Test anxiety impairs attentional control and negatively affects working memory (WM). According to Attentional Control Theory (ACT), individuals with high test anxiety (HTA) exhibit impaired attentional control compared to those with low test anxiety (LTA), with these deficits becoming more pronounced in high cognitive load and test-related threat conditions. This study used the Test Anxiety Scale (TAS) to group participants and combined the Sternberg WM task with EEG to investigate emotional WM processing differences between HTA (n=43) and LTA (n=45) individuals in high and low cognitive loads, with exposure to neutral and test-related threat stimuli. During the high-load WM encoding phase, HTA individuals showed enhanced theta power compared to LTA individuals specifically under neutral stimuli, while LTA individuals exhibited increased theta power for threat versus neutral stimuli-a pattern absent in HTA individuals. No significant theta differences emerged during maintenance. Alpha power did not differ between groups during encoding, but HTA individuals demonstrated significantly elevated alpha power than LTA individuals during the maintenance phase. These findings indicate that HTA individuals exhibit WM deficits. While they demonstrate flexible allocation of attentional resources for neutral stimuli under high-load encoding condition, their theta modulation capacity fails to show significant enhancement when processing test-related threat stimuli compared to neutral stimuli, reflecting a compromised ability to meet elevated cognitive demands. Moreover, during the maintenance phase, HTA individuals require greater attentional control resources than LTA individuals to suppress irrelevant information.

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the novice-expert divide in cave leaders, comparing professional judgment and decision-making (PJDM) through Applied Cognitive Task Analysis (ACTA) methods. Novice leaders (n=4) were purposively sampled and undertook the three stages of the ACTA protocol. A Cognitive Demands Table was produced and the collected data were compared to our previous study of high-level instructors to compare the practice and behaviors of novices to expert cavers. Findings show that novice leaders’ PJDM differed significantly to the experienced experts by how their cognitive load management negatively impacted decision-making capability. The authors conclude that these original PJDM findings extend the literature base in caving and wider adventure sports, finding that ACTA offers a suitable method to explore decision-making in this domain whilst informing professional development. The study provides valuable educational resources and applied models to help develop PJDM in this domain, positively impacting Cave Leader and Vertical Cave Leader practice.

Attention and executive functions (EFs) have been hypothesized to play a regulatory role in speech planning and production, thereby influencing the occurrence of speech disfluencies. This scoping review examined evidence on the relationship between attention, EFs, and speech disfluencies in persons who stutter (PWS), persons who do not stutter (PWNS), and PWNS with other conditions (PWNS + C), where attention or EFs are impacted. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines, searches were conducted in Web of Science, Embase, MEDLINE, and Scopus using inclusive terms for attention, EFs, and speech disfluencies. Data extracted included study and participant characteristics, speech sample types, disfluency types, cognitive components assessed, instruments used, and findings on cognitive-disfluency associations. Out of 4,233 records screened, 51 studies were included. Inhibitory control and working memory consistently emerged as key cognitive components linked to disfluency frequency, while cognitive flexibility and specific attention subdomains remain underexplored. In PWS, dual-task paradigms revealed paradoxical fluency improvements under increased cognitive load, suggesting dysregulated monitoring mechanisms. PWNS showed increased disfluencies primarily under high cognitive demands. PWNS + C exhibited broader regulatory deficits affecting fluency, highlighting reliance on domain-general cognitive control systems. Findings from this review underscore the role of attention and EFs, particularly inhibitory control and working memory, in speech fluency across populations. Dual-task paradigms highlight that cognitive load does not consistently disrupt fluency but interacts with individual cognitive profiles and task demands. Future research could benefit from adopting multimodal, ecologically valid methods to explain how attention and EFs contribute to fluent speech. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.31079509.

Cognitive offloading refers to the use of physical actions and the external environment to reduce cognitive demand. Offloading strategies such as creating external reminders instead of relying on internal memory are highly effective and play a key role in supporting real-world cognition. Previous work has shown that people have systematic biases in their offloading strategies, which are related to biased metacognitive evaluations of cognitive ability. While metacognitive interventions could potentially mitigate these biases, research investigating their effects has produced mixed results. Here, we examined the influence of a brief metacognitive intervention comprising just five trials during an initial practice session. After the intervention, participants performed a memory task where they decided between using internal memory (for maximum reward) or external reminders (for reduced reward), allowing us to determine the optimality of offloading strategies. Experiment 1 (N = 164) showed that making metacognitive predictions and subsequently receiving feedback led to improved metacognitive calibration and more optimal reminder-setting strategies. Experiment 2 (N = 416) replicated this pattern and found that making predictions alone was ineffective. These findings suggest that a metacognitive intervention combining prediction with feedback could potentially optimise cognitive offloading in everyday life.

