scholarly journals Flexible decision-strategy improvements in children

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas W Schuck ◽  
Dorit Wenke ◽  
Destina S. Ay ◽  
Anika Loewe ◽  
Robert Gaschler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Age Differences ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Error Feedback ◽  
Decision Strategy ◽  
Task Execution ◽  
Adult Level ◽  
Task Strategy

Children often perform worse than adults on tasks that require focused attention. While this is commonly regarded as a sign of incomplete cognitive development, a broader attentional focus could also endow children with the ability to find novel solutions to a given task. To test this idea, we investigated children's ability to discover and use novel aspects of the environment that allowed them to improve their decision-making strategy. Participants were given a simple choice task in which the possibility of strategy improvement was neither mentioned by instructions nor encouraged by explicit error feedback. In two experiments, 39 adults executed the instructed strategy well, but only 28.2\% of participants improved their task strategy with time. Children (n = 47, 8 -- 10 years of age) made approximately twice as many errors in executing the instructed choice rule, but were as likely as adults to improve their strategy (27.5\% of participants). A task difficulty manipulation did not affect results. The lack of age differences in flexible strategy updating was contrasted not only by substantial differences in task-execution, but also by reduced working memory and inhibitory control in children relative to adults. Our results suggest that children have adult-level abilities to find alternative task solutions. This capacity does not depend on adult-level cognitive control.

Age differences, in card-sorting performance in relation to task difficulty task set, and practice.

1960 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Botwinick ◽  
Joseph S. Robbin ◽  
Joseph F. Brinley
Keyword(s):  
Age Differences ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Card Sorting ◽  
Task Set

scholarly journals Preprint: Characterizing the Anomalous Cognition-Emotion Interactions in Externalizing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arielle R. Baskin-Sommers ◽  
John Joseph Curtin ◽  
Christine Larson ◽  
Daniel Stout ◽  
Kent A. Kiehl ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Executive Function ◽  
Executive Functioning ◽  
Emotional Reactivity ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Drug Seeking ◽  
Affective Processes ◽  
Fear Potentiated Startle

Externalizing traits are characterized by exaggerated emotional (e.g., frustration, anger) and behavioral (e.g., drug seeking, reactive aggression) reactions to motivationally-significant stimuli. Explanations for this exaggerated reactivity emphasize attention, executive function, and affective processes, but the associations among these processes is rarely investigated. To examine these interactions, we measure fear potentiated startle (FPS; Experiment 1) and neural activation (Experiment 2) in an instructed fear paradigm that manipulates attentional focus, demands on executive functioning, and emotion. In both studies, exaggerated emotional reactivity associated with externalizing was specific to conditions that focused attention on threat information and placed minimal demands on executive functioning. Results suggest that a crucial cognition-emotion interaction affecting externalizing is the over-prioritization and over-allocation of attention to motivationally-significant information, which in turn, may impair executive and affective regulation.

The Effects of Attentional Focus Instructions and Task Difficulty in a Paced Fine Motor Skill

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-270
Author(s):  
L. D. Raisbeck ◽  
M. Yamada ◽  
J. A. Diekfuss ◽  
N. A. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Motor Skill ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Fine Motor ◽  
Fine Motor Skill ◽  
And Task

scholarly journals The Aging Brain and Executive Functions Revisited: Implications from Meta-Analytic and Functional-Connectivity Evidence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marisa K. Heckner ◽  
Edna C. Cieslik ◽  
Simon B. Eickhoff ◽  
Julia A. Camilleri ◽  
Felix Hoffstaedter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Functional Coupling ◽  
General Role ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Meta Analyses

