Exploring Information Processing Research Articles

Orthographic and phonological processing in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex during Chinese word reading.

The left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (lvOT) has been consistently identified as a crucial structure in word reading, and its function varies across subregions. Nevertheless, the specific function of the lvOT and its subregions remains controversial because the obvious grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rules of alphabetic languages make it difficult to disentangle the contributions of orthography and phonology to neural activations. To explore information processing in lvOT subregions, the present study manipulated the orthography and phonology in a factorial design and used the fMRI rapid adaptation paradigm. The results revealed a posterior-to-anterior functional gradient in lvOT in Chinese word reading and specified that the functional transition from sublexical to lexical processing occurred in the middle subregion close to the classic VWFA. More importantly, we found that the middle and posterior subregions of lvOT are responsible for processing both orthographic and phonological information during Chinese word reading. These results elaborated the function of the lvOT in Chinese word reading.

Emergent digital bio-computation through spatial diffusion and engineered bacteria

Biological computing is a promising field with potential applications in biosafety, environmental monitoring, and personalized medicine. Here we present work on the design of bacterial computers using spatial patterning to process information in the form of diffusible morphogen-like signals. We demonstrate, mathematically and experimentally, that single, modular, colonies can perform simple digital logic, and that complex functions can be built by combining multiple colonies, removing the need for further genetic engineering. We extend our experimental system to incorporate sender colonies as morphogen sources, demonstrating how one might integrate different biochemical inputs. Our approach will open up ways to perform biological computation, with applications in bioengineering, biomaterials and biosensing. Ultimately, these computational bacterial communities will help us explore information processing in natural biological systems.

OPTIMIZATION OF CORPORATE STRATEGY: ELIMINATION OF INEFFECTIVE ECONOMIC COMPONENTS

This article addresses the crucial issue of optimizing corporate strategies in the context of modern economic instability. The authors explore information processing methodologies necessary for identifying and eliminating ineffective economic components in the strategic planning of a company. The article examines the results of analyzing the experiences of both domestic and international companies in the field of corporate strategy optimization. The main emphasis is placed on the utilization of contemporary methods and tools for information processing, such as semantic analysis, comparative analysis, juxtaposition, and others, to obtain objective data and numerical assessments. The authors highlight key factors that should be considered when optimizing a corporate strategy, including efficiency, profitability, risks, competitiveness, and others. They also discuss approaches to selecting sources of information and data processing methods. The article provides practical recommendations for company executives to improve the strategic decision-making processes, enhance the overall socio-economic state, and increase the competitiveness of the enterprise in the conditions of economic instability.

Exploring information processing as a new research orientation beyond cognitive operations and their management in interpreting studies: taking stock and looking forward

ABSTRACT This article is a conceptual discussion reflecting on research trends in interpreting studies. It begins with an overview of the long-term focus on cognitive operations and their management in interpreting studies. By revisiting the multiple dimensions and distinctive features of interpreting, it reveals the necessity to go beyond the cognitive approach. Through a stock-taking of relevant literature, it identifies the pivotal role of information processing in interpreting. Proceeding from the distinctive features of interpreting, it proposes a framework on how information processing can be studied, which highlights four lines of research that call for new attention in interpreting studies: (1) how information is processed multimodally as a hyper-discourse in interpreting; (2) how information is processed strategically under the conditions of immediacy and singular presentation in interpreting; (3) how information is processed as meaning-making in interpreting as interpersonal communication and sociocultural interaction; (4) how information processing in interpreting has language-pair specificity.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) alters the pattern of information processing in children with ADHD: Evidence from drift diffusion modeling

ObjectivePerformance accuracy and reaction time in cognitive tasks are routinely used to evaluate the efficacy of tDCS to affect cognitive task performance. tDCS alters the excitability of targeted brain areas and thereby alters performance of cognitive tasks. The drift diffusion model (DDM) provides some additional measures to explore information processing style, such as (non)decision time, bias for decision, and speed of information processing. DDM parameters are informative for the study of cognitive impairments in children with ADHD. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the impact of tDCS on cognitive performance via DDM measures. MethodsThis study conducted DDM modeling and reanalysis of two exploratory, single-blinded, within-subject design experiments, which were published earlier. In the first experiment, twenty- four children with ADHD performed a Go/ No- Go task during anodal or sham tDCS over the right dlPFC. In the second experiment, twenty- five children with ADHD performed the 1- back working memory task during anodal or sham tDCS over the left dlPFC. We reanalyzed the data after DDM modeling. ResultsThe conventional performance measures revealed no significant effect of tDCS on No- Go accuracy in the first experiment and 1-back accuracy in the second experiment. The 1-back reaction time and speed-accuracy tradeoff were however improved under the real stimulation condition. The DDM measures identified increased No-Go- bias and decision time with respect to inhibitory control, and an increased threshold and amount of information required for response in the 1- back test. ConclusionIn children with ADHD, anodal tDCS over the right dlPFC induces more conservative and less impulsive decisions. Furthermore, anodal tDCS over the left dlPFC enhanced efficacy of working memory performance with respect to agility and capacity. The experimental results show that drift diffusion modeling is useful for evaluation of the impact of tDCS on the style of information processing.

