Towers of Hanoi and London: Contribution of Working Memory and Inhibition to Performance

The Tower of Hanoi and Tower of London have become well-established executive function tasks that presumably tap cognitive skills mediated by the frontal cortex. It has been assumed that the two tower tasks are more or less interchangeable and that both measure working memory and inhibition processe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain and cognition 1999-11, Vol.41 (2), p.231-242
Main Authors: Welsh, Marilyn C., Satterlee-Cartmell, Trey, Stine, Michelle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition. Intelligence
Female
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Inhibition (Psychology)
Male
Memory - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Visual Perception - physiology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Tower of Hanoi and Tower of London have become well-established executive function tasks that presumably tap cognitive skills mediated by the frontal cortex. It has been assumed that the two tower tasks are more or less interchangeable and that both measure working memory and inhibition processes. These assumptions were tested in a study involving 37 normal college volunteers (M age = 20 years). Participants were administered the Tower of Hanoi (TOH), Tower of London-Revised (TOL-R), two working memory tests, and two tests of inhibition. The two tower tasks correlated significantly (r = .39), but only moderately. The working memory and inhibition variables explained over one-half of the variance in TOL-R performance; however, there was a relatively weaker contribution of inhibition to TOH performance.
ISSN:0278-2626
1090-2147
DOI:10.1006/brcg.1999.1123