AbstractHealthy aging is associated with changes in cognitive performance including executive functions (EFs) and their associated brain activation patterns. However, it has remained unclear which EF-related brain regions are affected consistently, because the results of pertinent neuroimaging studies and earlier meta-analyses vary considerably. We, therefore, conducted new rigorous meta-analyses of published age differences in EF-related brain activity. Out of a larger set of regions associated with EFs, only left inferior frontal junction (IFJ) and left anterior cuneus/precuneus (aC/PrC) were found to show consistent age differences. To further characterize these two age-sensitive regions, we performed seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RS-FC) analyses using fMRI data from a large adult sample with a wide age range. We also assessed associations of the two regions’ whole-brain RS-FC patterns with age and EF performance. Although functional profiling and RS-FC analyses point towards a domain-general role of left IFJ in EFs, the pattern of individual study contributions to the meta-analytic results suggests process-specific modulations by age. Our analyses further indicate that left aC/PrC is recruited differently by older (compared to younger) adults during EF tasks, potentially reflecting inefficiencies in switching the attentional focus. Overall, our findings question earlier meta-analytic results and suggest a larger heterogeneity of age-related differences in brain activity associated with EFs. Hence, they encourage future research that pays greater attention to replicability, investigates age-related differences in deactivation, and focuses on more narrowly defined EF subprocesses, combining multiple behavioral assessments with multi-modal imaging.Highlights- Healthy aging is linked to deterioration in executive functions (EFs)- ALE meta-analyses examined consistent age differences in brain activity linked to EFs- In a larger set of EF regions, only left IFJ and (pre)cuneus were sensitive to age- Advanced age was linked to weaker functional coupling within EF-related networks- Our findings question earlier meta-analytic findings

scholarly journals Trait self-focused attention, task difficulty, and effort-related cardiovascular reactivity

2011 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Silvia ◽  
Hannah C. Jones ◽  
Casey S. Kelly ◽  
Alireza Zibaie
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Reactivity ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Attention Task

Attentional Focus Effects as a Function of Task Difficulty

2007 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriele Wulf ◽  
Thomas Töllner ◽  
Charles H. Shea
Keyword(s):  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Attentional Focus

Short article: Distractor interference in focused attention tasks is not mediated by attention capture

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (9) ◽  
pp. 1685-1695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Gronau ◽  
Asher Cohen ◽  
Gershon Ben-Shakhar
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Attention Capture ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Distractor Interference ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Attention Tasks

Distractor stimuli possessing information that is relevant for a task (henceforth, task-relevant distractors) often interfere with task performance. The interference by task-relevant distractors is observed even when distractors are positioned outside the main attentional focus. We investigated whether such interference is due to an attention capture by the distractors. Participants responded to a target colour while ignoring word distractors positioned within (Experiment 1) or outside (Experiments 2 and 3) the attentional focus. The words carried task-relevant information in their colour and personally significant information in their content. Because personally significant information affects performance only when positioned in an attended region, it was used as a marker for the locus of the attentional focus. As expected, when distractors were attended, both task-relevant and personally significant information affected performance. However, when distractors were unattended, only task-relevant information caused interference, suggesting that attention did not shift to the distractors’ location. We discuss possible accounts for interference effects in focused-attention tasks.

scholarly journals Familiarity with visual stimuli boosts recency bias in macaques

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e8105
Author(s):  
Nicolas Brunet ◽  
Bharathi Jagadeesh
Keyword(s):  
Serial Position ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Decision Strategy ◽  
Temporal Dynamic ◽  
Discussion Section ◽  
Dynamic Stimuli ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
Forced Choice Task ◽  
Previous Session

To probe how non-human primates (NHPs) decode temporal dynamic stimuli, we used a two-alternative forced choice task (2AFC), where the cue was dynamic: a movie snippet drawn from an animation that transforms one image into another. When the cue was drawn from either the beginning or end of the animation, thus heavily weighted towards one (the target) of both images (the choice pair), then primates performed at high levels of accuracy. For a subset of trials, however, the cue was ambiguous, drawn from the middle of the animation, containing information that could be associated to either image. Those trials, rewarded randomly and independent of choice, offered an opportunity to study the strategy the animals used trying to decode the cue. Despite being ambiguous, the primates exhibited a clear strategy, suggesting they were not aware that reward was given non-differentially. More specifically, they relied more on information provided at the end than at the beginning of those cues, consistent with the recency effect reported by numerous serial position studies. Interestingly and counterintuitively, this effect became stronger for sessions where the primates were already familiar with the stimuli. In other words, despite having rehearsed with the same stimuli in a previous session, the animals relied even more on a decision strategy that did not yield any benefits during a previous session. In the discussion section we speculate on what might cause this behavioral shift towards stronger bias, as well as why this behavior shows similarities with a repetition bias in humans known as the illusory truth effect.

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