Task-evoked brain network architecture captured by the complementary integration of metabolic and functional connectivity.

The growing adoption of automation in warehousing has underscored the importance of ergonomics and human factors in order picking. Traditional storage assignment strategies often prioritise throughput and travel distance while overlooking the physical and cognitive workload on human pickers. This study introduces an energy-aware ergonomic storage assignment framework that integrates biomechanical energy expenditure modelling, safety constraints, and heuristic optimisation. It begins with constructing an energy expenditure cost matrix that incorporates workload parameters, capturing both physical lifting and cognitive search demands. Ergonomic constraints are then formulated to regulate total rack load, ensuring occupational safety. An exact optimisation formulation is first introduced to characterise optimal ergonomic storage assignments, complemented by a greedy-based heuristic procedure to support computationally efficient solution generation. Numerical studies reveal that this method achieves significant energy expenditure savings by approximately 47% compared with baseline strategies while strictly adhering to hard safety constraints. Sensitivity analyses illustrate how key performance measures vary with problem scale, providing insights into the model’s behaviour under different parameter settings. The findings enhance research on human-centric warehouse optimisation and provide actionable guidelines for developing ergonomic, safe, and efficient storage assignment policies in intralogistics systems.

This study evaluated eye movements (i.e., regressions, fixations, and saccades) in a variety of reading contexts in school-age children with and without reading disorders (RDs). This study used an experimental design with two groups: peers with RDs and typically developing (TD) peers. A Tobii Pro Spectrum system was used to capture eye movement data for all participants during the reading tasks under the following conditions: (a) single words without cognitive demand, (b) single-word reading with cognitive demand, and (c) grade-level paragraph reading text. The results indicated significant differences between the groups in the duration of fixation and number of regressions. In addition, participants in the RD group exhibited significantly more saccades while reading than their TD counterparts. Although reading is a language-based skill involving five areas of language (morphology, phonology, syntax, pragmatics, and semantics), this study offers a unique perspective and objective measurement while highlighting the role of eye movements in reading. The results of this study showed distinctive eye responses in school-age children with RDs. These findings underscore the value of eye tracking as a diagnostic and research tool, offering an objective window into the complex interplay among visual, linguistic, and cognitive processes that underlie reading.

Fatigue, long recognized as a limiting factor in physical performance, has traditionally been conceptualized as comprising both objective (performance fatigability) and subjective (perception of fatigue) dimensions. In sports science, increasing attention has been paid to "mental fatigue", a state induced by mental efforts, owing to its presumed negative effects on subsequent physical performance. However, this opinion paper argues that the dominant focus on mental fatigue as a singular construct is overly narrow and potentially misleading. Many studies rely on mental tasks (e.g., Stroop test) to induce mental fatigue, assuming that a decline in task performance or self-reported fatigue only equates to mental fatigue. Yet such declines are neither universal nor easily attributable solely to fatigue. Factors such as boredom, mind-wandering, motivation, task automation, and affective states also influence performance and perception during mental tasks. Our research demonstrates that subjective experience during mental tasks is dynamic and multidimensional, with performance decrement and perceived fatigue varying widely across individuals and time. We advocate for a shift from the mental fatigue paradigm to a broader framework, which more accurately captures the interplay between cognitive demands and subjective states. Using tools such as the Temporal Experience Tracing (TET) method, we highlight the complex array of responses during mental tasks that go beyond fatigue alone. In doing so, we challenge current assumptions and call for more nuanced methodologies to assess how mental states affect subsequent physical performance.

This paper aimed to assess the test construction skills of science teachers in public secondary schools in Dagupan City, to establish a foundation for improving current assessment practices. The research was anchored on national and international policies such as the UNESCO Education 2030 Framework, assessment practices of the OECD, and DepEd Order No. 31, s 2020, which concentrated on assessing teachers' competency in the area of test construction and in strengthening classroom assessments. The study covered several aspects of interest: (1) Teachers' profile in terms of academic qualifications, specialization, years of teaching, position, grade level assignment and relevant courses attended; (2) their competency levels in items construction across the four key domains of Item Development (ID), Content Alignment (CA), Cognitive Demand (CD), and Distractor Effectiveness (DE); (3) relationship between teachers' profile and competency levels, (4) expert-based rating of competency in Earth Science, Biology, Chemistry and Physics; (5) challenges encountered in items development process; and (6) propose a framework of improving competency in items construction. A cross-sectional study of 84 secondary science teachers was conducted, using a survey questionnaire and CVI evaluation of teacher-made tests. The results revealed that most teachers held Master's degrees and specialized in General Science and Biology. Their competency was highest in Item Development (M = 3.69) and Content Alignment (M = 3.65), with moderate competency in Cognitive Demand (M = 3.44) and Distractor Effectiveness (M = 3.40). Test construction competence showed a positive correlation with educational level, teaching experience, position, and training, but not with subject area or grade level. Content Validity Index (CVI) scores indicated that Senior High School (SHS) teachers performed better (mean CVI = 0.85) than Junior High School (JHS) teachers (mean CVI = 0.79), with Chemistry performing the weakest in both groups. Barriers to effective test construction included lack of time (76.2%), insufficient training (67.9%), difficulty writing distractors (64.3%), and challenges in assessing higher-order thinking (57.1%). The study recommends expanding training programs, providing additional resources, enhancing time management strategies, and establishing mentorship programs. Additionally, it suggests implementing a developmental framework to improve test construction practices, particularly in subjects like Chemistry and Physics.

