Behavioral Thermoregulation: Task Difficulty as a Measure of Motivational Strength

Abstract. It has been generally accepted that skipping breakfast adversely affects cognition, mainly disturbing the attentional processes. However, the effects of short-term fasting upon brain functioning are still unclear. We aimed to evaluate the effect of skipping breakfast on cognitive processing by studying the electrical brain activity of young healthy individuals while performing several working memory tasks. Accordingly, the behavioral results and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of 20 healthy university students (10 males) were obtained and compared through analysis of variances (ANOVAs), during the performance of three n-back working memory (WM) tasks in two morning sessions on both normal (after breakfast) and 12-hour fasting conditions. Significantly fewer correct responses were achieved during fasting, mainly affecting the higher WM load task. In addition, there were prolonged reaction times with increased task difficulty, regardless of breakfast intake. ERP showed a significant voltage decrement for N200 and P300 during fasting, while the amplitude of P200 notably increased. The results suggest skipping breakfast disturbs earlier cognitive processing steps, particularly attention allocation, early decoding in working memory, and stimulus evaluation, and this effect increases with task difficulty.

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P300 Amplitude and Topography in an Autobiographical Oddball Paradigm Involving Simulated Amnesia

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027//0269-8803.16.1.1 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 1-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Antoinette R. Miller ◽

J. Peter Rosenfeld ◽

Matthew Soskins ◽

Marianne Jhee

Keyword(s):

Task Difficulty ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

P300 Amplitude ◽

Oddball Paradigm ◽

Amplitude Difference ◽

P300 Component ◽

Oddball Task

Abstract The P300 component of the event-related potential was recorded during two blocks of an autobiographical oddball task. All participants performed honestly during the first block (Phone), i.e., the oddball stimuli were phone numbers. During the second block (Birthday), in which the oddball stimuli were participants' birthdays, a Truth group (N = 13) performed honestly and a Malinger group (N = 14) simulated amnesia. Amnesia simulation significantly reduced P300 amplitudes, both between groups and within the Malinger group (Phone vs. Birthday), possibly because of an increase in task difficulty in the Malinger condition. Analysis of scaled amplitudes also indicated a trend for a feigning-related alteration in P300 topography. Bootstrapping of peak-to-peak amplitudes detected significantly more (93%) Malinger individuals than bootstrapping of baseline-to-peak amplitudes (64%). Bootstrapping also provided evidence of a feigning-related amplitude difference between oddball stimuli (i.e., Phone > Birthday) in 71% of Malinger group individuals. In this comparison, the peak-to-peak measure also performed significantly better in intraindividual diagnostics.

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Emotional Experiences of Students in the Classroom

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040/a000014 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 142-151 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Wondimu Ahmed ◽

Greetje van der Werf ◽

Alexander Minnaert

Keyword(s):

Heart Rate ◽

Emotional Response ◽

Task Difficulty ◽

Physiological Reactivity ◽

Emotional Experiences ◽

Heart Rate Monitoring ◽

Coding Scheme ◽

Stimulated Recall ◽

Response Systems ◽

The Relationship

In this article, we report on a multimethod qualitative study designed to explore the emotional experiences of students in the classroom setting. The purpose of the study was threefold: (1) to explore the correspondence among nonverbal expressions, subjective feelings, and physiological reactivity (heart rate changes) of students’ emotions in the classroom; (2) to examine the relationship between students’ emotions and their competence and value appraisals; and (3) to determine whether task difficulty matters in emotional experiences. We used multiple methods (nonverbal coding scheme, video stimulated recall interview, and heart rate monitoring) to acquire data on emotional experiences of six grade 7 students. Concurrent correspondence analyses of the emotional indices revealed that coherence between emotional response systems, although apparent, is not conclusive. The relationship between appraisals and emotions was evident, but the effect of task difficulty appears to be minimal.

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Replication of the Superstition and Performance Study by

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000190 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (3) ◽

pp. 239-245 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Robert J. Calin-Jageman ◽

Tracy L. Caldwell

Keyword(s):

Task Difficulty ◽

Statistical Power ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

A Priori ◽

Significant Heterogeneity ◽

Performance Study ◽

Improve Performance ◽

Research Designs ◽

Series Of Experiments ◽

And Performance

A recent series of experiments suggests that fostering superstitions can substantially improve performance on a variety of motor and cognitive tasks ( Damisch, Stoberock, & Mussweiler, 2010 ). We conducted two high-powered and precise replications of one of these experiments, examining if telling participants they had a lucky golf ball could improve their performance on a 10-shot golf task relative to controls. We found that the effect of superstition on performance is elusive: Participants told they had a lucky ball performed almost identically to controls. Our failure to replicate the target study was not due to lack of impact, lack of statistical power, differences in task difficulty, nor differences in participant belief in luck. A meta-analysis indicates significant heterogeneity in the effect of superstition on performance. This could be due to an unknown moderator, but no effect was observed among the studies with the strongest research designs (e.g., high power, a priori sampling plan).

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Generation and Associative Encoding in Young and Old Adults

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.55.1.23 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 23-30 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Laurence Taconnat ◽

Charlotte Froger ◽

Mathilde Sacher ◽

Michel Isingrini

Keyword(s):

Task Difficulty ◽

Generation Effect ◽

Elderly Adults ◽

Generation Task ◽

Younger Adults ◽

Old Adults ◽

Strength Of Association ◽

Target Words

Abstract. The generation effect (i.e., better recall of the generated items than the read items) was investigated with a between-list design in young and elderly participants. The generation task difficulty was manipulated by varying the strength of association between cues and targets. Overall, strong associates were better recalled than weak associates. However, the results showed different generation effect patterns according to strength of association and age, with a greater generation effect for weak associates in younger adults only. These findings suggest that generating weak associates leads to more elaborated encoding, but that elderly adults cannot use this elaborated encoding as well as younger adults to recall the target words at test.

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A Quick Visual Mind Can be a Slow Auditory Mind

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.56.1.33 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 33-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Sander Martens ◽

Addie Johnson ◽

Martje Bolle ◽

Jelmer Borst

Keyword(s):

Attentional Blink ◽

Task Difficulty ◽

Human Mind ◽

Visual Modality ◽

Present Evidence ◽

Conscious Level ◽

Visual Targets ◽

Concurrent Information

The human mind is severely limited in processing concurrent information at a conscious level of awareness. These temporal restrictions are clearly reflected in the attentional blink (AB), a deficit in reporting the second of two targets when it occurs 200–500 ms after the first. However, we recently reported that some individuals do not show a visual AB, and presented psychophysiological evidence that target processing differs between “blinkers” and “nonblinkers”. Here, we present evidence that visual nonblinkers do show an auditory AB, which suggests that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB is likely to be modality-specific. In Experiment 3, we show that when the difficulty in identifying visual targets is increased, nonblinkers continue to show little or no visual AB, suggesting that the presence of an AB in the auditory but not in the visual modality is not due to a difference in task difficulty.

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