Neural Mechanism of Affective Perception: Evidence from Phase and Causality Analysis in the Cerebral Cortex

Emotion plays an important role in people’s lives. However, the neural mechanism of affective perception is still unclear. In this study, steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) were used to explore information processing speed and interactions among cortical structures involved in affective perception. Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System were presented either in intact or phase-scrambled form at a fixed frequency, where the induced SSVEPs could be used as a frequency marker of brain activity with high temporal resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. Source estimation methods were used to reconstruct the cortical signals. The information processing of affective images was studied by phase and causal connection analysis in the cortical space to investigate the information processing speed of the local brain region and the dynamic interactions across brain regions. Experimental results showed that affective and semantic perception was accompanied by the acceleration of information processing speed in the ventral pathway. Unpleasant emotions had the fastest information processing speed in the ventral stream compared with pleasant and neutral emotions, including the middle occipital gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus, with a right hemisphere bias. In addition, unpleasant emotions were stronger than pleasant emotions in long-term causal connections in the bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and the direction was from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere. These results provide unique insights into the cortical activities for affective perception and support the view that unpleasant emotions have priority in information perception in the middle temporal gyrus compared with pleasant and neutral emotions, with a right hemisphere bias.

Braskem concludes $10 M expansion of US Innovation & Technology Center.

Emotion plays an important role in people’s lives. However, the neural mechanism of affective perception is still unclear. In this study, steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) were used to explore information processing speed and interactions among cortical structures involved in affective perception. Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures selected from the International Affective Picture System were presented either in intact or phase-scrambled form at a fixed frequency, where the induced SSVEPs could be used as a frequency marker of brain activity with high temporal resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. Source estimation methods were used to reconstruct the cortical signals. The information processing of affective images was studied by phase and causal connection analysis in the cortical space to investigate the information processing speed of the local brain region and the dynamic interactions across brain regions. Experimental results showed that affective and semantic perception was accompanied by the acceleration of information processing speed in the ventral pathway. Unpleasant emotions had the fastest information processing speed in the ventral stream compared with pleasant and neutral emotions, including the middle occipital gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus, with a right hemisphere bias. In addition, unpleasant emotions were stronger than pleasant emotions in long-term causal connections in the bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and the direction was from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere. These results provide unique insights into the cortical activities for affective perception and support the view that unpleasant emotions have priority in information perception in the middle temporal gyrus compared with pleasant and neutral emotions, with a right hemisphere bias.

Biocytin Recovery and 3D Reconstructions of Filled Hippocampal CA2 Interneurons.

How cortical network activity processes information is of importance to a large number of basic and clinical scientific questions. The protocol described here identifies the basic building blocks of this circuitry. The in-depth studies of cortical regions will ultimately provide other scientists with the circuit components needed for an understanding of how the brain acquires, processes and stores information and what goes wrong in disease, while the electrophysiological and morphological data are widely used by computational neuroscientists in the construction of model networks that explore information processing. The protocol outlined here describes how biocytin-filled cells recorded in the CA2 region of the hippocampus are recovered and then reconstructed in3D. Additionally, the protocol describes the demonstration of calcium binding protein or peptide content in recorded interneurons.

Brain morphology and information processing at the completion of chemotherapy-only treatment for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia

ABSTRACTBackground: Approximately 50% of survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) demonstrate cognitive impairments. However, the trajectory of change and contributing neuropathology is unclear, limiting our ability to tailor intervention content and timing. This study aimed to explore information processing abilities and brain morphology early post-treatment for pediatric ALL.Procedure: Twenty-one children at the end of ALL treatment and 18 controls underwent neuropsychological assessment. A subset also completed structural magnetic resonance imaging.Results: A principal component analysis generated two cognitive factors: information processing capacity and information processing speed. Compared to control group, the ALL group displayed deficits in capacity, but not speed. No group differences were identified in morphology. No relationship was identified between capacity or speed and morphology.Conclusion: Early cognitive intervention should target information processing abilities using a system-wide approach. Future studies should employ alternative imaging techniques sensitive to white-matter microstructure when exploring pathology underlying information processing deficits.