Linguistic agency assignment is an unavoidable yet understudied feature in climate messaging. We propose temporal (moving-time/moving-ego), causal (natural/human), and action (non-agential/human) agency as distinct features targeting three core cognitive demands in climate communication: risk perception, responsibility, and efficacy beliefs. Through a 2 (temporal agency: moving-time vs. moving-ego) × 2 (causal agency: natural vs. human) × 2 (action agency: non-agential vs. human) between-subjects experiment with 1,917 participants, the results showed that moving-time temporal agency amplifies risk perceptions, human causal agency strengthens responsibility, and human action agency increases efficacy. However, inconsistent agency assignments reduce intention and trigger defensive reactions.

Purpose Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often lack decision-support tools that support context-sensitive real-time prioritisation. Existing models, frameworks and tools primarily focus on performance measurement and management rather than guiding individual-level decision-making. These systems are often too generic, technocentric and burdensome to implement, especially in environments where decisions are intuitive, time-pressured and owner-driven. In response to this gap, this study introduces the organisational performance and value (OPV) framework, a structured yet flexible personal decision-support tool designed to help SME owner-managers identify and act on high-impact priorities aligned with their unique organisational contexts. Design/methodology/approach This study is guided by Anderson's (2006) five principles of analytic autoethnography, and data sources include recorded reflexive conversations, email exchanges with the practitioner and beta testing results of the developed tool. Using an iterative narrative interpretation, excerpts were selected based on their conceptual richness and relevance to the tool's evolution. This approach supports a layered, reflexive analysis that elevates the study from personal reflection to a theoretically grounded scholarly contribution. Findings The analysis of Beta test feedback identified five main themes covering platform and report-level matters: navigation, user interface and functionality; required time and effort; relevance and question design; design and experience suggestion; and engagement and consolidation potential. These insights reveal that SME decision-makers assess tools not only by usability but also by how well they match their expectations and strategic thinking needs. Perceived time burden reflected an expectation-experience mismatch, highlighting the importance of managing cognitive load and aligning design with user assumptions. More broadly, the findings show that tool development in SME contexts functions as an entrepreneurial negotiation, balancing user input with business model realities rather than the linear application of user experience (UX) design principles. Finally, the study underscores the importance of emotional design, as SMEs seek tools that foster trust, legitimacy and reflective engagement alongside functional efficiency. Practical implications Decision-support tools should help owner-managers think, prioritise and act, not just complete tasks efficiently. They should also promote emotional engagement and build trust. Future research should explore the impact of diagnostic tools on strategic action and organisational adaptability, entrepreneurial constraints and tensions on SME tool development and design approaches for managing SMEs' expectations. By improving reflective prioritisation under constraint, such tools may also contribute to more resilient small businesses and local entrepreneurial ecosystems. Originality/value This study presents the OPV framework as a practitioner-informed, context-sensitive contribution to SME strategy support tools. It is distinct in translating the lived consulting experience of advising SME owner-managers into a practical, structured tool for prioritisation. Unlike traditional large-firm-based frameworks or performance measurement systems, the OPV framework reflects the cognitive demands, intuitive styles and adaptive needs of SME decision-makers. It offers a timely and relevant model for real-time, capacity-conscious decision-making, bridging a critical gap between academic insight and practical application in the SME domain.

