task individual differences: Topics by Science.gov

Sample records for task individual differences

Task-dependent individual differences in prefrontal connectivity.

PubMed

Biswal, Bharat B; Eldreth, Dana A; Motes, Michael A; Rypma, Bart

2010-09-01

Recent advances in neuroimaging have permitted testing of hypotheses regarding the neural bases of individual differences, but this burgeoning literature has been characterized by inconsistent results. To test the hypothesis that differences in task demands could contribute to between-study variability in brain-behavior relationships, we had participants perform 2 tasks that varied in the extent of cognitive involvement. We examined connectivity between brain regions during a low-demand vigilance task and a higher-demand digit-symbol visual search task using Granger causality analysis (GCA). Our results showed 1) Significant differences in numbers of frontoparietal connections between low- and high-demand tasks 2) that GCA can detect activity changes that correspond with task-demand changes, and 3) faster participants showed more vigilance-related activity than slower participants, but less visual-search activity. These results suggest that relatively low-demand cognitive performance depends on spontaneous bidirectionally fluctuating network activity, whereas high-demand performance depends on a limited, unidirectional network. The nature of brain-behavior relationships may vary depending on the extent of cognitive demand. High-demand network activity may reflect the extent to which individuals require top-down executive guidance of behavior for successful task performance. Low-demand network activity may reflect task- and performance monitoring that minimizes executive requirements for guidance of behavior.
Task-Dependent Individual Differences in Prefrontal Connectivity

PubMed Central

Biswal, Bharat B.; Eldreth, Dana A.; Motes, Michael A.

2010-01-01

Recent advances in neuroimaging have permitted testing of hypotheses regarding the neural bases of individual differences, but this burgeoning literature has been characterized by inconsistent results. To test the hypothesis that differences in task demands could contribute to between-study variability in brain-behavior relationships, we had participants perform 2 tasks that varied in the extent of cognitive involvement. We examined connectivity between brain regions during a low-demand vigilance task and a higher-demand digit–symbol visual search task using Granger causality analysis (GCA). Our results showed 1) Significant differences in numbers of frontoparietal connections between low- and high-demand tasks 2) that GCA can detect activity changes that correspond with task-demand changes, and 3) faster participants showed more vigilance-related activity than slower participants, but less visual-search activity. These results suggest that relatively low-demand cognitive performance depends on spontaneous bidirectionally fluctuating network activity, whereas high-demand performance depends on a limited, unidirectional network. The nature of brain-behavior relationships may vary depending on the extent of cognitive demand. High-demand network activity may reflect the extent to which individuals require top-down executive guidance of behavior for successful task performance. Low-demand network activity may reflect task- and performance monitoring that minimizes executive requirements for guidance of behavior. PMID:20064942
Strategic Adaptation to Task Characteristics, Incentives, and Individual Differences in Dual-Tasking

PubMed Central

Janssen, Christian P.; Brumby, Duncan P.

2015-01-01

We investigate how good people are at multitasking by comparing behavior to a prediction of the optimal strategy for dividing attention between two concurrent tasks. In our experiment, 24 participants had to interleave entering digits on a keyboard with controlling a randomly moving cursor with a joystick. The difficulty of the tracking task was systematically varied as a within-subjects factor. Participants were also exposed to different explicit reward functions that varied the relative importance of the tracking task relative to the typing task (between-subjects). Results demonstrate that these changes in task characteristics and monetary incentives, together with individual differences in typing ability, influenced how participants choose to interleave tasks. This change in strategy then affected their performance on each task. A computational cognitive model was used to predict performance for a wide set of alternative strategies for how participants might have possibly interleaved tasks. This allowed for predictions of optimal performance to be derived, given the constraints placed on performance by the task and cognition. A comparison of human behavior with the predicted optimal strategy shows that participants behaved near optimally. Our findings have implications for the design and evaluation of technology for multitasking situations, as consideration should be given to the characteristics of the task, but also to how different users might use technology depending on their individual characteristics and their priorities. PMID:26161851
Unique and Persistent Individual Patterns of Brain Activity Across Different Memory Retrieval Tasks

PubMed Central

Miller, Michael B.; Donovan, Christa-Lynn; Van Horn, John D.; German, Elaine; Sokol-Hessner, Peter; Wolford, George L.

2009-01-01

Fourteen subjects were scanned in two fMRI sessions separated by several months. During each session, subjects performed an episodic retrieval task, a semantic retrieval task, and a working memory task. We found that 1) despite extensive intersubject variability in the pattern of activity across the whole brain, individual activity patterns were stable over time, 2) activity patterns of the same individual performing different tasks were more similar than activity patterns of different individuals performing the same task, and 3) that individual differences in decision criterion on a recognition test predicted the degree of similarity between any two individuals’ patterns of brain activity, but individual differences in memory accuracy or similarity in structural anatomy did not. These results imply that the exclusive use of group maps may be ineffective in profiling the pattern of activations for a given task. This may be particularly true for a task like episodic retrieval, which is relatively strategic and can involve widely-distributed specialized processes that are peripheral to the actual retrieval of stored information. Further, these processes may be differentially engaged depending on individual differences in cognitive processing and/or physiology. PMID:19540922
Reliabilities of mental rotation tasks: limits to the assessment of individual differences.

PubMed

Hirschfeld, Gerrit; Thielsch, Meinald T; Zernikow, Boris

2013-01-01

Mental rotation tasks with objects and body parts as targets are widely used in cognitive neuropsychology. Even though these tasks are well established to study between-groups differences, the reliability on an individual level is largely unknown. We present a systematic study on the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of individual differences in mental rotation tasks comparing different target types and orders of presentations. In total n = 99 participants (n = 63 for the retest) completed the mental rotation tasks with hands, feet, faces, and cars as targets. Different target types were presented in either randomly mixed blocks or blocks of homogeneous targets. Across all target types, the consistency (split-half reliability) and stability (test-retest reliabilities) were good or acceptable both for intercepts and slopes. At the level of individual targets, only intercepts showed acceptable reliabilities. Blocked presentations resulted in significantly faster and numerically more consistent and stable responses. Mental rotation tasks-especially in blocked variants-can be used to reliably assess individual differences in global processing speed. However, the assessment of the theoretically important slope parameter for individual targets requires further adaptations to mental rotation tests.
Individual Differences in Dual Task Performance.

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-06-10

SJCURITY CLASSIFICATION OF THIS PAGE("en Data Entered) second experimental series, we compared ability to detect visual and audi- tory targets in single...used performance on a simple secondary task executed during an easy primary task to predict performance on a more diffi- cult’version of the same...process concepts developed b’j cognitive ps:choloqists°’ In this laborators, we adapted a number of experimental tasks to 4ield individual measures of the
Speech fluency profile on different tasks for individuals with Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Juste, Fabiola Staróbole; Andrade, Claudia Regina Furquim de

2017-07-20

To characterize the speech fluency profile of patients with Parkinson's disease. Study participants were 40 individuals of both genders aged 40 to 80 years divided into 2 groups: Research Group - RG (20 individuals with diagnosis of Parkinson's disease) and Control Group - CG (20 individuals with no communication or neurological disorders). For all of the participants, three speech samples involving different tasks were collected: monologue, individual reading, and automatic speech. The RG presented a significant larger number of speech disruptions, both stuttering-like and typical dysfluencies, and higher percentage of speech discontinuity in the monologue and individual reading tasks compared with the CG. Both groups presented reduced number of speech disruptions (stuttering-like and typical dysfluencies) in the automatic speech task; the groups presented similar performance in this task. Regarding speech rate, individuals in the RG presented lower number of words and syllables per minute compared with those in the CG in all speech tasks. Participants of the RG presented altered parameters of speech fluency compared with those of the CG; however, this change in fluency cannot be considered a stuttering disorder.
Individual differences in implicit motor learning: task specificity in sensorimotor adaptation and sequence learning.

PubMed

Stark-Inbar, Alit; Raza, Meher; Taylor, Jordan A; Ivry, Richard B

2017-01-01

In standard taxonomies, motor skills are typically treated as representative of implicit or procedural memory. We examined two emblematic tasks of implicit motor learning, sensorimotor adaptation and sequence learning, asking whether individual differences in learning are correlated between these tasks, as well as how individual differences within each task are related to different performance variables. As a prerequisite, it was essential to establish the reliability of learning measures for each task. Participants were tested twice on a visuomotor adaptation task and on a sequence learning task, either the serial reaction time task or the alternating reaction time task. Learning was evident in all tasks at the group level and reliable at the individual level in visuomotor adaptation and the alternating reaction time task but not in the serial reaction time task. Performance variability was predictive of learning in both domains, yet the relationship was in the opposite direction for adaptation and sequence learning. For the former, faster learning was associated with lower variability, consistent with models of sensorimotor adaptation in which learning rates are sensitive to noise. For the latter, greater learning was associated with higher variability and slower reaction times, factors that may facilitate the spread of activation required to form predictive, sequential associations. Interestingly, learning measures of the different tasks were not correlated. Together, these results oppose a shared process for implicit learning in sensorimotor adaptation and sequence learning and provide insight into the factors that account for individual differences in learning within each task domain. We investigated individual differences in the ability to implicitly learn motor skills. As a prerequisite, we assessed whether individual differences were reliable across test sessions. We found that two commonly used tasks of implicit learning, visuomotor adaptation and the
Individual differences in implicit motor learning: task specificity in sensorimotor adaptation and sequence learning

PubMed Central

Raza, Meher; Ivry, Richard B.

2016-01-01

In standard taxonomies, motor skills are typically treated as representative of implicit or procedural memory. We examined two emblematic tasks of implicit motor learning, sensorimotor adaptation and sequence learning, asking whether individual differences in learning are correlated between these tasks, as well as how individual differences within each task are related to different performance variables. As a prerequisite, it was essential to establish the reliability of learning measures for each task. Participants were tested twice on a visuomotor adaptation task and on a sequence learning task, either the serial reaction time task or the alternating reaction time task. Learning was evident in all tasks at the group level and reliable at the individual level in visuomotor adaptation and the alternating reaction time task but not in the serial reaction time task. Performance variability was predictive of learning in both domains, yet the relationship was in the opposite direction for adaptation and sequence learning. For the former, faster learning was associated with lower variability, consistent with models of sensorimotor adaptation in which learning rates are sensitive to noise. For the latter, greater learning was associated with higher variability and slower reaction times, factors that may facilitate the spread of activation required to form predictive, sequential associations. Interestingly, learning measures of the different tasks were not correlated. Together, these results oppose a shared process for implicit learning in sensorimotor adaptation and sequence learning and provide insight into the factors that account for individual differences in learning within each task domain. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We investigated individual differences in the ability to implicitly learn motor skills. As a prerequisite, we assessed whether individual differences were reliable across test sessions. We found that two commonly used tasks of implicit learning, visuomotor
Self-Reflection, Insight, and Individual Differences in Various Language Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Xu

2011-01-01

This study explored the relationships of self-reflection and insight with individuals' performances on various language tasks. The Self-Reflection and Insight Scale (SRIS; Grant, Franklin, & Langford, 2002) assessed individual differences in three factors: engagement in reflection, need for reflection, and insight. A high need for reflection was…
Classification Systems for Individual Differences in Multiple-task Performance and Subjective Estimates of Workload

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Damos, D. L.

1984-01-01

Human factors practitioners often are concerned with mental workload in multiple-task situations. Investigations of these situations have demonstrated repeatedly that individuals differ in their subjective estimates of workload. These differences may be attributed in part to individual differences in definitions of workload. However, after allowing for differences in the definition of workload, there are still unexplained individual differences in workload ratings. The relation between individual differences in multiple-task performance, subjective estimates of workload, information processing abilities, and the Type A personality trait were examined.
Predicting the size of individual and group differences on speeded cognitive tasks.

PubMed

Chen, Jing; Hale, Sandra; Myerson, Joel

2007-06-01

An a priori test of the difference engine model (Myerson, Hale, Zheng, Jenkins, & Widaman, 2003) was conducted using a large, diverse sample of individuals who performed three speeded verbal tasks and three speeded visuospatial tasks. Results demonstrated that, as predicted by the model, the group standard deviation (SD) on any task was proportional to the amount of processing required by that task. Both individual performances as well as those of fast and slow subgroups could be accurately predicted by the model using no free parameters, just an individual or subgroup's mean z-score and the values of theoretical constructs estimated from fits to the group SDs. Taken together, these results are consistent with post hoc analyses reported by Myerson et al. and provide even stronger supporting evidence. In particular, the ability to make quantitative predictions without using any free parameters provides the clearest demonstration to date of the power of an analytic approach on the basis of the difference engine.
How Individual Differences Interact with Task Demands in Text Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Zuowei; Sabatini, John; O'Reilly, Tenaha; Feng, Gary

2017-01-01

Reading is affected by both situational requirements and one's cognitive skills. The current study investigated how individual differences interacted with task requirements to determine reading behavior and outcome. We recorded the eye movements of college students, who differed in reading efficiency, while they completed a multiple-choice (MC)…
The reliability paradox: Why robust cognitive tasks do not produce reliable individual differences.

PubMed

Hedge, Craig; Powell, Georgina; Sumner, Petroc

2018-06-01

Individual differences in cognitive paradigms are increasingly employed to relate cognition to brain structure, chemistry, and function. However, such efforts are often unfruitful, even with the most well established tasks. Here we offer an explanation for failures in the application of robust cognitive paradigms to the study of individual differences. Experimental effects become well established - and thus those tasks become popular - when between-subject variability is low. However, low between-subject variability causes low reliability for individual differences, destroying replicable correlations with other factors and potentially undermining published conclusions drawn from correlational relationships. Though these statistical issues have a long history in psychology, they are widely overlooked in cognitive psychology and neuroscience today. In three studies, we assessed test-retest reliability of seven classic tasks: Eriksen Flanker, Stroop, stop-signal, go/no-go, Posner cueing, Navon, and Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Code (SNARC). Reliabilities ranged from 0 to .82, being surprisingly low for most tasks given their common use. As we predicted, this emerged from low variance between individuals rather than high measurement variance. In other words, the very reason such tasks produce robust and easily replicable experimental effects - low between-participant variability - makes their use as correlational tools problematic. We demonstrate that taking such reliability estimates into account has the potential to qualitatively change theoretical conclusions. The implications of our findings are that well-established approaches in experimental psychology and neuropsychology may not directly translate to the study of individual differences in brain structure, chemistry, and function, and alternative metrics may be required.
Solution strategies as possible explanations of individual and sex differences in a dynamic spatial task.

PubMed

Peña, Daniel; Contreras, María José; Shih, Pei Chun; Santacreu, José

2008-05-01

When individuals perform spatial tasks, individual differences emerge in accuracy and speed as well as in the response patterns used to cope with the task. The purpose of this study is to identify, through empirical criteria, the different response patterns or strategies used by individuals when performing the dynamic spatial task presented in the Spatial Orientation Dynamic Test-Revised (SODT-R). Results show that participants can be classified according to their response patterns. Three different ways of solving a task are described, and their relation to (a) performance factors (response latency, response frequency, and invested time) and (b) ability tests (analytical reasoning, verbal reasoning, and spatial estimation) are investigated. Sex differences in response patterns and performance are also analyzed. It is found that the frequency with which men and women employ each one of the strategies described here, is different and statistically significant. Thus, employed strategy plays an important role when interpreting sex differences on dynamic spatial tasks.
Individual differences in the influence of task-irrelevant Pavlovian cues on human behavior.

PubMed

Garofalo, Sara; di Pellegrino, Giuseppe

2015-01-01

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) refers to the process of a Pavlovian reward-paired cue acquiring incentive motivational proprieties that drive choices. It represents a crucial phenomenon for understanding cue-controlled behavior, and it has both adaptive and maladaptive implications (i.e., drug-taking). In animals, individual differences in the degree to which such cues bias performance have been identified in two types of individuals that exhibit distinct Conditioned Responses (CR) during Pavlovian conditioning: Sign-Trackers (ST) and Goal-Trackers (GT). Using an appetitive PIT procedure with a monetary reward, the present study investigated, for the first time, the extent to which such individual differences might affect the influence of reward-paired cues in humans. In a first task, participants learned an instrumental response leading to reward; then, in a second task, a visual Pavlovian cue was associated with the same reward; finally, in a third task, PIT was tested by measuring the preference for the reward-paired instrumental response when the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue was presented, in the absence of the reward itself. In ST individuals, but not in GT individuals, reward-related cues biased behavior, resulting in an increased likelihood to perform the instrumental response independently paired with the same reward when presented with the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue, even if the reward itself was no longer available (i.e., stronger PIT effect). This finding has important implications for developing individualized treatment for maladaptive behaviors, such as addiction.
Individual differences in the influence of task-irrelevant Pavlovian cues on human behavior

PubMed Central

Garofalo, Sara; di Pellegrino, Giuseppe

2015-01-01

Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) refers to the process of a Pavlovian reward-paired cue acquiring incentive motivational proprieties that drive choices. It represents a crucial phenomenon for understanding cue-controlled behavior, and it has both adaptive and maladaptive implications (i.e., drug-taking). In animals, individual differences in the degree to which such cues bias performance have been identified in two types of individuals that exhibit distinct Conditioned Responses (CR) during Pavlovian conditioning: Sign-Trackers (ST) and Goal-Trackers (GT). Using an appetitive PIT procedure with a monetary reward, the present study investigated, for the first time, the extent to which such individual differences might affect the influence of reward-paired cues in humans. In a first task, participants learned an instrumental response leading to reward; then, in a second task, a visual Pavlovian cue was associated with the same reward; finally, in a third task, PIT was tested by measuring the preference for the reward-paired instrumental response when the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue was presented, in the absence of the reward itself. In ST individuals, but not in GT individuals, reward-related cues biased behavior, resulting in an increased likelihood to perform the instrumental response independently paired with the same reward when presented with the task-irrelevant reward-paired cue, even if the reward itself was no longer available (i.e., stronger PIT effect). This finding has important implications for developing individualized treatment for maladaptive behaviors, such as addiction. PMID:26157371
Individual Differences in Dual Task Performance. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lansman, Marcy; Hunt, Earl

This report summarizes the research results and provides a reference. The basic question addressed was, "Is performance on multi-component tasks predicted by performance on the individual components performed separately?" In the first series of experiments, a dual task involving memory and verbal processing components to predict a…
Individual Difference Relations in Psychometric and Experimental Cognitive Tasks. Final Report. No. 163.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carroll, John B.

Fifty-five recent studies of individual differences (IDs) in elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) are reviewed. Twenty-five data sets are examined, analyzed, or reanalyzed by factor analysis. The following promising dimensions are identified: basic perceptual processes, reaction and movement times, mental comparison and recognition tasks, retrieval…
Task Complexity, Focus on L2 Constructions, and Individual Differences: A Classroom-Based Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Revesz, Andrea

2011-01-01

Motivated by cognitive-interactionist frameworks for task-based learning, this study explores whether task complexity affects the extent to which learners focus on form-meaning connections during task-based work in a classroom setting, and whether this relationship is modulated by 3 individual difference factors--linguistic self-confidence,…

Individual differences in emotion processing: how similar are diffusion model parameters across tasks?

PubMed

Mueller, Christina J; White, Corey N; Kuchinke, Lars

2017-11-27

The goal of this study was to replicate findings of diffusion model parameters capturing emotion effects in a lexical decision task and investigating whether these findings extend to other tasks of implicit emotion processing. Additionally, we were interested in the stability of diffusion model parameters across emotional stimuli and tasks for individual subjects. Responses to words in a lexical decision task were compared with responses to faces in a gender categorization task for stimuli of the emotion categories: happy, neutral and fear. Main effects of emotion as well as stability of emerging response style patterns as evident in diffusion model parameters across these tasks were analyzed. Based on earlier findings, drift rates were assumed to be more similar in response to stimuli of the same emotion category compared to stimuli of a different emotion category. Results showed that emotion effects of the tasks differed with a processing advantage for happy followed by neutral and fear-related words in the lexical decision task and a processing advantage for neutral followed by happy and fearful faces in the gender categorization task. Both emotion effects were captured in estimated drift rate parameters-and in case of the lexical decision task also in the non-decision time parameters. A principal component analysis showed that contrary to our hypothesis drift rates were more similar within a specific task context than within a specific emotion category. Individual response patterns of subjects across tasks were evident in significant correlations regarding diffusion model parameters including response styles, non-decision times and information accumulation.
Speed and Lateral Inhibition of Stimulus Processing Contribute to Individual Differences in Stroop-Task Performance.

PubMed

Naber, Marnix; Vedder, Anneke; Brown, Stephen B R E; Nieuwenhuis, Sander

2016-01-01

The Stroop task is a popular neuropsychological test that measures executive control. Strong Stroop interference is commonly interpreted in neuropsychology as a diagnostic marker of impairment in executive control, possibly reflecting executive dysfunction. However, popular models of the Stroop task indicate that several other aspects of color and word processing may also account for individual differences in the Stroop task, independent of executive control. Here we use new approaches to investigate the degree to which individual differences in Stroop interference correlate with the relative processing speed of word and color stimuli, and the lateral inhibition between visual stimuli. We conducted an electrophysiological and behavioral experiment to measure (1) how quickly an individual's brain processes words and colors presented in isolation (P3 latency), and (2) the strength of an individual's lateral inhibition between visual representations with a visual illusion. Both measures explained at least 40% of the variance in Stroop interference across individuals. As these measures were obtained in contexts not requiring any executive control, we conclude that the Stroop effect also measures an individual's pre-set way of processing visual features such as words and colors. This study highlights the important contributions of stimulus processing speed and lateral inhibition to individual differences in Stroop interference, and challenges the general view that the Stroop task primarily assesses executive control.
Test-retest reliability and gender differences in the sexual discounting task among cocaine-dependent individuals.

PubMed

Johnson, Matthew W; Bruner, Natalie R

2013-08-01

The Sexual Discounting Task uses the delay discounting framework to examine sexual HIV risk behavior. Previous research showed task performance to be significantly correlated with self-reported HIV risk behavior in cocaine dependence. Test-retest reliability and gender differences had remained unexamined. The present study examined the test-retest reliability of the Sexual Discounting Task. Cocaine-dependent individuals (18 men, 13 women) completed the task in two laboratory visits ∼7 days apart. Participants selected photographs of individuals with whom they were willing to have casual sex. Among these, participants identified the individual most (and least) likely to have a sexually transmitted infection (STI), and the individual with whom he or she most (and least) wanted to have sex. In reference to these individuals, participants rated their likelihood of having unprotected sex versus waiting to have sex with a condom, at various delays. A money delay discounting task was also completed at the first visit. Significant differences in discounting among partner conditions were shown. Differential stability was demonstrated by significant, positive correlations between test and retest for all four partner conditions. Absolute stability was demonstrated by statistical equivalence tests between test and retest, and also supported by a lack of significant differences between test and retest. Men generally discounted significantly more than women for sexual outcomes but not money. Results suggest the Sexual Discounting Task to be a reliable measure in cocaine-dependent individuals, which supports its use as a repeated measure in clinical research, for example, studies examining acute drug effects on sexual risk and the effects of addiction treatment and HIV prevention interventions on sexual risk. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved
Individual Differences in General Intelligence Correlate with Brain Function during Nonreasoning Tasks.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haier, Richard J.; White, Nathan S.; Alkire, Michael T.

2003-01-01

Administered Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices to 22 adults and measured cerebral glucose activity as subjects viewed videos on 2 occasions. Data provide evidence that individual differences in intelligence correlate with brain function even when the brain is engaged in non-reasoning tasks. (SLD)
Function in the Human Connectome: Task-fMRI and Individual Differences in Behavior

PubMed Central

Barch, Deanna M.; Burgess, Gregory C.; Harms, Michael P.; Petersen, Steven E.; Schlaggar, Bradley L.; Corbetta, Maurizio; Glasser, Matthew F.; Curtiss, Sandra; Dixit, Sachin; Feldt, Cindy; Nolan, Dan; Bryant, Edward; Hartley, Tucker; Footer, Owen; Bjork, James M.; Poldrack, Russ; Smith, Steve; Johansen-Berg, Heidi; Snyder, Abraham Z.; Van Essen, David C.

2014-01-01

The primary goal of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) is to delineate the typical patterns of structural and functional connectivity in the healthy adult human brain. However, we know that there are important individual differences in such patterns of connectivity, with evidence that this variability is associated with alterations in important cognitive and behavioral variables that affect real world function. The HCP data will be a critical stepping-off point for future studies that will examine how variation in human structural and functional connectivity play a role in adult and pediatric neurological and psychiatric disorders that account for a huge amount of public health resources. Thus, the HCP is collecting behavioral measures of a range of motor, sensory, cognitive and emotional processes that will delineate a core set of functions relevant to understanding the relationship between brain connectivity and human behavior. In addition, the HCP is using task-fMRI (tfMRI) to help delineate the relationships between individual differences in the neurobiological substrates of mental processing and both functional and structural connectivity, as well as to help characterize and validate the connectivity analyses to be conducted on the structural and functional connectivity data. This paper describes the logic and rationale behind the development of the behavioral, individual difference, and tfMRI batteries and provides preliminary data on the patterns of activation associated with each of the fMRI tasks, at both a group and individual level. PMID:23684877
Correlation of individual differences in audiovisual asynchrony across stimuli and tasks: New constraints on temporal renormalization theory.

