Levels Of Cognitive Control Research Articles

Task-irrelevant emotional faces impact BOLD responses more for prosaccades than antisaccades in a mixed saccade fMRI task

Cognitive control allows individuals to flexibly and efficiently perform tasks by attending to relevant stimuli while inhibiting distraction from irrelevant stimuli. The antisaccade task assesses cognitive control by requiring participants to inhibit a prepotent glance towards a peripheral stimulus and generate an eye movement to the mirror image location. This task can be administered with various contextual manipulations to investigate how factors such as trial timing or emotional content interact with cognitive control. In the current study, 26 healthy adults completed a mixed antisaccade and prosaccade fMRI task that included task irrelevant emotional faces and gap/overlap timing. The results showed typical antisaccade and gap behavioral effects with greater BOLD activation in frontal and parietal brain regions for antisaccade and overlap trials. Conversely, there were no differences in behavior based on the emotion of the task irrelevant face, but trials with neutral faces had greater activation in widespread visual regions than trials with angry faces, particularly for prosaccade and overlap trials. Together, these effects suggest that a high level of cognitive control and inhibition was required throughout the task, minimizing the impact of the face presentation on saccade behavior, but leading to increased attention to the neutral faces on overlap prosaccade trials when both the task cue (look towards) and emotion stimulus (neutral, non-threatening) facilitated disinhibition of visual processing.

The hidden cost of a smartphone: The effects of smartphone notifications on cognitive control from a behavioral and electrophysiological perspective.

Since their release in 2007, smartphones and their use have seemingly become a fundamental aspect of life in western society. Prior literature has suggested a link between mobile technology use and lower levels of cognitive control when people engage in a cognitively demanding task. This effect is more evident for people who report higher levels of smartphone use. The current study examined the effects of smartphones notifications on cognitive control and attention. Participants completed the Navon Letter paradigm which paired visual (frequent and rare target letters) and auditory (smartphone and control sounds) stimuli. We found that overall, participants responded slower on trials paired with smartphone notification (vs. control) sounds. They also demonstrated larger overall N2 ERP and a larger N2 oddball effect on trials paired with smartphone (vs. control) sounds, suggesting that people generally exhibited greater levels of cognitive control on the smartphone trials. In addition, people with higher smartphone addiction proneness showed lower P2 ERP on trials with the smartphone (vs. control) sounds, suggesting lower attentional engagement. These results add to the debate on the effects of smartphones on cognition. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Debiasing the Disposition Effect with Noninvasive Brain Stimulation: The Role of Cognitive Control

This study tests whether modulating a brain region associated with cognitive control using noninvasive brain stimulation affects the disposition effect. A participant trades stocks in an experimental asset market while their level of cognitive control is exogenously manipulated by applying weak current stimulation to a control-related cortical region. We find that the stimulation significantly affects the participant’s cognitive control and tendency to exhibit the disposition effect. This result is also obtained for financial professionals. We thus provide evidence that cognitive control is important for the disposition effect. This paper was accepted by Bruno Biais, finance. Funding: X. Niu acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72203132], Taishan Scholar Program of Shandong Province [Grant tsqn201909013], and Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province [Grant ZR2022QG048]. J. Li acknowledges financial support from the National Social Science Foundation of China [Grant 20AZD044], Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province [Grant ZR2022MG068], and Project of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shandong University [Grant 21RWZD15]. Q. Cao acknowledges financial support from the Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [Grant 21GLC006]. The authors also acknowledge financial support from the Major Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72192842]. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4596 .

French Phonological Component Analysis and aphasia recovery: A bilingual perspective on behavioral and structural data.