Assessing attentional biases with stuttering.

Many adults who stutter presenting for speech treatment experience social anxiety disorder. The presence of mental health disorders in adults who stutter has been implicated in a failure to maintain speech treatment benefits. Contemporary theories of social anxiety disorder propose that the condition is maintained by negative cognitions and information processing biases. Consistent with cognitive theories, the probe detection task has shown that social anxiety is associated with an attentional bias to avoid social information. This information processing bias is suggested to be involved in maintaining anxiety. Evidence is emerging for information processing biases being involved with stuttering. This study investigated information processing in adults who stutter using the probe detection task. Information processing biases have been implicated in anxiety maintenance in social anxiety disorder and therefore may have implications for the assessment and treatment of stuttering. It was hypothesized that stuttering participants compared with control participants would display an attentional bias to avoid attending to social information. Twenty-three adults who stutter and 23 controls completed a probe detection task in which they were presented with pairs of photographs: a face displaying an emotional expression-positive, negative or neutral-and an everyday household object. All participants were subjected to a mild social threat induction being told they would speak to a small group of people on completion of the task. The stuttering group scored significantly higher than controls for trait anxiety, but did not differ from controls on measures of social anxiety. Non-socially anxious adults who stutter did not display an attentional bias to avoid looking at photographs of faces relative to everyday objects. Higher scores on trait anxiety were positively correlated with attention towards photographs of negative faces. Attentional biases as assessed by the probe detection task may not be a characteristic of non-socially anxious adults who stutter. A vigilance to attend to threat information with high trait anxiety is consistent with findings of studies using the emotional Stroop task in stuttering and social anxiety disorder. Future research should investigate attentional processing in people who stutter who are socially anxious. It will also be useful for future studies to employ research paradigms that involve speaking. Continued research is warranted to explore information processing and potential biases that could be involved in the maintenance of anxiety and failure to maintain the benefits of speech treatment outcomes.

The Cognitive Mechanism and Influential Factors of Perception of Inflation

The perception of inflation is a subjective experience of inflation. The cognitive mechanism of perception of inflation is generally reflected in the price experience phase and the integration phase: the price experience phase mainly involves individual’s susceptibility and memory; the integration phase mainly involves availability heuristic, anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Additionally, it is suggested that many factors make impact on the perception of inflation, including the expectation of inflation, framing effects, price fairness, social amplification, currency changeover and so on. Future studies could focus on exploring information processing mode, cognitive-neural mechanism, cross-culture influential factors and new index with high ecological validity.

Brain–computer interfaces increase whole-brain signal to noise

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can convert mental states into signals to drive real-world devices, but it is not known if a given covert task is the same when performed with and without BCI-based control. Using a BCI likely involves additional cognitive processes, such as multitasking, attention, and conflict monitoring. In addition, it is challenging to measure the quality of covert task performance. We used whole-brain classifier-based real-time functional MRI to address these issues, because the method provides both classifier-based maps to examine the neural requirements of BCI and classification accuracy to quantify the quality of task performance. Subjects performed a covert counting task at fast and slow rates to control a visual interface. Compared with the same task when viewing but not controlling the interface, we observed that being in control of a BCI improved task classification of fast and slow counting states. Additional BCI control increased subjects' whole-brain signal-to-noise ratio compared with the absence of control. The neural pattern for control consisted of a positive network comprised of dorsal parietal and frontal regions and the anterior insula of the right hemisphere as well as an expansive negative network of regions. These findings suggest that real-time functional MRI can serve as a platform for exploring information processing and frontoparietal and insula network-based regulation of whole-brain task signal-to-noise ratio.

Discriminating neurological from psychiatric hypersomnia using the forced awakening test

Sleep inertia refers to the inability to attain full alertness following awakening from sleep and is a major component of hypersomnia. As event-related potentials (ERPs) are correlated to the degree of consciousness, they allow exploring information processing in transitional states of vigilance. Their modifications during forced awakening (FA) context have been shown to reflect sleep inertia. To assess the diagnostic value of a FA test using an oddball stimulation protocol during a nap in a representative sample of patients with excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). One hundred and seventy three patients [30 narcolepsy, 62 idiopathic hypersomnia, 33 sleep apnoea syndrome, and 48 other (mainly psychiatric) hypersomnia] performed an auditory target detection stimulation task during pre-, post-nap wakefulness, and during two successive intra-nap FA while the EEG was simultaneously recorded. Both the accuracy of target detection and the ERPs were evaluated. ERPs during forced awakening test were considered to reflect sleep inertia if they presented with a P300 delay and/or sleep negativities (N350/N550). Pre-nap behavior and ERPs were normal in all patients. Behavioral results were significantly worse during FA than during wakefulness for all groups of patients. P300 latencies were significantly delayed on FA conditions in each group of patients except the psychiatric group. Sensitivity and specificity for detection of sleep inertia were 64% and 94%, respectively, with predictive values of 96% (positive) and 50% (negative). Our results suggest that the FA test could be helpful as a diagnostic procedure for discriminating neurological from psychiatric hypersomnia.