PubMed

Ipser, Alberta; Karlinski, Maayan; Freeman, Elliot D

2018-05-07

Sight and sound are out of synch in different people by different amounts for different tasks. But surprisingly, different concurrent measures of perceptual asynchrony correlate negatively (Freeman et al., 2013). Thus, if vision subjectively leads audition in one individual, the same individual might show a visual lag in other measures of audiovisual integration (e.g., McGurk illusion, Stream-Bounce illusion). This curious negative correlation was first observed between explicit temporal order judgments and implicit phoneme identification tasks, performed concurrently as a dual task, using incongruent McGurk stimuli. Here we used a new set of explicit and implicit tasks and congruent stimuli, to test whether this negative correlation persists across testing sessions, and whether it might be an artifact of using specific incongruent stimuli. None of these manipulations eliminated the negative correlation between explicit and implicit measures. This supports the generalizability and validity of the phenomenon, and offers new theoretical insights into its explanation. Our previously proposed "temporal renormalization" theory assumes that the timings of sensory events registered within the brain's different multimodal subnetworks are each perceived relative to a representation of the typical average timing of such events across the wider network. Our new data suggest that this representation is stable and generic, rather than dependent on specific stimuli or task contexts, and that it may be acquired through experience with a variety of simultaneous stimuli. Our results also add further evidence that speech comprehension may be improved in some individuals by artificially delaying voices relative to lip-movements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
The Role of Training, Individual Differences and Knowledge Representation in Cognitive-Oriented Task Performance.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koubek, Richard J.

The roles of training, problem representation, and individual differences on performance of both automated (simple) and controlled (complex) process tasks were studied. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) training and cognitive style affect the representation developed; (2) training and cognitive style affect the development and performance…
Individual Differences in Secondary Task Performance.

DTIC Science & Technology

1980-09-01

applied than in the experimental literature (e.g. Brown, 1968). The assertion that primary and secondary tasks compete for mental resources has a further...Subjects were paid $8.00 for participation in two 1 -hour sessions. Bonus points were awarded on the basis of performance in the experimental tasks...the experimental measures are presented in Table 3. Reliabilities, shown in the diagonal, are based on correlations between measures from Day 1 and Day
Parietal plasticity after training with a complex video game is associated with individual differences in improvements in an untrained working memory task

PubMed Central

Nikolaidis, Aki; Voss, Michelle W.; Lee, Hyunkyu; Vo, Loan T. K.; Kramer, Arthur F.

2014-01-01

Researchers have devoted considerable attention and resources to cognitive training, yet there have been few examinations of the relationship between individual differences in patterns of brain activity during the training task and training benefits on untrained tasks (i.e., transfer). While a predominant hypothesis suggests that training will transfer if there is training-induced plasticity in brain regions important for the untrained task, this theory lacks sufficient empirical support. To address this issue we investigated the relationship between individual differences in training-induced changes in brain activity during a cognitive training videogame, and whether those changes explained individual differences in the resulting changes in performance in untrained tasks. Forty-five young adults trained with a videogame that challenges working memory, attention, and motor control for 15 2-h sessions. Before and after training, all subjects received neuropsychological assessments targeting working memory, attention, and procedural learning to assess transfer. Subjects also underwent pre- and post-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they played the training videogame to assess how these patterns of brain activity change in response to training. For regions implicated in working memory, such as the superior parietal lobe (SPL), individual differences in the post-minus-pre changes in activation predicted performance changes in an untrained working memory task. These findings suggest that training-induced plasticity in the functional representation of a training task may play a role in individual differences in transfer. Our data support and extend previous literature that has examined the association between training related cognitive changes and associated changes in underlying neural networks. We discuss the role of individual differences in brain function in training generalizability and make suggestions for future cognitive training research
Parietal plasticity after training with a complex video game is associated with individual differences in improvements in an untrained working memory task.

PubMed

Nikolaidis, Aki; Voss, Michelle W; Lee, Hyunkyu; Vo, Loan T K; Kramer, Arthur F

2014-01-01

Researchers have devoted considerable attention and resources to cognitive training, yet there have been few examinations of the relationship between individual differences in patterns of brain activity during the training task and training benefits on untrained tasks (i.e., transfer). While a predominant hypothesis suggests that training will transfer if there is training-induced plasticity in brain regions important for the untrained task, this theory lacks sufficient empirical support. To address this issue we investigated the relationship between individual differences in training-induced changes in brain activity during a cognitive training videogame, and whether those changes explained individual differences in the resulting changes in performance in untrained tasks. Forty-five young adults trained with a videogame that challenges working memory, attention, and motor control for 15 2-h sessions. Before and after training, all subjects received neuropsychological assessments targeting working memory, attention, and procedural learning to assess transfer. Subjects also underwent pre- and post-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they played the training videogame to assess how these patterns of brain activity change in response to training. For regions implicated in working memory, such as the superior parietal lobe (SPL), individual differences in the post-minus-pre changes in activation predicted performance changes in an untrained working memory task. These findings suggest that training-induced plasticity in the functional representation of a training task may play a role in individual differences in transfer. Our data support and extend previous literature that has examined the association between training related cognitive changes and associated changes in underlying neural networks. We discuss the role of individual differences in brain function in training generalizability and make suggestions for future cognitive training research.
Individual differences in working memory capacity determine the effects of oculomotor task load on concurrent word recall performance.

PubMed

Lee, Eun-Ju; Kwon, Gusang; Lee, Aekyoung; Ghajar, Jamshid; Suh, Minah

2011-07-05

In this study, the interaction between individual differences in working memory capacity, which were assessed by the Korean version of the California Verbal Learning Test (K-CVLT), and the effects of oculomotor task load on word recall performance are examined in a dual-task experiment. We hypothesized that varying levels of oculomotor task load should result in different demands on cognitive resources. The verbal working memory task used in this study involved a brief exposure to seven words to be remembered, followed by a 30-second delay during which the subject carried out an oculomotor task. Then, memory performance was assessed by having the subjects recall as many words as possible. Forty healthy normal subjects with no vision-related problems carried out four separate dual-tasks over four consecutive days of participation, wherein word recall performances were tested under unpredictable random SPEM (smooth pursuit eye movement), predictive SPEM, fixation, and eyes-closed conditions. The word recall performance of subjects with low K-CVLT scores was significantly enhanced under predictive SPEM conditions as opposed to the fixation and eyes-closed conditions, but performance was reduced under the random SPEM condition, thus reflecting an inverted-U relationship between the oculomotor task load and word recall performance. Subjects with high K-CVLT scores evidenced steady word recall performances, regardless of the type of oculomotor task performed. The concurrent oculomotor performance measured by velocity error did not differ significantly among the K-CVLT groups. However, the high-scoring subjects evidenced smaller phase errors under predictive SPEM conditions than did the low-scoring subjects; this suggests that different resource allocation strategies may be adopted, depending on individuals' working memory capacity. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN TASK-SPECIFIC PAIRED ASSOCIATES LEARNING IN OLDER ADULTS: THE ROLE OF PROCESSING SPEED AND WORKING MEMORY

PubMed Central

Kurtz, Tanja; Mogle, Jacqueline; Sliwinski, Martin J.; Hofer, Scott M.

2013-01-01

Background The role of processing speed and working memory was investigated in terms of individual differences in task-specific paired associates learning in a sample of older adults. Task-specific learning, as distinct from content-oriented item-specific learning, refers to gains in performance due to repeated practice on a learning task in which the to-be-learned material changes over trials. Methods Learning trajectories were modeled within an intensive repeated-measures design based on participants obtained from an opt-in internet-based sampling service (Mage = 65.3, SD = 4.81). Participants completed an eight-item paired associates task daily over a seven-day period. Results Results indicated that a three-parameter hyperbolic model (i.e., initial level, learning rate, and asymptotic performance) best described learning trajectory. After controlling for age-related effects, both higher working memory and higher processing speed had a positive effect on all three learning parameters. Conclusion These results emphasize the role of cognitive abilities for individual differences in task-specific learning of older adults. PMID:24151913
Students' Representations of the Atomic Structure--The Effect of Some Individual Differences in Particular Task Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Papageorgiou, George; Markos, Angelos; Zarkadis, Nikolaos

2016-01-01

The current study aims to investigate students' representations of the atomic structure in a number of student cohorts with specific characteristics concerning age, grade, class curriculum and some individual differences, such as formal reasoning and field dependence/independence. Two specific task contexts, which were designed in accordance with…
Probabilistic Inference: Task Dependency and Individual Differences of Probability Weighting Revealed by Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling

PubMed Central

Boos, Moritz; Seer, Caroline; Lange, Florian; Kopp, Bruno

2016-01-01

Cognitive determinants of probabilistic inference were examined using hierarchical Bayesian modeling techniques. A classic urn-ball paradigm served as experimental strategy, involving a factorial two (prior probabilities) by two (likelihoods) design. Five computational models of cognitive processes were compared with the observed behavior. Parameter-free Bayesian posterior probabilities and parameter-free base rate neglect provided inadequate models of probabilistic inference. The introduction of distorted subjective probabilities yielded more robust and generalizable results. A general class of (inverted) S-shaped probability weighting functions had been proposed; however, the possibility of large differences in probability distortions not only across experimental conditions, but also across individuals, seems critical for the model's success. It also seems advantageous to consider individual differences in parameters of probability weighting as being sampled from weakly informative prior distributions of individual parameter values. Thus, the results from hierarchical Bayesian modeling converge with previous results in revealing that probability weighting parameters show considerable task dependency and individual differences. Methodologically, this work exemplifies the usefulness of hierarchical Bayesian modeling techniques for cognitive psychology. Theoretically, human probabilistic inference might be best described as the application of individualized strategic policies for Bayesian belief revision. PMID:27303323
Rapid gist perception of meaningful real-life scenes: Exploring individual and gender differences in multiple categorization tasks

PubMed Central

Vanmarcke, Steven; Wagemans, Johan

2015-01-01

In everyday life, we are generally able to dynamically understand and adapt to socially (ir)elevant encounters, and to make appropriate decisions about these. All of this requires an impressive ability to directly filter and obtain the most informative aspects of a complex visual scene. Such rapid gist perception can be assessed in multiple ways. In the ultrafast categorization paradigm developed by Simon Thorpe et al. (1996), participants get a clear categorization task in advance and succeed at detecting the target object of interest (animal) almost perfectly (even with 20 ms exposures). Since this pioneering work, follow-up studies consistently reported population-level reaction time differences on different categorization tasks, indicating a superordinate advantage (animal versus dog) and effects of perceptual similarity (animals versus vehicles) and object category size (natural versus animal versus dog). In this study, we replicated and extended these separate findings by using a systematic collection of different categorization tasks (varying in presentation time, task demands, and stimuli) and focusing on individual differences in terms of e.g., gender and intelligence. In addition to replicating the main findings from the literature, we find subtle, yet consistent gender differences (women faster than men). PMID:26034569
Individual Differences, Intelligence, and Behavior Analysis

PubMed Central

Williams, Ben; Myerson, Joel; Hale, Sandra

2008-01-01

Despite its avowed goal of understanding individual behavior, the field of behavior analysis has largely ignored the determinants of consistent differences in level of performance among individuals. The present article discusses major findings in the study of individual differences in intelligence from the conceptual framework of a functional analysis of behavior. In addition to general intelligence, we discuss three other major aspects of behavior in which individuals differ: speed of processing, working memory, and the learning of three-term contingencies. Despite recent progress in our understanding of the relations among these aspects of behavior, numerous issues remain unresolved. Researchers need to determine which learning tasks predict individual differences in intelligence and which do not, and then identify the specific characteristics of these tasks that make such prediction possible. PMID:18831127
Emotion, working memory task demands and individual differences predict behavior, cognitive effort and negative affect.

PubMed

Storbeck, Justin; Davidson, Nicole A; Dahl, Chelsea F; Blass, Sara; Yung, Edwin

2015-01-01

We examined whether positive and negative affect motivates verbal and spatial working memory processes, respectively, which have implications for the expenditure of mental effort. We argue that when emotion promotes cognitive tendencies that are goal incompatible with task demands, greater cognitive effort is required to perform well. We sought to investigate whether this increase in cognitive effort impairs behavioural control over a broad domain of self-control tasks. Moreover, we predicted that individuals with higher behavioural inhibition system (BIS) sensitivities would report more negative affect within the goal incompatible conditions because such individuals report higher negative affect during cognitive challenge. Positive or negative affective states were induced followed by completing a verbal or spatial 2-back working memory task. All participants then completed one of three self-control tasks. Overall, we observed that conditions of emotion and working memory incompatibility (positive/spatial and negative/verbal) performed worse on the self-control tasks, and within the incompatible conditions individuals with higher BIS sensitivities reported more negative affect at the end of the study. The combination of findings suggests that emotion and working memory compatibility reduces cognitive effort and impairs behavioural control.
Different Strokes for Different Folks: How Individual Interest Moderates the Effects of Situational Factors on Task Interest

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Durik, Amanda M.; Harackiewicz, Judith M.

2007-01-01

Individual interest was examined as a moderator of effects of situational factors designed to catch and hold task interest. In Study 1, 96 college students learned a math technique with materials enhanced with collative features (catch) versus not. Catch promoted motivation among participants with low individual interest in math (IIM) but hampered…
Group therapy task training versus individual task training during inpatient stroke rehabilitation: a randomised controlled trial.

PubMed

Renner, Caroline Ie; Outermans, Jacqueline; Ludwig, Ricarda; Brendel, Christiane; Kwakkel, Gert; Hummelsheim, Horst

2016-07-01

To compare the efficacy of intensive daily applied progressive group therapy task training with equally dosed individual progressive task training on self-reported mobility for patients with moderate to severe stroke during inpatient rehabilitation. Randomized controlled clinical trial. In-patient rehabilitation center. A total of 73 subacute patients with stroke who were not able to walk without physical assistance at randomisation. Patients were allocated to group therapy task training (GT) or individual task training (IT). Both interventions were intended to improve walking competency and comprised 30 sessions of 90 minutes over six weeks. Primary outcome was the mobility domain of the Stroke Impact Scale (SIS-3.0). Secondary outcomes were the other domains of SIS-3.0, standing balance, gait speed, walking distance, stair climbing, fatigue, anxiety and depression. No adverse events were reported in either arm of the trial. There were no significant differences between groups for the SIS mobility domain at the end of the intervention (Z= -0.26, P = 0.79). No significant differences between groups were found in gait speed improvements (GT:0.38 ±0.23; IT:0.26±0.35), any other gait related parameters, or in non-physical outcomes such as depression and fatigue. Inpatient group therapy task training for patients with moderate to severe stroke is safe and equally effective as a dose-matched individual task training therapy. Group therapy task training may be delivered as an alternative to individual therapy or as valuable adjunct to increase time spent in gait-related activities. © The Author(s) 2015.
Standing balance in individuals with Parkinson's disease during single and dual-task conditions.

PubMed

Fernandes, Ângela; Coelho, Tiago; Vitória, Ana; Ferreira, Augusto; Santos, Rubim; Rocha, Nuno; Fernandes, Lia; Tavares, João Manuel R S

2015-09-01

This study aimed to examine the differences in standing balance between individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) and subjects without PD (control group), under single and dual-task conditions. A cross-sectional study was designed using a non-probabilistic sample of 110 individuals (50 participants with PD and 60 controls) aged 50 years old and over. The individuals with PD were in the early or middle stages of the disease (characterized by Hoehn and Yahr as stages 1-3). The standing balance was assessed by measuring the centre of pressure (CoP) displacement in single-task (eyes-open/eyes-closed) and dual-task (while performing two different verbal fluency tasks). No significant differences were found between the groups regarding sociodemographic variables. In general, the standing balance of the individuals with PD was worse than the controls, as the CoP displacement across tasks was significantly higher for the individuals with PD (p<0.01), both in anteroposterior and mediolateral directions. Moreover, there were significant differences in the CoP displacement based parameters between the conditions, mainly between the eyes-open condition and the remaining conditions. However, there was no significant interaction found between group and condition, which suggests that changes in the CoP displacement between tasks were not influenced by having PD. In conclusion, this study shows that, although individuals with PD had a worse overall standing balance than individuals without the disease, the impact of performing an additional task on the CoP displacement is similar for both groups. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Contributions of Sensory Coding and Attentional Control to Individual Differences in Performance in Spatial Auditory Selective Attention Tasks.

PubMed

Dai, Lengshi; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G

2016-01-01

Listeners with normal hearing thresholds (NHTs) differ in their ability to steer attention to whatever sound source is important. This ability depends on top-down executive control, which modulates the sensory representation of sound in the cortex. Yet, this sensory representation also depends on the coding fidelity of the peripheral auditory system. Both of these factors may thus contribute to the individual differences in performance. We designed a selective auditory attention paradigm in which we could simultaneously measure envelope following responses (EFRs, reflecting peripheral coding), onset event-related potentials (ERPs) from the scalp (reflecting cortical responses to sound) and behavioral scores. We performed two experiments that varied stimulus conditions to alter the degree to which performance might be limited due to fine stimulus details vs. due to control of attentional focus. Consistent with past work, in both experiments we find that attention strongly modulates cortical ERPs. Importantly, in Experiment I, where coding fidelity limits the task, individual behavioral performance correlates with subcortical coding strength (derived by computing how the EFR is degraded for fully masked tones compared to partially masked tones); however, in this experiment, the effects of attention on cortical ERPs were unrelated to individual subject performance. In contrast, in Experiment II, where sensory cues for segregation are robust (and thus less of a limiting factor on task performance), inter-subject behavioral differences correlate with subcortical coding strength. In addition, after factoring out the influence of subcortical coding strength, behavioral differences are also correlated with the strength of attentional modulation of ERPs. These results support the hypothesis that behavioral abilities amongst listeners with NHTs can arise due to both subcortical coding differences and differences in attentional control, depending on stimulus characteristics
Comparing methods for measuring peak look duration: Are individual differences observed on screen-based tasks also found in more ecologically valid contexts?

PubMed Central

Wass, Sam V.

2014-01-01

Convergent research points to the importance of studying the ontogenesis of sustained attention during the early years of life, but little research hitherto has compared and contrasted different techniques available for measuring sustained attention. Here, we compare methods that have been used to assess one parameter of sustained attention, namely infants’ peak look duration to novel stimuli. Our focus was to assess whether individual differences in peak look duration are stable across different measurement techniques. In a single cohort of 42 typically developing 11-month-old infants we assessed peak look duration using six different measurement paradigms (four screen-based, two naturalistic). Zero-order correlations suggested that individual differences in peak look duration were stable across all four screen-based paradigms, but no correlations were found between peak look durations observed on the screen-based and the naturalistic paradigms. A factor analysis conducted on the dependent variable of peak look duration identified two factors. All four screen-based tasks loaded onto the first factor, but the two naturalistic tasks did not relate, and mapped onto a different factor. Our results question how individual differences observed on screen-based tasks manifest in more ecologically valid contexts. PMID:24905901
Task representation in individual and joint settings

PubMed Central

Prinz, Wolfgang

2015-01-01

This paper outlines a framework for task representation and discusses applications to interference tasks in individual and joint settings. The framework is derived from the Theory of Event Coding (TEC). This theory regards task sets as transient assemblies of event codes in which stimulus and response codes interact and shape each other in particular ways. On the one hand, stimulus and response codes compete with each other within their respective subsets (horizontal interactions). On the other hand, stimulus and response code cooperate with each other (vertical interactions). Code interactions instantiating competition and cooperation apply to two time scales: on-line performance (i.e., doing the task) and off-line implementation (i.e., setting the task). Interference arises when stimulus and response codes overlap in features that are irrelevant for stimulus identification, but relevant for response selection. To resolve this dilemma, the feature profiles of event codes may become restructured in various ways. The framework is applied to three kinds of interference paradigms. Special emphasis is given to joint settings where tasks are shared between two participants. Major conclusions derived from these applications include: (1) Response competition is the chief driver of interference. Likewise, different modes of response competition give rise to different patterns of interference; (2) The type of features in which stimulus and response codes overlap is also a crucial factor. Different types of such features give likewise rise to different patterns of interference; and (3) Task sets for joint settings conflate intraindividual conflicts between responses (what), with interindividual conflicts between responding agents (whom). Features of response codes may, therefore, not only address responses, but also responding agents (both physically and socially). PMID:26029085
Effects of imperfect automation and individual differences on concurrent performance of military and robotics tasks in a simulated multitasking environment.

PubMed

Chen, J Y C; Terrence, P I

2009-08-01

This study investigated the performance and workload of the combined position of gunner and robotics operator in a simulated military multitasking environment. Specifically, the study investigated how aided target recognition (AiTR) capabilities for the gunnery task with imperfect reliability (false-alarm-prone vs. miss-prone) might affect the concurrent robotics and communication tasks. Additionally, the study examined whether performance was affected by individual differences in spatial ability and attentional control. Results showed that when the robotics task was simply monitoring the video, participants had the best performance in their gunnery and communication tasks and the lowest perceived workload, compared with the other robotics tasking conditions. There was a strong interaction between the type of AiTR unreliability and participants' perceived attentional control. Overall, for participants with higher perceived attentional control, false-alarm-prone alerts were more detrimental; for low attentional control participants, conversely, miss-prone automation was more harmful. Low spatial ability participants preferred visual cueing and high spatial ability participants favoured tactile cueing. Potential applications of the findings include personnel selection for robotics operation, robotics user interface designs and training development. The present results will provide further understanding of the interplays among automation reliability, multitasking performance and individual differences in military tasking environments. These results will also facilitate the implementation of robots in military settings and will provide useful data to military system designs.
Eye movements during information processing tasks: individual differences and cultural effects.

PubMed

Rayner, Keith; Li, Xingshan; Williams, Carrick C; Cave, Kyle R; Well, Arnold D

2007-09-01

The eye movements of native English speakers, native Chinese speakers, and bilingual Chinese/English speakers who were either born in China (and moved to the US at an early age) or in the US were recorded during six tasks: (1) reading, (2) face processing, (3) scene perception, (4) visual search, (5) counting Chinese characters in a passage of text, and (6) visual search for Chinese characters. Across the different groups, there was a strong tendency for consistency in eye movement behavior; if fixation durations of a given viewer were long on one task, they tended to be long on other tasks (and the same tended to be true for saccade size). Some tasks, notably reading, did not conform to this pattern. Furthermore, experience with a given writing system had a large impact on fixation durations and saccade lengths. With respect to cultural differences, there was little evidence that Chinese participants spent more time looking at the background information (and, conversely less time looking at the foreground information) than the American participants. Also, Chinese participants' fixations were more numerous and of shorter duration than those of their American counterparts while viewing faces and scenes, and counting Chinese characters in text.
The Academic Diligence Task (ADT): Assessing Individual Differences in Effort on Tedious but Important Schoolwork

PubMed Central

Galla, Brian M.; Plummer, Benjamin D.; White, Rachel E.; Meketon, David; D’Mello, Sidney K.; Duckworth, Angela L.

2014-01-01

The current study reports on the development and validation of the Academic Diligence Task (ADT), designed to assess the tendency to expend effort on academic tasks which are tedious in the moment but valued in the long-term. In this novel online task, students allocate their time between solving simple math problems (framed as beneficial for problem solving skills) and, alternatively, playing Tetris or watching entertaining videos. Using a large sample of high school seniors (N = 921), the ADT demonstrated convergent validity with self-report ratings of Big Five conscientiousness and its facets, self-control and grit, as well as discriminant validity from theoretically unrelated constructs, such as Big Five extraversion, openness, and emotional stability, test anxiety, life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect. The ADT also demonstrated incremental predictive validity for objectively measured GPA, standardized math and reading achievement test scores, high school graduation, and college enrollment, over and beyond demographics and intelligence. Collectively, findings suggest the feasibility of online behavioral measures to assess noncognitive individual differences that predict academic outcomes. PMID:25258470
The Academic Diligence Task (ADT): Assessing Individual Differences in Effort on Tedious but Important Schoolwork.

PubMed

Galla, Brian M; Plummer, Benjamin D; White, Rachel E; Meketon, David; D'Mello, Sidney K; Duckworth, Angela L

2014-10-01

The current study reports on the development and validation of the Academic Diligence Task (ADT), designed to assess the tendency to expend effort on academic tasks which are tedious in the moment but valued in the long-term. In this novel online task, students allocate their time between solving simple math problems (framed as beneficial for problem solving skills) and, alternatively, playing Tetris or watching entertaining videos. Using a large sample of high school seniors ( N = 921), the ADT demonstrated convergent validity with self-report ratings of Big Five conscientiousness and its facets, self-control and grit, as well as discriminant validity from theoretically unrelated constructs, such as Big Five extraversion, openness, and emotional stability, test anxiety, life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect. The ADT also demonstrated incremental predictive validity for objectively measured GPA, standardized math and reading achievement test scores, high school graduation, and college enrollment, over and beyond demographics and intelligence. Collectively, findings suggest the feasibility of online behavioral measures to assess noncognitive individual differences that predict academic outcomes.
Comparing methods for measuring peak look duration: are individual differences observed on screen-based tasks also found in more ecologically valid contexts?