Studies show bilingualism entails an advantage in cognitive control tasks. There is evidence of a bilingual advantage in the context of aphasia, resulting in better cognitive outcomes and recovery in bilingual persons with aphasia compared to monolingual peers. This bilingual advantage also results in structural changes in the right hemisphere gray matter. Very few studies have examined the so-called bilingual advantage by reference to specific anomia therapy efficacy. This study aims to compare the effect of French-Phonological Component Analysis (Fr-PCA) in monolinguals and bilingual persons with aphasia, both at the linguistic and cognitive control level, and to examine the structural impact of left hemisphere lesion location and right hemisphere structural data. Eight participants with chronic aphasia received Fr-PCA for a total of 15 h over 5 weeks. The results showed improved accuracy for treated words and generalization to untreated items and discourse in both groups, and improved Flanker task performance for some participants. Bilingual participants improved more than monolinguals for picture-naming tasks and narrative discourse. Damage to the left postcentral gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus was associated with less therapy-induced improvement. Additionally, left hemisphere damage to the inferior parietal gyrus and postcentral gyrus was associated with reduced cognitive control pre-therapy. Undamaged right hemisphere cortical thicknesses were significantly different between groups; the inferior frontal gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus were greater for the bilingual participants and correlated with cognitive control skills. These results suggest a bilingual advantage in anomia recovery following Fr-PCA, potentially resulting from enhanced cognitive control abilities that could be supported by right hemisphere neural reserve.

Examination of the Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility Skills and Teaching Motivations of Child Development Students

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between child development students' cognitive flexibility skills and their motivation to teach. A quantitative research design was used in the study. The sample consists of 257 child development students continuing their education. In the research, Personal Information Form containing information about child development students, Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI) to determine cognitive flexibility levels, and Teaching Motivation Scale (TMS) to determine instructional motivation levels were used. As a result of the correlation analysis, it was revealed that there was a positive and significant relationship between the cognitive flexibility skills of child development students and their motivation for learning, and there was a low-to-moderate positive relationship between the ages of the children. child development students and cognitive flexibility skills, and alternative and control dimensions, which are two sub-dimensions. . In addition, a significant difference was found between men and women in the control sub-dimension of cognitive flexibility according to gender. It has been revealed that the cognitive flexibility and cognitive control levels of child development students differ significantly according to whether their mothers work or not, the order of their siblings, and their fathers' occupations. Key Words: Child

Chronic Exercise as a Modulator of Cognitive Control: Investigating the Electrophysiological Indices of Performance Monitoring.

Exercise may influence components of executive functioning, specifically cognitive control and action monitoring. We aimed to determine whether high level exercise improves the efficacy of cognitive control in response to differing levels of conflict. Fitter individuals were expected to demonstrate enhanced action monitoring and optimal levels of cognitive control in response to changing task demands. Participants were divided into the highly active (HA) or low-active group based on self-reported activity using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire. A modified flanker task was then performed, in which the level of conflict was modulated by distance of distractors from the target (close, far) and congruency of arrows (incongruent, congruent). Electroencephalography (EEG) was collected during 800 trials; trials were 80% congruent, 20% incongruent, 50% close, and 50% far. The error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe) were extracted from the difference wave of correct and incorrect response locked epochs, the N2 from the difference wave of congruent and incongruent stimulus locked epochs and the P3 from stimulus locked epochs. The HA group showed a larger Pe amplitude compared to the low-active group. Close trials elicited a larger N2 amplitude than far trials in the HA group, but not the low-active group, the HA group also made fewer errors on far trials than on close trials. Finally, the P3 was smaller in the lowest conflict condition in the HA, but not the low-active group. These findings suggest that habitual, high levels of exercise may influence the endogenous processing involved in pre-response conflict detection and the post-error response.

Changes in the Power Characteristics of the α-Rhythm in Students with Different Levels of Anxiety in Normal Sleep and Partial Deprivation Solving the Go/NoGo Problem

The effect of partial sleep deprivation on cognitive control was studied in 26 students with different levels of trait anxiety. The synchronization–desynchronization reactions of the EEG α-oscillations were evaluated during the Go/NoGo test. In less anxious students, a reduction in sleep time on the night before the study led to a decrease in the desynchronization response to a positive conditioning stimulus (Go) and thus smoothed out the differences with the response to a stimulus that inhibited the behavioral response (NoGo). The smoothing of the α-rhythm responses to stimuli of different signal significance after deprivation indicated deterioration of cognitive control in this group. In students with a high level of anxiety, there were no differences in responses to Go/No Go stimuli either after a night’s sleep of normal duration or after a single sharp reduction of it. They probably had a reduced level of cognitive control, and it did not depend on partial sleep deprivation.

