Keypress Responses Research Articles

My mistake? Enhanced error processing for commanded compared to passively observed actions.

We often ask other people to carry out actions for us in order to reach our goals. However, these commanded actions may sometimes go awry, and goal attainment is hindered by errors of the following person. Here, we investigated how the commanding person processes these errors of their follower. Because such errors indicate that the original goal of the command is not met, error processing for these actions should be enhanced compared to passively observing another person's actions. Participants thus either commanded another agent to perform one of four key press responses or they passively observed the agent responding. The agent could respond correctly or commit an error in either case. We compared error processing of commanded and passively observed actions using observation-related post-error slowing (oPES) as a behavioral marker and observed-error-related negativity (oNE /oERN) and observed-error positivity (oPE ) as electrophysiological markers. Whereas error processing, as measured via the oERN, was similarly pronounced for commanded and observed actions, commanded actions gave rise to stronger oPES and a stronger oPE . These results suggest that enhanced monitoring is an automatic by-product of commanding another person's actions.

Manual versus saccadic assessment of cognitive inhibition and switching in young and older adults.

Inhibition and switching deficits occur with healthy aging and many clinical conditions, compromising performance of daily tasks and thus quality of life. To assess deficits, saccade tasks have often been used, but they require access to expensive eye-tracking equipment and trained personnel. Moreover, with respect to switching, the aging literature suggests that easy-to-administer manual tasks may be more sensitive to deficits than saccade tasks. Here we directly compared the 2 response modalities for assessing inhibition and switching abilities and characterized changes associated with healthy aging. We measured in 60 young adults (18-24 years) and 60 older adults (60-72 years) performance on 3 brief tasks that varied in their requirement of inhibition and switching. All participants completed the 3 tasks twice-once making keypress and once making saccadic responses. Regarding assessment similarity across the 2 response modalities, manual and saccadic response variables significantly correlated (r > .2 in all cases). With respect to aging effects, manual responses showed robust inhibition (r = .52) and switching (r = .63) deficits whereas saccadic responses showed inhibition (r = .23) but not switching (r = .13) deficits. These results indicate that easy-to-administer keypress responses can be used to assess age-related declines in inhibition and switching abilities and that keypress responses show greater sensitivity than saccadic responses. Future research is needed to test whether these patterns extend to clinical populations with inhibition and switching deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record

Flowers and spiders in spatial stimulus-response compatibility: does affective valence influence selection of task-sets or selection of responses?

ABSTRACTThe present study examined the effect of stimulus valence on two levels of selection in the cognitive system, selection of a task-set and selection of a response. In the first experiment, participants performed a spatial compatibility task (pressing left and right keys according to the locations of stimuli) in which stimulus-response mappings were determined by stimulus valence. There was a standard spatial stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect for positive stimuli (flowers) and a reversed SRC effect for negative stimuli (spiders), but the same data could be interpreted as showing faster responses when positive and negative stimuli were assigned to compatible and incompatible mappings, respectively, than when the assignment was opposite. Experiment 2 disentangled these interpretations, showing that valence did not influence a spatial SRC effect (Simon effect) when task-set retrieval was unnecessary. Experiments 3 and 4 replaced keypress responses with joystick deflections that afforded approach/avoidance action coding. Stimulus valence modulated the Simon effect (but did not reverse it) when the valence was task-relevant (Experiment 3) as well as when it was task-irrelevant (Experiment 4). Therefore, stimulus valence influences task-set selection and response selection, but the influence on the latter is limited to conditions where responses afford approach/avoidance action coding.

Best not to bet on the horserace: A comment on Forrin and MacLeod (2017) and a relevant stimulus-response compatibility view of colour-word contingency learning asymmetries.

