Investigating the Relationships of P3b with Negative Symptoms and Neurocognition in Subjects with Chronic Schizophrenia

Neurocognitive deficits and negative symptoms (NS) have a pivotal role in subjects with schizophrenia (SCZ) due to their impact on patients’ functioning in everyday life and their influence on goal-directed behavior and decision-making. P3b is considered an optimal electrophysiological candidate biomarker of neurocognitive impairment for its association with the allocation of attentional resources to task-relevant stimuli, an important factor for efficient decision-making, as well as for motivation-related processes. Furthermore, associations between P3b deficits and NS have been reported. The current research aims to fill the lack of studies investigating, in the same subjects, the associations of P3b with multiple cognitive domains and the expressive and motivation-related domains of NS, evaluated with state-of-the-art instruments. One hundred and fourteen SCZ and 63 healthy controls (HCs) were included in the study. P3b amplitude was significantly reduced and P3b latency prolonged in SCZ as compared to HCs. In SCZ, a positive correlation was found between P3b latency and age and between P3b amplitude and the Attention-vigilance domain, while no significant correlations were found between P3b and the two NS domains. Our results indicate that the effortful allocation of attention to task-relevant stimuli, an important component of decision-making, is compromised in SCZ, independently of motivation deficits or other NS.

Learning from text and video blogs: comprehension effects on secondary school students

Informational video blogs are a popular method of communication among students that may be fruitful educational tools, but their potential benefits and risks remain unclear. Streaming videos created by YouTubers are often consumed for entertainment, which may lead students to develop habits that hinder in-depth information processing. We aimed to test this hypothesis by comparing students’ perceived attention to task, metacognitive calibration of their level of comprehension, and comprehension outcomes between reading text blogs and watching video blogs. We also examined the influence of notetaking. 188 lower secondary students read two text blog entries and watched two video blog entries, and completed a series of tasks. Results showed no statistically significant effect of blog format and notetaking on students’ perceived on-task attention, metacognitive calibration, and comprehension of blog entries. Nevertheless, we found a triple interaction effect of format, notetaking, and students’ reading comprehension on blog entry comprehension. Only students low in reading comprehension benefited from notetaking and only when they read the text blog entries. These results indicate that video blogs can be as suitable for learning as text blogs and that notetaking can help struggling readers overcome their difficulties when learning from text blogs but not from video blogs.

Gaze dynamics of feature-based distractor inhibition under the prior-knowledge and expectation

Prior information about distractor facilitates selective attention to task-relevant items and helps the optimization of oculomotor planning. Particularly, feature-based attentional inhibition could be benefited from the pre-knowledge of critical features of the distractors. In the present study, we capitalized on gaze-position decoding to examine the dynamics of attentional deployment in a feature-based attentional task that involved two groups of dots (target/distractor dots) moving toward different directions. Specifically, this measurement revealed how pre-knowledge of the target’s or distractor’s direction modulated real-time feature-based attentional bias. In Experiment 1, participants were provided with target cues indicating the moving direction of target dots. The results showed that participants were biased towards the cued direction and tracked the target dots throughout the task period. In Experiment 2 and Experiment 3, participants were provided with cues that informed the moving direction of distractor dots. The results showed that participants would continuously monitor the distractor’s direction when the distractor cue varied on a trial-by-trial basis (Experiment 2). However, when the to-be-ignored distractor direction remained constant (Experiment 3), participants would strategically bias their attention to the distractor’s direction before the cue onset and reduce the cost of re-deployment of attention between trials. These results suggest that monitoring the distractor’s feature is a prerequisite for feature-based attentional inhibition and this process is facilitated by the predictability of the distractor’s feature.

Retrospective Selection in Visual and Tactile Working Memory Is Mediated by Shared Control Mechanisms

Selective attention regulates the activation of working memory (WM) representations. Retro-cues, presented after memory sample stimuli have been stored, modulate these activation states by triggering shifts of attention to task-relevant samples. Here, we investigated whether the control of such attention shifts is modality-specific or shared across sensory modalities. Participants memorized bilateral tactile and visual sample stimuli before an auditory retro-cue indicated which visual and tactile stimuli had to be retained. Critically, these cued samples were located on the same side or opposite sides, thus requiring spatially congruent or incongruent attention shifts in tactile and visual WM. To track the attentional selection of retro-cued samples, tactile and visual contralateral delay activities (tCDA and CDA components) were measured. Clear evidence for spatial synergy effects from attention shifts in visual WM on concurrent shifts in tactile WM were observed: Tactile WM performance was impaired, and tCDA components triggered by retro-cues were strongly attenuated on opposite-sides relative to same-side trials. These spatial congruency effects were eliminated when cued attention shifts in tactile WM occurred in the absence of simultaneous shifts within visual WM. Results show that, in contrast to other modality-specific aspects of WM control, concurrent attentional selection processes within tactile and visual WM are mediated by shared supramodal control processes.

Seeking Salience

Chapter 2 explores the role played by categorization processing in perceptual recognition and introduces a diagnostic recognition framework for engaging art derived from a biased competition model for selective attention. The environment is replete with information. Perceptual systems are limited capacity cognitive systems. Perceptual systems are by their very nature, therefore, selective. In ordinary contexts, task demands and general world knowledge are used to direct attention to task-salient features of the environment. In artistic contexts these task demands are constrained by shared knowledge of different categories of art which serve as recipes to direct attention to minimal sets of diagnostic compositional features that carry the content of a work. Neurophysiological evidence demonstrates that these psychological processes not only guide attention, but also shape perception. This in turn entails that psychology and neuroscience can contribute to an understanding of how an artwork carries and conveys its artistically salient content.

Meta-Analysis and Quality of Self-Monitoring Behavior Interventions with Children and Adolescents

Self-monitoring is an intervention that has been used for decades to improve academic fluency in reading, mathematics, spelling, and promote strategies for solving problems, and increasing attention to task and decreases off-task related behaviors. There have been a few reviews of self-monitoring on the variables listed previously, but only one examined study quality and no meta-analysis of self-monitoring behavior (versus academic tasks) has been undertaken. The purpose of this review was to conduct a meta-analysis of the 20 studies that focused on self-monitoring behavior and apply the Council for Exceptional Children’s eight quality indicators. Results from standard mean difference, improvement rate difference, and Tau-U effect size calculations were all in the effective range. Implications for practice are presented.

E-procurement: A Strategic Approach to Public Works Tendering

With the Public demanding efficient and transparent procedures and the clients as well as the vendors seeking lower cost and flexibility in Public Procurement Process (PPP), PPP is becoming more complicated, expensive and fragile. Proper methods of feasible benefits of Public E-Procurement (PEP) are quickly becoming a major influence in the mainstream of Public Procurement Enterprises (PPE). PEP is intended to improve transparency, efficiency, and value for money by exposing various procurement activities as tasks over the internet. Current PEP Procedures lacks an organized framework to capture the essential tasks required for successful Procurement Processes, it also pays little attention to task complexity as an important key design feature that impacts other internal PEP attributes. Although traditional Procurement methods have been with us for sometimes, until now no one has provided a reliable PEP framework. This paper proposed a framework based on Business Process Management and Notation Approach (BPMN) for the implementation of PEP by dealing separately with strategic tasks. The BPMN can help PPE simplify and regulate PEP implementation by explicit identification of PEP specific tasks in the BPMN. We provide an example case study to demonstrate proposed PEP task. Twenty users were engaged, the result showed the tool to be a preferred choice to the traditional method of a bidding process. The benefits of PEP to its adopters were also investigated.