Preschoolers are capable of fine-grained implicit cognitive control: Evidence from development of the context-specific proportion congruency effect

2021 ◽  
Vol 210 ◽  
pp. 105211
Author(s):  
Corentin Gonthier ◽  
Agnès Blaye
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Context Specific

Efficient but less mobilized monitoring system in individuals with high aggressive predispositions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Grisetto ◽  
Yvonne N. Delevoye-Turrell ◽  
Clémence Roger
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Monitoring System ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Simon Task ◽  
Aggressive Behaviors ◽  
Eeg Recordings ◽  
Global Reduction

Aggressive behaviors in pathological and healthy populations have been largely related to poor cognitive control functioning. However, few studies investigated the influence of aggressive traits (i.e., aggressiveness) on cognitive control. In the current study, we investigated the effects of aggressiveness on cognitive control abilities and particularly, on performance monitoring. Thirty-two participants performed a Simon task while electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) were recorded. Participants were classified as high and low aggressive using the BPAQ questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992). EMG recordings were used to reveal three response types by uncovering small incorrect muscular activations in ~15% of correct trials (i.e., partial-errors) that have to be distinguished from full-error and pure-correct responses. For these three response types, EEG recordings were used to extract fronto-central negativities indicative of performance monitoring, the error and correct (-related) negativities (ERN/Ne and CRN/Nc). Behavioral results indicated that the high aggressiveness group had a larger congruency effect compared to the low aggressiveness group, but there were no differences in accuracy. EEG results revealed a global reduction in performance-related negativities amplitudes in all the response types in the high aggressiveness group compared to the low aggressiveness group. Interestingly, the distinction between the ERN/Ne and the CRN/Nc components was preserved both in high and low aggressiveness groups. In sum, high aggressive traits did not affect the capacity to self-evaluate erroneous from correct actions but are associated with a decrease in the importance given to one’s own performance. The implication of these findings are discussed in relation to pathological aggressiveness.

Context-specific abnormalities of the central executive network in first-episode psychosis: relationship with cognition

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Deepak K. Sarpal ◽  
Goda Tarcijonas ◽  
Finnegan J. Calabro ◽  
William Foran ◽  
Gretchen L. Haas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Psychotic Disorders ◽  
First Episode Psychosis ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Cognitive State ◽  
Cognitive States ◽  
Episode Psychosis ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
Parietal Lobule ◽  
Context Specific

Abstract Background Cognitive impairments, which contribute to the profound functional deficits observed in psychotic disorders, have found to be associated with abnormalities in trial-level cognitive control. However, neural tasks operate within the context of sustained cognitive states, which can be assessed with ‘background connectivity’ following the removal of task effects. To date, little is known about the integrity of brain processes supporting the maintenance of a cognitive state in individuals with psychotic disorders. Thus, here we examine background connectivity during executive processing in a cohort of participants with first-episode psychosis (FEP). Methods The following fMRI study examined background connectivity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), during working memory engagement in a group of 43 patients with FEP, relative to 35 healthy controls (HC). Findings were also examined in relation to measures of executive function. Results The FEP group relative to HC showed significantly lower background DLPFC connectivity with bilateral superior parietal lobule (SPL) and left inferior parietal lobule. Background connectivity between DLPFC and SPL was also positively associated with overall cognition across all subjects and in our FEP group. In comparison, resting-state frontoparietal connectivity did not differ between groups and was not significantly associated with overall cognition, suggesting that psychosis-related alterations in executive networks only emerged during states of goal-oriented behavior. Conclusions These results provide novel evidence indicating while frontoparietal connectivity at rest appears intact in psychosis, when engaged during a cognitive state, it is impaired possibly undermining cognitive control capacities in FEP.