PubMed

Wass, Sam V

2014-08-01

Convergent research points to the importance of studying the ontogenesis of sustained attention during the early years of life, but little research hitherto has compared and contrasted different techniques available for measuring sustained attention. Here, we compare methods that have been used to assess one parameter of sustained attention, namely infants' peak look duration to novel stimuli. Our focus was to assess whether individual differences in peak look duration are stable across different measurement techniques. In a single cohort of 42 typically developing 11-month-old infants we assessed peak look duration using six different measurement paradigms (four screen-based, two naturalistic). Zero-order correlations suggested that individual differences in peak look duration were stable across all four screen-based paradigms, but no correlations were found between peak look durations observed on the screen-based and the naturalistic paradigms. A factor analysis conducted on the dependent variable of peak look duration identified two factors. All four screen-based tasks loaded onto the first factor, but the two naturalistic tasks did not relate, and mapped onto a different factor. Our results question how individual differences observed on screen-based tasks manifest in more ecologically valid contexts. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Increased subcortical neural activity among HIV+ individuals during a lexical retrieval task.

PubMed

Thames, April D; Sayegh, Philip; Terashima, Kevin; Foley, Jessica M; Cho, Andrew; Arentoft, Alyssa; Hinkin, Charles H; Bookheimer, Susan Y

2016-08-01

Deficits in lexical retrieval, present in approximately 40% of HIV+ patients, are thought to reflect disruptions to frontal-striatal functions and may worsen with immunosuppression. Coupling frontal-striatal tasks such as lexical retrieval with functional neuroimaging may help delineate the pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying HIV-associated neurological dysfunction. We examined whether HIV infection confers brain functional changes during lexical access and retrieval. It was expected that HIV+ individuals would demonstrate greater brain activity in frontal-subcortical regions despite minimal differences between groups on neuropsychological testing. Within the HIV+ sample, we examined associations between indices of immunosuppression (recent and nadir CD4+ count) and task-related signal change in frontostriatal structures. Method16 HIV+ participants and 12 HIV- controls underwent fMRI while engaged in phonemic/letter and semantic fluency tasks. Participants also completed standardized measures of verbal fluency HIV status groups performed similarly on phonemic and semantic fluency tasks prior to being scanned. fMRI results demonstrated activation differences during the phonemic fluency task as a function of HIV status, with HIV+ individuals demonstrating significantly greater activation in BG structures than HIV- individuals. There were no significant differences in frontal brain activation between HIV status groups during the phonemic fluency task, nor were there significant brain activation differences during the semantic fluency task. Within the HIV+ group, current CD4+ count, though not nadir, was positively correlated with increased activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and basal ganglia. During phonemic fluency performance, HIV+ patients recruit subcortical structures to a greater degree than HIV- controls despite similar task performances suggesting that fMRI may be sensitive to neurocompromise before overt cognitive declines can be detected. Among HIV
ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns.

PubMed

Sukenik, Nufar; Friedmann, Naama

2018-01-01

Do individuals with autism have a developmental syntactic impairment, DLI (formerly known as SLI)? In this study we directly compared the performance of 18 individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) aged 9;0-18;0 years with that of 93 individuals with Syntactic-Developmental Language Impairment (SyDLI) aged 8;8-14;6 (and with 166 typically-developing children aged 5;2-18;1). We tested them using three syntactic tests assessing the comprehension and production of syntactic structures that are known to be sensitive to syntactic impairment: elicitation of subject and object relative clauses, reading and paraphrasing of object relatives, and repetition of complex syntactic structures including Wh questions, relative clauses, topicalized sentences, sentences with verb movement, sentences with A-movement, and embedded sentences. The results were consistent across the three tasks: the overall rate of correct performance on the syntactic tasks is similar for the children with ASD and those with SyDLI. However, once we look closer, they are very different. The types of errors of the ASD group differ from those of the SyDLI group-the children with ASD provide various types of pragmatically infelicitous responses that are not evinced in the SyDLI or in the age equivalent typically-developing groups. The two groups (ASD and SyDLI) also differ in the pattern of performance-the children with SyDLI show a syntactically-principled pattern of impairment, with selective difficulty in specific sentence types (such as sentences derived by movement of the object across the subject), and normal performance on other structures (such as simple sentences). In contrast, the ASD participants showed generalized low performance on the various sentence structures. Syntactic performance was far from consistent within the ASD group. Whereas all ASD participants had errors that can originate in pragmatic/discourse difficulties, seven of them had completely normal syntax in the structures we
ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns

PubMed Central

Sukenik, Nufar; Friedmann, Naama

2018-01-01

Do individuals with autism have a developmental syntactic impairment, DLI (formerly known as SLI)? In this study we directly compared the performance of 18 individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) aged 9;0–18;0 years with that of 93 individuals with Syntactic-Developmental Language Impairment (SyDLI) aged 8;8–14;6 (and with 166 typically-developing children aged 5;2–18;1). We tested them using three syntactic tests assessing the comprehension and production of syntactic structures that are known to be sensitive to syntactic impairment: elicitation of subject and object relative clauses, reading and paraphrasing of object relatives, and repetition of complex syntactic structures including Wh questions, relative clauses, topicalized sentences, sentences with verb movement, sentences with A-movement, and embedded sentences. The results were consistent across the three tasks: the overall rate of correct performance on the syntactic tasks is similar for the children with ASD and those with SyDLI. However, once we look closer, they are very different. The types of errors of the ASD group differ from those of the SyDLI group—the children with ASD provide various types of pragmatically infelicitous responses that are not evinced in the SyDLI or in the age equivalent typically-developing groups. The two groups (ASD and SyDLI) also differ in the pattern of performance—the children with SyDLI show a syntactically-principled pattern of impairment, with selective difficulty in specific sentence types (such as sentences derived by movement of the object across the subject), and normal performance on other structures (such as simple sentences). In contrast, the ASD participants showed generalized low performance on the various sentence structures. Syntactic performance was far from consistent within the ASD group. Whereas all ASD participants had errors that can originate in pragmatic/discourse difficulties, seven of them had completely normal syntax in the
Behavioural Lateralization in Budgerigars Varies with the Task and the Individual

PubMed Central

Schiffner, Ingo; Srinivasan, Mandyam V.

2013-01-01

Handedness/footedness and side biases are a well-known phenomenon in many animals, including humans. However, these so-called biases have mostly been studied at the population level - individual biases have received less attention, especially with regard to consistency over different tasks. Here we investigate behavioral lateralization in 12 male Budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus, a social parrot inhabiting the Australian bushlands. We performed 5 types of experiments to investigate lateralization, in tasks that involved climbing onto a perch, or landing on perches arranged in various configurations. The birds displayed highly significant, individually varying biases. The bias displayed by any particular individual varied with the task, in strength as well as polarity. Analysis of the data revealed that the preferred foot used for climbing did not coincide with the foot that was used while landing. Thus, landing choices are probably not determined by foot bias. Furthermore, these individual preferences were overridden completely when a bird had to perform a task simultaneously with another bird. PMID:24324820
Age-Related Differences in Multiple Task Monitoring

PubMed Central

Todorov, Ivo; Del Missier, Fabio; Mäntylä, Timo

2014-01-01

Coordinating multiple tasks with narrow deadlines is particularly challenging for older adults because of age related decline in cognitive control functions. We tested the hypothesis that multiple task performance reflects age- and gender-related differences in executive functioning and spatial ability. Young and older adults completed a multitasking session with four monitoring tasks as well as separate tasks measuring executive functioning and spatial ability. For both age groups, men exceeded women in multitasking, measured as monitoring accuracy. Individual differences in executive functioning and spatial ability were independent predictors of young adults' monitoring accuracy, but only spatial ability was related to sex differences. For older adults, age and executive functioning, but not spatial ability, predicted multitasking performance. These results suggest that executive functions contribute to multiple task performance across the adult life span and that reliance on spatial skills for coordinating deadlines is modulated by age. PMID:25215609
Age-related differences in multiple task monitoring.

PubMed

Todorov, Ivo; Del Missier, Fabio; Mäntylä, Timo

2014-01-01

Coordinating multiple tasks with narrow deadlines is particularly challenging for older adults because of age related decline in cognitive control functions. We tested the hypothesis that multiple task performance reflects age- and gender-related differences in executive functioning and spatial ability. Young and older adults completed a multitasking session with four monitoring tasks as well as separate tasks measuring executive functioning and spatial ability. For both age groups, men exceeded women in multitasking, measured as monitoring accuracy. Individual differences in executive functioning and spatial ability were independent predictors of young adults' monitoring accuracy, but only spatial ability was related to sex differences. For older adults, age and executive functioning, but not spatial ability, predicted multitasking performance. These results suggest that executive functions contribute to multiple task performance across the adult life span and that reliance on spatial skills for coordinating deadlines is modulated by age.
Spatial task performance, sex differences, and motion sickness susceptibility.

PubMed

Levine, Max E; Stern, Robert M

2002-10-01

There are substantial individual differences in susceptibility to motion sickness, yet little is known about what mediates these differences. Spatial ability and sex have been suggested as possible factors in this relationship. 89 participants (57 women) were administered a Motion Sickness Questionnaire that assesses motion sickness susceptibility, a Water-level Task that gauges sensitivity to gravitational upright, and a Mental Rotation Task that tests an individual's awareness of how objects typically move in space. Significant sex differences were observed in performance of both the Water-level Task (p<.01), and the Mental Rotation Task (p<.005), with women performing less accurately than men. Women also had significantly higher scores on the Motion Sickness Questionnaire (p<.005). Among men, but not women, significant negative relationships were observed between Water-level Task performance and Motion Sickness Questionnaire score (p<.001) and between Mental Rotation Task performance and Motion Sickness Questionnaire score (p<.005). In conclusion, women performed significantly more poorly than men did on the spatial ability tasks and reported significantly more bouts of motion sickness. In addition, men showed a significant negative relationship between spatial ability and motion sickness susceptibility.
Increased intra-individual reaction time variability in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder across response inhibition tasks with different cognitive demands.

PubMed

Vaurio, Rebecca G; Simmonds, Daniel J; Mostofsky, Stewart H

2009-10-01

One of the most consistent findings in children with ADHD is increased moment-to-moment variability in reaction time (RT). The source of increased RT variability can be examined using ex-Gaussian analyses that divide variability into normal and exponential components and Fast Fourier transform (FFT) that allow for detailed examination of the frequency of responses in the exponential distribution. Prior studies of ADHD using these methods have produced variable results, potentially related to differences in task demand. The present study sought to examine the profile of RT variability in ADHD using two Go/No-go tasks with differing levels of cognitive demand. A total of 140 children (57 with ADHD and 83 typically developing controls), ages 8-13 years, completed both a "simple" Go/No-go task and a more "complex" Go/No-go task with increased working memory load. Repeated measures ANOVA of ex-Gaussian functions revealed for both tasks children with ADHD demonstrated increased variability in both the normal/Gaussian (significantly elevated sigma) and the exponential (significantly elevated tau) components. In contrast, FFT analysis of the exponential component revealed a significant task x diagnosis interaction, such that infrequent slow responses in ADHD differed depending on task demand (i.e., for the simple task, increased power in the 0.027-0.074 Hz frequency band; for the complex task, decreased power in the 0.074-0.202 Hz band). The ex-Gaussian findings revealing increased variability in both the normal (sigma) and exponential (tau) components for the ADHD group, suggest that both impaired response preparation and infrequent "lapses in attention" contribute to increased variability in ADHD. FFT analyses reveal that the periodicity of intermittent lapses of attention in ADHD varies with task demand. The findings provide further support for intra-individual variability as a candidate intermediate endophenotype of ADHD.
Individual differences in working memory capacity predict visual attention allocation.

PubMed

Bleckley, M Kathryn; Durso, Francis T; Crutchfield, Jerry M; Engle, Randall W; Khanna, Maya M

2003-12-01

To the extent that individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) reflect differences in attention (Baddeley, 1993; Engle, Kane, & Tuholski, 1999), differences in WMC should predict performance on visual attention tasks. Individuals who scored in the upper and lower quartiles on the OSPAN working memory test performed a modification of Egly and Homa's (1984) selective attention task. In this task, the participants identified a central letter and localized a displaced letter flashed somewhere on one of three concentric rings. When the displaced letter occurred closer to fixation than the cue implied, high-WMC, but not low-WMC, individuals showed a cost in the letter localization task. This suggests that low-WMC participants allocated attention as a spotlight, whereas those with high WMC showed flexible allocation.
Interference of different types of seats on postural control system during a forward-reaching task in individuals with paraplegia.

PubMed

de Abreu, Daniela Cristina Carvalho; Takara, Kelly; Metring, Nathália Lopes; Reis, Júlia Guimarães; Cliquet, Alberto

2012-09-01

We aimed to evaluate the influence of different types of wheelchair seats on paraplegic individuals' postural control using a maximum anterior reaching test. Balance evaluations during 50, 75, and 90% of each individual's maximum reach in the forward direction using two different cushions on seat (one foam and one gel) and a no-cushion condition were carried out on 11 individuals with a spinal cord injury (SCI) and six individuals without SCI. Trunk anterior displacement and the time spent to perform the test were assessed. No differences were found for the three types of seats in terms of trunk anterior displacement and the time spent to perform the test when intragroup comparisons were made in both groups (P>0.05). The intergroup comparison showed that body displacement was less prominent and the time spent to perform the test was more prolonged for individuals with SCI (P<0.05), which suggests a postural control deficit. The seat type did not affect the ability of the postural control system to maintain balance during the forward-reaching task.
Individual differences in intrinsic brain connectivity predict decision strategy.

PubMed

Barnes, Kelly Anne; Anderson, Kevin M; Plitt, Mark; Martin, Alex

2014-10-15

When humans are provided with ample time to make a decision, individual differences in strategy emerge. Using an adaptation of a well-studied decision making paradigm, motion direction discrimination, we probed the neural basis of individual differences in strategy. We tested whether strategies emerged from moment-to-moment reconfiguration of functional brain networks involved in decision making with task-evoked functional MRI (fMRI) and whether intrinsic properties of functional brain networks, measured at rest with functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI), were associated with strategy use. We found that human participants reliably selected one of two strategies across 2 days of task performance, either continuously accumulating evidence or waiting for task difficulty to decrease. Individual differences in decision strategy were predicted both by the degree of task-evoked activation of decision-related brain regions and by the strength of pretask correlated spontaneous brain activity. These results suggest that spontaneous brain activity constrains strategy selection on perceptual decisions.
Individual differences and workload effects on strategy adoption in a dynamic task.

PubMed

Moon, Jungaa; Betts, Shawn; Anderson, John R

2013-09-01

The current study investigated the effects of individual differences and workload on strategy adaptivity in a complex, dynamic task called the Space Fortress game (Donchin, 1989). Participants learned to use a strategy of flying a ship in circles around the fortress in a standard game environment. Once they mastered the strategy, they were assigned to different workload conditions and transferred to a nonstandard environment in which a strong wind was introduced that made it more difficult to achieve a circular orbit. About half of the participants continued with their prior circular strategy while the rest adopted a novel strategy that achieved comparable performance with less effort. With this novel strategy, rather than trying to complete orbits they flew into the wind and then allowed the wind to blow them back to achieve a pendulum-like path. Participants without a working-memory load were more likely to adopt the new strategy. Participants were also more likely to adopt the new strategy if their pattern of behavior exposed them more often to the potential of drifting with the wind. The results indicate that spontaneous changes in strategy occur when people are exposed to the potential of a new strategy and have the cognitive resources to understand its potential. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Individualized Cognitive Modeling for Close-Loop Task Mitigation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zhang, Guangfan; Xu, Roger; Wang, Wei; Li, Jiang; Schnell, Tom; Keller, Mike

2010-01-01

An accurate real-time operator functional state assessment makes it possible to perform task management, minimize risks, and improve mission performance. In this paper, we discuss the development of an individualized operator functional state assessment model that identifies states likely leading to operational errors. To address large individual variations, we use two different approaches to build a model for each individual using its data as well as data from subjects with similar responses. If a subject's response is similar to that of the individual of interest in a specific functional state, all the training data from this subject will be used to build the individual model. The individualization methods have been successfully verified and validated with a driving test data set provided by University of Iowa. With the individualized models, the mean squared error can be significantly decreased (by around 20%).
Inattentional Blindness and Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities.

PubMed

Kreitz, Carina; Furley, Philip; Memmert, Daniel; Simons, Daniel J

2015-01-01

People sometimes fail to notice salient unexpected objects when their attention is otherwise occupied, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. To explore individual differences in inattentional blindness, we employed both static and dynamic tasks that either presented the unexpected object away from the focus of attention (spatial) or near the focus of attention (central). We hypothesized that noticing in central tasks might be driven by the availability of cognitive resources like working memory, and that noticing in spatial tasks might be driven by the limits on spatial attention like attention breadth. However, none of the cognitive measures predicted noticing in the dynamic central task or in either the static or dynamic spatial task. Only in the central static task did working memory capacity predict noticing, and that relationship was fairly weak. Furthermore, whether or not participants noticed an unexpected object in a static task was only weakly associated with their odds of noticing an unexpected object in a dynamic task. Taken together, our results are largely consistent with the notion that noticing unexpected objects is driven more by stochastic processes common to all people than by stable individual differences in cognitive abilities.
Inattentional Blindness and Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities

PubMed Central

Kreitz, Carina; Furley, Philip; Memmert, Daniel; Simons, Daniel J.

2015-01-01

People sometimes fail to notice salient unexpected objects when their attention is otherwise occupied, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. To explore individual differences in inattentional blindness, we employed both static and dynamic tasks that either presented the unexpected object away from the focus of attention (spatial) or near the focus of attention (central). We hypothesized that noticing in central tasks might be driven by the availability of cognitive resources like working memory, and that noticing in spatial tasks might be driven by the limits on spatial attention like attention breadth. However, none of the cognitive measures predicted noticing in the dynamic central task or in either the static or dynamic spatial task. Only in the central static task did working memory capacity predict noticing, and that relationship was fairly weak. Furthermore, whether or not participants noticed an unexpected object in a static task was only weakly associated with their odds of noticing an unexpected object in a dynamic task. Taken together, our results are largely consistent with the notion that noticing unexpected objects is driven more by stochastic processes common to all people than by stable individual differences in cognitive abilities. PMID:26258545
Individual differences in social and non-social behaviors in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) during the acquisition, extinction and reacquisition of a problem solving task.

PubMed

Shimabukuro, Carolina; Putrino, Natalia; Helbling, Julia; Tognetti, Sandra; Bentosela, Mariana

2015-04-01

Dogs are able to solve different problems by trial and error learning, but it seems that they cannot understand the means-end connection. Some studies suggest that dogs' performance is influenced by their breed and by the level of familiarity with the person they interact with. In our study, we assess individual differences in both social and non-social responses in a problem-solving task during the acquisition, extinction, and reacquisition phases. In order to investigate the effect of familiarity, in the first experiment, the human present during the task was either a familiar (the dog's owner) or unfamiliar person. In the second experiment, we compared breeds (Retrievers and Shepherds) that had previously shown differences in a communicative task. The results revealed that all groups learned the task and became more efficient in the acquisition trials. These non-social responses diminished during extinction, where an increase in social responses was observed. With regard to individual differences, dogs were more persistent in searching the reward during the second extinction trial when the owner was present (in contrast with a stranger), and also looked longer at the unfamiliar person at the beginning of the acquisition trial. On the other hand, Retrievers showed greater social motivation during reacquisition and Shepherds picked up more bones during the third acquisition trial, thus suggesting a more persistent search of the reward. These findings highlight the relevance of studying different learning schedules as well as individual differences in problem-solving ability so as to improve selection and training techniques. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Procedural Learning and Individual Differences in Language

PubMed Central

Lee, Joanna C.; Tomblin, J. Bruce

2014-01-01

The aim of the current study was to examine different aspects of procedural memory in young adults who varied with regard to their language abilities. We selected a sample of procedural memory tasks, each of which represented a unique type of procedural learning, and has been linked, at least partially, to the functionality of the corticostriatal system. The findings showed that variance in language abilities is associated with performance on different domains of procedural memory, including the motor domain (as shown in the pursuit rotor task), the cognitive domain (as shown in the weather prediction task), and the linguistic domain (as shown in the nonword repetition priming task). These results implicate the corticostriatal system in individual differences in language. PMID:26190949
Individual differences in working memory, secondary memory, and fluid intelligence: evidence from the levels-of-processing span task.

PubMed

Rose, Nathan S

2013-12-01

Individual differences in working memory (WM) are related to performance on secondary memory (SM), and fluid intelligence (gF) tests. However, the source of the relation remains unclear, in part because few studies have controlled for the nature of encoding; therefore, it is unclear whether individual variation is due to encoding, maintenance, or retrieval processes. In the current study, participants performed a WM task (the levels-of-processing span task; Rose, Myerson, Roediger III, & Hale, 2010) and a SM test that tested for both targets and the distracting processing words from the initial WM task. Deeper levels of processing at encoding did not benefit WM, but did benefit subsequent SM, although the amount of benefit was smaller for those with lower WM spans. This result suggests that, despite encoding cues that facilitate retrieval from SM, low spans may have engaged in shallower, maintenance-focused processing to maintain the words in WM. Low spans also recalled fewer targets, more distractors, and more extralist intrusions than high spans, although this was partially due to low spans' poorer recall of targets, which resulted in a greater number of opportunities to commit recall errors. Delayed recall of intrusions and commission of source errors (labeling targets as processing words and vice versa) were significant negative predictors of gF. These results suggest that the ability to use source information to recall relevant information and withhold recall of irrelevant information is a critical source of both individual variation in WM and the relation between WM, SM, and gF. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Age and Sex Differences in Intra-Individual Variability in a Simple Reaction Time Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ghisletta, Paolo; Renaud, Olivier; Fagot, Delphine; Lecerf, Thierry; de Ribaupierre, Anik

2018-01-01

While age effects in reaction time (RT) tasks across the lifespan are well established for level of performance, analogous findings have started appearing also for indicators of intra-individual variability (IIV). Children are not only slower, but also display more variability than younger adults in RT. Yet, little is known about potential…
No Evidence of the Ego-Depletion Effect across Task Characteristics and Individual Differences: A Pre-Registered Study

PubMed Central

Lurquin, John H.; Michaelson, Laura E.; Barker, Jane E.; Gustavson, Daniel E.; von Bastian, Claudia C.; Carruth, Nicholas P.; Miyake, Akira

2016-01-01

Ego-depletion, a psychological phenomenon in which participants are less able to engage in self-control after prior exertion of self-control, has become widely popular in the scientific community as well as in the media. However, considerable debate exists among researchers as to the nature of the ego-depletion effect, and growing evidence suggests the effect may not be as strong or robust as the extant literature suggests. We examined the robustness of the ego-depletion effect and aimed to maximize the likelihood of detecting the effect by using one of the most widely used depletion tasks (video-viewing attention control task) and by considering task characteristics and individual differences that potentially moderate the effect. We also sought to make our research plan transparent by pre-registering our hypotheses, procedure, and planned analyses prior to data collection. Contrary to the ego-depletion hypothesis, participants in the depletion condition did not perform worse than control participants on the subsequent self-control task, even after considering moderator variables. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting ego-depletion is not a reliable phenomenon, though more research is needed that uses large sample sizes, considers moderator variables, and pre-registers prior to data collection. PMID:26863227
No Evidence of the Ego-Depletion Effect across Task Characteristics and Individual Differences: A Pre-Registered Study.

PubMed

Lurquin, John H; Michaelson, Laura E; Barker, Jane E; Gustavson, Daniel E; von Bastian, Claudia C; Carruth, Nicholas P; Miyake, Akira

2016-01-01

Ego-depletion, a psychological phenomenon in which participants are less able to engage in self-control after prior exertion of self-control, has become widely popular in the scientific community as well as in the media. However, considerable debate exists among researchers as to the nature of the ego-depletion effect, and growing evidence suggests the effect may not be as strong or robust as the extant literature suggests. We examined the robustness of the ego-depletion effect and aimed to maximize the likelihood of detecting the effect by using one of the most widely used depletion tasks (video-viewing attention control task) and by considering task characteristics and individual differences that potentially moderate the effect. We also sought to make our research plan transparent by pre-registering our hypotheses, procedure, and planned analyses prior to data collection. Contrary to the ego-depletion hypothesis, participants in the depletion condition did not perform worse than control participants on the subsequent self-control task, even after considering moderator variables. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting ego-depletion is not a reliable phenomenon, though more research is needed that uses large sample sizes, considers moderator variables, and pre-registers prior to data collection.
Dual tasking negatively impacts obstacle avoidance abilities in post-stroke individuals with visuospatial neglect: Task complexity matters!