Cognitive control in processing ambiguous idioms: evidence from a self-paced reading study.

Idioms entail a competition between bottom-up and top-down activations of literal and figurative meanings. The present study explored the involvement of cognitive control in processing Hebrew ambiguous idioms. Fifty subjects have completed a self-paced reading task and a response inhibition, stop-signal task (SST). Subjects read 26 matched pairs of almost-identical sentences, which included ambiguous idioms (e.g., "break the ice"). The ambiguity was resolved only in the third part of the sentence, which was either literal ("on the parking lot") or figurative ("with funny stories"). Figurative disambiguation parts were read significantly faster than literal ones. The means of the absolute RT difference between the literal and figurative sentences significantly correlated with the SST cognitive control measure. A comparison between three groups of cognitive control levels validated that "Good inhibitors" in the SST were also faster in processing ambiguities. The paper discusses the generality of cognitive control in linguistic processing.

Üniversite Sınavına Girecek Olan Eşit Ağırlık ve Sayısal Grubu Öğrencilerinin Stresli Durumlarda Bilişsel Kontrol ve Bilişsel Esneklik Düzeylerinin İncelenmesi

In this study, it was aimed to determine the cognitive flexibility and cognitive control levels of equal weight and numerical group students who will take the university exam in stressful situations and to determine whether there is a significant difference between the two groups in terms of cognitive control and cognitive flexibility levels Dec In the study, descriptive survey model was used as one of the quantitative research patterns. The universe of the study was studied in Izmit, Kocaeli Province, 12. the class consists of students. A total of 126 students, 79 of whom were female and 47 of whom were male, participated in the study. The participants of the study were reached by means of easily accessible case sampling method. In the study, SPSS 20 program was used for data analysis. After the descriptive analysis of the participants was performed as statistical methods, t-test was applied to test the hypotheses. As a data collection tool, The Cognitive Control and Flexibility Questionnaire (The Cognitive Control and Flexibility Questionnaire) developed by Demirtas (2019) was used in Stressful Situations. According to the results of the research; there was no significant difference between the levels of cognitive dec and cognitive flexibility in stressful situations of students of the equal weight and numerical group who were going to take the university exam. The results of the research were compared with the literature and various recommendations were made. Keywords: Cognitive Control, Cognitive Flexibility, University Exam, Stress Situations

Adaptive control of working memory

The present study investigated mechanisms of adaptive cognitive control in working memory (WM). WM is conceived as a system for short-term maintenance, updating and manipulation of representations required for goal-directed action. Adaptive control refers to the finding of flexible adjustments of control processes based on conflict. For instance, a higher frequency of incongruent stimuli, that is, stimuli evoking conflicting response tendencies, leads to a higher level of cognitive control as reflected by smaller congruency effects (i.e., the difference between congruent and incongruent items). Likewise, conflict on the previous trial leads to a higher level of cognitive control on the current trial. To investigate adaptive control in WM, we used a modified Sternberg paradigm. Participants memorized two differently colored lists of four digits (i.e., 2 5 7 1), in which corresponding positions in both lists contained the same digits (congruent items) or different digits (incongruent items). Participants were required to make a match/mismatch judgement (Experiment 1 and 2) or to recollect the correct digit at a probed position in one of the two lists (Experiment 3). In all experiments, we could replicate both hallmark effects of adaptive control, the proportion congruency effect, and the congruency sequence effect. Our results strongly support the assumption that WM representations can be dynamically adapted based on the amount of conflict, and that adaptive control of WM follows the same principles that have previously been shown for selective attention.