ERP Evidence for Implicit Priming of Top–Down Control of Attention

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 763-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Blais ◽  
Emily Hubbard ◽  
George R. Mangun
Keyword(s):  
Associative Learning ◽  
Stroop Effect ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Simon Task ◽  
Electrical Signal ◽  
Lower Visual Field ◽  
Specific Effects ◽  
High Conflict ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Context Specific

Proportion congruency effects are the observation that the magnitude of the Stroop effect increases as the proportion of congruent trials in a block increases. Contemporary work shows that proportion effects can be specific to a particular context. For example, in a Simon task in which items appearing above fixation are mostly congruent and items appearing below fixation are mostly incongruent, the Simon effect is larger for the items appearing at the top. There is disagreement as to whether these context-specific effects result from simple associative learning or, instead, a type of conflict-mediated associative learning. Here, we address this question in an ERP study using a Simon task in which the proportion congruency effect was context-specific, manipulating the proportion of congruent trials based on location (upper vs. lower visual field). We found significant behavioral proportion congruency effects that varied with the specific contexts. In addition, we observed that the N2 response of the ERPs to the stimuli was larger in amplitude for the high congruent (high conflict) versus low congruent (low conflict) conditions/contexts. Because the N2 is known to be greater in amplitude also for trials where conflict is high and is believed to be an electrical signal related to conflict detection in the medial frontal cortex, this supports the idea that conflict-mediated associative learning is involved in the proportion congruency effect.

scholarly journals Context-specific proportion congruent effects: Compound-cue contingency learning in disguise

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 1119-1130 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R Schmidt ◽  
Céline Lemercier
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Control ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Irrelevant Stimulus ◽  
Response Speed ◽  
Contingency Learning ◽  
Conflict Monitoring ◽  
Stroop Paradigm ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Task Irrelevant ◽  
Compound Cue

Conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimulus information leads to impairment in response speed and accuracy. For instance, in the colour-word Stroop paradigm, participants respond slower and less accurately to the print colour of incongruent colour words (e.g., “red” printed in green) than to congruent colour words (e.g., “green” in green). Importantly, this congruency effect is diminished when the trials in an experiment are mostly incongruent, relative to mostly congruent, termed a proportion congruent effect. When distracting stimuli are mostly congruent in one context (e.g., location or font) but mostly incongruent in another context (e.g., another location or font), the congruency effect is still diminished in the mostly incongruent context, termed a context-specific proportion congruent (CSPC) effect. Both the standard proportion congruent and CSPC effects are typically interpreted in terms of conflict-driven attentional control, frequently termed conflict adaptation or conflict monitoring. However, in two experiments, we investigated contingency learning confounds in context-specific proportion congruent effects. In particular, two variants of a dissociation procedure are presented with the font variant of the CSPC procedure. In both, robust contingency learning effects were observed. No evidence for context-specific control was observed. In fact, results trended in the wrong direction. In all, the results suggest that CSPC effects may not be a useful way of studying attentional control.

Half-Context Language Models

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 843-865
Author(s):  
Hinrich Schütze ◽  
Michael Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Language Model ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Language Models ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Specific Analysis ◽  
Distributional Information ◽  
N Gram ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Context Models

This article investigates the effects of different degrees of contextual granularity on language model performance. It presents a new language model that combines clustering and half-contextualization, a novel representation of contexts. Half-contextualization is based on the half-context hypothesis that states that the distributional characteristics of a word or bigram are best represented by treating its context distribution to the left and right separately and that only directionally relevant distributional information should be used. Clustering is achieved using a new clustering algorithm for class-based language models that compares favorably to the exchange algorithm. When interpolated with a Kneser-Ney model, half-context models are shown to have better perplexity than commonly used interpolated n-gram models and traditional class-based approaches. A novel, fine-grained, context-specific analysis highlights those contexts in which the model performs well and those which are better treated by existing non-class-based models.

scholarly journals Model-Based Analysis of Context-Specific Cognitive Control

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. King ◽  
Christopher Donkin ◽  
Franziska M. Korb ◽  
Tobias Egner
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Model Based Analysis

scholarly journals Different Neural Mechanisms Underlie Non-habitual Honesty and Non-habitual Cheating

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian P. H. Speer ◽  
Ale Smidts ◽  
Maarten A. S. Boksem
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Automatic Response ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Multivariate Pattern