One powerfully robust method for the study of human contingency learning is the colour-word contingency learning paradigm. In this task, participants respond to the print colour of neutral words, each of which is presented most often in one colour. The contingencies between words and colours are learned, as indicated by faster and more accurate responses when words are presented in their expected colour relative to an unexpected colour. In a recent report, Forrin and MacLeod (2017b, Memory & Cognition) asked to what extent this performance (i.e., response time) measure of learning might depend on the relative speed of processing of the word and the colour. With keypress responses, learning effects were comparable when responding to the word and to the colour (contrary to predictions). However, an asymmetry appeared in a second experiment with vocal responses, with a contingency effect only present for colour identification. In a third experiment, the colour was preexposed, and contingency effects were again roughly symmetrical. In their report, they suggested that a simple speed-of-processing (or "horserace") model might explain when contingency effects are observed in colour and word identification. In the present report, an alternative view is presented. In particular, it is argued that the results are best explained by appealing to the notion of relevant stimulus-response compatibility, which also resolves discrepancies between horserace model predictions and participant results. The article presents simulations with the Parallel Episodic Processing model to demonstrate this case.

Role of hand dominance in mapping preferences for emotional-valence words to keypress responses

When a crossed-hands placement (right hand presses left key; left hand presses right key) is used in a two-choice spatial reaction task, the mapping of left stimulus to left key and right stimulus to right key yields faster responses than the opposite mapping. In contrast, de la Vega, Dudschig, De Filippis, Lachmair, and Kaup (2013) reported that when right-handed individuals classified words as having positive or negative affect, there was a benefit for mapping positive affect to the right hand (left key) and negative affect to the left hand (right key). The goal of the present study was to replicate and extend this seemingly distinct finding. Experiment 1 duplicated the design of that study without including nonword “no-go” trials but including a condition in which participants performed with an uncrossed hand placement. Results corroborated the benefit for mapping positive to the right hand and negative to the left hand with the hands crossed, and this benefit was as large as that obtained with the hands uncrossed. Experiment 2 confirmed the importance of the dominant/subordinate hand distinction with left-handed participants, and Experiment 3 showed, with right-handed participants, that it does not depend on which limb is placed over the other. The results verify that the mapping advantage for positive→right/negative→left is indeed due to the distinction between dominant and subordinate hands. Possible reasons for the difference between these results and those obtained with spatial-location stimuli are considered.

Relative speed of processing determines color-word contingency learning.

In three experiments, we tested a relative-speed-of-processing account of color-word contingency learning, a phenomenon in which color identification responses to high-contingency stimuli (words that appear most often in particular colors) are faster than those to low-contingency stimuli. Experiment 1 showed equally large contingency-learning effects whether responding was to the colors or to the words, likely due to slow responding to both dimensions because of the unfamiliar mapping required by the key press responses. For Experiment 2, participants switched to vocal responding, in which reading words is considerably faster than naming colors, and we obtained a contingency-learning effect only for color naming, the slower dimension. In Experiment 3, previewing the color information resulted in a reduced contingency-learning effect for color naming, but it enhanced the contingency-learning effect for word reading. These results are all consistent with contingency learning influencing performance only when the nominally irrelevant feature is faster to process than the relevant feature, and therefore are entirely in accord with a relative-speed-of-processing explanation.

Effects on P3 of spreading targets and response prompts apart

When key-press responses to targets have to be withheld until the presentation of response prompts, target-evoked P3 amplitudes are reduced and so is the P3 difference between rare and frequent targets (the oddball effect on P3). Recently we showed that this even applied when go-signals followed targets by 100ms. Here we aimed at replicating this result with more fine-grained temporal resolution in 100ms steps from 0ms to 500ms, and dissecting the P3 complex to stimulus- and response-related portions by applying residue iteration decomposition (RIDE). Frequent and rare target stimuli (in random series) were followed by go signals (and occasional no-go signals), with block-wise fixed stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) from 0ms to 500ms. Target-evoked P3 amplitudes decreased monotonically across SOAs. Part of this decrease might have been due to an overlapping Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) prior to go signals, increasing across SOAs. When CNV was subtracted out by forming rare-frequent difference waveforms, oddball-P3 was largest at SOA 0, smallest at SOA 500, and equally large at SOAs 100–400. According to RIDE, it was P3's response-related part that was increased at SOA0. These results may be interpreted in terms of the stimulus-response-link reactivation hypothesis of P3.