PubMed

Aravind, Gayatri; Lamontagne, Anouk

2017-01-01

Persons with perceptual-attentional deficits due to visuospatial neglect (VSN) after a stroke are at a risk of collisions while walking in the presence of moving obstacles. The attentional burden of performing a dual-task may further compromise their obstacle avoidance performance, putting them at a greater risk of collisions. The objective of this study was to compare the ability of persons with (VSN+) and without VSN (VSN-) to dual task while negotiating moving obstacles. Twenty-six stroke survivors (13 VSN+, 13 VSN-) were assessed on their ability to (a) negotiate moving obstacles while walking (locomotor single task); (b) perform a pitch-discrimination task (cognitive single task) and (c) simultaneously perform the walking and cognitive tasks (dual task). We compared the groups on locomotor (collision rates, minimum distance from obstacle and onset of strategies) and cognitive (error rates) outcomes. For both single and dual task walking, VSN+ individuals showed higher collision rates compared to VSN- individuals. Dual tasking caused deterioration of locomotor (more collisions, delayed onset and smaller minimum distances) and cognitive performances (higher error rate) in VSN+ individuals. Contrastingly, VSN- individuals maintained collision rates, increased minimum distance, but showed more cognitive errors, prioritizing their locomotor performance. Individuals with VSN demonstrate cognitive-locomotor interference under dual task conditions, which could severely compromise safety when ambulating in community environments and may explain the poor recovery of independent community ambulation in these individuals.
Sex differences in verbal and visual-spatial tasks under different hemispheric visual-field presentation conditions.

PubMed

Boyle, Gregory J; Neumann, David L; Furedy, John J; Westbury, H Rae

2010-04-01

This paper reports sex differences in cognitive task performance that emerged when 39 Australian university undergraduates (19 men, 20 women) were asked to solve verbal (lexical) and visual-spatial cognitive matching tasks which varied in difficulty and visual field of presentation. Sex significantly interacted with task type, task difficulty, laterality, and changes in performance across trials. The results revealed that the significant individual-differences' variable of sex does not always emerge as a significant main effect, but instead in terms of significant interactions with other variables manipulated experimentally. Our results show that sex differences must be taken into account when conducting experiments into human cognitive-task performance.
The Effect of Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on A Throwing Task Depends on Individual Level of Task Performance.

PubMed

Mizuguchi, Nobuaki; Katayama, Takashi; Kanosue, Kazuyuki

2018-02-10

The effect of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on motor performance remains controversial. Some studies suggest that the effect of tDCS depends upon task-difficulty and individual level of task performance. Here, we investigated whether the effect of cerebellar tDCS on the motor performance depends upon the individual's level of performance. Twenty-four naïve participants practiced dart throwing while receiving a 2-mA cerebellar tDCS for 20 min under three stimulus conditions (anodal-, cathodal-, and sham-tDCS) on separate days with a double-blind, counter-balanced cross-over design. Task performance was assessed by measuring the distance between the center of the bull's eye and the dart's position. Although task performance tended to improve throughout the practice under all stimulus conditions, improvement within a given day was not significant as compared to the first no-stimulus block. In addition, improvement did not differ among stimulation conditions. However, the magnitude of improvement was associated with an individual's level of task performance only under cathodal tDCS condition (p < 0.05). This resulted in a significant performance improvement only for the sub-group of participants with lower performance levels as compared to that with sham-tDCS (p < 0.05). These findings suggest that the facilitation effect of cerebellar cathodal tDCS on motor skill learning of complex whole-body movements depends on the level of an individual's task performance. Thus, cerebellar tDCS would facilitate learning of a complex motor skill task only in a subset of individuals. Copyright © 2017 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Short-term motor learning through non-immersive virtual reality task in individuals with down syndrome.

PubMed

de Mello Monteiro, Carlos Bandeira; da Silva, Talita Dias; de Abreu, Luiz Carlos; Fregni, Felipe; de Araujo, Luciano Vieira; Ferreira, Fernando Henrique Inocêncio Borba; Leone, Claudio

2017-04-14

Down syndrome (DS) has unique physical, motor and cognitive characteristics. Despite cognitive and motor difficulties, there is a possibility of intervention based on the knowledge of motor learning. However, it is important to study the motor learning process in individuals with DS during a virtual reality task to justify the use of virtual reality to organize intervention programs. The aim of this study was to analyze the motor learning process in individuals with DS during a virtual reality task. A total of 40 individuals participated in this study, 20 of whom had DS (24 males and 8 females, mean age of 19 years, ranging between 14 and 30 yrs.) and 20 typically developing individuals (TD) who were matched by age and gender to the individuals with DS. To examine this issue, we used software that uses 3D images and reproduced a coincidence-timing task. The results showed that all individuals improved performance in the virtual task, but the individuals with DS that started the task with worse performance showed higher difference from the beginning. Besides that, they were able to retain and transfer the performance with increase of speed of the task. Individuals with DS are able to learn movements from virtual tasks, even though the movement time was higher compared to the TD individuals. The results showed that individuals with DS who started with low performance improved coincidence- timing task with virtual objects, but were less accurate than typically developing individuals. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02719600 .
Event-related potentials during individual, cooperative, and competitive task performance differ in subjects with analytic vs. holistic thinking.

PubMed

Apanovich, V V; Bezdenezhnykh, B N; Sams, M; Jääskeläinen, I P; Alexandrov, YuI

2018-01-01

It has been presented that Western cultures (USA, Western Europe) are mostly characterized by competitive forms of social interaction, whereas Eastern cultures (Japan, China, Russia) are mostly characterized by cooperative forms. It has also been stated that thinking in Eastern countries is predominantly holistic and in Western countries analytic. Based on this, we hypothesized that subjects with analytic vs. holistic thinking styles show differences in decision making in different types of social interaction conditions. We investigated behavioural and brain-activity differences between subjects with analytic and holistic thinking during a choice reaction time (ChRT) task, wherein the subjects either cooperated, competed (in pairs), or performed the task without interaction with other participants. Healthy Russian subjects (N=78) were divided into two groups based on having analytic or holistic thinking as determined with an established questionnaire. We measured reaction times as well as event-related brain potentials. There were significant differences between the interaction conditions in task performance between subjects with analytic and holistic thinking. Both behavioral performance and physiological measures exhibited higher variance in holistic than in analytic subjects. Differences in amplitude and P300 latency suggest that decision making was easier for the holistic subjects in the cooperation condition, in contrast to analytic subjects for whom decision making based on these measures seemed to be easier in the competition condition. The P300 amplitude was higher in the individual condition as compared with the collective conditions. Overall, our results support the notion that the brains of analytic and holistic subjects work differently in different types of social interaction conditions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Dynamic balance during walking adaptability tasks in individuals post-stroke.

PubMed

Vistamehr, Arian; Balasubramanian, Chitralakshmi K; Clark, David J; Neptune, Richard R; Fox, Emily J

2018-06-06

Maintaining dynamic balance during community ambulation is a major challenge post-stroke. Community ambulation requires performance of steady-state level walking as well as tasks that require walking adaptability. Prior studies on balance control post-stroke have mainly focused on steady-state walking, but walking adaptability tasks have received little attention. The purpose of this study was to quantify and compare dynamic balance requirements during common walking adaptability tasks post-stroke and in healthy adults and identify differences in underlying mechanisms used for maintaining dynamic balance. Kinematic data were collected from fifteen individuals with post-stroke hemiparesis during steady-state forward and backward walking, obstacle negotiation, and step-up tasks. In addition, data from ten healthy adults provided the basis for comparison. Dynamic balance was quantified using the peak-to-peak range of whole-body angular-momentum in each anatomical plane during the paretic, nonparetic and healthy control single-leg-stance phase of the gait cycle. To understand differences in some of the key underlying mechanisms for maintaining dynamic balance, foot placement and plantarflexor muscle activation were examined. Individuals post-stroke had significant dynamic balance deficits in the frontal plane across most tasks, particularly during the paretic single-leg-stance. Frontal plane balance deficits were associated with wider paretic foot placement, elevated body center-of-mass, and lower soleus activity. Further, the obstacle negotiation task imposed a higher balance requirement, particularly during the trailing leg single-stance. Thus, improving paretic foot placement and ankle plantarflexor activity, particularly during obstacle negotiation, may be important rehabilitation targets to enhance dynamic balance during post-stroke community ambulation. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual Differences in Dynamic Functional Brain Connectivity across the Human Lifespan.

PubMed

Davison, Elizabeth N; Turner, Benjamin O; Schlesinger, Kimberly J; Miller, Michael B; Grafton, Scott T; Bassett, Danielle S; Carlson, Jean M

2016-11-01

Individual differences in brain functional networks may be related to complex personal identifiers, including health, age, and ability. Dynamic network theory has been used to identify properties of dynamic brain function from fMRI data, but the majority of analyses and findings remain at the level of the group. Here, we apply hypergraph analysis, a method from dynamic network theory, to quantify individual differences in brain functional dynamics. Using a summary metric derived from the hypergraph formalism-hypergraph cardinality-we investigate individual variations in two separate, complementary data sets. The first data set ("multi-task") consists of 77 individuals engaging in four consecutive cognitive tasks. We observe that hypergraph cardinality exhibits variation across individuals while remaining consistent within individuals between tasks; moreover, the analysis of one of the memory tasks revealed a marginally significant correspondence between hypergraph cardinality and age. This finding motivated a similar analysis of the second data set ("age-memory"), in which 95 individuals, aged 18-75, performed a memory task with a similar structure to the multi-task memory task. With the increased age range in the age-memory data set, the correlation between hypergraph cardinality and age correspondence becomes significant. We discuss these results in the context of the well-known finding linking age with network structure, and suggest that hypergraph analysis should serve as a useful tool in furthering our understanding of the dynamic network structure of the brain.
Individual differences in multitasking ability and adaptability.

PubMed

Morgan, Brent; D'Mello, Sidney; Abbott, Robert; Radvansky, Gabriel; Haass, Michael; Tamplin, Andrea

2013-08-01

The aim of this study was to identify the cognitive factors that predictability and adaptability during multitasking with a flight simulator. Multitasking has become increasingly prevalent as most professions require individuals to perform multiple tasks simultaneously. Considerable research has been undertaken to identify the characteristics of people (i.e., individual differences) that predict multitasking ability. Although working memory is a reliable predictor of general multitasking ability (i.e., performance in normal conditions), there is the question of whether different cognitive faculties are needed to rapidly respond to changing task demands (adaptability). Participants first completed a battery of cognitive individual differences tests followed by multitasking sessions with a flight simulator. After a baseline condition, difficulty of the flight simulator was incrementally increased via four experimental manipulations, and performance metrics were collected to assess multitasking ability and adaptability. Scholastic aptitude and working memory predicted general multitasking ability (i.e., performance at baseline difficulty), but spatial manipulation (in conjunction with working memory) was a major predictor of adaptability (performance in difficult conditions after accounting for baseline performance). Multitasking ability and adaptability may be overlapping but separate constructs that draw on overlapping (but not identical) sets of cognitive abilities. The results of this study are applicable to practitioners and researchers in human factors to assess multitasking performance in real-world contexts and with realistic task constraints. We also present a framework for conceptualizing multitasking adaptability on the basis of five adaptability profiles derived from performance on tasks with consistent versus increased difficulty.
Decomposing decision components in the Stop-signal task: A model-based approach to individual differences in inhibitory control

PubMed Central

White, Corey N.; Congdon, Eliza; Mumford, Jeanette A.; Karlsgodt, Katherine H.; Sabb, Fred W.; Freimer, Nelson B.; London, Edythe D.; Cannon, Tyrone D.; Bilder, Robert M.; Poldrack, Russell A.

2014-01-01

The Stop-signal task (SST), in which participants must inhibit prepotent responses, has been used to identify neural systems that vary with individual differences in inhibitory control. To explore how these differences relate to other aspects of decision-making, a drift diffusion model of simple decisions was fitted to SST data from Go trials to extract measures of caution, motor execution time, and stimulus processing speed for each of 123 participants. These values were used to probe fMRI data to explore individual differences in neural activation. Faster processing of the Go stimulus correlated with greater activation in the right frontal pole for both Go and Stop trials. On Stop trials stimulus processing speed also correlated with regions implicated in inhibitory control, including the right inferior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, and basal ganglia. Individual differences in motor execution time correlated with activation of the right parietal cortex. These findings suggest a robust relationship between the speed of stimulus processing and inhibitory processing at the neural level. This model-based approach provides novel insight into the interrelationships among decision components involved in inhibitory control, and raises interesting questions about strategic adjustments in performance and inhibitory deficits associated with psychopathology. PMID:24405185
Bidirectional transfer between joint and individual actions in a task of discrete force production.

PubMed

Masumoto, Junya; Inui, Nobuyuki

2017-07-01

The present study examined bidirectional learning transfer between joint and individual actions involving discrete isometric force production with the right index finger. To examine the effects of practice of joint action on performance of the individual action, participants performed a pre-test (individual condition), practice blocks (joint condition), and a post-test (individual condition) (IJI task). To examine the effects of practice of the individual action on performance during the joint action, the participants performed a pre-test (joint condition), practice blocks (individual condition), and a post-test (joint condition) (JIJ task). Whereas one participant made pressing movements with a target peak force of 10% maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) in the individual condition, two participants produced the target force of the sum of 10% MVC produced by each of them in the joint condition. In both the IJI and JIJ tasks, absolute errors and standard deviations of peak force were smaller post-test than pre-test, indicating bidirectional transfer between individual and joint conditions for force accuracy and variability. Although the negative correlation between forces produced by two participants (complementary force production) became stronger with practice blocks in the IJI task, there was no difference between the pre- and post-tests for the negative correlation in the JIJ task. In the JIJ task, the decrease in force accuracy and variability during the individual action did not facilitate complementary force production during the joint action. This indicates that practice performed by two people is essential for complementary force production in joint action.
Individual Differences in Dynamic Functional Brain Connectivity across the Human Lifespan

PubMed Central

Davison, Elizabeth N.; Turner, Benjamin O.; Miller, Michael B.; Carlson, Jean M.

2016-01-01

Individual differences in brain functional networks may be related to complex personal identifiers, including health, age, and ability. Dynamic network theory has been used to identify properties of dynamic brain function from fMRI data, but the majority of analyses and findings remain at the level of the group. Here, we apply hypergraph analysis, a method from dynamic network theory, to quantify individual differences in brain functional dynamics. Using a summary metric derived from the hypergraph formalism—hypergraph cardinality—we investigate individual variations in two separate, complementary data sets. The first data set (“multi-task”) consists of 77 individuals engaging in four consecutive cognitive tasks. We observe that hypergraph cardinality exhibits variation across individuals while remaining consistent within individuals between tasks; moreover, the analysis of one of the memory tasks revealed a marginally significant correspondence between hypergraph cardinality and age. This finding motivated a similar analysis of the second data set (“age-memory”), in which 95 individuals, aged 18–75, performed a memory task with a similar structure to the multi-task memory task. With the increased age range in the age-memory data set, the correlation between hypergraph cardinality and age correspondence becomes significant. We discuss these results in the context of the well-known finding linking age with network structure, and suggest that hypergraph analysis should serve as a useful tool in furthering our understanding of the dynamic network structure of the brain. PMID:27880785

Serial or overlapping processing in multitasking as individual preference: Effects of stimulus preview on task switching and concurrent dual-task performance.

PubMed

Reissland, Jessika; Manzey, Dietrich

2016-07-01

Understanding the mechanisms and performance consequences of multitasking has long been in focus of scientific interest, but has been investigated by three research lines more or less isolated from each other. Studies in the fields of the psychological refractory period, task switching, and interruptions have scored with a high experimental control, but usually do not give participants many degrees of freedom to self-organize the processing of two concurrent tasks. Individual strategies as well as their impact on efficiency have mainly been neglected. Self-organized multitasking has been investigated in the field of human factors, but primarily with respect to overall performance without detailed investigation of how the tasks are processed. The current work attempts to link aspects of these research lines. All of them, explicitly or implicitly, provide hints about an individually preferred type of task organization, either more cautious trying to work strictly serially on only one task at a time or more daring with a focus on task interleaving and, if possible, also partially overlapping (parallel) processing. In two experiments we investigated different strategies of task organization and their impact on efficiency using a new measure of overall multitasking efficiency. Experiment 1 was based on a classical task switching paradigm with two classification tasks, but provided one group of participants with a stimulus preview of the task to switch to next, enabling at least partial overlapping processing. Indeed, this preview led to a reduction of switch costs and to an increase of dual-task efficiency, but only for a subgroup of participants. They obviously exploited the possibility of overlapping processing, while the others worked mainly serially. While task-sequence was externally guided in the first experiment, Experiment 2 extended the approach by giving the participants full freedom of task organization in concurrent performance of the same tasks. Fine
Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use.

PubMed

Watson, Stuart K; Vale, Gillian L; Hopper, Lydia M; Dean, Lewis G; Kendal, Rachel L; Price, Elizabeth E; Wood, Lara A; Davis, Sarah J; Schapiro, Steven J; Lambeth, Susan P; Whiten, Andrew

2018-06-19

Studies of transmission biases in social learning have greatly informed our understanding of how behaviour patterns may diffuse through animal populations, yet within-species inter-individual variation in social information use has received little attention and remains poorly understood. We have addressed this question by examining individual performances across multiple experiments with the same population of primates. We compiled a dataset spanning 16 social learning studies (26 experimental conditions) carried out at the same study site over a 12-year period, incorporating a total of 167 chimpanzees. We applied a binary scoring system to code each participant's performance in each study according to whether they demonstrated evidence of using social information from conspecifics to solve the experimental task or not (Social Information Score-'SIS'). Bayesian binomial mixed effects models were then used to estimate the extent to which individual differences influenced SIS, together with any effects of sex, rearing history, age, prior involvement in research and task type on SIS. An estimate of repeatability found that approximately half of the variance in SIS was accounted for by individual identity, indicating that individual differences play a critical role in the social learning behaviour of chimpanzees. According to the model that best fit the data, females were, depending on their rearing history, 15-24% more likely to use social information to solve experimental tasks than males. However, there was no strong evidence of an effect of age or research experience, and pedigree records indicated that SIS was not a strongly heritable trait. Our study offers a novel, transferable method for the study of individual differences in social learning.
Subjective workload and individual differences in information processing abilities

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Damos, D. L.

1984-01-01

This paper describes several experiments examining the source of individual differences in the experience of mental workload. Three sources of such differences were examined: information processing abilities, timesharing abilities, and personality traits/behavior patterns. On the whole, there was little evidence that individual differences in information processing abilities or timesharing abilities are related to perceived differences in mental workload. However, individuals with strong Type A coronary prone behavior patterns differed in both single- and multiple-task performance from individuals who showed little evidence of such a pattern. Additionally, individuals with a strong Type A pattern showed some dissociation between objective performance and the experience of mental workload.
Diverse task scheduling for individualized requirements in cloud manufacturing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Longfei; Zhang, Lin; Zhao, Chun; Laili, Yuanjun; Xu, Lida

2018-03-01

Cloud manufacturing (CMfg) has emerged as a new manufacturing paradigm that provides ubiquitous, on-demand manufacturing services to customers through network and CMfg platforms. In CMfg system, task scheduling as an important means of finding suitable services for specific manufacturing tasks plays a key role in enhancing the system performance. Customers' requirements in CMfg are highly individualized, which leads to diverse manufacturing tasks in terms of execution flows and users' preferences. We focus on diverse manufacturing tasks and aim to address their scheduling issue in CMfg. First of all, a mathematical model of task scheduling is built based on analysis of the scheduling process in CMfg. To solve this scheduling problem, we propose a scheduling method aiming for diverse tasks, which enables each service demander to obtain desired manufacturing services. The candidate service sets are generated according to subtask directed graphs. An improved genetic algorithm is applied to searching for optimal task scheduling solutions. The effectiveness of the scheduling method proposed is verified by a case study with individualized customers' requirements. The results indicate that the proposed task scheduling method is able to achieve better performance than some usual algorithms such as simulated annealing and pattern search.
Exploring individual differences in task switching: Persistence and other personality traits related to anterior cingulate cortex function.

PubMed

Umemoto, A; Holroyd, C B

2016-01-01

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is involved in cognitive control and decision-making but its precise function is still highly debated. Based on evidence from lesion, neurophysiological, and neuroimaging studies, we have recently proposed a critical role for ACC in motivating extended behaviors according to learned task values (Holroyd and Yeung, 2012). Computational simulations based on this theory suggest a hierarchical mechanism in which a caudal division of ACC selects and applies control over task execution, and a rostral division of ACC facilitates switches between tasks according to a higher task strategy (Holroyd and McClure, 2015). This theoretical framework suggests that ACC may contribute to personality traits related to persistence and reward sensitivity (Holroyd and Umemoto, 2016). To explore this possibility, we carried out a voluntary task switching experiment in which on each trial participants freely chose one of two tasks to perform, under the condition that they try to select the tasks "at random" and equally often. The participants also completed several questionnaires that assessed personality trait related to persistence, apathy, anhedonia, and rumination, in addition to the Big 5 personality inventory. Among other findings, we observed greater compliance with task instructions by persistent individuals, as manifested by a greater facility with switching between tasks, which is suggestive of increased engagement of rostral ACC. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Workflows and individual differences during visually guided routine tasks in a road traffic management control room.

PubMed

Starke, Sandra D; Baber, Chris; Cooke, Neil J; Howes, Andrew

2017-05-01

Road traffic control rooms rely on human operators to monitor and interact with information presented on multiple displays. Past studies have found inconsistent use of available visual information sources in such settings across different domains. In this study, we aimed to broaden the understanding of observer behaviour in control rooms by analysing a case study in road traffic control. We conducted a field study in a live road traffic control room where five operators responded to incidents while wearing a mobile eye tracker. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we investigated the operators' workflow using ergonomics methods and quantified visual information sampling. We found that individuals showed differing preferences for viewing modalities and weighting of task components, with a strong coupling between eye and head movement. For the quantitative analysis of the eye tracking data, we propose a number of metrics which may prove useful to compare visual sampling behaviour across domains in future. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
Post-error response inhibition in high math-anxious individuals: Evidence from a multi-digit addition task.

PubMed

Núñez-Peña, M Isabel; Tubau, Elisabet; Suárez-Pellicioni, Macarena

2017-06-01

The aim of the study was to investigate how high math-anxious (HMA) individuals react to errors in an arithmetic task. Twenty HMA and 19 low math-anxious (LMA) individuals were presented with a multi-digit addition verification task and were given response feedback. Post-error adjustment measures (response time and accuracy) were analyzed in order to study differences between groups when faced with errors in an arithmetical task. Results showed that both HMA and LMA individuals were slower to respond following an error than following a correct answer. However, post-error accuracy effects emerged only for the HMA group, showing that they were also less accurate after having committed an error than after giving the right answer. Importantly, these differences were observed only when individuals needed to repeat the same response given in the previous trial. These results suggest that, for HMA individuals, errors caused reactive inhibition of the erroneous response, facilitating performance if the next problem required the alternative response but hampering it if the response was the same. This stronger reaction to errors could be a factor contributing to the difficulties that HMA individuals experience in learning math and doing math tasks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Organizational Adaptative Behavior: The Complex Perspective of Individuals-Tasks Interaction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Jiang; Sun, Duoyong; Hu, Bin; Zhang, Yu

Organizations with different organizational structures have different organizational behaviors when responding environmental changes. In this paper, we use a computational model to examine organizational adaptation on four dimensions: Agility, Robustness, Resilience, and Survivability. We analyze the dynamics of organizational adaptation by a simulation study from a complex perspective of the interaction between tasks and individuals in a sales enterprise. The simulation studies in different scenarios show that more flexible communication between employees and less hierarchy level with the suitable centralization can improve organizational adaptation.
Cognitive Abilities, Monitoring Confidence, and Control Thresholds Explain Individual Differences in Heuristics and Biases

PubMed Central

Jackson, Simon A.; Kleitman, Sabina; Howie, Pauline; Stankov, Lazar

2016-01-01

In this paper, we investigate whether individual differences in performance on heuristic and biases tasks can be explained by cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds. Current theories explain individual differences in these tasks by the ability to detect errors and override automatic but biased judgments, and deliberative cognitive abilities that help to construct the correct response. Here we retain cognitive abilities but disentangle error detection, proposing that lower monitoring confidence and higher control thresholds promote error checking. Participants (N = 250) completed tasks assessing their fluid reasoning abilities, stable monitoring confidence levels, and the control threshold they impose on their decisions. They also completed seven typical heuristic and biases tasks such as the cognitive reflection test and Resistance to Framing. Using structural equation modeling, we found that individuals with higher reasoning abilities, lower monitoring confidence, and higher control threshold performed significantly and, at times, substantially better on the heuristic and biases tasks. Individuals with higher control thresholds also showed lower preferences for risky alternatives in a gambling task. Furthermore, residual correlations among the heuristic and biases tasks were reduced to null, indicating that cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds accounted for their shared variance. Implications include the proposal that the capacity to detect errors does not differ between individuals. Rather, individuals might adopt varied strategies that promote error checking to different degrees, regardless of whether they have made a mistake or not. The results support growing evidence that decision-making involves cognitive abilities that construct actions and monitoring and control processes that manage their initiation. PMID:27790170
Cognitive Abilities, Monitoring Confidence, and Control Thresholds Explain Individual Differences in Heuristics and Biases.

