Executive Functioning and Behavioral Consistency
Ritske De Jong
Department of Psychology -- University of Groningen -- Groningen, The Netherlands

Most theories of executive functioning predict that it should be possible to obtain reliable and reproducible patterns of associations and dissociations between (distinct subsets of) executive and non-executive tasks. A review of the evidence reveals that such patterns have been identified only rarely. Instead, the evidence would seem to point to a lack of behavioral consistency, resulting in enhanced variability in performance both within and between sessions and within and between tasks, rather than to a consistent pattern of deficiencies across tasks, as the foremost sign of executive dysfunctioning. If we take seriously the notion that "the noise is the data", new empirical and theoretical tools are needed to collect and explain such data. Some potentially useful tools will be discussed and illustrated, using recent data on age-related performance changes in the Stroop, the anti-saccade, and the task-switching paradigm.