Evidence accumulation in the integrated and primed Stroop tasks

We report distributional analyses of response times (RT) in two variants of the color-word Stroop task using manual keypress responses. In the classic Stroop task, in which the color and word dimensions are integrated into a single stimulus, the Stroop congruence effect increased across the quantiles. In contrast, in the primed Stroop task, in which the distractor word is presented ahead of colored symbols, the Stroop congruence effect was manifested solely as a distributional shift, remaining constant across the quantiles. The distributional-shift pattern mirrors the semantic-priming effect that has been reported in semantic categorization tasks. The results are interpreted within the framework of evidence accumulation, and implications for the roles of task conflict and informational conflict are discussed.

The magic of words reconsidered: Investigating the automaticity of reading color-neutral words in the Stroop task.

In 2 variants of the color-word Stroop task, we compared 5 types of color-neutral distractors-real words (e.g., HAT), pseudowords (e.g., HIX), consonant strings (e.g., HDK), symbol strings (e.g., #$%), and a row of Xs (e.g., XXX)-as well as incongruent color words (e.g., GREEN displayed in red). When participants named the color, relative to a row of Xs, words and pseudowords interfered equally and more than the consonant strings, which in turn interfered more than the symbols. In contrast, when participants identified the color by manual key-press responses, all 5 types of neutral strings produced equal color response latencies. In both tasks, the incongruent color words produced robust interference relative to the color-neutral words. Reaction time (RT) distribution analyses showed that all interference effects (relative to the row of Xs) increased across the quantiles. We interpret these results in terms of an evidence accumulation process in which the interfering distractor reduces the effective rate of evidence accumulation for the color target. We take the results to argue that the task of reading, even when triggered unintentionally, is not an invariant process driven solely by the stimulus properties, and is instead guided by the task goal. (PsycINFO Database Record

Go and no-go P3 with rare and frequent stimuli in oddball tasks: A study comparing key-pressing with counting

The P3 component of event-related potentials (ERPs) is large at posterior scalp sites with rare go stimuli (go-P3) and at anterior sites with rare no-go stimuli (no-go P3). Most hypotheses on P3, including our S-R link reactivation notion, imply that these characteristics are independent of specific response modes. This assumption was here investigated by comparing ERPs between key-pressing and covert counting responses in oddball tasks that required responses to either frequent or rare stimuli. Replicating previous results, topographic differences between parietal rare go-P3 and fronto-central rare no-go P3 were much reduced with counting compared to key-press responses. Besides, while go-P3 was generally more positive than no-go P3 in the key-press tasks (except for fronto-central no-go P3 with rare stimuli) the reverse was true in the counting tasks. Thus, the characteristic posterior and fronto-central go and no-go topographies appear to be specific to hand movements. Moreover, P3s evoked in counting tasks might not simply be P3 proper, uncontaminated by movement-related potentials, but rather the go/no-go logic might differ between counting and key-pressing, with the oddball effects being affected by specific processes implemented for these particular response modes.

Effects of levodopa on stimulus-response learning versus response selection in healthy young adults

Dopaminergic therapy has been shown to worsen some cognitive functions, particularly learning, in Parkinson’s disease (PD). This has been attributed to dopamine overdose of brain regions that are relatively dopamine replete. Dopamine dosages are titrated to the severely depleted dorsal striatum (DS). According to this account, dopaminergic therapy should worsen cognitive functions in healthy young adults who have normal dopamine levels. As a critical test of the dopamine overdose hypothesis, we tested the effect of levodopa on learning stimulus-response associations and on performing stimulus-specific responses once these associations were learned. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subjects design, 40 healthy young adults completed a stimulus-response learning task on either levodopa or placebo. Half of the participants received 100mg of levodopa and 25mg of carbidopa whereas the other half received an equal volume of placebo. In Session 1, participants learned to associate abstract images with specific key-press responses through trial and error with outcome feedback. In Session 2, participants performed stimulus-specific selections to abstract images they had previously learned in Session 1. Participants treated with levodopa compared to those on placebo demonstrated unambiguously less efficient acquisition of stimulus-response associations. The groups did not differ in their ability to enact stimulus-specific selections once they were learned, however, even though these responses were not overlearned. This pattern of findings is entirely consistent with the effect of levodopa on cognition in PD. The deleterious effects of levodopa on learning seem independent of PD pathology. These results have important implications for understanding mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction in PD and caution about the potential for cognitive deficits in patients treated with levodopa for other indications.

