Irrelevant Cues Research Articles

Comprehension of pretence in children with autism

Impairments of pretend play are a diagnostic characteristic of autism. This has been interpreted in terms of a generative impairment. Specifically, children with autism are unable to generate the ideas for pretend play despite an intact underlying ability to understand pretence. The notion of a performance deficit affecting production only has, in part, been based upon observations that children with autism appear to have no difficulty understanding pretence. However, research investigating comprehension is somewhat limited and has only investigated a specific type of pretend play, namely pretend properties. The research reported here investigated the ability of children with autism to understand object substitution pretence and pretend gestures (i.e. using no substitutes). Children with autism (N = 36) matched for verbal ability (between 3 and 6 years) with typically developing children (N = 55) and children with moderate learning difficulties (N = 37) were questioned about a series of pretend actions, such as writing. The results revealed three main findings. First, children with autism appear to experience no notable difficulties comprehending functional play. Second, children with autism do encounter difficulties comprehending pretend play. A performance deficit is unable to explain these findings and it is suggested that there may be a more critical impairment in understanding how absent objects are represented. Finally, there was a trend for some kinds of object substitutions and gestures to be more impaired than others. One tentative interpretation is that as the degree of similarity between the referent and the substitute diminishes the representational connection becomes more difficult to understand, particularly when there is a need to inhibit salient but irrelevant cues.

Clinical Implications of Numeracy: Theory and Practice

Low numeracy is pervasive and constrains informed patient choice, reduces medication compliance, limits access to treatments, impairs risk communication, and affects medical outcomes; therefore, it is incumbent upon providers to minimize its adverse effects. We provide an overview of research on health numeracy and discuss its implications in clinical contexts. Low numeracy cannot be reliably inferred on the basis of patients' education, intelligence, or other observable characteristics. Objective and subjective assessments of numeracy are available in short forms and could be used to tailor health communication. Low scorers on these assessments are subject to cognitive biases, irrelevant cues (e.g., mood), and sharper temporal discounting. Because prevention of the leading causes of death (e.g., cancer and cardiovascular disease) depends on taking action now to prevent serious consequences later, those low in numeracy are likely to require more explanation of risk to engage in prevention behaviors. Visual displays can be used to make numerical relations more transparent, and different types of displays have different effects (e.g., greater risk avoidance). Ironically, superior quantitative processing seems to be achieved by focusing on qualitative gist and affective meaning, which has important implications for empowering patients to take advantage of the evidence in evidence-based medicine.

Opening the “Black Box” of Surgeons’ Risk Estimation: from Intuition to Quantitative Modeling

Woodfield et al. [1] reported that surgeons’ subjective riskestimates (as captured by visual analog scales) are usefulpredictors of postoperative complications over and aboveobjective criteria. Estimating risk accurately is a key pre-operative surgical task, essential for determining whetherto operate and for enabling surgical patients to provideinformed consent. However, little is known about howsurgeons produce risk estimates. In their commentary onthe above study, Clavien and Dindo [2] rightly argued thatto be useful risk estimation should be based solely onpreoperative factors. They contended that accurate sub-jective risk estimation depends on surgeons’ experience. Itis unclear, however, how accurate even experienced sur-geons’ subjective risk estimates are—in fact, the evidenceis virtually nonexistent. Risk estimation remains an uno-pened ‘‘black box’’ of surgical competence.In contrast to its ‘‘black box’’ treatment in the surgicalliterature, risk estimation has received considerable atten-tion by behavioral scientists. Estimating risk is a complexcognitive task that has been successfully modeled using aquantitative technique called judgment analysis (JA) [3, 4].The typical JA approach involves asking participants toprovide risk estimates for a series of scenarios that differwith respect to risk factors. These estimates are modeledquantitatively as a function of the factors present in thescenarios using linear regression. Data are analyzedseparately for each participant. The analysis yields betaweights for individual risk factors and model fit.This technique has been used to model surgeons’ pri-oritization decisions for general [5] and cardiac [6] surgery.We used JA to model surgeons’ risk estimates of conver-sion of laparoscopic cholecystectomy to an open operation[7]. Trainee surgeons provided risk estimates for a series ofvignettes in which the biliary history, previous upperabdominal surgery, patient’s sex, age/co-morbidity, bodyhabitus, and race were systematically varied. Risk esti-mates (0–100%) were modeled as a function of these cuesand compared to an existing outcomes-based gold standardmodel [8]. Whereas almost all trainee surgeons’ judgmentswere (appropriately) influenced by the biliary history andprevious surgery, there were significant individual differ-ences in how these factors were weighted. Moreover, somesurgeons were influenced by irrelevant cues (age/ASAscore, obesity, or race). Finally, correlations betweenindividuals’ estimates and gold standard-derived predic-tions ranged from 0.08 to 0.72, with lower correlationsindicating significant departures from the evidence-basedmodel.Judgment analysis offers systematic, quantifiable com-parisons of how differing risk factors influence surgeons’risk estimates. It allows comparisons between surgeons aswell as between surgeons and evidence-based risk models.It can address how surgeons integrate existing risk scores(e.g., ASA) with the ‘‘invasiveness’’ of the operation, aswell as the subjective impact of low-frequency factors,such as cirrhosis. We are currently exploring the effec-tiveness of JA for capturing differences in expertise amongsurgeons [9], modeling estimates of various surgical risks,and in a training intervention context using JA to providespecific, individualized feedback to surgical trainees. Sur-geons’ risk estimation may be an intuitive process, but it is

