Sleep deprivation and compensatory cognitive effort on a visual information processing task

SLEEP ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly J Sullan ◽  
Sean P A Drummond ◽  
Eric Granholm

Abstract Study Objectives Total sleep deprivation (TSD) is often associated with worse performance on tasks of attention and working memory, but some studies show no performance changes. One possibility is that greater compensatory cognitive effort is put forth to achieve similar results after TSD. We aimed to better understand the relationship between TSD, cognitive engagement, and performance outcomes following TSD. Methods Twenty healthy adults completed cognitive testing following a night of normal sleep and again after ~55 hours of TSD. Participants detected target letters in low (3-item) and high (10-item) load visual letter displays on the span of apprehension task with concurrent pupillometry, a measure of cognitive effort. Results We found significantly poorer detection accuracy and marginally longer response times following TSD across both arrays. In both arrays, significantly greater preparatory pupillary responses were found just prior to array onset. There was also a significant session by array interaction for pupillary responses, such that significantly greater dilation was found for the 3-letter array after TSD, while a nonsignificant decline in dilation was found following the 10-letter array after TSD. Conclusions These results suggest a complex relationship between attentional control and cognitive resource allocation following TSD. Sleep-deprived individuals may allocate more compensatory cognitive effort to easier tasks but choose to disengage from more challenging cognitive tasks that have little perceived reward or probability of success to preserve diminishing cognitive resources. More work is needed to better delineate the underlying neurological systems involved in these processing load-dependent attentional control mechanisms after TSD.

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIC GRANHOLM ◽  
SHAUNNA MORRIS ◽  
ROBERT F. ASARNOW ◽  
DEREK CHOCK ◽  
DILIP V. JESTE

Cognitive impairment in schizophrenia may be related to reduced availability of information-processing resources (resource limitations hypothesis). An abnormally accelerated age-related decline in processing resource availability may also occur in older patients with schizophrenia (neurodegeneration hypothesis). To test these hypotheses, pupillary responses were recorded as an index of processing resource availability during performance of the span of apprehension (SOA) task in 33 middle-aged and older patients with schizophrenia and 37 age-comparable nonpsychiatric participants. Consistent with the resource-limitations hypothesis, the patients with schizophrenia showed impaired detection accuracy and abnormally small pupillary responses (reduced resource allocation) only in the higher processing load SOA conditions. This pattern of results suggests that the patients depleted their available processing resources at lower processing loads than the nonpsychiatric participants. Consistent with the neurodegeneration hypothesis, cross-sectional analyses showed abnormally accelerated rates of age-related decline in SOA performance and pupillary responses in the patients with schizophrenia relative to age-comparable normal participants. (JINS, 2000, 6, 30–43.)


Author(s):  
Antonio Prieto ◽  
Vanesa Peinado ◽  
Julia Mayas

AbstractVisual working memory has been defined as a system of limited capacity that enables the maintenance and manipulation of visual information. However, some perceptual features like Gestalt grouping could improve visual working memory effectiveness. In two different experiments, we aimed to explore how the presence of elements grouped by color similarity affects the change detection performance of both, grouped and non-grouped items. We combined a change detection task with a retrocue paradigm in which a six item array had to be remembered. An always valid, variable-delay retrocue appeared in some trials during the retention interval, either after 100 ms (iconic-trace period) or 1400 ms (working memory period), signaling the location of the probe. The results indicated that similarity grouping biased the information entered into the visual working memory, improving change detection accuracy only for previously grouped probes, but hindering change detection for non-grouped probes in certain conditions (Exp. 1). However, this bottom-up automatic encoding bias was overridden when participants were explicitly instructed to ignore grouped items as they were irrelevant for the task (Exp. 2).


SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. A44-A45
Author(s):  
Darian Lawrence-Sidebottom ◽  
John Hinson ◽  
Paul Whitney ◽  
Kimberly Honn ◽  
Hans Van Dongen

