scholarly journals Pupillometry as a measure of cognitive load in mental rotation tasks with abstract and embodied figures

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bauer ◽  
Leonardo Jost ◽  
Bianca Günther ◽  
Petra Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Pupil Dilation ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Angular Disparity ◽  
Body Postures ◽  
Time Accuracy ◽  
Accuracy Rates

AbstractWe investigated sex differences in behavioral performance and cognitive load in chronometric mental rotation tasks with abstract and embodied figures. Eighty participants (44 females and 36 males) completed 126 items, which included cube figures, body postures, and human figures, which were all comparable in shape and color. Reaction time, accuracy, and cognitive load, measured by changes in pupil dilation, were analyzed. As a function of angular disparity, participants showed shorter reaction times and higher accuracy rates for embodied stimuli than cube figures. Changes in pupil dilation showed a similar pattern, indicating that mental rotation of embodied figures caused less cognitive load to solve the task. No sex differences appeared in any of the measurements.

Does Children’s Left Hemisphere Lateralization During Mental Rotation Depend Upon the Stimulus Material?

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Léonie F. Lange ◽  
Martin Heil ◽  
Petra Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Developmental Trend ◽  
Angular Disparity ◽  
Related Potentials

Recent publications suggest that there is a developmental-based change of lateralization of brain activity during mental rotation from left to bilateral. But it is an open question whether this left hemisphere activation could also be observed with stimuli other than characters. To test this, behavioral data and event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured in 28 children, 28 juveniles, and 28 adults during a mental rotation task with animal drawings. The results showed that reaction times (RTs) and error rates decreased with the increasing age of the participants. Furthermore, RTs and error rates increased with increasing angular disparity. An unlateralized ERP amplitude modulation at parietal electrodes as a function of angular disparity was present in all age groups. These results contrast former studies revealing a left lateralization in children when characters were used as stimuli for mental rotation. Left hemisphere activation is therefore not a general developmental trend; rather, it is suggested that it might be a correlate of written language acquisition.

Differential Cued-Stroop Performance in Cognitively Asymptomatic Older Adults with Biomarker-Identified Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease: A Pilot Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 820-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Van Patten ◽  
Anne M. Fagan ◽  
David A.S. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Cerebrospinal Fluid ◽  
Stroop Task ◽  
Coefficient Of Variation ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Preclinical Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers ◽  
Accuracy Rates

Background: There exists a need for more sensitive measures capable of detecting subtle cognitive decline due to Alzheimer's disease. Objective: To advance the literature in Alzheimer’s disease by demonstrating that performance on a cued-Stroop task is impacted by preclinical Alzheimer's disease neuropathology. Method: Twenty-nine cognitively asymptomatic older adults completed a computerized, cued-Stroop task in which accuracy rates and intraindividual variability in reaction times were the outcomes of interest. Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of Aβ42 and tau were measured and participants were then grouped according to a published p-tau/Aβ42 cutoff reflecting risk for Alzheimer’s disease (preclinical Alzheimer's disease = 14; control = 15). Results: ANOVAs indicated that accuracy rates did not differ between the groups but 4-second delay incongruent color-naming Stroop coefficient of variation reaction times were higher in the preclinical Alzheimer’s disease group compared to the control group, reflecting increased within-person variability. Moreover, partial correlations showed no relationships between cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and accuracy rates. However, increases in coefficient of variation reaction times correlated with decreased Aβ42 and increases in p-tau and the p-tau/Aβ42 ratio. Conclusion: Results supported the ability of the computerized, cued-Stroop task to detect subtle Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology using a small cohort of cognitively asymptomatic older adults. The ongoing measurement of cued-Stroop coefficient of variation reaction times has both scientific and clinical utility in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.

scholarly journals Mental Rotation Meets the Motion Aftereffect: The Role of hV5/MT+ in Visual Mental Imagery

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1395-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Seurinck ◽  
Floris P. de Lange ◽  
Erik Achten ◽  
Guy Vingerhoets
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Mental Imagery ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Motion Aftereffect ◽  
Mental Rotation Task ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Visual Mental Imagery

A growing number of studies show that visual mental imagery recruits the same brain areas as visual perception. Although the necessity of hV5/MT+ for motion perception has been revealed by means of TMS, its relevance for motion imagery remains unclear. We induced a direction-selective adaptation in hV5/MT+ by means of an MAE while subjects performed a mental rotation task that elicits imagined motion. We concurrently measured behavioral performance and neural activity with fMRI, enabling us to directly assess the effect of a perturbation of hV5/MT+ on other cortical areas involved in the mental rotation task. The activity in hV5/MT+ increased as more mental rotation was required, and the perturbation of hV5/MT+ affected behavioral performance as well as the neural activity in this area. Moreover, several regions in the posterior parietal cortex were also affected by this perturbation. Our results show that hV5/MT+ is required for imagined visual motion and engages in an interaction with parietal cortex during this cognitive process.

scholarly journals Can EEG Be Adopted as a Neuroscience Reference for Assessing Software Programmers’ Cognitive Load?