Memory Search following Valid and Invalid Abrupt-Onset Cues

The impact of abrupt-onset cues on memory search was investigated, where the abrupt-onset cue was a valid (Experiment 1), random (Experiment 2), or irrelevant (Experiment 3) predictor of the location containing the test probe. In Experiment 4, the abrupt-onset cue either preceded or followed the test probe. Sternberg-like functions were obtained in Experiments 1 and 2, with the effects of the abrupt-onset cue localized primarily in the intercept rather than the slope. Experiment 3 demonstrated that a spatially separated and irrelevant abrupt-onset cue increased latency even when all memory probes occurred at the fixation point. In Experiment 4, the robust impact of an abrupt-onset cue vanished, regardless of stimulus onset asynchrony, when it followed the target. We concluded that abrupt-onset cues captured attention regardless of their predictability, manifested as a delaying of search. However, once attention was captured by the target, a subsequent abrupt-onset stimulus had no effect. These results were discussed in terms of diffuse attention and contingent capture models of attention.

Specific cue reactivity on computer game-related cues in excessive gamers.

It has been posited that excessive computer game playing behavior, referred to as computer game addiction, meets criteria that have been internationally established to define drug addiction. Nevertheless, there have been no psychophysiological investigations of the underlying mechanisms available to support the characterization of excessive computer gaming as behavioral addiction. To investigate whether excessive computer gaming parallels learning processes in development and maintenance (which are assumed to underlie drug addiction), the authors obtained a psychophysiological assessment of the (learned) emotional processing of computer game-relevant and -irrelevant cues. For this purpose, electroencephalographic recordings in excessive and casual computer game players were conducted. Significant between-group differences in event-related potentials evoked by computer game related-cues were found at parietal regions and point to an increased emotional processing of these cues in excessive pathological players compared with casual players. These results are in concordance with the suggestion that addiction is characterized and maintained through sensitization of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system along with incentive salience of specific addiction-associated cues.

Analyzing Judgments of Ethnically Diverse Applicants During Personnel Selection: A study at the Dutch police

A judgment‐analysis study was used to investigate assessors' judgment processes, evaluating ethnic minority vs ethnic majority applicants. Sixteen ethnic majority assessors judged 5089 applicants during the Dutch police officer selection procedure, with each assessor judging 30 ethnic minority applicants minimally. Information from an employment interview, an assessment center, and a Big Five personality test were combined into a final selection advice. Results showed that as much as or more information sources were used to judge ethnic minority than ethnic majority applicants. Furthermore, a larger number of irrelevant cues were used for the judgment of ethnic minority applicants. Finally, when judging ethnic minority applicants, assessors based their decision to a lesser extent on their own ratings than on ratings of others.