Response-specific effects in a joint action task: social inhibition of return effects do not emerge when observed and executed actions are different.

Although the inhibition of return (IOR) effect is primarily studied when people act individually, IOR is also observed in social environments where a person observes a partner's response before executing their own response (social or sIOR). Specifically, an observer takes longer to initiate a response to a target at a location that another individual has just responded to than to another location. The present study was conducted to determine if sIOR emerges when two individuals execute different actions-one participant executed keypress responses and the other completed aiming movements to the same set of stimuli. The two conditions in the present experiment were designed to separate the effects of observing a co-actor's target information from observing their subsequent response. In the Full Vision condition, observers saw both the target stimuli and the response of the partner. In the Partial Vision condition, observers witnessed the response of the partner, but did not see the target stimulus or any other potentially attention capturing event at the target location. It was found that, although sIOR emerged in the Full Vision condition, sIOR did not emerge in the Partial Vision condition. These and other previous findings on the impact of action goal on sIOR are discussed with reference to the potential contributions of attention and action co-representation mechanisms to the sIOR effect.

Separate mechanisms for magnitude and order processing in the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect: The strange case of musical note values.

The spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect is considered an evidence of the association between numbers and space, with faster left key-press responses to small numbers and faster right key-press responses to large numbers. We examined whether visually presented note values produce a SNARC-like effect. Differently from numbers, note values are represented as a decreasing left-to-right progression, allowing us to disambiguate the contribution of order and magnitude in determining the direction of the effect. Musicians with formal education performed a note value comparison in Experiment 1 (direct task), a line orientation judgment in Experiment 2 (indirect task), and a detection task in Experiment 3 (indirect task). When note values were task relevant (direct task), participants responded faster to large note values with the left key-press, and vice versa. Conversely, when note values were task irrelevant (indirect tasks), the direction of this association was reversed. This evidence suggests the existence of separate mechanisms underlying the SNARC effect. Namely, an Order-Related Mechanism (ORM) and a Magnitude-Related Mechanism (MRM) that are revealed by different task demands. Indeed, according to a new model we proposed, ordinal and magnitude related information appears to be preferentially involved in direct and indirect tasks, respectively. (PsycINFO Database Record

Do Rare Stimuli Evoke Large P3s by Being Unexpected? A Comparison of Oddball Effects Between Standard-Oddball and Prediction-Oddball Tasks.

The P3 component of event-related potentials increases when stimuli are rarely presented. It has been assumed that this oddball effect (rare-frequent difference) reflects the unexpectedness of rare stimuli. The assumption of unexpectedness and its link to P3 amplitude were tested here. A standard- oddball task requiring alternative key-press responses to frequent and rare stimuli was compared with an oddball-prediction task where stimuli had to be first predicted and then confirmed by key-pressing. Oddball effects in the prediction task depended on whether the frequent or the rare stimulus had been predicted. Oddball effects on P3 amplitudes and error rates in the standard oddball task closely resembled effects after frequent predictions. This corroborates the notion that these effects occur because frequent stimuli are expected and rare stimuli are unexpected. However, a closer look at the prediction task put this notion into doubt because the modifications of oddball effects on P3 by expectancies were entirely due to effects on frequent stimuli, whereas the large P3 amplitudes evoked by rare stimuli were insensitive to predictions (unlike response times and error rates). Therefore, rare stimuli cannot be said to evoke large P3 amplitudes because they are unexpected. We discuss these diverging effects of frequency and expectancy, as well as general differences between tasks, with respect to concepts and hypotheses about P3b’s function and conclude that each discussed concept or hypothesis encounters some problems, with a conception in terms of subjective relevance assigned to stimuli offering the most consistent account of these basic effects.