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 2338
Author(s):  
Júlio Medeiros ◽  
Ricardo Couceiro ◽  
Gonçalo Duarte ◽  
João Durães ◽  
João Castelhano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Software Development ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Mental Effort ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Accurate Identification ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Code Complexity ◽  
Time Accuracy ◽  
Future Evaluation

An emergent research area in software engineering and software reliability is the use of wearable biosensors to monitor the cognitive state of software developers during software development tasks. The goal is to gather physiologic manifestations that can be linked to error-prone scenarios related to programmers’ cognitive states. In this paper we investigate whether electroencephalography (EEG) can be applied to accurately identify programmers’ cognitive load associated with the comprehension of code with different complexity levels. Therefore, a controlled experiment involving 26 programmers was carried. We found that features related to Theta, Alpha, and Beta brain waves have the highest discriminative power, allowing the identification of code lines and demanding higher mental effort. The EEG results reveal evidence of mental effort saturation as code complexity increases. Conversely, the classic software complexity metrics do not accurately represent the mental effort involved in code comprehension. Finally, EEG is proposed as a reference, in particular, the combination of EEG with eye tracking information allows for an accurate identification of code lines that correspond to peaks of cognitive load, providing a reference to help in the future evaluation of the space and time accuracy of programmers’ cognitive state monitored using wearable devices compatible with software development activities.

Sex Differences in Mental Rotation Ability Are a Consequence of Procedure and Artificiality of Stimuli

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryanne L. Fisher ◽  
Tami Meredith ◽  
Melissa Gray
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Mental Rotation

scholarly journals The effects of gamelike features and test location on cognitive test performance and participant enjoyment

PeerJ ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. e2184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Lumsden ◽  
Andy Skinner ◽  
Andy T. Woods ◽  
Natalia S. Lawrence ◽  
Marcus Munafò
Keyword(s):  
Test Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Cognitive Testing ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
Cognitive Test ◽  
Test Location ◽  
Gamelike Features ◽  
Time Accuracy

Computerised cognitive assessments are a vital tool in the behavioural sciences, but participants often view them as effortful and unengaging. One potential solution is to add gamelike elements to these tasks in order to make them more intrinsically enjoyable, and some researchers have posited that a more engaging task might produce higher quality data. This assumption, however, remains largely untested. We investigated the effects of gamelike features and test location on the data and enjoyment ratings from a simple cognitive task. We tested three gamified variants of the Go-No-Go task, delivered both in the laboratory and online. In the first version of the task participants were rewarded with points for performing optimally. The second version of the task was framed as a cowboy shootout. The third version was a standard Go-No-Go task, used as a control condition. We compared reaction time, accuracy and subjective measures of enjoyment and engagement between task variants and study location. We found points to be a highly suitable game mechanic for gamified cognitive testing because they did not disrupt the validity of the data collected but increased participant enjoyment. However, we found no evidence that gamelike features could increase engagement to the point where participant performance improved. We also found that while participants enjoyed the cowboy themed task, the difficulty of categorising the gamelike stimuli adversely affected participant performance, increasing No-Go error rates by 28% compared to the non-game control. Responses collected online vs. in the laboratory had slightly longer reaction times but were otherwise very similar, supporting other findings that online crowdsourcing is an acceptable method of data collection for this type of research.

scholarly journals Sex differences in virtual navigation influenced by visual factors and individual differences

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lace Padilla
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Morris Water Maze ◽  
Water Maze ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Standard Design ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Virtual Morris Water Maze

The Morris water maze is a task adapted from the animal spatial cognition literature and has been studied in the context of sex differences in humans, particularly because of the standard design, which manipulates proximal (close) and distal (far) cues. However, there are mixed findings with respect to the interaction of cues and sex differences in virtual Morris water maze tasks, which may be attributed to variations in the scale of the space and previously unmeasured individual differences. We explore the question of scale and context by presenting participants with an outdoor virtual Morris water maze that is four times the size of the mazes previously tested. We also measured lifetime mobility and mental rotation skills. Results of this study suggest that for the small-scale environment, males and females performed similarly when asked to navigate with only proximal cues. However, males outperformed females when only distal cues were visible. In the large-scale environment, males outperformed females in both cue conditions. Additionally, greater mental rotation skills predicted better navigation performance with proximal cues only. Finally, we found that highly mobile females and males perform equally well when navigating with proximal cues.

scholarly journals Behavioral effects of sub-anesthetic ketamine in a go/no-go task

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-162
Author(s):  
André Sevenius Nilsen ◽  
Bjørn Erik Juel ◽  
Nadine Farnes ◽  
Luis Romundstad ◽  
Johan Frederik Storm
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Times ◽  
Behavioral Effects ◽  
Behavioral Performance ◽  
Altered States ◽  
States Of Consciousness ◽  
Performance Impairment ◽  
Motor Response Inhibition ◽  
Omission Errors ◽  
Drug Free ◽  
Healthy Participants

AbstractBackground and aimsWhile psychedelic agents are known to have powerful, but largely unexplained, effects on contents of consciousness, there is an increasing interest in the potential clinical usefulness of such drugs for therapy, and legalization is discussed in some countries. Thus, it is relevant to study the effects of psychedelic compounds not only on experience, but also on behavioral performance.MethodsSeven healthy participants performed a motor response inhibition task before, during, and after sub-anesthetic doses of intravenously administered ketamine. The infusion rate was individually adjusted to produce noticeable subjective psychedelic effects.ResultsWe observed no statistically significant impact of sub-anesthetic ketamine on reaction times, omission errors, or post error slowing, relative to the preceding drug-free condition. However, we did observe significant correlations between performance impairment and self-reported, subjective altered states of consciousness, specifically experience of “anxiety” and “complex imagery.”ConclusionsConsidering the limited number of participants and large variation in strength of self-reported experiences, further studies with wider ranges of ketamine doses and behavioral tasks are needed to determine the presence and strength of potential behavioral effects.

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