Towers of Hanoi and London: Reliability and Validity of Two Executive Function Tasks

The Towers of Hanoi and London are presumed to measure executive functions such as planning and working memory. Both have been used as a putative assessment of frontal lobe function. In this study, both tasks were administered to 61 normal adult participants to test the assumption that the two tasks are measuring the same cognitive processes. The results revealed a significant, but relatively low (.37) correlation between performances on the two tasks. Follow-up analyses indicated that the likely source of the lack of convergence was the unreliability of the Tower of London. Thus, the common assumption that the two tasks are isomorphic must be questioned.

[1]  Bruce F. Pennington,et al.  The development of future-oriented processes , 1994 .

[2]  H. H. Spitz,et al.  Influence of planning time and first-move strategy on Tower of Hanoi problem-solving performance of mentally retarded young adults and nonretarded children. , 1985, American journal of mental deficiency.

[3]  B. Pennington,et al.  Executive function deficits in high-functioning autistic individuals: relationship to theory of mind. , 1991, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[4]  T. Goldberg,et al.  Assessment of procedural learning and problem solving in schizophrenic patients by Tower of Hanoi type tasks. , 1990, The Journal of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences.

[5]  J. Cohen,et al.  Context, cortex, and dopamine: a connectionist approach to behavior and biology in schizophrenia. , 1992, Psychological review.

[6]  D. Stuss,et al.  Neuropsychological studies of the frontal lobes. , 1984, Psychological bulletin.

[7]  T. Robbins,et al.  Planning and spatial working memory following frontal lobe lesions in man , 1990, Neuropsychologia.

[8]  B. Pennington,et al.  Contrasting Cognitive Deficits in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder versus Reading Disability. , 1993 .

[9]  S. Chapman,et al.  Tower of London Performance in Relation to Magnetic Resonance Imaging Following Closed Head Injury in Children , 1994 .

[10]  Suzanne V. Borys,et al.  Further studies of the Tower of Hanoi problem-solving performance of retarded young adults and nonretarded children. , 1982 .

[11]  Bruce F. Pennington,et al.  The working memory function of the prefrontal cortices: Implications for developmental and individual differences in cognition. , 1994 .

[12]  T. Shallice.  Specific impairments of planning. , 1982, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[13]  W. Grant Willis,et al.  Validation of executive function tasks with young children , 1991 .

[14]  H. Simon,et al.  The functional equivalence of problem solving skills , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[15]  Mark F. Brennan,et al.  Error and Temporal Patterns in Tower of Hanoi Performance: Cognitive Mechanisms and Individual Differences , 1995 .

[16]  M. Welsh.  Rule-guided behavior and self-monitoring on the tower of hanoi disk-transfer task , 1991 .

[17]  B. Pennington,et al.  Specific frontal lobe deficits among women with the fragile X gene. , 1992, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.