Task-Relevant Representations and Cognitive Control Demands Modulate Functional Connectivity from Ventral Occipito-Temporal Cortex During Object Recognition Tasks.

The left ventral occipito-temporal cortex (vOTC) supports extraction and processing of visual features. However, it has remained unclear whether left vOTC-based functional connectivity (FC) differs according to task-relevant representations (e.g., lexical, visual) and control demands imposed by the task, even when similar visual-semantic processing is required for object identification. Here, neural responses to the same set of pictures of meaningful objects were measured, while the type of task that participants had to perform (picture naming versus size-judgment task), and the level of cognitive control required by the picture naming task (high versus low interference contexts) were manipulated. Explicit retrieval of lexical representations in the picture naming task facilitated activation of lexical/phonological representations, modulating FC between left vOTC and dorsal anterior-cingulate-cortex/pre-supplementary-motor-area. This effect was not observed in the size-judgment task, which did not require explicit word-retrieval of object names. Furthermore, retrieving the very same lexical/phonological representation in the high versus low interference contexts during picture naming increased FC between left vOTC and left caudate. These findings support the proposal that vOTC functional specialization emerges from interactions with task-relevant brain regions.

It is harder than you think: On the boundary conditions of exploiting congruency cues.

Humans are able to anticipate abstract task demands and prepare attentional sets accordingly. A popular method to study this ability is to include explicit cues that signal the required level of cognitive control in conflict tasks (e.g., whether or not word meaning will correspond to the task-relevant font color in a Stroop task). Here, we demonstrate that this ability is more limited than assumed by most theories. Starting from a recent finding that implicit cues on the previous trial do not aid task performance, we demonstrate that these cues remain inefficient even when participants are explicitly instructed about their meaning, when the cue-stimulus interval is prolonged, or when the cues are deterministic and blocked (Experiments 1-4). In fact, the cues sometimes even impaired performance. Extending cue-information into the intertrial interval did not help (Experiment 5), and even though we replicated previous cueing effects using explicit cues in between trials in the vocal Stroop task (Experiment 7), this effect disappeared when using manual responses or presenting the cue in the preceding trial (Experiments 6, 8, and 9), and only benefited congruent responses when the intertrial interval was reduced (Experiment 10). Together, these findings point to important boundary conditions in cued control: The ability to prepare for control demands on a trial-by-trial basis is restricted to situations in which cues are presented alone, and where the task involves a nonarbitrary stimulus-response mapping. We discuss these findings in light of recent theories that emphasize the role of event boundaries and the value of cognitive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of motor restrictions on preparatory brain activity

Modifying established motor skills is a challenging endeavor due to proactive interference from undesired old to desired new actions, calling for high levels of cognitive control. Motor restrictions may facilitate the modification of motor skills by rendering undesired responses physically impossible, thus reducing demands to response inhibition. Here we studied behavioral and EEG effects of rule changes to typing in skilled touch-typists. The respective rule change—typing without using the left index finger—was either implemented per instruction only or with an additional motor restriction. In both groups, the rule change elicited delays and more errors in typing, indicating the occurrence of proactive interference. While stimulus-locked ERPs did not exhibit prominent effects of rule change or group, response-locked ERPs revealed that the time courses of preparatory brain activity preceding typing responses depended on the presence of motor restriction. Although further research is necessary to corroborate our findings, they indicate a novel brain correlate that represents changes in inhibitory response preparation induced by short-term motor restrictions.

More change in task repetition, less cost in task switching: Behavioral and event-related potential evidence.