There is a long-standing debate regarding the cognitive nature of (dis)honesty: Is honesty an automatic response or does it require willpower in the form of cognitive control in order to override an automatic dishonest response. In a recent study (Speer et al., 2020), we proposed a reconciliation of these opposing views by showing that activity in areas associated with cognitive control, particularly the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), helped dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it enabled cheating for honest participants. These findings suggest that cognitive control is not needed to be honest or dishonest per se but that it depends on an individual’s moral default. However, while our findings provided insights into the role of cognitive control in overriding a moral default, they did not reveal whether overriding honest default behavior (non-habitual dishonesty) is the same as overriding dishonest default behavior (non-habitual honesty) at the neural level. This speaks to the question as to whether cognitive control mechanisms are domain-general or may be context specific. To address this, we applied multivariate pattern analysis to compare neural patterns of non-habitual honesty to non-habitual dishonesty. We found that these choices are differently encoded in the IFG, suggesting that engaging cognitive control to follow the norm (that cheating is wrong) fundamentally differs from applying control to violate this norm.

scholarly journals Are some cultures more mind-minded in their moral judgements than others?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett ◽  
Rebecca Saxe
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Contextual Variability ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Main Effects

Cross-cultural research on moral reasoning has brought to the fore the question of whether moral judgements always turn on inferences about the mental states of others. Formal legal systems for assigning blame and punishment typically make fine-grained distinctions about mental states, as illustrated by the concept of mens rea, and experimental studies in the USA and elsewhere suggest everyday moral judgements also make use of such distinctions. On the other hand, anthropologists have suggested that some societies have a morality that is disregarding of mental states, and have marshalled ethnographic and experimental evidence in support of this claim. Here, we argue against the claim that some societies are simply less ‘mind-minded’ than others about morality. In place of this cultural main effects hypothesis about the role of mindreading in morality, we propose a contextual variability view in which the role of mental states in moral judgement depends on the context and the reasons for judgement. On this view, which mental states are or are not relevant for a judgement is context-specific, and what appear to be cultural main effects are better explained by culture-by-context interactions.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing usability for the eHealth context: A content analysis of usability problems of eHealth applications (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marijke Broekhuis ◽  
Lex van Velsen ◽  
Linda Peute ◽  
Meilani Halim ◽  
Hermie Hermens
Keyword(s):  
Interface Design ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Verbal Protocols ◽  
User Characteristics ◽  
End User ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Usability Tests ◽  
Usability Problems ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Context Specific

BACKGROUND Usability tests can be either formative (where the aim is to detect usability problems) or summative (where the aim is to benchmark usability). There are ample formative methods that can take into account user characteristics and contexts (i.e., cognitive walkthrough, co-discovery, verbal protocols). This is especially valuable for eHealth applications, as health conditions can influence user-technology interaction. However, most summative usability tests do not consider eHealth-specific factors that could potentially affect the usability of a system. One of the reasons for this, is that there are currently no fine-grained frameworks or models of usability factors that are unique for the eHealth domain. OBJECTIVE The goal of this study is to develop an ontology of usability problems, specifically for eHealth applications with patients as their primary end-user group. METHODS We analysed eight datasets, containing the results of eight formative usability tests of eHealth applications. These datasets contained 400 usability problems that were usable for analysis. Both, inductive and deductive coding was used to create the ontology. Six datasets were used to create the ontology; two datasets were used for the validation of the framework by assessing the inter-coder agreement. RESULTS Eight main categories of usability factors were identified: (1) System Basic Performance, (2) Task-Technology Fit, (3) User Accommodativeness, (4) Interface Design, (5) Navigation & Structure, (6) Information & Terminology, (7) Guidance & Support, (8) Satisfaction. These eight categories contain a total of 21 factors: 14 general usability factors and seven context-specific factors. Cohen’s kappa was calculated for two datasets, on both category and factor level. The Kappa’s were all between k = 0.62 and k = 0.67, which is acceptable. Descriptive analysis revealed that approximately 70% of the usability problems can be considered as general usability factors and 30% as eHealth-specific usability factors. CONCLUSIONS Our ontology provides a detailed overview of usability factors for eHealth applications. Current usability benchmarking instruments include only a subset of the factors that emerged from our study and are therefore not fully suited for summative evaluations of eHealth applications. Our findings can support the development of new usability benchmarking tools for the eHealth domain.

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