Evidence from a response choice task reveals a selection bias in the attentional cueing paradigm

In a typical attentional cueing paradigm, irrelevant peripheral cues produce early facilitation (fast responses) followed by later inhibition (slow responses) to cued locations. Here we examine whether cues not only influence the speed with which responses are produced, but also impact or bias which location is ultimately selected as requiring a response. Specifically, can cues influence not only the speed with which we respond but also influence the behavior produced? To examine this question, a choice localization task was used in which no targets were presented, and subjects were asked to choose which effector (left hand, right hand) to use in response to a centrally presented tone. Thus, following either a left or right peripheral cue, and then a central tone, subjects were free to respond with either their left or right hand. Early facilitation and later inhibition with this choice procedure were found in both response times and the proportion of responses to the cued and uncued locations. These results suggest that there are processes which initially bias response selection toward cued locations and then subsequently bias response selection away from cued locations.

Beacon training in a water maze can facilitate and compete with subsequent room cue learning in rats.

In Stage 1 of 4 experiments in which rats completed a water-maze blocking procedure, experimental groups were trained to use a predictive beacon (hanging above, connected to, or displaced from the platform) to find a submerged escape platform in the presence of predictive or irrelevant background cues and in the presence or absence of irrelevant landmarks. In Stage 2, a fixed beacon, landmarks, and background cues all predicted the platform location. A Room Test (landmarks and background cues only) showed that Stage 1 training with a fixed hanging beacon or the moving displaced beacon facilitated Stage 2 learning of predictive room cues for experimental relative to control subjects. In contrast, Stage 1 training with a moving pole beacon interfered with Stage 2 learning about predictive room cues relative to controls, whereas training with a fixed pole or moving hanging beacon had no effect. We conclude that multiple spatial learning processes influence locating an escape platform in the water maze.

Cognitive influences in infant speech perception

Speech perception during the first year reflects increasing attunement to native language phonetic features, but the mechanisms underlying this development are not well understood. Reductions in non-native phonetic discrimination have been linked to improvement in native phonetic discrimination and later vocabulary growth (Kuhl et al., 2005), and performance on nonlinguistic tasks (Lalonde and Werker, 1995). The present study examined links between native and non-native voice onset time discrimination, receptive vocabulary (MacArthur-Bates CDI), and cognitive control abilities at 11 months. Infants (n=18) completed a double-target conditioned head turn task and two nonlinguistic tasks requiring attentional control and resistance to irrelevant cues (means-end and detour-reaching object retrieval). Infants with CDI scores above the median showed higher native discrimination scores, t(16)=2.15 0.05, but no group differences for the nonnative contrast. Infants with scores above the median on either cognitive task showed worse discrimination of the nonnative contrast (means-end, t(15)=2.27p0.04; detour-reaching, t(15)=3.49, p.01), but no group differences for the native contrast. These results suggest that cognitive control plays a role in infants’ ability to ignore acoustic cues that are irrelevant to their native languages phonemic categories. [Work supported by NICHD (Grant HD37954) and a UW NSF Science of Learning Center Grant (LIFE).]

Cursor type and response conflict in graphical user interfaces

Arrowhead cursor shape may offer irrelevant cues that conflict with desired positioning movements. To assist cursor design this study considered how cursor shape can influence the preparation or execution of cursor positioning movements. An experiment varied cursor shape on-line such that its shape cued the required direction of movement or better afforded hitting the target. Twelve participants performed cursor positioning movements with systematic variations in cursor shape affecting preparation (neutral, pre-cuing target direction), cursor flight (arrowhead, comet) and terminal guidance (big, small target). Kinematic analysis determined the effects on phases of cursor placement. Cursor shape primarily affected terminal guidance and implies conventional cursor designs should be reconsidered.

Inhibition of return promotes stop-signal inhibition by delaying responses

Inhibition of return (10R) refers to a mechanism that slows response times (RTs) to detect, localize, or discriminate a target that is presented at a location previously occupied by an irrelevant peripheral cue. Generally, the slowing of RTs is described as a negative effect on responding that is believed to promote searching to new locations. In this report, we consider whether IOR might benefit performance when the goal is to prevent a prepared response. Using the stop-signal paradigm, we show that IOR improved the ability to inhibit a prepared response by delaying responses to the target. Thus, in addition to aiding visual search, IOR may also provide an opportunity for the adjustment of decisions and behaviour in accordance with the demands of a dynamic environment.