A single session of exercise as a modulator of short-term learning in healthy individuals

BackgroundA single session of aerobic exercise is linked to faster motor responses; however, the effect on rate of short-term learning is less clear. The objective was to evaluate the influence of a single bout of aerobic exercise on the rate of short-term acquisition of a shape-letter association task requiring a motor response. Methods23 [11 females, age 20.8±2.7years] healthy young adults were evaluated using a randomly assigned crossover design which was counterbalanced for order before and after moderate (exercise) and light (control) intensity cycle ergometry. Participants performed 3 blocks, with each block consisting of one round of training and testing. During training, participants were tasked with learning 6 unique shape-letter associations. Subsequent testing required a key press response to a visually presented shape pattern. Response time and error rates were used to assess acquisition over the 3 blocks of testing. ResultsMean response time was faster post-exercise relative to the other testing periods, and approached statistical significance compared to post-control (p<0.07). However, no significant difference in response time reduction (difference between test block 1 and test block 3) was identified between the four evaluations (pre and post the exercise and control conditions). Error rate reduction (test block 1 minus test block 3) revealed that individuals had the smallest change in error rate post-exercise (p<0.05). Follow-up analyses revealed fewer errors in test block 1 and test block 2 post-exercise which approached statistical significance (p=0.06) suggesting near-perfect error rates were obtained after only 2 testing blocks post-exercise compared to 3 blocks in the other testing periods. ConclusionsSupport for augmentation of short-term learning was mixed as errors were reduced post-exercise while response time was not different between evaluations. Future work should include neurophysiological evaluation and a retention test to better elucidate the influence of aerobic exercise on rate of short-term learning.

Saccade latency indexes exogenous and endogenous object-based attention

Classic studies of object-based attention have utilized keypress responses as the main dependent measure. However, people typically make saccades to fixate important objects. Recent work has shown that attention may act differently when it is deployed covertly versus in advance of a saccade. We further investigated the link between saccades and attention by examining whether object-based effects can be observed for saccades. We adapted the classical double-rectangle cueing paradigm of Egly, Driver, and Rafal (1994), and measured both the first saccade latency and the keypress reaction time (RT) to a target that appeared at the end of one of the two rectangles. Our results showed that saccade latencies exhibited higher sensitivity than did RTs for detecting effects of attention. We also assessed the generality of the attention effects by testing three types of cues: hybrid (predictive and peripheral), exogenous (nonpredictive and peripheral), and endogenous (predictive and central). We found that both RTs and saccade latencies exhibited effects of both space-based and object-based attentional selection. However, saccade latencies showed a more robust attentional modulation than RTs. For the exogenous cues, we observed a spatial inhibition of return along with an object-based effect, implying that object-based attention is independent of space-based attention. Overall, our results revealed an oculomotor correlate of object-based attention, suggesting that, in addition to spatial priority, object-level priority also affects saccade planning.

Corticospinal excitability is reduced in a simple reaction time task requiring complex timing

Increasing the complexity of a movement has been shown to result in longer simple reaction time (RT), which has been attributed to sequencing or timing requirements following the go-signal. However, RT differences may also be due to differences in corticospinal excitability (CE) as previous studies have found an enhanced excitatory state of corticospinal neurons in complex tasks. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used in the present study to probe the excitability of the motor pathway during the simple RT interval for single (simple) versus multiple (complex) key press responses. Premotor RT data indicated that participants responded significantly (p<.001) faster in the simple task compared to the complex task, confirming response complexity was manipulated appropriately. Analysis of the CE data indicated that motor evoked potential (MEP) amplitudes increased with time following the go-signal in both conditions and that MEP amplitudes in the simple task were significantly larger than those in the complex task when evoked within 75ms of movement onset (p=.009). These findings suggest that the rate of increase for initiation-related neural activation is reduced for complex as compared to simple movements, which may partially explain differences in RT.

