Effects of experience and task difficulty on event-related potentials.

1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Kobus ◽  
Keren B. Stashower
Keyword(s):  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
And Task

Primary and Secondary Task Analysis of Step Tracking: An Event-Related Potentials Approach

1981 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Kramer ◽  
Christopher Wickens ◽  
Linda Vanasse ◽  
Earle Heffley ◽  
Emanuel Donchin
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Task ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Tracking Task ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
P300 Amplitude ◽  
Task Load ◽  
Initial Reduction ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Assessment Techniques

The utility of the Event Related Brain Potential for the evaluation of task load was investigated. Subjects performed a discrete step tracking task with either first or second order control dynamics. In different conditions, the subject covertly counted auditory probes, visual probes, or tracking target steps presented in a Bernoulli series. In a fourth experimental condition subjects performed the primary tracking task without a secondary task. In the auditory condition, an increase in the difficulty of the primary task produced a decrease in the amplitude of the P300 elicited by the secondary count task. The introduction of the primary task in the visual condition resulted in an initial reduction in P300 amplitude but increasing task difficulty failed to attenuate the P300 further. A positive relationship between primary task difficulty and P300 amplitude was obtained in the step conditions. Furthermore, this effect did not require that the step changes be counted. The results are addressed in terms of the relative advantages of primary and secondary ERP workload assessment techniques.

scholarly journals Joint Modulation of Facial Expression Processing by Contextual Congruency and Task Demands

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Aguado ◽  
Karisa Parkington ◽  
Teresa Dieguez-Risco ◽  
José Hinojosa ◽  
Roxane Itier
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Early Posterior Negativity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Expression Processing ◽  
And Task

Faces showing expressions of happiness or anger were presented together with sentences that described happiness-inducing or anger-inducing situations. Two main variables were manipulated: (i) congruency between contexts and expressions (congruent/incongruent) and (ii) the task assigned to the participant, discriminating the emotion shown by the target face (emotion task) or judging whether the expression shown by the face was congruent or not with the context (congruency task). Behavioral and electrophysiological results (event-related potentials (ERP)) showed that processing facial expressions was jointly influenced by congruency and task demands. ERP results revealed task effects at frontal sites, with larger positive amplitudes between 250–450 ms in the congruency task, reflecting the higher cognitive effort required by this task. Effects of congruency appeared at latencies and locations corresponding to the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components that have previously been found to be sensitive to emotion and affective congruency. The magnitude and spatial distribution of the congruency effects varied depending on the task and the target expression. These results are discussed in terms of the modulatory role of context on facial expression processing and the different mechanisms underlying the processing of expressions of positive and negative emotions.

Pushing around the Locus of Selection: Evidence for the Flexible-selection Hypothesis

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 1907-1922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward K. Vogel ◽  
Geoffrey F. Woodman ◽  
Steven J. Luck
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Task Parameters ◽  
And Task

Attention operates at an early stage in some experimental paradigms and at a late stage in others, which suggests that the locus of selection is flexible. The present study was designed to determine whether the locus of selection can vary flexibly within a single experimental paradigm as a function of relatively modest variations in stimulus and task parameters. In the first experiment, a new method for assessing the locus of selection was developed. Specifically, attention can influence perceptual encoding only if it is directed to the target before a perceptual representation of the target has been formed, whereas attention can influence postperceptual processes even if attention is cued after perception is complete. Event-related potentials were used to confirm the validity of this method. The subsequent experiments used cueing tasks in which subjects were required to perceive and remember a set of objects, and the difficulty of the perception and memory components of the task were varied. When the task overloaded perception but not working memory, attention influenced the formation of perceptual representations but not the storage of these representations in memory; when the task overloaded working memory but not perception, attention influenced the transfer of perceptual representations into memory but not the formation of the perceptual representations. Thus, attention operates to select relevant information at whatever stage or stages of processing are overloaded by a particular stimulus-task combination.

scholarly journals Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. e2011796118
Author(s):  
Julia W. Y. Kam ◽  
Zachary C. Irving ◽  
Caitlin Mills ◽  
Shawn Patel ◽  
Alison Gopnik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Windows ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Alpha Power ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Thought Sampling ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Freely Moving ◽  
Electroencephalogram Eeg ◽  
And Task

Humans spend much of their lives engaging with their internal train of thoughts. Traditionally, research focused on whether or not these thoughts are related to ongoing tasks, and has identified reliable and distinct behavioral and neural correlates of task-unrelated and task-related thought. A recent theoretical framework highlighted a different aspect of thinking—how it dynamically moves between topics. However, the neural correlates of such thought dynamics are unknown. The current study aimed to determine the electrophysiological signatures of these dynamics by recording electroencephalogram (EEG) while participants performed an attention task and periodically answered thought-sampling questions about whether their thoughts were 1) task-unrelated, 2) freely moving, 3) deliberately constrained, and 4) automatically constrained. We examined three EEG measures across different time windows as a function of each thought type: stimulus-evoked P3 event-related potentials and non–stimulus-evoked alpha power and variability. Parietal P3 was larger for task-related relative to task-unrelated thoughts, whereas frontal P3 was increased for deliberately constrained compared with unconstrained thoughts. Frontal electrodes showed enhanced alpha power for freely moving thoughts relative to non-freely moving thoughts. Alpha-power variability was increased for task-unrelated, freely moving, and unconstrained thoughts. Our findings indicate distinct electrophysiological patterns associated with task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts, suggesting these neural measures capture the heterogeneity of our ongoing thoughts.