Information Processing System of the Visually Impaired Children in Relation to their Styles of Learning

Information processing system is very important in learning process. Children differ among themselves regarding their ability to organize information. Styles of learning are different ways through which a person learns. It's commonly believed that most people have some particular method of interacting with, talking in, and processing stimuli or information. Keeping in view the importance of styles of learning and information processing system in the teaching learning process a study was conducted with the following objectives:- (i) to explore the information processing system of the visually impaired children, (ii) to identify the styles of learning of the visually impaired children, (iii) to find out the difference between the visually impaired boys and girls in their information processing system. (iv) to find out the difference between the visually impaired boys and girls in their styles of learning, and (v) to analyze the relationship between information processing system and styles of learning of the visually impaired children. The present study is descriptive survey type study. Collection of data was done on 150 visually impaired children. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample. Data collection was done by using two standardized psychological tools namely; (i) PGI Memory Scale developed by Dwarka Prasad and N. N. Wig (1994) for exploring information processing system, and (ii) Styles of learning by Joy Reid (1984). The collected data was subjected to appropriate statistical calculations. The t-test was applied to determine significant difference between the visually impaired boys and girls in information processing system and styles of leaning. The coefficient of correlation was calculated for studying relationship between information processing system and styles of learning of the visually impaired children. The result showed that there exists significant difference between the visually impaired boys and girls both in their information processing system and r styles of learning. There exists negative relationship between information processing system and styles of learning of the visually impaired children.

Causal Uncertainty Prompts Abstract Construal of Behavior

When people experience Causal Uncertainty (CU; the sense that they have failed to understand the causal structure of the social world) they search for information that will restore their understanding. Three studies explore information processing strategies that guide this search. We hypothesized that CU would promote abstract construal of behavioral information. In Study 1, CU promoted faster spontaneous trait inferences; in Studies 2 and 3, individuals with chronically activated CU beliefs, and those primed with CU, showed broader unitization of the behavioral stream (Study 2) and increased preference for abstract construal of behaviors (Study 3). We argue that these strategies reflect a search for diagnostic causal information about the social world.

The foreperiod effect revisited: conditioning as a basis for nonspecific preparation

The foreperiod (FP) is the interval between a warning stimulus and the imperative stimulus. It is a classical finding that both the duration and the intertrial variability of FP considerably affects response time. These effects are invariably attributed to the participant's state of nonspecific preparation at the moment the imperative stimulus is presented. In this article, we examined a proposal by Los, S. A. (1996) [On the origin of mixing costs: exploring information processing in pure and mixed blocks of trials. Acta Psychologica, 94, 145–188] that the real-time development of nonspecific preparation during FP relies on the same principle as trace conditioning. To this end, we adjusted the formal conditioning model developed by Machado, A. (1997) [Learning the temporal dynamics of behavior. Psychological Review, 104 (2), 241–265], and fitted this model to a representative data set we obtained from nine participants. Although the model accounted for only a moderate proportion of the variance, it accurately reproduced several key features of the data. We therefore concluded that the model is a promising first step toward a theory of nonspecific preparation.

On the origin of mixing costs: Exploring information processing in pure and mixed blocks of trials

In a reaction task responding has often proved faster when the levels of the independent variable are presented isolated from each other, in pure blocks than when they are presented randomly intermixed, in mixed blocks. This difference in response time is denoted here as mixing costs. This paper presents a theoretical review of mixing costs with special emphasis on their origin. In Section 1, two views on the origin of mixing costs are delineated, which are subsequently elaborated in Sections 2 and 3. The strategic view asserts that subjects are less well prepared in mixed blocks than in pure blocks, due to greater uncertainty about the level of the independent variable to be presented on the forthcoming trial. The stimulus-driven view attributes mixing costs to more pronounced trial-to-trial adaptation of processing in mixed blocks than in pure blocks, due to greater intertial variability. Section 4 reviews mixing costs deriving from various areas of human performance, and concludes that the dominant strategic view in the literature is not warranted, and that stimulus-driven factors have been underestimated.