is clearly due in part to the development and refinement of cognitive assessment techniques and brain imaging technology. Of particular relevance to health psychology and behavioral medicine has been recent research on the set of brain functions collectively termed “executive” (alternately termed executive functioning, executive cognitive functioning, or executive functions). This issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine presents a series of papers that illustrate how research on central topics in health psychology and behavioral medicine may be informed by considering the role of executive functioning (EF), including maintenance and change of health behavior, stress regulation, developmental trajectories of aging and mortality, and management of chronic illness. What is Executive Functioning? As described by Suchy [1], EF is a multifaceted construct that includes the constellation of higher order cognitive processes that involve reasoning and problem solving, as well as planning, organization, and successful execution of P. G. Williams (*) Department of Psychology, University of Utah, 380 South 1530 East Rm. 502, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. F. Thayer Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
behavior. Importantly, a variety of psychological constructs/ processes rely on EF, including self-regulation, self-control, emotion regulation, delay of gratification, attentional control, and self-monitoring. Suchy [1] provides a useful framework for considering the varying definitions of EF, the neurocognitive substrates underlying the subcomponents of EF, and the advantages and limitations of various methods of assessment. EF is assessed with both traditional neuropsychological tests (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) [2] and with experimental cognitive tasks (see [3– 5]). As Suchy [1] outlines, each of these tasks assesses particular aspects of EF; there is no global test of EF. For this reason, behavioral medicine researchers and practitioners who incorporate measures of EF in their research or practice should be cognizant of which aspects of EF they are capturing and the limitations of their assessment methods. A comprehensive consideration of EF and behavioral medicine must include not only the characterization of this construct as the collection of brain networks that are common to all people but also as the efficiencies of such networks that underlie individual differences between people (see [6]). That is, EF can be considered an individual difference factor. Several papers in this special series address the question of whether individual differences in EF may
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