Previous studies have shown that the probability of task switching can vary the level of cognitive control and modulate the size of switch costs. However, it is unclear whether switch costs would be affected by a task-repetition context formed by varying the degree of response (and task-relevant stimulus property) change within the task repetition sequences while the probability of task switching remains constant. In the present study, participants were presented with a string of digits (e.g., ②②②). Basing on stimulus color, they were required to indicate either the presented digit, or the number of presented digits. Before task switching, stimulus and response in consecutive task-repeat trials varied more or less frequently. Behavioral results showed that the frequent-change context elicited smaller switch costs than the rare-change context. Event-related potential (ERP) results indicated that: (1) the frequent-change context evoked greater fronto-central N2 amplitudes for both task-repeat and task-switch trials, implying that cognitive control increased due to the variation of stimulus and response associations; (2) for the task switch trials, smaller P300 amplitudes were evoked in the frequent-change context than the rare-change context, reflecting the promoted task-set reconfiguration. These findings suggest that, the more change in stimulus and response during task repetition, the higher the overall level of cognitive control and the higher efficiency of task-switching.

Domains of the autism phenotype, cognitive control, and rumination as transdiagnostic predictors of DSM-5 suicide risk.

Suicide is a global health problem affecting both normative and clinical populations. Theoretical models that examine mechanisms underlying suicide risk across heterogeneous samples are needed. The present study explored core characteristics associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a sub-population at high risk of suicide, as well as two dimensional cognitive constructs, as potential transdiagnostic predictors of suicidal ideation in a clinically diverse sample. Participants (n = 1851, 62% female) aged 18 to 89 years completed online questionnaires assessing: social communication difficulties; insistence on sameness; cognitive control; and rumination. Forty-three percent of participants reported the presence of at least one neurodevelopmental or neuropsychiatric disorder. One third of the sample reported some suicidal ideation (SI), and 40 percent met the threshold for concern for depression. All hypothesized constructs were associated with SI and depression and, with the exception of rumination, contributed significantly to SI. Participants reporting SI returned significantly higher social communication difficulties and insistence on sameness, and lower levels of cognitive control than those reporting no-SI. The study was limited by the use of a cross-sectional sample assessed with self-report measures. All diagnoses were self-reported and the study was additionally limited by the use of a single item indicator of suicidal ideation. These findings support a role for constructs associated with the ASD phenotype and associated broad cognitive domains as potential risk factors underlying suicidal ideation in a large clinically diverse sample. Our findings suggest directions for future longitudinal research studies, along with specific targets for suicide prevention and clinical practice.

Development and Initial Validation of a Scale Measuring Young Children’s Self-Perceptions of Trait Cognitive Control

ABSTRACT Cognitive control skills in early life are vital to success throughout the lifespan. Such skills have been positively linked to a host of important short- and long-term outcomes across many diverse domains. Similarly, self-perceptions such as self-efficacy, implicit beliefs about cognition, and self-concept have all been shown to predict meaningful variance in important outcomes like academic performance over and above measures of cognitive ability. To what extent do young children have a self-perception of their own level of cognitive control functioning? To date, no measures have been developed to assess young children’s perceptions of their own skills in this regard. In this study, we aimed to develop and validate a scale capturing children’s self-perceptions of their cognitive control skills via a puppet interview. Scale analyses of interviews from 125 children aged 4 through 7 years suggest the scale elicits responses that cluster around two correlated, but separable components: 1) Self- and Emotion-Regulation, and 2) Attention Modulation. Responses on these two subscales showed moderate to strong internal consistency, were strongly correlated with parent reports of similar skills, and self-reports of related constructs, but showed no systematic relation to behavioral tasks measuring executive functioning abilities. The findings suggest that young children are capable of reflecting and reporting on their own cognitive control skills and that these skills correspond to parent reports of similar abilities. Further scale refinement and targeted validation efforts are needed; however, these encouraging early results suggest the new scale holds potential to uncover how children’s self-perceptions influence their learning success.