Abstract Introduction Total sleep deprivation (TSD) has been shown to impair performance on a two-phase attentional control task, the AX-type continuous performance task with switch (AX-CPTs). Here we investigate whether the observed AX-CPTs impairments are a downstream consequence of TSD-induced non-specific effects (e.g., reduced vigilant attention) or reflect a distinct impact on attentional control. Methods N=55 healthy adults (aged 26.0±0.7y; 32 women) participated in a 4-day laboratory study with 10h baseline sleep (22:00-08:00) followed by 38h TSD and then 10h recovery sleep. At baseline (09:00 day 2) and after 25h and 30h TSD (09:00 and 14:00 day 3), subjects were tested on a 10min psychomotor vigilance test (PVT), an assay of vigilant attention, and on the AX-CPTs. The AX-CPTs required subjects to differentiate designated target from non-target cue-probe pairs. In phase 1, target trials occurred frequently, which promoted prepotent anticipatory responses; in phase 2, the target pair was switched. Accuracy of responses to various different AX-CPTs trial types was expressed relative to accuracy on phase 1 neutral (non-target cue and probe) trials, which should capture non-specific impairments on the task. For all three test sessions, these relative accuracy measures, along with accuracy on phase 1 neutral trials and lapses (RT>500ms) on the PVT, were subjected to principal component analysis (PCA). Results The PCA revealed three statistically independent factors. Following varimax rotation, factor 1 (36.3% variance explained) and factor 3 (14.8% variance explained) each had high loadings for relative accuracy on multiple AX-CPTs trial types from phases 1 and 2; whereas factor 2 (17.9% variance explained) had high loadings for accuracy on phase 1 neutral trials, relative accuracy on phase 1 target trials, and PVT lapses. Conclusion These results indicate a statistical separation between AX-CPTs phase 1 neutral trials and phase 1 target trials, in conjunction with PVT lapses, versus the various other AX-CPTs trial types. This suggests a dissociation between TSD-induced, non-specific impairments on the task—potentially related to reduced vigilant attention—and TSD-induced specific impairments related to attentional control. Thus, TSD-induced deficits in attentional control are unlikely to be a downstream consequence of non-specific impairments. Support (if any) CDMRP grant W81XWH-16-1-0319


Antioxidants ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Philip ◽  
Patricia Sagaspe ◽  
Jacques Taillard ◽  
Claire Mandon ◽  
Joël Constans ◽  
...  

Despite an increasing level of evidence supporting the individual beneficial effect of polyphenols on cognitive performance, information related to the potential synergistic action of these phytonutrients on cognitive performance during a prolonged cognitive effort is currently lacking. This study investigated the acute and sustained action of a polyphenols-rich extract from grape and blueberry (PEGB), on working memory and attention in healthy students during a prolonged and intensive cognitive effort. In this randomised, cross-over, double blind study, 30 healthy students consumed 600 mg of PEGB or a placebo. Ninety minutes after product intake, cognitive functions were assessed for one hour using a cognitive demand battery including serial subtraction tasks, a rapid visual information processing (RVIP) task and a visual analogical scale. Flow-mediated dilation (FMD) and plasma flavan-3-ols metabolites quantification were also performed. A 2.5-fold increase in serial three subtraction variation net scores was observed following PEGB consumption versus placebo (p < 0.001). A trend towards significance was also observed with RVIP percentage of correct answers (p = 0.058). No treatment effect was observed on FMD. Our findings suggest that consumption of PEGB coupled with a healthy lifestyle may be a safe alternative to acutely improve working memory and attention during a sustained cognitive effort.


2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (7) ◽  
pp. 1667-1681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Lorenz ◽  
Pienie Zwitserlood ◽  
Stefanie Regel ◽  
Rasha Abdel Rahman

This study investigated effects of healthy ageing and of non-verbal attentional control on speech production. Young and older speakers participated in a picture-word interference (PWI) task with compound targets. To increase the processing load, the two pictures of the compounds’ constituents were presented side-by-side for spoken naming (e.g., a picture of a sun + a picture of a flower to be named with sunflower). Written distractors either corresponded to the first or second constituent ( sun or flower → sunflower), or were semantically related either to the first constituent of the target ( moon → sunflower) or to the second constituent/whole word ( tulip → sunflower). Morpho-phonological facilitation was obtained for both constituents, whereas semantic interference was restricted to first-constituent-related semantic distractors. Furthermore, a trend towards facilitation was obtained for distractors that were semantically related to the whole word. Older speakers were slower and produced more errors than young speakers. While morphological effects of first-constituent distractors were stronger for the elderly, the semantic effects were not affected by age. Non-verbal attentional control processes, measured in the Simon task, significantly contributed to morpho-phonological priming in the elderly, but they did not affect semantic interference or semantic facilitation. With a picture naming task that increases the semantic and lexical processing load, we corroborate earlier evidence that word-finding difficulties in the elderly result from deficient phonological encoding, whereas lexical-semantic and morpho-phonological representations remain stable with age.