Implicit Assimilation and Explicit Contrast: A Set/Reset Model of Response to Celebrity Voice‐Overs

An experiment reveals that the relationship between celebrity attitude and attitude toward brands paired with the celebrity’s voice is moderated by identification of the celebrity but only when attitude is measured explicitly. Using explicit measures, celebrity attitude was positively (negatively) related to brand attitude change when the evaluator could not (could) identify the celebrity. This finding is attributed to “resetting,” a correction of the perceived influence from irrelevant cues. On implicit measures, a positive relationship between celebrity and brand attitude was observed regardless of celebrity identification. The disassociation between the explicit and implicit results suggests that resetting requires explicit evaluation.

Syntactic comprehension in agrammatism: A computational model

In this paper we present a detailed computational model of agrammatic aphasia that is consistent with the Slow Syntax Hypothesis. In particular, our model postulates that the cause of the slowing of syntax processing is a deficit in overcoming irrelevant active lexical cues. This causes interference in retrieval of lexical and semantic information, which in turn causes a misrepresentation of semantic content. We show that the model, opportunely damaged, can simulate the impairment of patients in the understanding of psychological verbs. Syntactic comprehension in agrammatism: A computational model

Multiple Dopamine Receptor Subtypes in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex of the Rat Regulate Set-Shifting

Dopamine (DA) input to the prefrontal cortex (PFC), acting on D1 receptors, plays an essential role in mediating working memory functions. In comparison, less is known about the importance of distinct PFC DA receptor subtypes in mediating executive functions such as set-shifting. The present study assessed the effects of microinfusion of D2 and D4 receptor antagonists, and D1, D2, and D4 receptor agonists into the PFC on performance of a maze-based set-shifting task. In Experiment 1, rats were trained on a response discrimination task, and then on a visual-cue discrimination task requiring rats to suppress the use of the response strategy and approach the previously irrelevant cue to locate food. In Experiment 2, the order of training was reversed. Infusions of the D2 antagonist eticlopride, or the D4 agonist PD-168,077, impaired shifting from a response to a visual-cue discrimination strategy and vice versa, and caused a selective increase in perseverative errors. In contrast, infusions of the D4 antagonist L-745,870 improved set-shifting. Infusions of the D1 agonist SKF81297 or the D2 agonist quinpirole caused no reliable effect. These data, in combination with previous reports of impaired set-shifting following D1 receptor blockade, suggest that multiple receptors in the PFC are essential for set-shifting and that the mechanisms by which PFC DA mediates behavioral flexibility may be different from those underlying working memory. These findings may have important implications for developing novel treatments for cognitive deficits observed in disorders such as attentional deficit and hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia.

Reflexive Orienting in Spatial Neglect Is Biased towards Behaviourally Salient Stimuli

Patients with spatial neglect are impaired when detecting contralesional targets presented shortly after an ipsilesional cue. This "disengagement" deficit is believed to reflect reflexive orienting towards ipsilesional stimuli that is independent of behavioural goals. Here, we show that the extent of this spatial bias depends on the behavioural salience of ipsilesional stimuli. Healthy participants, brain-injured patients without neglect and neglect patients reacted to ipsilesional and contralesional visual targets. Prior to target presentation, a visual cue similar or dissimilar to the target was presented at target position or opposite the target. Although participants did not react to the similar cue, it had high behavioural salience since it shared features with the target stimulus. Neglect patients showed dramatically increased reaction times to contralesional targets, but only when these followed behaviourally relevant ipsilesional cues. No decrease of performance was observed with irrelevant cues. This performance pattern was not due to perceptual similarity, since the same effect was found when cue and target were semantically related but differed perceptually. Importantly, semantically related cues ceased to attract attention when they were defined as behaviourally irrelevant. These results show that neglect patients only orient attention reflexively towards ipsilesional stimuli with high behavioural salience.

Can Subjective Asthma Symptoms Be Learned?

We investigated whether perception of subjective asthma symptoms can be brought under control of biomedically irrelevant cues in the environment, i.e., whether subjective asthma symptoms can be learned in response to harmless stimuli. Twenty patients with asthma and 20 healthy participants were presented with two placebo-inhalers presented as new chemicals for diagnosing asthma. One inhaler was coupled three times with rebreathing 5% CO2 in oxygen, the other inhaler was coupled three times with rebreathing oxygen. In the subsequent test phase, both inhalers were coupled once with oxygen. We assessed airway resistance and subjective symptoms throughout the study. Both groups expected and reported more symptoms with the inhaler that was previously associated with the CO2 trials compared with trials with the inhaler that was used on trials without CO2 without concomitant effects on respiratory resistance. The learning effects were most pronounced in a subgroup of patients reporting symptoms of hyperventilation during asthma exacerbations in daily life. Subjective respiratory symptoms can be learned in response to harmless stimuli and a substantial proportion of patients with asthma might be especially vulnerable to this phenomenon. Because asthma patients rely mainly on perceived symptoms for their medication use, it is likely that they will take reliever medication based on expected symptoms instead of real exacerbations of respiratory dysfunction.