This study investigates the persistent gap between technology acceptance and actual technology adoption among internal auditors in Thai public universities. While digital technologies are widely promoted as essential to contemporary audit practice, favorable perceptions do not consistently translate into meaningful integration. Drawing on qualitative data from ten in-depth interviews, this study explores how auditors interpret and negotiate digital technology within high-accountability professional environments. The findings reveal that adoption is shaped not only by perceived usefulness but also by professional identity preservation, perceived redistribution of authority, accountability-driven anxiety, cognitive demands, and constrained self-efficacy. Digital tools are not encountered as neutral instruments; rather, they are evaluated in relation to professional legitimacy, risk exposure, and confidence under scrutiny. The study argues that prevailing technology acceptance models overemphasize cognitive determinants while underestimating identity-mediated and emotion-mediated mechanisms. By analytically distinguishing acceptance from adoption, this research advances a more critical and context-sensitive understanding of digital transformation in expert professions. Sustainable adoption requires not only technical readiness but alignment with professional identity, authority structures, and psychological safety.

Background The swift advancement of Internet of Things (IoT) technology has revolutionized smart home settings; the prevalent automation systems are limited by their need for specific device identification and rigid rule-based configurations. These constraints impede natural human-device interaction, especially in dynamic or communal environments where spatial context is more instinctive than predetermined naming conventions. Current solutions frequently neglect spatial reasoning and multimodal inputs, resulting in heightened cognitive demands and diminished accessibility. The proposed work develops a spatial context-aware control system aimed at facilitating intuitive, vision-driven, and language-based interaction with smart devices to overcome these problems. Methods The proposed model is a modular, multimodal framework that integrates computer vision, natural language processing, and spatial inference for context-aware smart device control. The system comprises six core components: (i) an Onboarding Inference Engine for extracting device information via natural language input, (ii) Zero-Shot Device Detection using Open-World Localization–Vision Transformer (OWL-ViT) for object identification without prior training, (iii) Metadata Refinement and Filtering for structured annotation and disambiguation, (iv) a Geospatial Device Visualizer for annotated visual feedback, (v) Spatial Topology Inference using Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 omni (GPT-4o) for reasoning about physical layouts, and (vi) Intent-Based Command Synthesis with Gemini Flash to generate precise, executable control commands. The final Agentic Execution Module interfaces with the Tuya Smart Device Application Programming Interface (API), ensuring vendor-agnostic actuation. The system supports multilingual input and adapts to various environmental contexts, including smart homes and assisted living facilities. Results A user study involving 15 participants (aged 18–80, diverse educational backgrounds) was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison to the Google Home Assistant. Quantitative findings demonstrate a statistically significant reduction in cognitive workload, with NASA Task Load Index (TLX) scores decreasing by an average of 13.17 points ( p = 0.0013, Cohen’s d = 1.0381). Participants rated the proposed method higher in terms of ease of use (mean = 4.67) compared to Google Home (mean = 3.8) on a 5-point Likert scale. Qualitative feedback highlighted the intuitive nature of spatial context commands, reduced cognitive burden due to the elimination of device name memorization, and enhanced accessibility via support for regional languages. 93.3% of users preferred the proposed method over the baseline system. These results affirm the feasibility and user-centric benefits of integrating vision-language models for context-aware smart device control.

Contemporary societies demand problem-solving skills, highlighting the need for tasks that foster these abilities. Although curricular guidelines emphasise such tasks, their practical implementation in resources such as school textbooks varies. Since textbooks are essential for curriculum implementation, an important question arises: how do they frame problem-solving in primary education? We analysed Chilean textbooks used in fourth-grade primary education. Based on the literature, tasks are categorised as straightforward, grey-area or puzzle-like, depending on the solving method and cognitive demand. Additionally, factors such as the number of possible correct answers, data sufficiency, context and curricular area were analysed. By employing a multinomial model to integrate analysis of task type and characteristics, this study reveals significant correlations that deepen our understanding of the tasks textbooks consider problems. The findings show that only a small portion of tasks labelled as problems qualify as puzzle-like problems. Furthermore, bivariate analysis and the multinomial model indicated a strong correlation between certain task characteristics and their classification as problems. These insights suggest a need for strategies to increase genuine problems in textbooks and provide holistic problem-solving perspectives.