PubMed

Jackson, Simon A; Kleitman, Sabina; Howie, Pauline; Stankov, Lazar

2016-01-01

In this paper, we investigate whether individual differences in performance on heuristic and biases tasks can be explained by cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds. Current theories explain individual differences in these tasks by the ability to detect errors and override automatic but biased judgments, and deliberative cognitive abilities that help to construct the correct response. Here we retain cognitive abilities but disentangle error detection, proposing that lower monitoring confidence and higher control thresholds promote error checking. Participants ( N = 250) completed tasks assessing their fluid reasoning abilities, stable monitoring confidence levels, and the control threshold they impose on their decisions. They also completed seven typical heuristic and biases tasks such as the cognitive reflection test and Resistance to Framing. Using structural equation modeling, we found that individuals with higher reasoning abilities, lower monitoring confidence, and higher control threshold performed significantly and, at times, substantially better on the heuristic and biases tasks. Individuals with higher control thresholds also showed lower preferences for risky alternatives in a gambling task. Furthermore, residual correlations among the heuristic and biases tasks were reduced to null, indicating that cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds accounted for their shared variance. Implications include the proposal that the capacity to detect errors does not differ between individuals. Rather, individuals might adopt varied strategies that promote error checking to different degrees, regardless of whether they have made a mistake or not. The results support growing evidence that decision-making involves cognitive abilities that construct actions and monitoring and control processes that manage their initiation.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN IMPULSIVE CHOICE AND TIMING IN RATS

PubMed Central

Galtress, Tiffany; Garcia, Ana; Kirkpatrick, Kimberly

2012-01-01

Individual differences in impulsive choice behavior have been linked to a variety of behavioral problems including substance abuse, smoking, gambling, and poor financial decision-making. Given the potential importance of individual differences in impulsive choice as a predictor of behavioral problems, the present study sought to measure the extent of individual differences in a normal sample of hooded Lister rats. Three experiments utilized variations of a delay discounting task to measure the degree of variation in impulsive choice behavior across individual rats. The individual differences accounted for 22–55% of the variance in choice behavior across the three experiments. In Experiments 2 and 3, the individual differences were still apparent when behavior was measured across multiple choice points. Large individual differences in the rate of responding, and modest individual differences in timing of responding were also observed during occasional peak trials. The individual differences in timing and rate, however, did not correlate consistently with individual differences in choice behavior. This suggests that a variety of factors may affect choice behavior, response rate, and response timing. PMID:22851792
Individual Differences in Face Identity Processing with Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation.

PubMed

Xu, Buyun; Liu-Shuang, Joan; Rossion, Bruno; Tanaka, James

2017-08-01

A growing body of literature suggests that human individuals differ in their ability to process face identity. These findings mainly stem from explicit behavioral tasks, such as the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). However, it remains an open question whether such individual differences can be found in the absence of an explicit face identity task and when faces have to be individualized at a single glance. In the current study, we tested 49 participants with a recently developed fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) paradigm [Liu-Shuang, J., Norcia, A. M., & Rossion, B. An objective index of individual face discrimination in the right occipitotemporal cortex by means of fast periodic oddball stimulation. Neuropsychologia, 52, 57-72, 2014] in EEG to rapidly, objectively, and implicitly quantify face identity processing. In the FPVS paradigm, one face identity (A) was presented at the frequency of 6 Hz, allowing only one gaze fixation, with different face identities (B, C, D) presented every fifth face (1.2 Hz; i.e., AAAABAAAACAAAAD…). Results showed a face individuation response at 1.2 Hz and its harmonics, peaking over occipitotemporal locations. The magnitude of this response showed high reliability across different recording sequences and was significant in all but two participants, with the magnitude and lateralization differing widely across participants. There was a modest but significant correlation between the individuation response amplitude and the performance of the behavioral CFMT task, despite the fact that CFMT and FPVS measured different aspects of face identity processing. Taken together, the current study highlights the FPVS approach as a promising means for studying individual differences in face identity processing.
Individual personality differences in goats predict their performance in visual learning and non-associative cognitive tasks.

PubMed

Nawroth, Christian; Prentice, Pamela M; McElligott, Alan G

2017-01-01

Variation in common personality traits, such as boldness or exploration, is often associated with risk-reward trade-offs and behavioural flexibility. To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of consistent behavioural traits on both learning and cognition. We investigated whether certain personality traits ('exploration' and 'sociability') of individuals were related to cognitive performance, learning flexibility and learning style in a social ungulate species, the goat (Capra hircus). We also investigated whether a preference for feature cues rather than impaired learning abilities can explain performance variation in a visual discrimination task. We found that personality scores were consistent across time and context. Less explorative goats performed better in a non-associative cognitive task, in which subjects had to follow the trajectory of a hidden object (i.e. testing their ability for object permanence). We also found that less sociable subjects performed better compared to more sociable goats in a visual discrimination task. Good visual learning performance was associated with a preference for feature cues, indicating personality-dependent learning strategies in goats. Our results suggest that personality traits predict the outcome in visual discrimination and non-associative cognitive tasks in goats and that impaired performance in a visual discrimination tasks does not necessarily imply impaired learning capacities, but rather can be explained by a varying preference for feature cues. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Attentional bias in high math-anxious individuals: evidence from an emotional Stroop task

PubMed Central

Suárez-Pellicioni, Macarena; Núñez-Peña, Maria Isabel; Colomé, Àngels

2015-01-01

Attentional bias toward threatening or emotional information is considered a cognitive marker of anxiety, and it has been described in various clinical and subclinical populations. This study used an emotional Stroop task to investigate whether math anxiety is characterized by an attentional bias toward math-related words. Two previous studies failed to observe such an effect in math-anxious individuals, although the authors acknowledged certain methodological limitations that the present study seeks to avoid. Twenty high math-anxious (HMA) and 20 low math-anxious (LMA) individuals were presented with an emotional Stroop task including math-related and neutral words. Participants in the two groups did not differ in trait anxiety or depression. We found that the HMA group showed slower response times to math-related words than to neutral words, as well as a greater attentional bias (math-related – neutral difference score) than the LMA one, which constitutes the first demonstration of an attentional bias toward math-related words in HMA individuals. PMID:26539137
Correlates of Individual, and Age-Related, Differences in Short-Term Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhang, Zhiyong; Davis, Hasker P.; Salthouse, Timothy A.; Tucker-Drob, Elliot M.

2007-01-01

Latent growth models were applied to data on multitrial verbal and spatial learning tasks from two independent studies. Although significant individual differences in both initial level of performance and subsequent learning were found in both tasks, age differences were found only in mean initial level, and not in mean learning. In neither task…
Sustained attention in language production: an individual differences investigation.

PubMed

Jongman, Suzanne R; Roelofs, Ardi; Meyer, Antje S

2015-01-01

Whereas it has long been assumed that most linguistic processes underlying language production happen automatically, accumulating evidence suggests that these processes do require some form of attention. Here we investigated the contribution of sustained attention: the ability to maintain alertness over time. In Experiment 1, participants' sustained attention ability was measured using auditory and visual continuous performance tasks. Subsequently, employing a dual-task procedure, participants described pictures using simple noun phrases and performed an arrow-discrimination task while their vocal and manual response times (RTs) and the durations of their gazes to the pictures were measured. Earlier research has demonstrated that gaze duration reflects language planning processes up to and including phonological encoding. The speakers' sustained attention ability correlated with the magnitude of the tail of the vocal RT distribution, reflecting the proportion of very slow responses, but not with individual differences in gaze duration. This suggests that sustained attention was most important after phonological encoding. Experiment 2 showed that the involvement of sustained attention was significantly stronger in a dual-task situation (picture naming and arrow discrimination) than in simple naming. Thus, individual differences in maintaining attention on the production processes become especially apparent when a simultaneous second task also requires attentional resources.
Ethnicity and Individual Differences in Achievement Goals in Kindergarten Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Billings, Barbara L.

This study examined the effect of ethnicity on individual differences in achievement goals in a replication of the paradigm used by P. Smiley and C. Dweck (1994) to explore individual differences in achievement goals held by young children. The emphasis was on learning goals, which focus effort on mastering new tasks, and performance goals, which…
Towards a theory of individual differences in statistical learning

PubMed Central

Bogaerts, Louisa; Christiansen, Morten H.; Frost, Ram

2017-01-01

In recent years, statistical learning (SL) research has seen a growing interest in tracking individual performance in SL tasks, mainly as a predictor of linguistic abilities. We review studies from this line of research and outline three presuppositions underlying the experimental approach they employ: (i) that SL is a unified theoretical construct; (ii) that current SL tasks are interchangeable, and equally valid for assessing SL ability; and (iii) that performance in the standard forced-choice test in the task is a good proxy of SL ability. We argue that these three critical presuppositions are subject to a number of theoretical and empirical issues. First, SL shows patterns of modality- and informational-specificity, suggesting that SL cannot be treated as a unified construct. Second, different SL tasks may tap into separate sub-components of SL that are not necessarily interchangeable. Third, the commonly used forced-choice tests in most SL tasks are subject to inherent limitations and confounds. As a first step, we offer a methodological approach that explicitly spells out a potential set of different SL dimensions, allowing for better transparency in choosing a specific SL task as a predictor of a given linguistic outcome. We then offer possible methodological solutions for better tracking and measuring SL ability. Taken together, these discussions provide a novel theoretical and methodological approach for assessing individual differences in SL, with clear testable predictions. This article is part of the themed issue ‘New frontiers for statistical learning in the cognitive sciences’. PMID:27872377
Career Development, Collective Efficacy, and Individual Task Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kellett, Janet B.; Humphrey, Ronald H.; Sleeth, Randall G.

2009-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis that perceived collective efficacy would mediate the effects of self-efficacy on individual task performance. Design/methodology/approach: An assessment center design with 147 participants in 49 three-person groups was used. Findings: It is found that for individuals working on an…
Motor-cognitive dual-task deficits in individuals with early-mid stage Huntington disease.

PubMed

Fritz, Nora E; Hamana, Katy; Kelson, Mark; Rosser, Anne; Busse, Monica; Quinn, Lori

2016-09-01

Huntington disease (HD) results in a range of cognitive and motor impairments that progress throughout the disease stages; however, little research has evaluated specific dual-task abilities in this population, and the degree to which they may be related to functional ability. The purpose of this study was to a) examine simple and complex motor-cognitive dual-task performance in individuals with HD, b) determine relationships between dual-task walking ability and disease-specific measures of motor, cognitive and functional ability, and c) examine the relationship of dual-task measures to falls in individuals with HD. Thirty-two individuals with HD were evaluated for simple and complex dual-task ability using the Walking While Talking Test. Demographics and disease-specific measures of motor, cognitive and functional ability were also obtained. Individuals with HD had impairments in simple and complex dual-task ability. Simple dual-task walking was correlated to disease-specific motor scores as well as cognitive performance, but complex dual-task walking was correlated with total functional capacity, as well as a range of cognitive measures. Number of prospective falls was moderately-strongly correlated to dual-task measures. Our results suggest that individuals with HD have impairments in cognitive-motor dual-task ability that are related to disease progression and specifically functional ability. Dual-task measures appear to evaluate a unique construct in individuals with early to mid-stage HD, and may have value in improving the prediction of falls risk in this population. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Differential occipital responses in early- and late-blind individuals during a sound-source discrimination task.

PubMed

Voss, Patrice; Gougoux, Frederic; Zatorre, Robert J; Lassonde, Maryse; Lepore, Franco

2008-04-01

Blind individuals do not necessarily receive more auditory stimulation than sighted individuals. However, to interact effectively with their environment, they have to rely on non-visual cues (in particular auditory) to a greater extent. Often benefiting from cerebral reorganization, they not only learn to rely more on such cues but also may process them better and, as a result, demonstrate exceptional abilities in auditory spatial tasks. Here we examine the effects of blindness on brain activity, using positron emission tomography (PET), during a sound-source discrimination task (SSDT) in both early- and late-onset blind individuals. This should not only provide an answer to the question of whether the blind manifest changes in brain activity but also allow a direct comparison of the two subgroups performing an auditory spatial task. The task was presented under two listening conditions: one binaural and one monaural. The binaural task did not show any significant behavioural differences between groups, but it demonstrated striate and extrastriate activation in the early-blind groups. A subgroup of early-blind individuals, on the other hand, performed significantly better than all the other groups during the monaural task, and these enhanced skills were correlated with elevated activity within the left dorsal extrastriate cortex. Surprisingly, activation of the right ventral visual pathway, which was significantly activated in the late-blind individuals during the monaural task, was negatively correlated with performance. This suggests the possibility that not all cross-modal plasticity is beneficial. Overall, our results not only support previous findings showing that occipital cortex of early-blind individuals is functionally engaged in spatial auditory processing but also shed light on the impact the age of onset of blindness can have on the ensuing cross-modal plasticity.
Testing problem-solving capacities: differences between individual testing and social group setting.

PubMed

Krasheninnikova, Anastasia; Schneider, Jutta M

2014-09-01

Testing animals individually in problem-solving tasks limits distractions of the subjects during the test, so that they can fully concentrate on the problem. However, such individual performance may not indicate the problem-solving capacity that is commonly employed in the wild when individuals are faced with a novel problem in their social groups, where the presence of a conspecific influences an individual's behaviour. To assess the validity of data gathered from parrots when tested individually, we compared the performance on patterned-string tasks among parrots tested singly and parrots tested in social context. We tested two captive groups of orange-winged amazons (Amazona amazonica) with several patterned-string tasks. Despite the differences in the testing environment (singly vs. social context), parrots from both groups performed similarly. However, we found that the willingness to participate in the tasks was significantly higher for the individuals tested in social context. The study provides further evidence for the crucial influence of social context on individual's response to a challenging situation such as a problem-solving test.
The Betrayal Aversion Elicitation Task: An Individual Level Betrayal Aversion Measure.

PubMed

Aimone, Jason; Ball, Sheryl; King-Casas, Brooks

2015-01-01

Research on betrayal aversion shows that individuals' response to risk depends not only on probabilities and payoffs, but also on whether the risk includes a betrayal of trust. While previous studies focus on measuring aggregate levels of betrayal aversion, the connection between an individual's own betrayal aversion and other individually varying factors, including risk preferences, are currently unexplored. This paper develops a new task to elicit an individual's level of betrayal aversion that can then be compared to individual characteristics. We demonstrate the feasibility of our new task and show that our aggregate individual results are consistent with previous studies. We then use this classification to ask whether betrayal aversion is correlated with risk aversion. While we find risk aversion and betrayal aversion have no significant relationship, we do observe that risk aversion is correlated with non-social risk preferences, but not the social, betrayal related, risk component of the new task.
Written object naming, spelling to dictation, and immediate copying: Different tasks, different pathways?

PubMed

Bonin, Patrick; Méot, Alain; Lagarrigue, Aurélie; Roux, Sébastien

2015-01-01

We report an investigation of cross-task comparisons of handwritten latencies in written object naming, spelling to dictation, and immediate copying. In three separate sessions, adults had to write down a list of concrete nouns from their corresponding pictures (written naming), from their spoken (spelling to dictation) and from their visual presentation (immediate copying). Linear mixed models without random slopes were performed on the latencies in order to study and compare within-task fixed effects. By-participants random slopes were then included to investigate individual differences within and across tasks. Overall, the findings suggest that written naming, spelling to dictation, and copying all involve a lexical pathway, but that written naming relies on this pathway more than the other two tasks do. Only spelling to dictation strongly involves a nonlexical pathway. Finally, the analyses performed at the level of participants indicate that, depending on the type of task, the slower participants are more or less influenced by certain psycholinguistic variables.
Correlates of individual, and age-related, differences in short-term learning.

PubMed

Zhang, Zhiyong; Davis, Hasker P; Salthouse, Timothy A; Tucker-Drob, Elliot M

2007-07-01

Latent growth models were applied to data on multitrial verbal and spatial learning tasks from two independent studies. Although significant individual differences in both initial level of performance and subsequent learning were found in both tasks, age differences were found only in mean initial level, and not in mean learning. In neither task was fluid or crystallized intelligence associated with learning. Although there were moderate correlations among the level parameters across the verbal and spatial tasks, the learning parameters were not significantly correlated with one another across task modalities. These results are inconsistent with the existence of a general (e.g., material-independent) learning ability.
Individual differences in conflict detection during reasoning.

PubMed

Frey, Darren; Johnson, Eric D; De Neys, Wim

2018-05-01

Decades of reasoning and decision-making research have established that human judgment is often biased by intuitive heuristics. Recent "error" or bias detection studies have focused on reasoners' abilities to detect whether their heuristic answer conflicts with logical or probabilistic principles. A key open question is whether there are individual differences in this bias detection efficiency. Here we present three studies in which co-registration of different error detection measures (confidence, response time and confidence response time) allowed us to assess bias detection sensitivity at the individual participant level in a range of reasoning tasks. The results indicate that although most individuals show robust bias detection, as indexed by increased latencies and decreased confidence, there is a subgroup of reasoners who consistently fail to do so. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for the field.
[Neuromodulatory effects of bromazepam when individuals were exposed to a motor learning task: quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG)].

PubMed

Salles, José Inácio; Bastos, Victor Hugo; Cunha, Marlo; Machado, Dionis; Cagy, Maurício; Furtado, Vernon; Basile, Luis Fernando; Piedade, Roberto; Ribeiro, Pedro

2006-03-01

The sedative effects of bromazepam on cognitive and performance have been widely investigated. A number of different approaches have assessed the influence of bromazepam when individuals are engaged to a motor task. In this context, the present study aimed to investigate electrophysiological changes when individuals were exposed to a typewriting task after taking 6 mg of bromazepam. qEEG data were simultaneously recorded during the task. In particular, relative power in delta band (0.5-3.5 Hz) was analyzed. Time of execution and errors during the task were registered as behavioral variables. The experimental group, bromazepam 6 mg, showed a better motor performance and higher relative power than control individuals (placebo). These results suggest that the use of bromazepam reduces anxiety levels as expected and thus, produces an increment in motor performance.
Information and processes underlying semantic and episodic memory across tasks, items, and individuals.

PubMed

Cox, Gregory E; Hemmer, Pernille; Aue, William R; Criss, Amy H

2018-04-01

The development of memory theory has been constrained by a focus on isolated tasks rather than the processes and information that are common to situations in which memory is engaged. We present results from a study in which 453 participants took part in five different memory tasks: single-item recognition, associative recognition, cued recall, free recall, and lexical decision. Using hierarchical Bayesian techniques, we jointly analyzed the correlations between tasks within individuals-reflecting the degree to which tasks rely on shared cognitive processes-and within items-reflecting the degree to which tasks rely on the same information conveyed by the item. Among other things, we find that (a) the processes involved in lexical access and episodic memory are largely separate and rely on different kinds of information, (b) access to lexical memory is driven primarily by perceptual aspects of a word, (c) all episodic memory tasks rely to an extent on a set of shared processes which make use of semantic features to encode both single words and associations between words, and (d) recall involves additional processes likely related to contextual cuing and response production. These results provide a large-scale picture of memory across different tasks which can serve to drive the development of comprehensive theories of memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Effects of Individual Differences and Situational Features on Age Differences in Mindless Reading.

PubMed

Shake, Matthew C; Shulley, Leah J; Soto-Freita, Angelica M

2016-09-01

Mindless reading occurs when an individual shifts their attention away from the text and toward other off-task thoughts. This study examined whether previously reported age-related declines in mindless reading episodes are due primarily to (a) situational features related to the text itself (e.g., text genre or interest in the text) and/or (b) individual differences in cognitive ability. Participants read 2 texts written in different genres but about the same topic. During reading, they were randomly probed to indicate whether they were on-task or mind-wandering. They also indicated their perceptions regarding the interest and difficulty of the text, and completed a battery of cognitive ability measures. The results showed that (a) text genre may engender some age differences in mindless reading and (b) greater age and perceived interest in the text were each uniquely predictive of reduced mindless reading for both text genres. Individual differences in cognitive abilities (e.g., working memory, vocabulary) did not account for additional significant variance in mindless reading after interest and age were taken into account. Our findings are discussed in terms of implications for age differences in lapses of attention during reading and predictors of mind-wandering generally. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Dual-task gait differences in female and male adolescents following sport-related concussion.

PubMed

Howell, David R; Stracciolini, Andrea; Geminiani, Ellen; Meehan, William P

2017-05-01

Concussion may affect females and males differentially. Identification of gender-related differences after concussion, therefore, may help clinicians with individualized evaluations. We examined potential differences in dual-task gait between females and males after concussion. Thirty-five participants diagnosed with a concussion (49% female, mean age=15.0±2.1 years, 7.5±3.0 days post-injury) and 51 controls (51% female, mean age=14.4±2.1 years) completed a symptom inventory and single/dual-task gait assessment. The primary outcome variable, the dual-task cost, was calculated as the percent change between single-task and dual-task conditions to account for individual differences in spatio-temporal gait variables. No significant differences in symptom severity measured by the post-concussion symptom scale were observed between females (32.0±18.0) and males (27.8±18.2). Compared with males, adolescent females walked with significantly decreased cadence dual-task costs after concussion (-19.7%±10.0% vs. -11.3%±9.2%, p=0.007) when adjusted for age, height, and prior concussion history. No significant differences were found between female and male control groups on other dual-task cost gait measures. Females and males with concussion also walked with significantly shorter stride lengths than controls during single-task (females: 1.13±0.11m vs. 1.26±0.11m, p=0.001; males: 1.14±0.14m vs. 1.22±0.15m, p=0.04) and dual-task gait (females: 0.99±0.10m vs. 1.10±0.11m, p=0.001; males: 1.00±0.13m vs. 1.08±0.14m, p=0.04). Females demonstrated a significantly greater amount of cadence change between single-task and dual-task gait than males after a sport-related concussion. Thus, differential alterations may exist during gait among those with a concussion; gender may be one prominent factor affecting dual-task gait. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Targeting specific facial variation for different identification tasks.

PubMed

Aeria, Gillian; Claes, Peter; Vandermeulen, Dirk; Clement, John Gerald

2010-09-10

A conceptual framework that allows faces to be studied and compared objectively with biological validity is presented. The framework is a logical extension of modern morphometrics and statistical shape analysis techniques. Three dimensional (3D) facial scans were collected from 255 healthy young adults. One scan depicted a smiling facial expression and another scan depicted a neutral expression. These facial scans were modelled in a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) space where Euclidean (ED) and Mahalanobis (MD) distances were used to form similarity measures. Within this PCA space, property pathways were calculated that expressed the direction of change in facial expression. Decomposition of distances into property-independent (D1) and dependent components (D2) along these pathways enabled the comparison of two faces in terms of the extent of a smiling expression. The performance of all distances was tested and compared in dual types of experiments: Classification tasks and a Recognition task. In the Classification tasks, individual facial scans were assigned to one or more population groups of smiling or neutral scans. The property-dependent (D2) component of both Euclidean and Mahalanobis distances performed best in the Classification task, by correctly assigning 99.8% of scans to the right population group. The recognition task tested if a scan of an individual depicting a smiling/neutral expression could be positively identified when shown a scan of the same person depicting a neutral/smiling expression. ED1 and MD1 performed best, and correctly identified 97.8% and 94.8% of individual scans respectively as belonging to the same person despite differences in facial expression. It was concluded that decomposed components are superior to straightforward distances in achieving positive identifications and presents a novel method for quantifying facial similarity. Additionally, although the undecomposed Mahalanobis distance often used in practice outperformed
Do individual differences in Iowa Gambling Task performance predict adaptive decision making for risky gains and losses?

PubMed

Weller, Joshua A; Levin, Irwin P; Bechara, Antoine

2010-02-01

We relate performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a widely used, but complex, neuropsychological task of executive function in which mixed outcomes (gains and losses) are experienced together, to performance on a relatively simpler descriptive task, the Cups task, which isolates adaptive decision making for achieving gains and avoiding losses. We found that poor IGT performance was associated with suboptimal decision making on Cups, especially for risky losses, suggesting that losses are weighted more than gains in the IGT. These findings were significant beyond several notable gender differences in which men outperformed women. Implications for the neuropsychological study of risk are discussed.
An individual differences analysis of memory control

PubMed Central

Salthouse, Timothy A.; Siedlecki, Karen L.; Krueger, Lacy E.