Dynamic Adjustments of Midfrontal Control Signals in Adults and Adolescents

During task performance, our level of cognitive control is dynamically adjusted to task demands as reflected, for example, by the congruency sequence effect (CSE) in conflict tasks. Although brain areas related to cognitive control show protracted maturation across adolescence, previous studies found that adolescents show similar behavioral CSEs to adults. In the present study, we investigated whether there are age-related changes in the neural underpinnings of dynamic control adjustments using electroencephalography. Early adolescents (ages 12-14, N = 30) and young adults (ages 25-27, N = 29) completed a confound-minimized flanker task optimized for the detection of sequential control adjustments. The CSE was observed in midfrontal theta power thought to capture anterior cingulate cortex-mediated monitoring processes but was not modulated significantly by age. Adolescents, however, showed a smaller congruency effect in the power and cross-trial temporal consistency of midfrontal theta oscillations than adults. No age differences were observed in phase-based connectivity between midfrontal and lateral frontal regions in the theta band. These findings provide strong support for the role of midfrontal theta oscillations in conflict monitoring and reactive control and suggest that the cognitive system of early adolescents initially responds less reliably to the occurrence of conflict than that of adults.

A framework for describing interaction between human operators and autonomous, automated, and manual control systems

This paper addresses how to describe critical episodes of interaction between human operators and autonomous, automated, and manual control systems. The first part of the paper poses three questions: (1) what levels of cognitive control are important to include in a descriptive framework for joint human-autonomy in process control; (2) how should one describe temporal developments in joint socio-technical systems; and (3) how does one analyse communication and control at the system joints. The paper proceeds by proposing a new framework for description and analysis, the Joint Control Framework (JCF), with a simple notation, the Score (JCF-S). It allows descriptions of the three previously mentioned aspects through three analytical activities: process mapping (PM), analysis of Levels of Autonomy in Cognitive Control (LACC), and temporal descriptions of human–machine interaction (T-HMI) through the Score notation. This facilitates analyses across cases and domains. The framework is discussed based on an analysis of two episodes; one work episode (from an air traffic control tower simulator); and one work procedure (from an unmanned traffic management system design concept).

Особенности развития контроля поведения у младших школьников из семей с различной этнокультурной принадлежностью

The aim of this paper is to study the development of self-control abilities in children of primary school age. The main mechanisms for the formation of self-regulation of children of primary school age are revealed. Such concepts as self-regulation, self-control, processes of mental self-regulation, structural components of self-regulation, behavioral control, ethno-cultural characteristics and styles of family relations are analyzed. The main context of the study is the study of the development of behavioral control within the framework of child-parent relations among the families of the Northern nationalities. The article presents data on behavioral control in children from families with different ethnic and cultural affiliation. The children of primary school age from 129 families took part in the survey: 42 families of Evens living in the native territory of Yakutia, 43 families of the country’s rural area, 44 Russian-speaking families of the city of Yakutsk. The following methods were used: Wechler’s test Children’s version. Subtest 11 “Coding” and the technique “Voluntary control (control actions): neuropsychological tasks” A.R. Luria. It was found that children from urban families, in comparison with rural families and traditional life-style families, are more likely have a low level of cognitive control and control of actions, but a high level of control of actions is observed less often.

List-level control in the flanker task.

Current theories posit multiple levels of cognitive control for resolving conflict, including list-level control: the global or proactive biasing of attention across a list of trials. However, to date, evidence for pure list-level control has largely been confined to the Stroop task. Our goals were twofold: (a) test the generality of theoretical accounts by seeking evidence for list-level control in the letter flanker task, using an established method involving diagnostic items, and investigating the conditions under which list-level control may and may not be observed and (b) develop and test a potential solution to the challenge of isolating list-level control in tasks with a relatively limited set of stimuli and responses such as arrow flanker. Our key findings were that list-level control was observed for the first time in a letter flanker task on diagnostic items (Experiment 1), and it was not observed when the design was altered to encourage learning and use of simple stimulus-response associations (Experiment 2). These findings support the generalisability of current theoretical accounts positing dual-mechanisms or multiple levels of control, and the associations as antagonists to control account positing that list-level control may be a last resort, to conflict tasks besides Stroop. List-level control was also observed in the arrow flanker task using a modified design (Experiment 3), which could be extended to other conflict tasks with limited sets of stimuli (four or fewer), although this solution is not entirely free of confounds.