Response Conflict and Inhibition of Return

Much research has suggested that attention is biased away from previously attended locations-- a phenomenon termed inhibition of return (IOR). Traditionally, IOR studies use simple visual stimuli in detection tasks and employ a cue-target paradigm where a task-irrelevant cue is briefly presented followed by a target at either a cued location (same location as cue) or at an uncued location. Participants provide no response to the cue, but then produce a key press response upon target detection. When the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) is less than 300 ms, response to the target is facilitated by the cue; when the SOA is greater than 300 ms, response to the target is slowed at the cued location. The current study investigates different cue-target tasks and their effect on inhibition of return (IOR). We will conduct a between-subjects experiment with three conditions differing in response instruction. Target-only condition replicates the classic IOR study using a cue-target, detection task paradigm in which participants respond to the target but not the cue. Same-response condition requires participants to make identical responses to the cue and target. Different-response condition requires participants to provide a response to both the cue and the target, but the responses for the cue and target will differ. Together these studies help us understand the extent that IOR is caused by a motor response conflict as we compare the magnitude of IOR from the three testing conditions.

Effect Anticipation Affects Perceptual, Cognitive, and Motor Phases of Response Preparation: Evidence from an Event-Related Potential (ERP) Study.

The anticipation of action effects is a basic process that can be observed even for key-pressing responses in a stimulus-response paradigm. In Ziessler et al.’s (2012) experiments participants first learned arbitrary effects of key-pressing responses. In the test phase an imperative stimulus determined the response, but participants withheld the response until a Go-stimulus appeared. Reaction times (RTs) were shorter if the Go-stimulus was compatible with the learned response effect. This is strong evidence that effect representations were activated during response planning. Here, we repeated the experiment using event-related potentials (ERPs), and we found that Go-stimulus locked ERPs depended on the compatibility relationship between the Go-stimulus and the response effect. In general, this supports the interpretation of the behavioral data. More specifically, differences in the ERPs between compatible and incompatible Go-stimuli were found for the early perceptual P1 component and the later frontal P2 component. P1 differences were found only in the second half of the experiment and for long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between imperative stimulus and Go-stimulus, i.e., when the effect was fully anticipated and the perceptual system was prepared for the effect-compatible Go-stimulus. P2 amplitudes, likely associated with evaluation and conflict detection, were larger when Go-stimulus and effect were incompatible; presumably, incompatibility increased the difficulty of effect anticipation. Onset of response-locked lateralized readiness potentials (R-LRPs) occurred earlier under incompatible conditions indicating extended motor processing. Together, these results strongly suggest that effect anticipation affects all (i.e., perceptual, cognitive, and motor) phases of response preparation.

女大学生对花美男和阳刚男择偶偏爱的内隐效应探究

应用IAT内隐联想测验，采用被试內设计对苏州大学文正学院30名女大学生进行配对样本T检验，从而来研究女大学生在择偶上对花美男和阳刚男的内隐偏好。研究结果发现，女大学生在阳刚男与花美男的按键反应的平均正确率上无显著差异，而在按键的平均反应时上存在显著差异(即，女大学生对阳刚男的平均反应时显著短于对花美男的平均反应时)。实验结果在一定程度上暗示着女大学生在择偶上对阳刚男有更为积极的评价，但并没有显著的偏好差异。 The aim of this article is to explore the differences of implicit mating preferences of female un-dergraduates. Our sample consisted of 30 female undergraduates from Wenzheng College of Soo-chow University and we used within-subjects design and Paired-Sample T test to explore this object. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was applied as a tool to measure the implicit mating tendency. The result showed that the average accuracy rate of the key-press responses between the two coupling tasks was found not significant in terms of the IAT on implicit mating preferences. Nevertheless, the average reaction time connected between masculine male information and posi-tive words were significantly smaller than that between feminine male information and passive words, which indicated that masculine features in male were more attractive than feminine ones, to a certain extent.