2013-01-01

Performance on a wide variety of memory tasks can be hypothesized to be influenced by processes associated with controlling the contents of memory. In this project 328 adults ranging from 18 to 93 years of age performed six tasks (e.g., multiple trial recall with an interpolated interference list, directed forgetting, proactive interference, and retrieval inhibition) postulated to yield measures of the effectiveness of memory control. Although most of the patterns from earlier studies were replicated, only a few of the measures of memory control were reliable at the level of individual differences. Furthermore, the memory control measures had very weak relations with the age of the participant. Analyses examining the relations between established cognitive abilities and variables from the experimental tasks revealed that most of the variables were related only to episodic memory ability. PMID:24347812
Measuring Individual Differences in Decision Biases: Methodological Considerations

PubMed Central

Aczel, Balazs; Bago, Bence; Szollosi, Aba; Foldes, Andrei; Lukacs, Bence

2015-01-01

Individual differences in people's susceptibility to heuristics and biases (HB) are often measured by multiple-bias questionnaires consisting of one or a few items for each bias. This research approach relies on the assumptions that (1) different versions of a decision bias task measure are interchangeable as they measure the same cognitive failure; and (2) that some combination of these tasks measures the same underlying construct. Based on these assumptions, in Study 1 we developed two versions of a new decision bias survey for which we modified 13 HB tasks to increase their comparability, construct validity, and the participants' motivation. The analysis of the responses (N = 1279) showed weak internal consistency within the surveys and a great level of discrepancy between the extracted patterns of the underlying factors. To explore these inconsistencies, in Study 2 we used three original examples of HB tasks for each of seven biases. We created three decision bias surveys by allocating one version of each HB task to each survey. The participants' responses (N = 527) showed a similar pattern as in Study 1, questioning the assumption that the different examples of the HB tasks are interchangeable and that they measure the same underlying construct. These results emphasize the need to understand the domain-specificity of cognitive biases as well as the effect of the wording of the cover story and the response mode on bias susceptibility before employing them in multiple-bias questionnaires. PMID:26635677
Organizational Policy Decisions as a Function of Individual Differences and Task Design: Maintenance Tasks. Technical Report No. 10.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Connor, Edward J.; And Others

Ninety subjects completed identical simulated maintenance tasks under two experimental conditions. In the high job structural attribute condition subjects were told that the task was high in learning new skills, responsibility, feedback, and task identity; while in the low job structural condition they were told the opposite. Results indicated the…
Obstacle crossing with dual tasking is a danger for individuals with Alzheimer's disease and for healthy older people.

PubMed

Simieli, Lucas; Barbieri, Fabio Augusto; Orcioli-Silva, Diego; Lirani-Silva, Ellen; Stella, Florindo; Gobbi, Lilian Teresa Bucken

2015-01-01

The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of dual tasking on obstacle crossing during walking by individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and by healthy older people. Thirty four elderly individuals (16 healthy subjects and 18 individuals with AD) were recruited to participate in this study. Three AD individuals and one control participant were excluded due to exclusion criteria. The participants were instructed to walk barefoot at their own speed along an 8 m long pathway. Each participant performed five trials for each condition (unobstructed walking, unobstructed walking with dual tasking, and obstacle crossing during walking with dual tasking). The trials were completely randomized for each participant. The mid-pathway stride was measured in the unobstructed walking trials and the stride that occurred during the obstacle avoidance was measured in the trials that involved obstacle crossing. The behavior of the healthy elderly subjects and individuals with AD was similar for obstacle crossing during walking with dual tasking. Both groups used the "posture first" strategy to prioritize stability and showed decreased attention to executive tasking while walking. Additionally, AD had a strong influence on the modifications that are made by the elderly while walking under different walking conditions.
Routine cognitive errors: a trait-like predictor of individual differences in anxiety and distress.

PubMed

Fetterman, Adam K; Robinson, Michael D

2011-02-01

Five studies (N=361) sought to model a class of errors--namely, those in routine tasks--that several literatures have suggested may predispose individuals to higher levels of emotional distress. Individual differences in error frequency were assessed in choice reaction-time tasks of a routine cognitive type. In Study 1, it was found that tendencies toward error in such tasks exhibit trait-like stability over time. In Study 3, it was found that tendencies toward error exhibit trait-like consistency across different tasks. Higher error frequency, in turn, predicted higher levels of negative affect, general distress symptoms, displayed levels of negative emotion during an interview, and momentary experiences of negative emotion in daily life (Studies 2-5). In all cases, such predictive relations remained significant with individual differences in neuroticism controlled. The results thus converge on the idea that error frequency in simple cognitive tasks is a significant and consequential predictor of emotional distress in everyday life. The results are novel, but discussed within the context of the wider literatures that informed them. © 2010 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
Dynamic functional connectivity and individual differences in emotions during social stress.

PubMed

Tobia, Michael J; Hayashi, Koby; Ballard, Grey; Gotlib, Ian H; Waugh, Christian E

2017-12-01

Exposure to acute stress induces multiple emotional responses, each with their own unique temporal dynamics. Dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) measures the temporal variability of network synchrony and captures individual differences in network neurodynamics. This study investigated the relationship between dFC and individual differences in emotions induced by an acute psychosocial stressor. Sixteen healthy adult women underwent fMRI scanning during a social evaluative threat (SET) task, and retrospectively completed questionnaires that assessed individual differences in subjectively experienced positive and negative emotions about stress and stress relief during the task. Group dFC was decomposed with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) into 10 components, each with a temporal signature, spatial network of functionally connected regions, and vector of participant loadings that captures individual differences in dFC. Participant loadings of two networks were positively correlated with stress-related emotions, indicating the existence of networks for positive and negative emotions. The emotion-related networks involved the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, anterior insula, and amygdala, among other distributed brain regions, and time signatures for these emotion-related networks were uncorrelated. These findings demonstrate that individual differences in stress-induced positive and negative emotions are each uniquely associated with large-scale brain networks, and suggest that dFC is a mechanism that generates individual differences in the emotional components of the stress response. Hum Brain Mapp 38:6185-6205, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Differential effects of social and novelty enrichment on individual differences in impulsivity and behavioral flexibility.

PubMed

Wang, Maya Zhe; Marshall, Andrew T; Kirkpatrick, Kimberly

2017-06-01

Early life experience profoundly impacts behavior and cognitive functions in rats. The present study investigated how the presence of conspecifics and/or novel objects, could independently influence individual differences in impulsivity and behavioral flexibility. Twenty-four rats were reared in an isolated condition, an isolated condition with a novel object, a pair-housed social condition, or a pair-housed social condition with a novel object. The rats were then tested on an impulsive choice task, a behavioral flexibility task, and an impulsive action task. Novelty enrichment produced an overall increase in impulsive choice, while social enrichment decreased impulsive choice in the absence of novelty enrichment and also produced an overall increase in impulsive action. In the behavioral flexibility task, social enrichment increased regressive errors, whereas both social and novelty enrichment reduced never-reinforced errors. Individual differences analyses indicated a significant relationship between performance in the behavioral flexibility and impulsive action tasks, which may reflect a common psychological correlate of action inhibition. Moreover, there was a relationship between delay sensitivity in the impulsive choice task and performance on the DRL and behavioral flexibility tasks, suggesting a dual role for timing and inhibitory processes in driving the interrelationship between these tasks. Overall, these results indicate that social and novelty enrichment produce distinct effects on impulsivity and adaptability, suggesting the need to parse out the different elements of enrichment in future studies. Further research is warranted to better understand how individual differences in sensitivity to enrichment affect individuals' interactions with and the resulting consequences of the rearing environment. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Bimanual proprioceptive performance differs for right- and left-handed individuals.

PubMed

Han, Jia; Waddington, Gordon; Adams, Roger; Anson, Judith

2013-05-10

It has been proposed that asymmetry between the upper limbs in the utilization of proprioceptive feedback arises from functional differences in the roles of the preferred and non-preferred hands during bimanual tasks. The present study investigated unimanual and bimanual proprioceptive performance in right- and left-handed young adults with an active finger pinch movement discrimination task. With visual information removed, participants were required to make absolute judgments about the extent of pinch movements made to physical stops, either by one hand, or by both hands concurrently, with the sequence of presented movement extents varied randomly. Discrimination accuracy scores were derived from participants' responses using non-parametric signal detection analysis. Consistent with previous findings, a non-dominant hand/hemisphere superiority effect was observed, where the non-dominant hands of right- and left-handed individuals performed overall significantly better than their dominant hands. For all participants, bimanual movement discrimination scores were significantly lower than scores obtained in the unimanual task. However, the magnitude of the performance reduction, from the unimanual to the bimanual task, was significantly greater for left-handed individuals. The effect whereby bimanual proprioception was disproportionately affected in left-handed individuals could be due to enhanced neural communication between hemispheres in left-handed individuals leading to less distinctive separation of information obtained from the two hands in the cerebral cortex. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Functional neural correlates of figure copy and recall task performances in cognitively impaired individuals: an 18F-FDG-PET study.

PubMed

Han, Ji Young; Byun, Min Soo; Seo, Eun Hyun; Yi, Dahyun; Choe, Young Min; Sohn, Bo Kyung; Choi, Hyo Jung; Baek, Hyewon; Lee, Jun Ho; Kim, Hyun Jung; Woo, Jong Inn; Lee, Dong Yong

2015-12-02

Figure copy and recall tasks from the Benton Visual Retention Test (BVRT) and the Consortium to Establish a Registry of Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) neuropsychological battery are used widely to assess visuospatial function in cognitively impaired (CI) individuals. We aimed to identify functional neural correlates of figure copy and recall task performances as measured by the BVRT and the CERAD constructional praxis (CP) and CP recall (CR) in CI individuals. Both tasks were administered to 64 CI individuals with early or prodromal stage Alzheimer's disease and 36 cognitively normal individuals. Voxel-wise correlations between test scores and regional cerebral glucose metabolism (rCMglc) measured by fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose PET in CI participants were analyzed. BVRT figure copy task performance was associated with rCMglc of the bilateral posterior brain regions including the parieto-temporo-occipital regions, whereas the BVRT figure recall task performance was predominantly correlated with rCMglc of the left parietal and temporo-occipital regions. Meanwhile, CERAD CP performance was associated mainly with rCMglc of the left prefrontal and temporo-occipital areas as well as in the bilateral parietal regions, whereas CERAD CR performance was correlated with rCMglc of the right prefrontal, parietal, and temporal regions. In conclusion, the functional neural correlates of the two tasks were markedly different, suggesting that these tasks might measure different visuospatial functions. Our findings contribute toward understanding the functional neuroanatomical aspects of these tasks, which is useful for both interpreting the task results as well as for more sophisticated utilization of these tasks for probing specific neuroanatomical functions.
Individual differences in attention influence perceptual decision making.

PubMed

Nunez, Michael D; Srinivasan, Ramesh; Vandekerckhove, Joachim

2015-01-01

Sequential sampling decision-making models have been successful in accounting for reaction time (RT) and accuracy data in two-alternative forced choice tasks. These models have been used to describe the behavior of populations of participants, and explanatory structures have been proposed to account for between individual variability in model parameters. In this study we show that individual differences in behavior from a novel perceptual decision making task can be attributed to (1) differences in evidence accumulation rates, (2) differences in variability of evidence accumulation within trials, and (3) differences in non-decision times across individuals. Using electroencephalography (EEG), we demonstrate that these differences in cognitive variables, in turn, can be explained by attentional differences as measured by phase-locking of steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) responses to the signal and noise components of the visual stimulus. Parameters of a cognitive model (a diffusion model) were obtained from accuracy and RT distributions and related to phase-locking indices (PLIs) of SSVEPs with a single step in a hierarchical Bayesian framework. Participants who were able to suppress the SSVEP response to visual noise in high frequency bands were able to accumulate correct evidence faster and had shorter non-decision times (preprocessing or motor response times), leading to more accurate responses and faster response times. We show that the combination of cognitive modeling and neural data in a hierarchical Bayesian framework relates physiological processes to the cognitive processes of participants, and that a model with a new (out-of-sample) participant's neural data can predict that participant's behavior more accurately than models without physiological data.
Multi-task linear programming discriminant analysis for the identification of progressive MCI individuals.

PubMed

Yu, Guan; Liu, Yufeng; Thung, Kim-Han; Shen, Dinggang

2014-01-01

Accurately identifying mild cognitive impairment (MCI) individuals who will progress to Alzheimer's disease (AD) is very important for making early interventions. Many classification methods focus on integrating multiple imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). However, the main challenge for MCI classification using multiple imaging modalities is the existence of a lot of missing data in many subjects. For example, in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study, almost half of the subjects do not have PET images. In this paper, we propose a new and flexible binary classification method, namely Multi-task Linear Programming Discriminant (MLPD) analysis, for the incomplete multi-source feature learning. Specifically, we decompose the classification problem into different classification tasks, i.e., one for each combination of available data sources. To solve all different classification tasks jointly, our proposed MLPD method links them together by constraining them to achieve the similar estimated mean difference between the two classes (under classification) for those shared features. Compared with the state-of-the-art incomplete Multi-Source Feature (iMSF) learning method, instead of constraining different classification tasks to choose a common feature subset for those shared features, MLPD can flexibly and adaptively choose different feature subsets for different classification tasks. Furthermore, our proposed MLPD method can be efficiently implemented by linear programming. To validate our MLPD method, we perform experiments on the ADNI baseline dataset with the incomplete MRI and PET images from 167 progressive MCI (pMCI) subjects and 226 stable MCI (sMCI) subjects. We further compared our method with the iMSF method (using incomplete MRI and PET images) and also the single-task classification method (using only MRI or only subjects with both MRI and PET images
Multi-Task Linear Programming Discriminant Analysis for the Identification of Progressive MCI Individuals

PubMed Central

Yu, Guan; Liu, Yufeng; Thung, Kim-Han; Shen, Dinggang

2014-01-01

Accurately identifying mild cognitive impairment (MCI) individuals who will progress to Alzheimer's disease (AD) is very important for making early interventions. Many classification methods focus on integrating multiple imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). However, the main challenge for MCI classification using multiple imaging modalities is the existence of a lot of missing data in many subjects. For example, in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study, almost half of the subjects do not have PET images. In this paper, we propose a new and flexible binary classification method, namely Multi-task Linear Programming Discriminant (MLPD) analysis, for the incomplete multi-source feature learning. Specifically, we decompose the classification problem into different classification tasks, i.e., one for each combination of available data sources. To solve all different classification tasks jointly, our proposed MLPD method links them together by constraining them to achieve the similar estimated mean difference between the two classes (under classification) for those shared features. Compared with the state-of-the-art incomplete Multi-Source Feature (iMSF) learning method, instead of constraining different classification tasks to choose a common feature subset for those shared features, MLPD can flexibly and adaptively choose different feature subsets for different classification tasks. Furthermore, our proposed MLPD method can be efficiently implemented by linear programming. To validate our MLPD method, we perform experiments on the ADNI baseline dataset with the incomplete MRI and PET images from 167 progressive MCI (pMCI) subjects and 226 stable MCI (sMCI) subjects. We further compared our method with the iMSF method (using incomplete MRI and PET images) and also the single-task classification method (using only MRI or only subjects with both MRI and PET images
Event-related potentials reveal task-dependence and inter-individual differences in negation processing during silent listening and explicit truth-value evaluation.

PubMed

Herbert, C; Kissler, J

2014-09-26

In sentences such as dogs cannot fly/bark, evaluation of the truth-value of the sentence is assumed to appear after the negation has been integrated into the sentence structure. Moreover negation processing and truth-value processing are considered effortful processes, whereas processing of the semantic relatedness of the words within sentences is thought to occur automatically. In the present study, modulation of event-related brain potentials (N400 and late positive potential, LPP) was investigated during an implicit task (silent listening) and active truth-value evaluation to test these theoretical assumptions and determine if truth-value evaluation will be modulated by the way participants processed the negated information implicitly prior to truth-value verification. Participants first listened to negated sentences and then evaluated these sentences for their truth-value in an active evaluation task. During passive listening, the LPP was generally more pronounced for targets in false negative (FN) than true negative (TN) sentences, indicating enhanced attention allocation to semantically-related but false targets. N400 modulation by truth-value (FN>TN) was observed in 11 out of 24 participants. However, during active evaluation, processing of semantically-unrelated but true targets (TN) elicited larger N400 and LPP amplitudes as well as a pronounced frontal negativity. This pattern was particularly prominent in those 11 individuals, whose N400 modulation during silent listening indicated that they were more sensitive to violations of the truth-value than to semantic priming effects. The results provide evidence for implicit truth-value processing during silent listening of negated sentences and for task dependence related to inter-individual differences in implicit negation processing. Copyright © 2014 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Age-related differences in postural adjustments in connection with different tasks involving weight transfer while standing.

PubMed

Jonsson, Erika; Henriksson, Marketta; Hirschfeld, Helga

2007-10-01

Weight transfer designed to change the area of the supportive base during the performance of three different motor tasks (one-leg stance, tandem stance and gait initiation) was examined both in healthy, physically active elderly people and younger adults. The former two tasks are balance tests used clinically. Our hypothesis was that the elderly subjects would demonstrate age-related changes in their postural adjustments that could be detected by analysis of the ground reaction forces. While 24 healthy elderly adults (65-77 years of age) and 26 younger adults (24-40 years of age) performed these three tasks, the ground reaction forces were recorded from two force plates. Prior to the onset of all three tasks, the elderly placed significantly more weight on the leg that was to provide support (the stance leg), than did the younger individuals. The analyses revealed two distinct phases of weight transfer, i.e., an initial thrust and a subsequent unloading phase. The elderly individuals exhibited a significantly longer unloading phase, as well as a higher frequency of peaks of vertical and lateral forces during this phase. Moreover, the maximal force rate during this phase was achieved at an earlier time point by the elderly. However, both groups generated forces of similar magnitudes and force rates. In conclusion, our findings indicate the presence of age-related differences in the temporal phasing of the ground reaction forces in all three of these tasks involving weight transfer, whereas the magnitude and rates of change of these forces are independent of age.
Origins of Individual Differences in Theory of Mind: From Nature to Nurture?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hughes, Claire; Jaffee, Sara R.; Happ, Francesca; Taylor, Alan; Caspi, Avshalom; Moffitt, Terrie E.

2005-01-01

In this study of the origins of individual differences in theory of mind (ToM), the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study sample of 1,116 sixty-month-old twin pairs completed a comprehensive battery of ToM tasks. Individual differences in ToM were striking and strongly associated with verbal ability. Behavioral genetic models of the…
Affect intensity and individual differences in informational style.

PubMed

Larsen, R J; Billings, D W; Cutler, S E

1996-03-01

Although individuals differ widely in the typical intensity of their affective experience, the mechanisms that create or maintain these differences are unclear. Larsen, Diener, and Cropanzano (1987) examined the hypothesis that individual differences in affect intensity (AI) are related to how people interpret emotional stimuli. They found that high AI individuals engaged in more personalizing and generalizing cognitions while construing emotional stimuli than low AI individuals. The present study extends these findings by examining cognitive activity during a different task-the generation of information to communicate about life events. Participants provided free-response descriptions of 16 life events. These descriptions were content coded for five informational style variables. It was found that the descriptive information generated by high AI participants contained significantly more references to emotional arousal, more focus on feelings, and more generalization compared to participants low in AI. These results are consistent with the notion that specific cognitive activity may lead to, or at least be associated with, dispositional affect intensity. In addition, the informational style variables identified in this study were stable over time and consistent across situations. Although men and women differ in AI, this difference becomes insignificant after controlling for informational style variation. Overall results are discussed in terms of a model of various psychological mechanisms that may potentially create or maintain individual differences in affect intensity.
The Multifold Relationship between Memory and Decision Making: An Individual-Differences Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Del Missier, Fabio; Mäntylä, Timo; Hansson, Patrik; Bruine de Bruin, Wändi; Parker, Andrew M.; Nilsson, Lars-Göran

2013-01-01

Several judgment and decision-making tasks are assumed to involve memory functions, but significant knowledge gaps on the memory processes underlying these tasks remain. In a study on 568 adults between 25 and 80 years of age, hypotheses were tested on the specific relationships between individual differences in working memory, episodic memory,…
The Betrayal Aversion Elicitation Task: An Individual Level Betrayal Aversion Measure

PubMed Central

Aimone, Jason; Ball, Sheryl; King-Casas, Brooks

2015-01-01

Research on betrayal aversion shows that individuals’ response to risk depends not only on probabilities and payoffs, but also on whether the risk includes a betrayal of trust. While previous studies focus on measuring aggregate levels of betrayal aversion, the connection between an individual’s own betrayal aversion and other individually varying factors, including risk preferences, are currently unexplored. This paper develops a new task to elicit an individual’s level of betrayal aversion that can then be compared to individual characteristics. We demonstrate the feasibility of our new task and show that our aggregate individual results are consistent with previous studies. We then use this classification to ask whether betrayal aversion is correlated with risk aversion. While we find risk aversion and betrayal aversion have no significant relationship, we do observe that risk aversion is correlated with non-social risk preferences, but not the social, betrayal related, risk component of the new task. PMID:26331944
Differential effects of social and novelty enrichment on individual differences in impulsivity and behavioral flexibility

PubMed Central

Wang, Maya Zhe; Marshall, Andrew T.; Kirkpatrick, Kimberly

2017-01-01

Early life experience profoundly impacts behavior and cognitive functions in rats. The present study investigated how the presence of conspecifics and/or novel objects, could independently influence individual differences in impulsivity and behavioral flexibility. Twenty-four rats were reared in an isolated condition, an isolated condition with a novel object, a pair-housed social condition, or a pair-housed social condition with a novel object. The rats were then tested on an impulsive choice task, a behavioral flexibility task, and an impulsive action task. Novelty enrichment produced an overall increase in impulsive choice, while social enrichment decreased impulsive choice in the absence of novelty enrichment and also produced an overall increase in impulsive action. In the behavioral flexibility task, social enrichment increased regressive errors, whereas both social and novelty enrichment reduced never reinforced errors. Individual differences analyses indicated a significant relationship between performance in the behavioral flexibility and impulsive action tasks, which may reflect a common psychological correlate of action inhibition. Moreover, there was a relationship between delay sensitivity in the impulsive choice task and performance on the DRL and behavioral flexibility tasks, suggesting a dual role for timing and inhibitory processes in driving the interrelationship between these tasks. Overall, these results indicate that social and novelty enrichment produce distinct effects on impulsivity and adaptability, suggesting the need to parse out the different elements of enrichment in future studies. Further research is warranted to better understand how individual differences in sensitivity to enrichment affect individuals’ interactions with and the resulting consequences of the rearing environment. PMID:28341610
The Role of L2 Learner Goal Differences in Task-Generated Oral Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ben Maad, Mohamed Ridha

2016-01-01

In light of the growing interest in the cognitive approach to task in second language (L2) research, comparatively little has been done to examine such effect over time and the role of individual differences (IDs). The present study was designed to verify some longitudinal evidence for the role of tasks in L2 production and whether IDs, in the…
Individual differences in the calibration of trust in automation.

PubMed

Pop, Vlad L; Shrewsbury, Alex; Durso, Francis T

2015-06-01

The objective was to determine whether operators with an expectancy that automation is trustworthy are better at calibrating their trust to changes in the capabilities of automation, and if so, why. Studies suggest that individual differences in automation expectancy may be able to account for why changes in the capabilities of automation lead to a substantial change in trust for some, yet only a small change for others. In a baggage screening task, 225 participants searched for weapons in 200 X-ray images of luggage. Participants were assisted by an automated decision aid exhibiting different levels of reliability. Measures of expectancy that automation is trustworthy were used in conjunction with subjective measures of trust and perceived reliability to identify individual differences in trust calibration. Operators with high expectancy that automation is trustworthy were more sensitive to changes (both increases and decreases) in automation reliability. This difference was eliminated by manipulating the causal attribution of automation errors. Attributing the cause of automation errors to factors external to the automation fosters an understanding of tasks and situations in which automation differs in reliability and may lead to more appropriate trust. The development of interventions can lead to calibrated trust in automation. © 2014, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
A Characterization of Individual Differences in Prospective Memory Monitoring Using the Complex Ongoing Serial Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Savine, Adam C.; McDaniel, Mark A.; Shelton, Jill Talley; Scullin, Michael K.

2012-01-01

Prospective memory--remembering to retrieve and execute future goals--is essential to daily life. Prospective remembering is often achieved through effortful monitoring; however, potential individual differences in monitoring patterns have not been characterized. We propose 3 candidate models to characterize the individual differences present in…
Time-on-task decrement in vigilance is modulated by inter-individual vulnerability to homeostatic sleep pressure manipulation

PubMed Central

Maire, Micheline; Reichert, Carolin F.; Gabel, Virginie; Viola, Antoine U.; Krebs, Julia; Strobel, Werner; Landolt, Hans-Peter; Bachmann, Valérie; Cajochen, Christian; Schmidt, Christina

2014-01-01

Under sleep loss, vigilance is reduced and attentional failures emerge progressively. It becomes difficult to maintain stable performance over time, leading to growing performance variability (i.e., state instability) in an individual and among subjects. Task duration plays a major role in the maintenance of stable vigilance levels, such that the longer the task, the more likely state instability will be observed. Vulnerability to sleep-loss-dependent performance decrements is highly individual and is also modulated by a polymorphism in the human clock gene PERIOD3 (PER3). By combining two different protocols, we manipulated sleep-wake history by once extending wakefulness for 40 h (high sleep pressure condition) and once by imposing a short sleep-wake cycle by alternating 160 min of wakefulness and 80 min naps (low sleep pressure condition) in a within-subject design. We observed that homozygous carriers of the long repeat allele of PER3 (PER35/5) experienced a greater time-on-task dependent performance decrement (i.e., a steeper increase in the number of lapses) in the Psychomotor Vigilance Task compared to the carriers of the short repeat allele (PER34/4). These genotype-dependent effects disappeared under low sleep pressure conditions, and neither motivation, nor perceived effort accounted for these differences. Our data thus suggest that greater sleep-loss related attentional vulnerability based on the PER3 polymorphism is mirrored by a greater state instability under extended wakefulness in the short compared to the long allele carriers. Our results undermine the importance of time-on-task related aspects when investigating inter-individual differences in sleep loss-induced behavioral vulnerability. PMID:24639634
Individual differences in emotion word processing: A diffusion model analysis.