scholarly journals Task Switching and Novelty Processing Activate a Common Neural Network for Cognitive Control

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1734-1748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Barcelo ◽  
Carles Escera ◽  
Maria J. Corral ◽  
Jose A. Periáñez
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Task Switching ◽  
Response Selection ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Task Switch ◽  
Task Condition ◽  
Novelty P3 ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
And Task

The abrupt onset of a novel event captures attention away from, and disrupts, ongoing task performance. Less obvious is that intentional task switching compares with novelty-induced behavioral distraction. Here we explore the hypothesis that intentional task switching and attentional capture by a novel distracter both activate a common neural network involved in processing contextual novelty [Barcelo, F., Periáñez, J. A., & Knight, R. T. Think differently: A brain orienting response to task novelty. NeuroReport, 13, 1887–1892, 2002.]. Event-related potentials were recorded in two task-cueing paradigms while 16 subjects sorted cards following either two (color or shape; two-task condition) or three (color, shape, or number; three-task condition) rules of action. Each card was preceded by a familiar tone cueing the subject either to switch or to repeat the previous rule. Novel sound distracters were interspersed in one of two blocks of trials in each condition. Both novel sounds and task-switch cues impaired responses to the following visual target. Novel sounds elicited novelty P3 potentials with their usual peak latency and frontal-central scalp distribution. Familiar tonal switch cues in the three- and two-task conditions elicited brain potentials with a similar latency and morphology as the novelty P3, but with relatively smaller amplitudes over frontal scalp regions. Covariance and principal component analyses revealed a sustained frontal negative potential that was distorting concurrent novelty P3 activity to the tonal switch cues. When this frontal negativity was statistically removed, P3 potentials to novel sounds and task-switch cues showed similar scalp topographies. The degree of activation in the novelty P3 network seemed to be a function of the information (entropy) conveyed by the eliciting stimulus for response selection, over and above its relative novelty, probability of occurrence, task relevance, or feedback value. We conclude that novelty P3 reflects transient activation in a neural network involved in updating task set information for goal-directed action selection and might thus constitute one key element in a central bottleneck for attentional control.

A Rested Development

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 680-684
Author(s):  
Kelene A. Fercho ◽  
Doug Peterson ◽  
Lee A. Baugh
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Decision Accuracy ◽  
Performance Outcome ◽  
Task Load ◽  
High Fatigue ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Compensatory Effort

The effects of task-induced cognitive fatigue on performance, strategy, and P300 event-related potentials (ERPs) were examined. Fatigue was induced by task load with participants completing either 700 mental rotation trials with (high fatigue) or without (low fatigue) a secondary task to increase fatigue. No differences were found between groups when examining mental rotation task decision accuracy or strategy; however, the number of trials in which the participant’s total trial time was greater than twice their average was influenced by experimental manipulations designed to increase task difficulty. These ‘minibreaks’, referred to as blocking, may have served to regulate effort expenditure in order to preserve task performance. P300 peak amplitude differed between groups, with high blocking participants showing a reduced amplitude and more dispersed P300 topology compared to low blockers. These results provide compelling evidence that performance outcome may not be affected by task demands if a compensatory effort strategy is utilized.

scholarly journals Virtual Reality Potentiates Emotion and Task Effects of Alpha/Beta Brain Oscillations

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 537 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schubring ◽  
Matthias Kraus ◽  
Christopher Stolz ◽  
Niklas Weiler ◽  
Daniel A. Keim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Baseline Period ◽  
Beta Activity ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Alpha Beta ◽  
Task Conditions ◽  
Stimulus Materials ◽  
And Task

The progress of technology has increased research on neuropsychological emotion and attention with virtual reality (VR). However, direct comparisons between conventional two-dimensional (2D) and VR stimulations are lacking. Thus, the present study compared electroencephalography (EEG) correlates of explicit task and implicit emotional attention between 2D and VR stimulation. Participants (n = 16) viewed angry and neutral faces with equal size and distance in both 2D and VR, while they were asked to count one of the two facial expressions. For the main effects of emotion (angry vs. neutral) and task (target vs. nontarget), established event related potentials (ERP), namely the late positive potential (LPP) and the target P300, were replicated. VR stimulation compared to 2D led to overall bigger ERPs but did not interact with emotion or task effects. In the frequency domain, alpha/beta-activity was larger in VR compared to 2D stimulation already in the baseline period. Of note, while alpha/beta event related desynchronization (ERD) for emotion and task conditions were seen in both VR and 2D stimulation, these effects were significantly stronger in VR than in 2D. These results suggest that enhanced immersion with the stimulus materials enabled by VR technology can potentiate induced brain oscillation effects to implicit emotion and explicit task effects.

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