Category-based attention facilitates the recognition of actions.

Self-regulation is an important factor of human functioning, which supports the modification of thoughts, feelings, impulses, and behaviors in the service of long-term goals. Self-regulation is relevant for goal striving in various contexts such as health behavior change (e.g. exercise behavior change, healthy diet, alcohol consumption, smoking cessation), academic achievement or social functioning. From a neuropsychological point of view, self-regulation seems to highly depend on the frontal lobes of the brain; these brain regions support mechanisms of self-regulatory goal pursuit such as active representation of a self-regulatory goal, active inhibition of impulses or flexibly switching between different means and goals. Abilities subserved by the frontal lobe are often labeled as executive functions (EFs). However, an important prerequisite for studies examining associations between EFs and self-regulation of health behaviors are reliable and valid measurement tools. In the present paper, our aim is to develop and validate such a tool to measure EFs in a self-report way in healthy adults. EFs refer to cognitive processes that enable top-down control of behavior and adaptive functioning such as organizing, directing, and managing cognitive activities or emotional responses. These multifaceted functions involve higher-order control of lower-order (sub-)processes. Using a structural equation modeling approach, Miyake and colleagues integrated the opponent theoretical views of a unitary EF system and a modular view assuming a set of several distinct EFs. The authors found evidence supporting both the unity and diversity of executive control (i.e., the prominent unitary/diversity framework), that categorizes EFs into three processing domains: inhibition, updating, and shifting. involves overriding dominant responses, relates to monitoring and manipulating working memory contents, and allows flexible switching between different tasks and activities. With regard to goal striving and self-regulation of human behavior, successful self-regulation relies, for example, on inhibiting behaviors, such as incompatible or inappropriate habits or impulses. Updating helps to maintain mental representations of self-regulatory goals and means to achieve them. High shifting ability allows individuals to abandon suboptimal plans and pursue alternative means (means-shifting). Additionally, goal-shifting permits temporary disengagement from self-regulatory goals to explore tempting alternatives. Performance-based measures evaluate EFs through structured tasks, focusing on performance-based efficiency. They are highly standardized and occur in well-controlled environments. Various experimental computer tasks serve as indicators of the three fundamental EFs (for a meta-analysis. Inhibition is frequently assessed by the Stroop task, the Go-NoGo task, the Simon task, or the Flanker task. -back measures have been found to reflect primarily the updating function. Shifting is operationalized with task switching paradigms. These performance-based tasks provide increased objectivity and help researchers to understand individual EF differences in the lab.