PubMed

Mueller, Christina J; Kuchinke, Lars

2016-06-01

The exploratory study investigated individual differences in implicit processing of emotional words in a lexical decision task. A processing advantage for positive words was observed, and differences between happy and fear-related words in response times were predicted by individual differences in specific variables of emotion processing: Whereas more pronounced goal-directed behavior was related to a specific slowdown in processing of fear-related words, the rate of spontaneous eye blinks (indexing brain dopamine levels) was associated with a processing advantage of happy words. Estimating diffusion model parameters revealed that the drift rate (rate of information accumulation) captures unique variance of processing differences between happy and fear-related words, with highest drift rates observed for happy words. Overall emotion recognition ability predicted individual differences in drift rates between happy and fear-related words. The findings emphasize that a significant amount of variance in emotion processing is explained by individual differences in behavioral data.
Conceptual Analysis and Implications of Students' Individual Differences to Curriculum Implementation in Technical Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Akpan, Godwin A.; Essien, Emmanuel O.; Okure, Okure S.

2013-01-01

Individual differences refer to the unique ways each human being differs from another human being as expressed in behaviour or perceived in the physical appearance. Three factors of individual differences identified to be closely related to learning/acquisition of skills and performance of tasks. These are personality dimensions, self-efficacy and…
Kinematic Differences During Single-Leg Step-Down Between Individuals With Femoroacetabular Impingement Syndrome and Individuals Without Hip Pain.

PubMed

Lewis, Cara L; Loverro, Kari L; Khuu, Anne

2018-04-01

Study Design Controlled laboratory study, case-control design. Background Despite recognition that femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAIS) is a movement-related disorder, few studies have examined dynamic unilateral tasks in individuals with FAIS. Objectives To determine whether movements of the pelvis and lower extremities in individuals with FAIS differ from those in individuals without hip pain during a single-leg step-down, and to analyze kinematic differences between male and female participants within groups. Methods Individuals with FAIS and individuals without hip pain performed a single-leg step-down while kinematic data were collected. Kinematics were evaluated at 60° of knee flexion. A linear regression analysis assessed the main effects of group, sex, and side, and the interaction of sex by group. Results Twenty individuals with FAIS and 40 individuals without hip pain participated. Individuals with FAIS performed the step-down with greater hip flexion (4.9°; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.5°, 9.2°) and anterior pelvic tilt (4.1°; 95% CI: 0.9°, 7.3°) than individuals without hip pain. Across groups, female participants performed the task with more hip flexion (6.1°; 95% CI: 1.7°, 10.4°), hip adduction (4.8°; 95% CI: 2.2°, 7.4°), anterior pelvic tilt (5.8°; 95% CI: 2.6°, 9.0°), pelvic drop (1.4°; 95% CI: 0.3°, 2.5°), and thigh adduction (2.7°; 95% CI: 1.3°, 4.2°) than male participants. Conclusion The results of this study suggest that individuals with FAIS have alterations in pelvic motion during a dynamic unilateral task. The noted altered movement patterns in the FAIS group may contribute to the development of hip pain and may be due to impairments that are modifiable through rehabilitation. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2018;48(4):270-279. Epub 6 Mar 2018. doi:10.2519/jospt.2018.7794.
Adult age differences in task switching.

PubMed

Kray, J; Lindenberger, U

2000-03-01

Age differences in 2 components of task-set switching speed were investigated in 118 adults aged 20 to 80 years using task-set homogeneous (e.g., AAAA ...) and task-set heterogeneous (e.g., AABBAABB ... ) blocks. General switch costs were defined as latency differences between heterogeneous and homogeneous blocks. whereas specific switch costs were defined as differences between switch and nonswitch trials within heterogeneous blocks. Both types of costs generalized over verbal, figural, and numeric stimulus materials; were more highly correlated to fluid than to crystallized abilities; and were not eliminated after 6 sessions of practice, indicating that they reflect basic and domain-general aspects of cognitive control. Most important, age-associated increments in costs were significantly greater for general than for specific switch costs, suggesting that the ability to efficiently maintain and coordinate 2 alternating task sets in working memory instead of 1 is more negatively affected by advancing age than the ability to execute the task switch itself.
Limited evidence of individual differences in holistic processing in different versions of the part-whole paradigm.

PubMed

Sunday, Mackenzie A; Richler, Jennifer J; Gauthier, Isabel

2017-07-01

The part-whole paradigm was one of the first measures of holistic processing and it has been used to address several topics in face recognition, including its development, other-race effects, and more recently, whether holistic processing is correlated with face recognition ability. However the task was not designed to measure individual differences and it has produced measurements with low reliability. We created a new holistic processing test designed to measure individual differences based on the part-whole paradigm, the Vanderbilt Part Whole Test (VPWT). Measurements in the part and whole conditions were reliable, but, surprisingly, there was no evidence for reliable individual differences in the part-whole index (how well a person can take advantage of a face part presented within a whole face context compared to the part presented without a whole face) because part and whole conditions were strongly correlated. The same result was obtained in a version of the original part-whole task that was modified to increase its reliability. Controlling for object recognition ability, we found that variance in the whole condition does not predict any additional variance in face recognition over what is already predicted by performance in the part condition.

Moral dilemmas film task: A study of spontaneous narratives by individuals with autism spectrum conditions.

PubMed

Barnes, Jennifer L; Lombardo, Michael V; Wheelwright, Sally; Baron-Cohen, Simon

2009-06-01

People with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have difficulties with mentalizing, empathy, and narrative comprehension. A new test of social and narrative cognition, the Moral Dilemmas Film Task, was developed to probe individuals' spontaneous understanding of naturalistic film scenes. Twenty-eight individuals with ASC and 28 neurotypical controls, matched for age, sex, and IQ, watched four short emotionally charged film clips each depicting a moral dilemma, and were asked to write about what they had seen. Individuals with ASC produced significantly shorter film-based narratives and showed a smaller bias for mental states over objects in their narratives than controls. A significant correlation was found between verbal IQ and the level of mentalizing in film narratives for the ASC group, but not the control group, while the reverse pattern was found with a measure of self-reported cognitive and affective empathy. These results suggest that to the extent that both groups succeed in viewing moral dilemmas in terms of mental content, they do so in different ways, with individuals with ASC using verbal scaffolding to increase their ability to draw meaning from social scenes. The well-established empathy deficit in ASC extends to spontaneous interpretation of moral dilemmas. This new film task has the potential to assay different aspects of how the social world is represented differently in ASC, including during moral comprehension.
Individual differences and subjective workload assessment - Comparing pilots to nonpilots

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Vidulich, Michael A.; Pandit, Parimal

1987-01-01

Results by two groups of subjects, pilots and nonpilots, for two subjective workload assessment techniques (the SWAT and NASA-TLX tests) intended to evaluate individual differences in the perception and reporting of subjective workload are compared with results obtained for several traditional personality tests. The personality tests were found to discriminate between the groups while the workload tests did not. It is concluded that although the workload tests may provide useful information with respect to the interaction between tasks and personality, they are not effective as pure tests of individual differences.
Neuroimaging self-esteem: a fMRI study of individual differences in women

PubMed Central

Lundberg, Erica; Brimson-Théberge, Melanie; Théberge, Jean

2013-01-01

Although neuroimaging studies strongly implicate the medial prefrontal cortex (ventral and dorsal), cingulate gyrus (anterior and posterior), precuneus and temporoparietal cortex in mediating self-referential processing (SRP), little is known about the neural bases mediating individual differences in valenced SRP, that is, processes intrinsic to self-esteem. This study investigated the neural correlates of experimentally engendered valenced SRP via the Visual–Verbal Self-Other Referential Processing Task in 20 women with fMRI. Participants viewed pictures of themselves or unknown other women during separate trials while covertly rehearsing ‘I am’ or ‘She is’, followed by reading valenced trait adjectives, thus variably associating the self/other with positivity/negativity. Response within dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex and left temporoparietal cortex varied with individual differences in both pre-task rated self-descriptiveness of the words, as well as task-induced affective responses. Results are discussed as they relate to a social cognitive and affective neuroscience view of self-esteem. PMID:22403154
Age-related differences in tongue-palate pressures for strength and swallowing tasks.

PubMed

Fei, Tiffany; Polacco, Rebecca Cliffe; Hori, Sarah E; Molfenter, Sonja M; Peladeau-Pigeon, Melanie; Tsang, Clemence; Steele, Catriona M

2013-12-01

The tongue plays a key role in the generation of pressures for transporting liquids and foods through the mouth in swallowing. Recent studies suggest that there is an age-related decline in tongue strength in healthy adults. However, whether age-related changes occur in tongue pressures generated for the purpose of swallowing remains unclear. Prior literature in this regard does not clearly explore the influence of task on apparent age-related differences in tongue pressure amplitudes. Furthermore, differences attributable to variations across individuals in strength, independent of age, have not clearly been elucidated. In this study, our goal was to clarify whether older adults have reduced tongue-palate pressures during maximum isometric, saliva swallowing, and water swallowing tasks, while controlling for individual variations in strength. Data were collected from 40 healthy younger adults (under age 40) and 38 healthy mature adults (over age 60). As a group, the mature participants had significantly lower maximum isometric pressures (MIPs). Swallowing pressures differed significantly by task, with higher pressures seen in saliva swallows than in water swallows. Age-group differences were not seen in swallowing pressures. Consideration of MIP as a covariate in the analysis of swallowing pressures revealed significant correlations between strength and swallowing pressures in the older participant group. Age-group differences were evident only when strength was considered in the model, suggesting that apparent age-related differences are, in fact, explained by differences in strength, which tends to be lower in healthy older adults. Our results show no evidence of independent differences in swallowing pressures attributable to age.
Is the fluency of language outputs related to individual differences in intelligence and executive function?

PubMed

Engelhardt, Paul E; Nigg, Joel T; Ferreira, Fernanda

2013-10-01

There has been little research on the fluency of language production and individual difference variables, such as intelligence and executive function. In this study, we report data from 106 participants who completed a battery of standardized cognitive tasks and a sentence production task. For the sentence production task, participants were presented with two objects and a verb and their task was to formulate a sentence. Four types of disfluency were examined: filled pauses (e.g. uh, um), unfilled pauses, repetitions, and repairs. Repetitions occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then repeats the previous word/phrase, and repairs occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then starts over with a different word/phrase. Hierarchical structural equation modeling revealed a significant relationship between repair disfluencies and inhibition. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their role in models and theories of language production. © 2013.
Is the fluency of language outputs related to individual differences in intelligence and executive function?

PubMed Central

Engelhardt, Paul E.; Nigg, Joel T.; Ferreira, Fernanda

2013-01-01

There has been little research on the fluency of language production and individual differences variables, such as intelligence and executive function. In this study, we report data from 106 participants who completed a battery of standardized cognitive tasks and a sentence production task. For the sentence production task, participants were presented with two objects and a verb and their task was to formulate a sentence. Four types of disfluency were examined: filled pauses (e.g. uh, um), unfilled pauses, repetitions, and repairs. Repetitions occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then repeats the previous word/phrase, and repairs occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then starts over with a different word/phrase. Hierarchical structural equation modeling revealed a significant relationship between repair disfluencies and inhibition. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their role in models and theories of language production. PMID:24018099
Individual differences in first- and second-order temporal judgment.

PubMed

Corcoran, Andrew W; Groot, Christopher; Bruno, Aurelio; Johnston, Alan; Cropper, Simon J

2018-01-01

The ability of subjects to identify and reproduce brief temporal intervals is influenced by many factors whether they be stimulus-based, task-based or subject-based. The current study examines the role individual differences play in subsecond and suprasecond timing judgments, using the schizoptypy personality scale as a test-case approach for quantifying a broad range of individual differences. In two experiments, 129 (Experiment 1) and 141 (Experiment 2) subjects completed the O-LIFE personality questionnaire prior to performing a modified temporal-bisection task. In the bisection task, subjects responded to two identical instantiations of a luminance grating presented in a 4deg window, 4deg above fixation for 1.5 s (Experiment 1) or 3 s (Experiment 2). Subjects initiated presentation with a button-press, and released the button when they considered the stimulus to be half-way through (750/1500 ms). Subjects were then asked to indicate their 'most accurate estimate' of the two intervals. In this way we measure both performance on the task (a first-order measure) and the subjects' knowledge of their performance (a second-order measure). In Experiment 1 the effect of grating-drift and feedback on performance was also examined. Experiment 2 focused on the static/no-feedback condition. For the group data, Experiment 1 showed a significant effect of presentation order in the baseline condition (no feedback), which disappeared when feedback was provided. Moving the stimulus had no effect on perceived duration. Experiment 2 showed no effect of stimulus presentation order. This elimination of the subsecond order-effect was at the expense of accuracy, as the mid-point of the suprasecond interval was generally underestimated. Response precision increased as a proportion of total duration, reducing the variance below that predicted by Weber's law. This result is consistent with a breakdown of the scalar properties of time perception in the early suprasecond range. All
Effects of Individual Differences in Working Memory on Plan Presentational Choices

PubMed Central

Tintarev, Nava; Masthoff, Judith

2016-01-01

This paper addresses research questions that are central to the area of visualization interfaces for decision support: (RQ1) whether individual user differences in working memory should be considered when choosing how to present visualizations; (RQ2) how to present the visualization to support effective decision making and processing; and (RQ3) how to evaluate the effectiveness of presentational choices. These questions are addressed in the context of presenting plans, or sequences of actions, to users. The experiments are conducted in several domains, and the findings are relevant to applications such as semi-autonomous systems in logistics. That is, scenarios that require the attention of humans who are likely to be interrupted, and require good performance but are not time critical. Following a literature review of different types of individual differences in users that have been found to affect the effectiveness of presentational choices, we consider specifically the influence of individuals' working memory (RQ1). The review also considers metrics used to evaluate presentational choices, and types of presentational choices considered. As for presentational choices (RQ2), we consider a number of variants including interactivity, aggregation, layout, and emphasis. Finally, to evaluate the effectiveness of plan presentational choices (RQ3) we adopt a layered-evaluation approach and measure performance in a dual task paradigm, involving both task interleaving and evaluation of situational awareness. This novel methodology for evaluating visualizations is employed in a series of experiments investigating presentational choices for a plan. A key finding is that emphasizing steps (by highlighting borders) can improve effectiveness on a primary task, but only when controlling for individual variation in working memory. PMID:27899905
Effects of Individual Differences in Working Memory on Plan Presentational Choices.

PubMed

Tintarev, Nava; Masthoff, Judith

2016-01-01

This paper addresses research questions that are central to the area of visualization interfaces for decision support: (RQ1) whether individual user differences in working memory should be considered when choosing how to present visualizations; (RQ2) how to present the visualization to support effective decision making and processing; and (RQ3) how to evaluate the effectiveness of presentational choices. These questions are addressed in the context of presenting plans, or sequences of actions, to users. The experiments are conducted in several domains, and the findings are relevant to applications such as semi-autonomous systems in logistics. That is, scenarios that require the attention of humans who are likely to be interrupted, and require good performance but are not time critical. Following a literature review of different types of individual differences in users that have been found to affect the effectiveness of presentational choices, we consider specifically the influence of individuals' working memory (RQ1). The review also considers metrics used to evaluate presentational choices, and types of presentational choices considered. As for presentational choices (RQ2), we consider a number of variants including interactivity, aggregation, layout, and emphasis. Finally, to evaluate the effectiveness of plan presentational choices (RQ3) we adopt a layered-evaluation approach and measure performance in a dual task paradigm, involving both task interleaving and evaluation of situational awareness. This novel methodology for evaluating visualizations is employed in a series of experiments investigating presentational choices for a plan. A key finding is that emphasizing steps (by highlighting borders) can improve effectiveness on a primary task, but only when controlling for individual variation in working memory.
Individual differences in working memory capacity and search efficiency.

PubMed

Miller, Ashley L; Unsworth, Nash

2018-05-29

In two experiments, we examined how various learning conditions impact the relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and memory search abilities. Experiment 1 employed a delayed free recall task with semantically related words to induce the buildup of proactive interference (PI) and revealed that the buildup of PI differentially impacted recall accuracy and recall latency for low-WMC and high-WMC individuals. Namely, the buildup of PI impaired recall accuracy and slowed recall latency for low-WMC individuals to a greater extent than what was observed for high-WMC individuals. To provide a circumstance in which previously learned information remains relevant over the course of learning, Experiment 2 required participants to complete a multitrial delayed free recall task with unrelated words. Results revealed that with increased practice with the same word list, WMC-related differences were eventually eliminated in interresponse times (IRTs) and recall accuracy, but not recall latency. Thus, despite still accumulating larger search sets, low-WMC individuals searched LTM as efficiently as high-WMC individuals. Collectively, these results are consistent with the notion that under normal free recall conditions, low-WMC individuals search LTM less efficiently than do high-WMC individuals because of their reliance on noisy temporal-contextual cues at retrieval. However, it appears that under conditions in which previously learned items remain relevant at recall, this tendency to rely on vague self-generated retrieval cues can actually facilitate the ability to accurately and quickly recall information.
Influence of Procedural Learning on Iowa Gambling Task Performance Among HIV+ Individuals with History of Substance Dependence

PubMed Central

Gonzalez, Raul; Wardle, Margaret; Jacobus, Joanna; Vassileva, Jasmin; Martin-Thormeyer, Eileen M.

2010-01-01

HIV+ individuals have been shown to demonstrate deficits on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a complex measure of “decision-making.” Little remains known about what other neurocognitive processes may account for variability in IGT performance among HIV+ samples or the role of procedural learning (PL) in IGT performance. A sample of 49 HIV+ individuals with a history of substance use disorders was examined to explore the relationship between IGT performance and three measures of PL: The Rotary Pursuit, Mirror Star Tracing, and Weather Prediction tasks. We found no statistically significant relationships between IGT performance and any of the PL tasks, despite finding significant correlations among the PL tasks. This pattern of results persisted when analyzing IGT performance in various ways (e.g., performance on earlier trial blocks or impairment classifications). Although other nondeclarative processes (e.g., somatic markers) may be important for IGT performance, these findings do not support PL as an important component neurocognitive process for the IGT. Similarly, these results suggest that differences in PL performance does not account for the decision-making deficits or variability in performances observed on the IGT among HIV+ individuals with a history of substance dependence. PMID:19939850
Sex and boldness explain individual differences in spatial learning in a lizard.

PubMed

Carazo, Pau; Noble, Daniel W A; Chandrasoma, Dani; Whiting, Martin J

2014-05-07

Understanding individual differences in cognitive performance is a major challenge to animal behaviour and cognition studies. We used the Eastern water skink (Eulamprus quoyii) to examine associations between exploration, boldness and individual variability in spatial learning, a dimension of lizard cognition with important bearing on fitness. We show that males perform better than females in a biologically relevant spatial learning task. This is the first evidence for sex differences in learning in a reptile, and we argue that it is probably owing to sex-specific selective pressures that may be widespread in lizards. Across the sexes, we found a clear association between boldness after a simulated predatory attack and the probability of learning the spatial task. In contrast to previous studies, we found a nonlinear association between boldness and learning: both 'bold' and 'shy' behavioural types were more successful learners than intermediate males. Our results do not fit with recent predictions suggesting that individual differences in learning may be linked with behavioural types via high-low-risk/reward trade-offs. We suggest the possibility that differences in spatial cognitive performance may arise in lizards as a consequence of the distinct environmental variability and complexity experienced by individuals as a result of their sex and social tactics.
Developmental and individual differences in pure numerical estimation.

PubMed

Booth, Julie L; Siegler, Robert S

2006-01-01

The authors examined developmental and individual differences in pure numerical estimation, the type of estimation that depends solely on knowledge of numbers. Children between kindergarten and 4th grade were asked to solve 4 types of numerical estimation problems: computational, numerosity, measurement, and number line. In Experiment 1, kindergartners and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders were presented problems involving the numbers 0-100; in Experiment 2, 2nd and 4th graders were presented problems involving the numbers 0-1,000. Parallel developmental trends, involving increasing reliance on linear representations of numbers and decreasing reliance on logarithmic ones, emerged across different types of estimation. Consistent individual differences across tasks were also apparent, and all types of estimation skill were positively related to math achievement test scores. Implications for understanding of mathematics learning in general are discussed. Copyright 2006 APA, all rights reserved.
The Multifold Relationship Between Memory and Decision Making: An Individual-differences Study

PubMed Central

Del Missier, Fabio; Mäntylä, Timo; Hansson, Patrik; Bruine de Bruin, Wändi; Parker, Andrew M.; Nilsson, Lars-Göran

2014-01-01

Several judgment and decision-making tasks are assumed to involve memory functions, but significant knowledge gaps on the memory processes underlying these tasks remain. In a study on 568 adults between 25 to 80 years, hypotheses were tested on the specific relationships between individual differences in working memory, episodic memory, and semantic memory, respectively, and six main components of decision-making competence. In line with the hypotheses, working memory was positively related with the more cognitively-demanding tasks (Resistance to Framing, Applying Decision Rules, and Under/Overconfidence), whereas episodic memory was positively associated with a more experience-based judgment task (Recognizing Social Norms). Furthermore, semantic memory was positively related with two more knowledge-based decision-making tasks (Consistency in Risk Perception and Resistance to Sunk Costs). Finally, the age-related decline observed in some of the decision-making tasks was (partially or totally) mediated by the age-related decline in working memory or episodic memory. These findings are discussed in relation to the functional roles fulfilled by different memory processes in judgment and decision-making tasks. PMID:23565790
Individual differences in the benefits of feedback for learning.

PubMed

Kelley, Christopher M; McLaughlin, Anne Collins

2012-02-01

Research on learning from feedback has produced ambiguous guidelines for feedback design--some have advocated minimal feedback, whereas others have recommended more extensive feedback that highly supported performance. The objective of the current study was to investigate how individual differences in cognitive resources may predict feedback requirements and resolve previous conflicted findings. Cognitive resources were controlled for by comparing samples from populations with known differences, older and younger adults.To control for task demands, a simple rule-based learning task was created in which participants learned to identify fake Windows pop-ups. Pop-ups were divided into two categories--those that required fluid ability to identify and those that could be identified using crystallized intelligence. In general, results showed participants given higher feedback learned more. However, when analyzed by type of task demand, younger adults performed comparably with both levels of feedback for both cues whereas older adults benefited from increased feedbackfor fluid ability cues but from decreased feedback for crystallized ability cues. One explanation for the current findings is feedback requirements are connected to the cognitive abilities of the learner-those with higher abilities for the type of demands imposed by the task are likely to benefit from reduced feedback. We suggest the following considerations for feedback design: Incorporate learner characteristics and task demands when designing learning support via feedback.
Individual differences in perceiving and recognizing faces-One element of social cognition.

PubMed

Wilhelm, Oliver; Herzmann, Grit; Kunina, Olga; Danthiir, Vanessa; Schacht, Annekathrin; Sommer, Werner

2010-09-01

Recognizing faces swiftly and accurately is of paramount importance to humans as a social species. Individual differences in the ability to perform these tasks may therefore reflect important aspects of social or emotional intelligence. Although functional models of face cognition based on group and single case studies postulate multiple component processes, little is known about the ability structure underlying individual differences in face cognition. In 2 large individual differences experiments (N = 151 and N = 209), a broad variety of face-cognition tasks were tested and the component abilities of face cognition-face perception, face memory, and the speed of face cognition-were identified and then replicated. Experiment 2 also showed that the 3 face-cognition abilities are clearly distinct from immediate and delayed memory, mental speed, general cognitive ability, and object cognition. These results converge with functional and neuroanatomical models of face cognition by demonstrating the difference between face perception and face memory. The results also underline the importance of distinguishing between speed and accuracy of face cognition. Together our results provide a first step toward establishing face-processing abilities as an independent ability reflecting elements of social intelligence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
Working Memory Delay Activity Predicts Individual Differences in Cognitive Abilities

PubMed Central

Unsworth, Nash; Fukuda, Keisuke; Awh, Edward; Vogel, Edward K.

