Contemporary psychology, Vol. 10 No. 2, 2007.
Original scientific paper
Central executive - unitary component or different modules?
Andrea Vranić
orcid.org/0000-0002-4235-8014
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Mirjana Tonković
orcid.org/0000-0002-9145-175X
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Central executive (CE) is a strategic and resource-demanding component of the Baddeley and Hitch (1974) working memory model, serving in orienting attention, organizing information, initiating and guiding search during retrieval. It is the least studied component of the WM model; its unitary or modular nature still being debated. The aim of this study was to examine the possibility of CE being of a modular nature. A divided attention paradigm was used where participants performed an auditory word recall task and a visually presented secondary task. Secondary task belonged to the same, or different domain compared to the primary task (verbal vs. numerical). Had a difference been found in the performance on either task between the situation of two simultaneous same-domain tasks compared to the situation of two simultaneous different-domain tasks, it would speak in favor of the modularity of CE. However, such a difference was not found in this study – speaking in favor of the unitary nature of CE.
Keywords
central executive; modularity; divided attention
Hrčak ID:
81388
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2007.
Visits: 1.212 *