Author(s):  
Laura Roche Chapman ◽  
Brooke Hallowell

Purpose: Arousal and cognitive effort are relevant yet often overlooked components of attention during language processing. Pupillometry can be used to provide a psychophysiological index of arousal and cognitive effort. Given that much is unknown regarding the relationship between cognition and language deficits seen in people with aphasia (PWA), pupillometry may be uniquely suited to explore those relationships. The purpose of this study was to examine arousal and the time course of the allocation of cognitive effort related to sentence processing in people with and without aphasia. Method: Nineteen PWA and age- and education-matched control participants listened to relatively easy (subject-relative) and relatively difficult (object-relative) sentences and were required to answer occasional comprehension questions. Tonic and phasic pupillary responses were used to index arousal and the unfolding of cognitive effort, respectively, while sentences were processed. Group differences in tonic and phasic responses were examined. Results: Group differences were observed for both tonic and phasic responses. PWA exhibited greater overall arousal throughout the task compared with controls, as evidenced by larger tonic pupil responses. Controls exhibited more effort (greater phasic responses) for difficult compared with easy sentences; PWA did not. Group differences in phasic responses were apparent during end-of-sentence and postsentence time windows. Conclusions: Results indicate that the attentional state of PWA in this study was not consistently supportive of adequate task engagement. PWA in our sample may have relatively limited attentional capacity or may have challenges with allocating existing capacity in ways that support adequate task engagement and performance. This work adds to the body of evidence supporting the validity of pupillometric tasks for the study of aphasia and contributes to a better understanding of the nature of language deficits in aphasia. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16959376


2020 ◽  
pp. 095679762095863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi Shechter ◽  
David L. Share

Rapid and seemingly effortless word recognition is a virtually unquestioned characteristic of skilled reading, yet the definition and operationalization of the concept of cognitive effort have proven elusive. We investigated the cognitive effort involved in oral and silent word reading using pupillometry among adults (Experiment 1, N = 30; Experiment 2, N = 20) and fourth through sixth graders (Experiment 3, N = 30; Experiment 4, N = 18). We compared multiple pupillary measures (mean, peak, and peak latency) for reading familiar words (real words) and unfamiliar letter strings (pseudowords) varying in length. Converging with the behavioral data for accuracy and response times, pupillary responses demonstrated a greater degree of cognitive effort for pseudowords compared with real words and stronger length effects for pseudowords than for real words. These findings open up new possibilities for studying the issue of effort and effortlessness in the field of word recognition and other fields of skill learning.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zezhong Lv ◽  
Qing Xu ◽  
Klaus Schoeffmann ◽  
Simon Parkinson

AbstractVisual scanning plays an important role in sampling visual information from the surrounding environments for a lot of everyday sensorimotor tasks, such as walking and car driving. In this paper, we consider the problem of visual scanning mechanism underpinning sensorimotor tasks in 3D dynamic environments. We exploit the use of eye tracking data as a behaviometric, for indicating the visuo-motor behavioral measures in the context of virtual driving. A new metric of visual scanning efficiency (VSE), which is defined as a mathematical divergence between a fixation distribution and a distribution of optical flows induced by fixations, is proposed by making use of a widely-known information theoretic tool, namely the square root of Jensen-Shannon divergence. Based on the proposed efficiency metric, a cognitive effort measure (CEM) is developed by using the concept of quantity of information. Psychophysical eye tracking studies, in virtual reality based driving, are conducted to reveal that the new metric of visual scanning efficiency can be employed very well as a proxy evaluation for driving performance. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed cognitive effort measure is demonstrated by a strong correlation between this measure and pupil size change. These results suggest that the exploitation of eye tracking data provides an effective behaviometric for sensorimotor activity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 7624
Author(s):  
Byoungjun Kim ◽  
Joonwhoan Lee

Fire is an abnormal event that can cause significant damage to lives and property. Deep learning approach has made large progress in vision-based fire detection. However, there is still the problem of false detections due to the objects which have similar fire-like visual properties such as colors or textures. In the previous video-based approach, Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN) is used to detect the suspected regions of fire (SRoFs), and long short-term memory (LSTM) accumulates the local features within the bounding boxes to decide a fire in a short-term period. Then, majority voting of the short-term decisions is taken to make the decision reliable in a long-term period. To ensure that the final fire decision is more robust, however, this paper proposes to use a Bayesian network to fuse various types of information. Because there are so many types of Bayesian network according to the situations or domains where the fire detection is needed, we construct a simple Bayesian network as an example which combines environmental information (e.g., humidity) with visual information including the results of location recognition and smoke detection, and long-term video-based majority voting. Our experiments show that the Bayesian network successfully improves the fire detection accuracy when compared against the previous video-based method and the state of art performance has been achieved with a public dataset. The proposed method also reduces the latency for perfect fire decisions, as compared with the previous video-based method.


1982 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 975-978
Author(s):  
Akihiro Yagi

5 subjects were assigned two tasks during which they were simultaneously presented brightness-changes of the spot light on the CRT and the speech in a foreign language. They were asked to count the number of the changes in the visual task and listen to the speech to discern the content in the auditory task. A pair of averaged visual evoked potentials (VEP) to the brightness-changes were obtained for each task to calculate a subset correlation as an index of the variance of VEP. The mean correlation coefficient of VEP across the subjects was significantly higher during the visual task than that in the auditory task. This means that VEP was more stable during the visual task. The result suggests that the subset correlation measure might be available to evaluate visual information-processing load.


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