Active learning, as delineated through the ICAP framework, differentiates between active, constructive, and interactive modes of engagement, each linked to specific cognitive and behavioural processes that influence knowledge acquisition and retention. While cognitive psychology and neurobiology provide mechanistic explanations for the effectiveness of certain learning behaviours, these insights are seldom systematically integrated within educational frameworks. This theoretical review aims to address this gap by utilising the ICAP hierarchy as an organisational scaffold for synthesising findings from education, cognitive psychology, and neurobiology, and by proposing an integrated model that elucidates how distinct forms of active engagement enhance declarative memory through shared neurocognitive mechanisms. From an interdisciplinary perspective, active learning fosters long-term memory not merely through heightened behavioural engagement, but by aligning curiosity, effort-reward appraisal, and social interaction to activate dopaminergic plasticity pathways. Consequently, the modes of ICAP engagement can be conceptualised as graded modulations of a common neurocognitive cascade: Increasing learner choice and novelty enhances effort–reward appraisal, biases learning toward curiosity and motivation, and thereby facilitates dopaminergic activation, hippocampal and striatal plasticity, and durable memory formation. Within this framework, the active mode initiates engagement with the cascade, the constructive mode stabilises learning through metacognitive monitoring and attentional control, and the interactive mode further amplifies memory by integrating social reward with coordinated regulation of cognitive demands. Collectively, these distinctions elucidate how instructional design can support durable learning by maintaining a favourable effort–reward balance, fostering metacognitive regulation, and leveraging collaboration without exceeding cognitive limits.

Context-dependent coupling of posture, gait, and functional mobility under cognitive and sensory demands in Parkinson's disease.

Studying flexible, adaptive transitions between cognitive tasks and serial-parallel processing under changing task demands has been central to understanding human cognition. Advances in neuroimaging analysis have improved the ability to link cognition with brain function, motivating methods that characterize dynamic brain activity to quantify emergent cognitive properties during task-based fMRI. Probabilistic Cognitive State Modeling (PCSM) combines Finite Impulse Response modeling of BOLD activity with a Gaussian Mixture Model-Hidden Markov Model to infer recurring multivariate patterns of task-evoked BOLD responses across spatially distributed regions over time ("brain states"). From the resulting posterior structure, PCSM deterministically derives interpretable processing metrics, including serial-parallel deviation, cognitive demand, and serial bottleneck. Data-informed generative simulations evaluated PCSM across systematically varied noise levels and transition regimes. Results show that PCSM reliably recovers latent structure (∼98 % state-alignment accuracy under known generative conditions) and produces stable parameter estimates across simulation regimes. Threshold analyses identify reliable boundaries between parallel, mixed, and serial processing modes and recover expected relationships among demand, and bottleneck. Together, these results demonstrate that PCSM provides a principled framework for characterizing dynamic task-evoked processing architectures and estimating individual-level cognitive dynamics from task-based fMRI, supporting future investigation of cognitive processing constraints across tasks and populations.

To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying auditory processing in older adults (OAs) under conditions of sensory-perceptual (S-P) and auditory-cognitive (A-C) loads. Electroencephalography was recorded in 20 OAs (mean age=69.6±5.2years) with age-appropriate hearing and preserved cognition, and 20 younger adults (YAs) (mean age=24.9±1.8years). Participants performed tasks under S-P load (quiet vs. noise), A-C load (simple vs. demanding task), and combined load. Analyses included event-related potentials and time-frequency representations. OAs showed delayed early (N1) and late (P3) cortical responses and slower reaction times (RTs) compared to YAs. Increased alpha-band desynchronization emerged as an age-related biomarker, reflecting OAs' reduced ability to inhibit irrelevant information. Distinct load-specific processing strategies appeared: S-P load was associated with delayed neural responses across cortical stages, longer RTs, and delta- and theta-band activity. A-C load was associated with prolonged late (P3) cortical activity, slower RTs, and broader neural recruitment across all frequency bands. Under combined load, OAs showed P3 latency prolongation, revealing vulnerability to the dual challenge of noise suppression and cognitive demand. Integrated time- and frequency-domain electroencephalography analyses exposed distinct listening strategies in OAs, characterized by load-specific neural signatures. Improved understanding of auditory processing strategies in OAs will advance targeted auditory rehabilitation.

This study examines the specific factors that contribute to academic writing difficulties among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in an English education department at a private university in Indonesia. Unlike other language skills, academic writing requires students to construct well-organized arguments, use formal academic conventions, and integrate evidence from multiple sources. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected through online surveys and interviews with 65 students across different academic years. The findings reveal that affective-motivational factors, such as low motivation and self-confidence, hinder students' ability to initiate and sustain the process of developing and structuring complex written arguments. Linguistic factors, including insufficient command of academic grammar and vocabulary, specifically impede students' capacity to produce coherent, precise, and formally appropriate academic texts. Educational environment factors, such as limited opportunities for academic discourse with peers and lecturers, were found to have a lesser but still relevant impact on students' engagement with academic writing tasks. These results highlight the need for targeted interventions that address the unique cognitive, linguistic, and affective demands of academic writing, rather than general language proficiency alone. The study suggests that specialized support and further research are essential to help EFL learners overcome these distinct academic writing challenges.

Divergent effects of high-frequency rTMS on cognitive performance in sleep-deprived nurses: An EEG brain network study.