Selection for cognitive control: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study on the selection of task-relevant information.

The complex environment we live in makes it necessary to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information constantly and reliably. The aim of the present study was to investigate the neural substrate underlying the selection of task-relevant information. We devised a new paradigm in which participants had to switch between two different tasks that were instructed by task cues. The task cues had a relevant and an irrelevant cue dimension. In congruent trials, both cue dimensions indicated the same task; in incongruent trials, they indicated different tasks; and in neutral trials, only the relevant dimension indicated a task. By comparing trials in which both cue dimensions were informative (congruent and incongruent trials) with trials in which only the relevant dimension was informative (neutral trials), we were able to show that the lateral prefrontal cortex and a region in the intraparietal sulcus are involved in the selection of task-relevant information. Furthermore, the present paradigm allows the influence of the selected task and stimulus dimension to be investigated. No significant influence was found in the prefrontal cortex, indicating that this region serves a very abstract role in the selection of task-relevant information.

Stimulus-response probability and inhibition of return.

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slowed responding to targets at a location previously occupied by an irrelevant cue. Here we explore the interaction between stimulus-response (S-R) probability and IOR effects using go/no-go (Experiment 1) and two-choice discrimination tasks (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the IOR effect was larger for the likely S-R ensemble than for the unlikely one. In the first experiment, there were more false alarms for uncued targets than for cued targets, and this difference was larger for the unlikely S-R ensemble than for the likely one. In the second experiment, the same pattern was observed for incorrect keypress responses. As with voluntary orienting in response to predictive central cues, the results suggest that IOR affects late stages of processing by altering the criteria to respond to targets presented at the cued (previously attended) location.

Short-term incidental memory for irrelevant cues.

A new analysis of previously published studies of delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) water-escape and the results of a new food-reinforced discrimination study are presented. In both cases, male Sprague-Dawley rats demonstrated short-term incidental memory for irrelevant cues in the context of two-alternative forced-choice problems that required learning about relevant cues. In the DMTS experiments, relevant and irrelevant cues were place or brightness. In the discrimination experiment, the relevant cues were place, brightness or a visual-tactile maze insert. In all experiments, after the rats attained high-level performance, consistently making choices with respect to the relevant stimuli, response latencies to the correct relevant cue were shorter when the irrelevant cue value(s) was the same as on the immediately preceding trial. These latency differences are interpreted as indicating that the rats demonstrated short-term incidental memory for the irrelevant cues. This mnemonic phenomenon resembles priming, an implicit form of memory.

Attentional bias to threat in social phobia: facilitated processing of threat or difficulty disengaging attention from threat?

There is a growing body of research pointing to the possibility that anxious individuals may have difficulty disengaging their attention from threat-relevant information when this information is task irrelevant (e.g., Amir, N., & Elias, J. (2002). Allocation of attention to threat in social phobia: difficulty in disengaging from task irrelevant cues, Manuscript under review; The Quarterly J. Exp. Psycho. 54A (2001) 665). In the current paper, we report a direct test of this hypothesis in individuals with social phobia. Participants performed a variation of the Posner paradigm ( Quart. J. Exp. Psycho. 32 (1980) 3). Social threat, neutral, or positive words cued one of two locations on the computer screen. After the cue disappeared, participants had to detect a probe (“ ∗”) that appeared in one of the two locations. On some trials the cue was valid (i.e., the probe appeared in the same location as the cue). On other trials the cue was invalid (the probe appeared in a different location than the cue). Yet, on other trials, no cue was presented. All participants were slower in detecting probes following invalid cues than probes following valid cues. Furthermore, individuals with social phobia showed significantly longer response latencies when detecting invalidly cued targets than did controls, but only when the probe followed a social threat word. These results suggest that individuals with social phobia may have difficulty disengaging their attention from socially threatening material.