2015-01-01

A great deal of prior research has examined the relation between estimates of working memory and cognitive abilities. Yet, the neural mechanisms that account for these relations are still not very well understood. The current study explored whether individual differences in working memory delay activity would be a significant predictor of cognitive abilities. A large number of participants performed multiple measures of capacity, attention control, long-term memory, working memory span, and fluid intelligence, and latent variable analyses were used to examine the data. During two working memory change detection tasks, we acquired EEG data and examined the contra-lateral delay activity. The results demonstrated that the contralateral delay activity was significantly related to cognitive abilities, and importantly these relations were because of individual differences in both capacity and attention control. These results suggest that individual differences in working memory delay activity predict individual differences in a broad range of cognitive abilities, and this is because of both differences in the number of items that can be maintained and the ability to control access to working memory. PMID:25436671
Working memory delay activity predicts individual differences in cognitive abilities.

PubMed

Unsworth, Nash; Fukuda, Keisuke; Awh, Edward; Vogel, Edward K

2015-05-01

A great deal of prior research has examined the relation between estimates of working memory and cognitive abilities. Yet, the neural mechanisms that account for these relations are still not very well understood. The current study explored whether individual differences in working memory delay activity would be a significant predictor of cognitive abilities. A large number of participants performed multiple measures of capacity, attention control, long-term memory, working memory span, and fluid intelligence, and latent variable analyses were used to examine the data. During two working memory change detection tasks, we acquired EEG data and examined the contralateral delay activity. The results demonstrated that the contralateral delay activity was significantly related to cognitive abilities, and importantly these relations were because of individual differences in both capacity and attention control. These results suggest that individual differences in working memory delay activity predict individual differences in a broad range of cognitive abilities, and this is because of both differences in the number of items that can be maintained and the ability to control access to working memory.
Individual Differences in the Flexibility of Peripersonal Space.

PubMed

Hunley, Samuel B; Marker, Arwen M; Lourenco, Stella F

2017-01-01

The current study investigated individual differences in the flexibility of peripersonal space (i.e., representational space near the body), specifically in relation to trait claustrophobic fear (i.e., fear of suffocating or being physically restricted). Participants completed a line bisection task with either a laser pointer (Laser condition), allowing for a baseline measure of the size of one's peripersonal space, or a stick (Stick condition), which produces expansion of one's peripersonal space. Our results revealed that individuals high in claustrophobic fear had larger peripersonal spaces than those lower in claustrophobic fear, replicating previous research. We also found that, whereas individuals low in claustrophobic fear demonstrated the expected expansion of peripersonal space in the Stick condition, individuals high in claustrophobic fear showed less expansion, suggesting decreased flexibility. We discuss these findings in relation to the defensive function of peripersonal space and reduced attentional flexibility associated with trait anxieties.
Examining the Domain-Specificity of Metacognition Using Academic Domains and Task-Specific Individual Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scott, Brianna M.; Berman, Ashleigh F.

2013-01-01

Metacognition refers to students' knowledge and regulation of cognition, as well as their accuracy in predicting their academic performance. This study addressed two major questions: 1) how do metacognitive knowledge, regulation and accuracy differ across domains?, and 2) how do students' individual differences relate to their reported…

Inter-individual Differences in Exercise-Induced Spatial Working Memory Improvement: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.

PubMed

Yamazaki, Yudai; Sato, Daisuke; Yamashiro, Koya; Tsubaki, Atsuhiro; Yamaguchi, Yui; Takehara, Nana; Maruyama, Atsuo

2017-01-01

Acute aerobic exercise at a mild intensity improves cognitive function. However, the response to exercise exhibits inter-individual differences, and the mechanisms underlying these differences remain unclear. The objective of this study was to determine potential factors in the brain that underlie differential responses to exercise in terms of cognitive improvement using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Fourteen healthy subjects participated in these experiments. Participants performed a low intensity cycling exercise at 30% maximal oxygen uptake (VO 2peak ) for 10 min and performed a spatial memory task before and after exercising (5 and 30 min). The spatial memory task comprised two levels of difficulty (low: 1-dot EXERCISE, high: 3-dot EXERCISE). Cortical oxy-hemoglobin (O 2 Hb) levels were recorded using near-infrared spectroscopy during both the exercise and the spatial memory task phases. Regions of interests included the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), and frontopolar area (FPA). The participants were divided into two groups depending on whether they were responders (improved task reaction time) or non-responders (no improvement). Subsequently, we analyzed the group characteristics and differences in the change in O 2 Hb levels during exercise and spatial working memory tasks. Acute mild exercise significantly improved mean reaction times in the 1-dot memory task but not in the 3-dot task across the participants. In the 1-dot EXERCISE, 10 subjects were responders and four subjects were non-responders, whereas in the 3-dot EXERCISE, seven subjects were non-responders. In responders, during exercise, we found higher O 2 Hb levels in the right VLPFC response for the 1-dot memory task. Acute mild exercise caused inter-individual differences in spatial memory improvement, which were associated with changes in O 2 Hb activity in the prefrontal area during the exercise phase but not during the actual spatial
Individual Differences in Working-Memory Capacity and Task Resumption Following Interruptions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foroughi, Cyrus K.; Werner, Nicole E.; McKendrick, Ryan; Cades, David M.; Boehm-Davis, Deborah A.

2016-01-01

Previous research has shown that there is a time cost (i.e., a resumption lag) associated with resuming a task following an interruption and that the longer the duration of the interruption, the greater the time cost (i.e., resumption lag increases as interruption duration increases). The memory-for-goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002)…
Reaction time and accuracy in individuals with aphasia during auditory vigilance tasks.

PubMed

Laures, Jacqueline S

2005-11-01

Research indicates that attentional deficits exist in aphasic individuals. However, relatively little is known about auditory vigilance performance in individuals with aphasia. The current study explores reaction time (RT) and accuracy in 10 aphasic participants and 10 nonbrain-damaged controls during linguistic and nonlinguistic auditory vigilance tasks. Findings indicate that the aphasic group was less accurate during both tasks than the control group, but was not slower in their accurate responses. Further examination of the data revealed variability in the aphasic participants' RT contributing to the lower accuracy scores.
Age-Related Differences of Individuals' Arithmetic Strategy Utilization with Different Level of Math Anxiety.

PubMed

Si, Jiwei; Li, Hongxia; Sun, Yan; Xu, Yanli; Sun, Yu

2016-01-01

The present study used the choice/no-choice method to investigate the effect of math anxiety on the strategy used in computational estimation and mental arithmetic tasks and to examine age-related differences in this regard. Fifty-seven fourth graders, 56 sixth graders, and 60 adults were randomly selected to participate in the experiment. Results showed the following: (1) High-anxious individuals were more likely to use a rounding-down strategy in the computational estimation task under the best-choice condition. Additionally, sixth-grade students and adults performed faster than fourth-grade students on the strategy execution parameter. Math anxiety affected response times (RTs) and the accuracy with which strategies were executed. (2) The execution of the partial-decomposition strategy was superior to that of the full-decomposition strategy on the mental arithmetic task. Low-math-anxious persons provided more accurate answers than did high-math-anxious participants under the no-choice condition. This difference was significant for sixth graders. With regard to the strategy selection parameter, the RTs for strategy selection varied with age.
Real time relationship between individual finger force and grip exertion on distal phalanges in linear force following tasks.

PubMed

Luo, Shi-Jian; Shu, Ge; Gong, Yan

2018-05-01

Individual finger force (FF) in a grip task is a vital concern in rehabilitation engineering and precise control of manipulators because disorders in any of the fingers will affect the stability or accuracy of the grip force (GF). To understand the functions of each finger in a dynamic grip exertion task, a GF following experiment with four individual fingers without thumb was designed. This study obtained four individual FFs from the distal phalanges with a cylindrical handle in dynamic GF following tasks. Ten healthy male subjects with similar hand sizes participated in the four-finger linear GF following tasks at different submaximal voluntary contraction (SMVC) levels. The total GF, individual FF, finger force contribution, and following error were subsequently calculated and analyzed. The statistics indicated the following: 1) the accuracy and stability of GF at low %MVC were significantly higher than those at high SMVC; 2) at low SMVC, the ability of the fingers to increase the GF was better than the ability to reduce it, but it was contrary at high SMVC; 3) when the target wave (TW) was changing, all four fingers strongly participated in the force exertion, but the participation of the little finger decreased significantly when TW remained stable; 4) the index finger and ring finger had a complementary relationship and played a vital role in the adjustment and control of GF. The middle finger and little finger had a minor influence on the force control and adjustment. In conclusion, each of the fingers had different functions in a GF following task. These findings can be used in the assessment of finger injury rehabilitation and for algorithms of precise control. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Exploring individual differences in children's mathematical skills: a correlational and dimensional approach.

PubMed

Sigmundsson, H; Polman, R C J; Lorås, H

2013-08-01

Individual differences in mathematical skills are typically explained by an innate capability to solve mathematical tasks. At the behavioural level this implies a consistent level of mathematical achievement that can be captured by strong relationships between tasks, as well as by a single statistical dimension that underlies performance on all mathematical tasks. To investigate this general assumption, the present study explored interrelations and dimensions of mathematical skills. For this purpose, 68 ten-year-old children from two schools were tested using nine mathematics tasks from the Basic Knowledge in Mathematics Test. Relatively low-to-moderate correlations between the mathematics tasks indicated most tasks shared less than 25% of their variance. There were four principal components, accounting for 70% of the variance in mathematical skill across tasks and participants. The high specificity in mathematical skills was discussed in relation to the principle of task specificity of learning.
Individual differences in attention strategies during detection, fine discrimination, and coarse discrimination

PubMed Central

Hecker, Elizabeth A.; Serences, John T.; Srinivasan, Ramesh

2013-01-01

Interacting with the environment requires the ability to flexibly direct attention to relevant features. We examined the degree to which individuals attend to visual features within and across Detection, Fine Discrimination, and Coarse Discrimination tasks. Electroencephalographic (EEG) responses were measured to an unattended peripheral flickering (4 or 6 Hz) grating while individuals (n = 33) attended to orientations that were offset by 0°, 10°, 20°, 30°, 40°, and 90° from the orientation of the unattended flicker. These unattended responses may be sensitive to attentional gain at the attended spatial location, since attention to features enhances early visual responses throughout the visual field. We found no significant differences in tuning curves across the three tasks in part due to individual differences in strategies. We sought to characterize individual attention strategies using hierarchical Bayesian modeling, which grouped individuals into families of curves that reflect attention to the physical target orientation (“on-channel”) or away from the target orientation (“off-channel”) or a uniform distribution of attention. The different curves were related to behavioral performance; individuals with “on-channel” curves had lower thresholds than individuals with uniform curves. Individuals with “off-channel” curves during Fine Discrimination additionally had lower thresholds than those assigned to uniform curves, highlighting the perceptual benefits of attending away from the physical target orientation during fine discriminations. Finally, we showed that a subset of individuals with optimal curves (“on-channel”) during Detection also demonstrated optimal curves (“off-channel”) during Fine Discrimination, indicating that a subset of individuals can modulate tuning optimally for detection and discrimination. PMID:23678013
Individual Differences in the Fan Effect and Working Memory Capacity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bunting, M.F.; Conway, A.R.A.; Heitz, R.P.

2004-01-01

In opposition to conceptualizing working memory (WM) in terms of a general capacity, we present four experiments that favor the view that individual differences in WM depend on attentional control. High- and low-WM participants, as assessed by the operation span task, learned unrelated sentences for which the subject and predicate of the sentences…
Individual differences in regulatory focus predict neural response to reward.

PubMed

Scult, Matthew A; Knodt, Annchen R; Hanson, Jamie L; Ryoo, Minyoung; Adcock, R Alison; Hariri, Ahmad R; Strauman, Timothy J

2017-08-01

Although goal pursuit is related to both functioning of the brain's reward circuits and psychological factors, the literatures surrounding these concepts have often been separate. Here, we use the psychological construct of regulatory focus to investigate individual differences in neural response to reward. Regulatory focus theory proposes two motivational orientations for personal goal pursuit: (1) promotion, associated with sensitivity to potential gain, and (2) prevention, associated with sensitivity to potential loss. The monetary incentive delay task was used to manipulate reward circuit function, along with instructional framing corresponding to promotion and prevention in a within-subject design. We observed that the more promotion oriented an individual was, the lower their ventral striatum response to gain cues. Follow-up analyses revealed that greater promotion orientation was associated with decreased ventral striatum response even to no-value cues, suggesting that promotion orientation may be associated with relatively hypoactive reward system function. The findings are also likely to represent an interaction between the cognitive and motivational characteristics of the promotion system with the task demands. Prevention orientation did not correlate with ventral striatum response to gain cues, supporting the discriminant validity of regulatory focus theory. The results highlight a dynamic association between individual differences in self-regulation and reward system function.
Same task, different strategies: How brain networks can be influenced by memory strategy

PubMed Central

Sanfratello, Lori; Caprihan, Arvind; Stephen, Julia M.; Knoefel, Janice E.; Adair, John C.; Qualls, Clifford; Lundy, S. Laura; Aine, Cheryl J.

2015-01-01

Previous functional neuroimaging studies demonstrated that different neural networks underlie different types of cognitive processing by engaging participants in particular tasks, such as verbal or spatial working memory (WM) tasks. However, we report here that even when a working memory task is defined as verbal or spatial, different types of memory strategies may be employed to complete it, with concomitant variations in brain activity. We developed a questionnaire to characterize the type of strategy used by individual members in a group of 28 young healthy participants (18–25 years) during a spatial WM task. A cluster analysis was performed to differentiate groups. We acquired functional magnetoencephalography (MEG) and structural diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures to characterize the brain networks associated with the use of different strategies. We found two types of strategies were utilized during the spatial WM task, a visuospatial and a verbal strategy, and brain regions and timecourses of activation differed between participants who used each. Task performance also varied by type of strategy used, with verbal strategies showing an advantage. In addition, performance on neuropsychological tests (indices from WAIS-IV, REY-D Complex Figure) correlated significantly with fractional anisotropy (FA) measures for the visuospatial strategy group in white matter tracts implicated in other WM/attention studies. We conclude that differences in memory strategy can have a pronounced effect on the locations and timing of brain activation, and that these differences need further investigation as a possible confounding factor for studies using group averaging as a means for summarizing results. PMID:24931401
Same task, different strategies: how brain networks can be influenced by memory strategy.

PubMed

Sanfratello, Lori; Caprihan, Arvind; Stephen, Julia M; Knoefel, Janice E; Adair, John C; Qualls, Clifford; Lundy, S Laura; Aine, Cheryl J

2014-10-01

Previous functional neuroimaging studies demonstrated that different neural networks underlie different types of cognitive processing by engaging participants in particular tasks, such as verbal or spatial working memory (WM) tasks. However, we report here that even when a WM task is defined as verbal or spatial, different types of memory strategies may be used to complete it, with concomitant variations in brain activity. We developed a questionnaire to characterize the type of strategy used by individual members in a group of 28 young healthy participants (18-25 years) during a spatial WM task. A cluster analysis was performed to differentiate groups. We acquired functional magnetoencephalography and structural diffusion tensor imaging measures to characterize the brain networks associated with the use of different strategies. We found two types of strategies were used during the spatial WM task, a visuospatial and a verbal strategy, and brain regions and time courses of activation differed between participants who used each. Task performance also varied by type of strategy used with verbal strategies showing an advantage. In addition, performance on neuropsychological tests (indices from Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV, Rey Complex Figure Test) correlated significantly with fractional anisotropy measures for the visuospatial strategy group in white matter tracts implicated in other WM and attention studies. We conclude that differences in memory strategy can have a pronounced effect on the locations and timing of brain activation and that these differences need further investigation as a possible confounding factor for studies using group averaging as a means for summarizing results. Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Working memory and intraindividual variability in processing speed: A lifespan developmental and individual-differences study.

PubMed

Mella, Nathalie; Fagot, Delphine; Lecerf, Thierry; de Ribaupierre, Anik

2015-04-01

Working memory (WM) and intraindividual variability (IIV) in processing speed are both hypothesized to reflect general attentional processes. In the present study, we aimed at exploring the relationship between WM capacity and IIV in reaction times (RTs) and its possible variation with development across the lifespan. Two WM tasks and six RT tasks of varying complexity were analyzed in a sample of 539 participants, consisting of five age groups: two groups of children (9-10 and 11-12 years of age), one group of young adults, and two groups of older adults (59-69 and 70-89 years of age). Two approaches were adopted. First, low-span and high-span individuals were identified, and analyses of variance were conducted comparing these two groups within each age group and for each RT task. The results consistently showed a span effect in the youngest children and oldest adults: High-span individuals were significantly faster and less variable than low-span individuals. In contrast, in young adults no difference was observed between high- and low-span individuals, whether in terms of their means or IIV. Second, multivariate analyses were conducted on the entire set of tasks, to determine whether IIV in RTs brought different information than the mean RT. The results showed that, although very strongly correlated, the mean and IIV in speed should be kept separate in terms of how they account for individual differences in WM. Overall, our results support the assumption of a link between WM capacity and IIV in RT, more strongly so in childhood and older adulthood.
Understanding balance differences in individuals with multiple sclerosis with mild disability: an investigation of differences in sensory feedback on postural control during a Romberg task.

PubMed

Denommé, Luke T; Mandalfino, Patricia; Cinelli, Michael E

2014-06-01

A major presenting symptom in 'individuals with multiple sclerosis with mild balance disability' (IwMS) is poor postural control, resulting from slowed spinal somatosensory conduction. Postural control deficits in IwMS are most apparent when vision is removed and the base of support is reduced such is the case during tandem and single support stances. The current study used center of pressure (COP) measurements to determine whether postural control differences exist between IwMS and either 'healthy age-matched individuals' (HAMI) or 'community-dwelling older adults' (OA). Postural control was evaluated using a Romberg standing task, which required participants to stand with their feet together and hands by their sides for 45 s with either their eyes open or closed. Results revealed that COP velocity root mean square was greater in IwMS and their COP position was closer to their self-selected maximum stability limits (e.g., greater Standing Index proportion) when vision was removed compared to HAMI. Conversely, IwMS displayed similar postural control characteristics to OA. The current study highlights two novel findings: (1) the utility of novel COP measurements to assess differences in the level of postural control in IwMS; and (2) the benefit of assessing postural control levels in IwMS to not only a population with a fully intact and functional postural control system (HAMI) but also to another population that is thought to experience postural control deficits (OA).
Assessment of planning abilities in individuals with mild cognitive impairment using an open-ended problem-solving task.

PubMed

Sanders, Chad; Low, Christina; Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen

2014-01-01

There is currently limited research evaluating planning abilities, a core subcomponent of executive functioning, in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In the present study, we utilized the "Amap Task," an open-ended problem-solving task, to separately evaluate the formulation and execution components of planning ability in individuals with MCI. Thirty-seven cognitively healthy older adults and 37 individuals with MCI used a map layout of a university apartment to develop and write out a strategy (formulation stage) to successfully complete a list of tasks (e.g., retrieve and fill a water pitcher before placing it in the refrigerator). Subsequently, participants carried out the tasks in the apartment with the aid of their formulated plan (execution stage). MCI participants performed more poorly than older adult (OA) controls during both the formulation and execution stages on measures of task accuracy and task efficiency. However, both groups were able to adjust and improve task accuracy and efficiency from formulation to task execution. Finally, MCI participants took significantly longer to complete the task and adhered less to their formulated plans during task completion. Using an open-ended problem-solving task, the findings revealed that individuals with MCI experienced difficulties with both the formulation and execution components of planning. Like controls, participants with MCI were able to successfully modify their plan online, improving their performance from task formulation to task execution.
A standard set of upper extremity tasks for evaluating rehabilitation interventions for individuals with complete arm paralysis

PubMed Central

Cornwell, Andrew S.; Liao, James Y.; Bryden, Anne M.; Kirsch, Robert F.

2013-01-01

We have developed a set of upper extremity functional tasks to guide the design and test the performance of rehabilitation technologies that restore arm motion in people with high tetraplegia. Our goal was to develop a short set of tasks that would be representative of a much larger set of activities of daily living while also being feasible for a unilateral user of an implanted Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) system. To compile this list of tasks, we reviewed existing clinical outcome measures related to arm and hand function, and were further informed by surveys of patient desires. We ultimately selected a set of five tasks that captured the most common components of movement seen in these tasks, making them highly relevant for assessing FES-restored unilateral arm function in individuals with high cervical spinal cord injury (SCI). The tasks are intended to be used when setting design specifications and for evaluation and standardization of rehabilitation technologies under development. While not unique, this set of tasks will provide a common basis for comparing different interventions (e.g., FES, powered orthoses, robotic assistants) and testing different user command interfaces (e.g., sip-and-puff, head joysticks, brain-computer interfaces). PMID:22773199
The Role of Psychometrics in Individual Differences Research in Cognition: A Case Study of the AX-CPT

PubMed Central

Cooper, Shelly R.; Gonthier, Corentin; Barch, Deanna M.; Braver, Todd S.

2017-01-01

Investigating individual differences in cognition requires addressing questions not often thought about in standard experimental designs, especially regarding the psychometric properties of the task. Using the AX-CPT cognitive control task as a case study example, we address four concerns that one may encounter when researching the topic of individual differences in cognition. First, we demonstrate the importance of variability in task scores, which in turn directly impacts reliability, particularly when comparing correlations in different populations. Second, we demonstrate the importance of variability and reliability for evaluating potential failures to replicate predicted correlations, even within the same population. Third, we demonstrate how researchers can turn to evaluating psychometric properties as a way of evaluating the feasibility of utilizing the task in new settings (e.g., online administration). Lastly, we show how the examination of psychometric properties can help researchers make informed decisions when designing a study, such as determining the appropriate number of trials for a task. PMID:28928690
Adolescent risk-taking is predicted by individual differences in cognitive control over emotional, but not non-emotional, response conflict.

PubMed

Botdorf, Morgan; Rosenbaum, Gail M; Patrianakos, Jamie; Steinberg, Laurence; Chein, Jason M

2017-08-01

While much research on adolescent risk behaviour has focused on the development of prefrontal self-regulatory mechanisms, prior studies have elicited mixed evidence of a relationship between individual differences in the capacity for self-regulation and individual differences in risk taking. To explain these inconsistent findings, it has been suggested that the capacity for self-regulation may be, for most adolescents, adequately mature to produce adaptive behaviour in non-affective, "cold" circumstances, but that adolescents have a more difficult time exerting control in affective, "hot" contexts. To further explore this claim, the present study examined individual differences in self-control in the face of affective and non-affective response conflict, and examined whether differences in the functioning of cognitive control processes under these different conditions was related to risk taking. Participants completed a cognitive Stroop task, an emotional Stroop task, and a risky driving task known as the Stoplight game. Regression analyses showed that performance on the emotional Stroop task predicted laboratory risk-taking in the driving task, whereas performance on the cognitive Stroop task did not exhibit the same trend. This pattern of results is consistent with theories of adolescent risk-taking that emphasise the impacts of affective contextual influences on the ability to enact effective cognitive control.
Racial differences in knee osteoarthritis pain: potential contribution of occupational and household tasks.

PubMed

Allen, Kelli D; Chen, Jiu-Chiuan; Callahan, Leigh F; Golightly, Yvonne M; Helmick, Charles G; Renner, Jordan B; Schwartz, Todd A; Jordan, Joanne M

2012-02-01

We examined whether occupational and household tasks contributed to differences in pain between African Americans and whites with radiographic knee osteoarthritis (OA). Participants from the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project self-reported the frequency (often/always vs never/seldom/sometimes) of performing 9 occupational tasks involving lower extremity joint loading at their longest job (N = 868) and current job (N = 273), as well as 8 household tasks ever performed (N = 811) and currently being performed (N = 767). The associations of the numbers of occupational or household tasks with the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) pain subscale were first examined in simple linear regression models. If significantly associated with greater pain, each of these was included in adjusted linear regression models to examine whether the association of race with pain remained statistically significant. African Americans reported significantly greater WOMAC pain scores than whites. Exposures to more occupational tasks at the longest job and the current job were associated with greater WOMAC pain scores (p < 0.01). The association of race with greater pain scores remained statistically significant when controlling for occupational tasks at the longest job, but was reduced by 26% and no longer significant when controlling for the number of current occupational tasks. Exposures to an increasing number of household tasks were associated with lower pain scores and were not further analyzed. Current performance of physically demanding occupational tasks contributed to racial differences in pain severity among individuals with knee OA. Better workplace policies to accommodate OA-related limitations may help to reduce racial differences in pain.
Individual Differences in Temporal Selective Attention as Reflected in Pupil Dilation.

PubMed

Willems, Charlotte; Herdzin, Johannes; Martens, Sander

2015-01-01

Attention is restricted for the second of two targets when it is presented within 200-500 ms of the first target. This attentional blink (AB) phenomenon allows one to study the dynamics of temporal selective attention by varying the interval between the two targets (T1 and T2). Whereas the AB has long been considered as a robust and universal cognitive limitation, several studies have demonstrated that AB task performance greatly differs between individuals, with some individuals showing no AB whatsoever. Here, we studied these individual differences in AB task performance in relation to differences in attentional timing. Furthermore, we investigated whether AB magnitude is predictive for the amount of attention allocated to T1. For both these purposes pupil dilation was measured, and analyzed with our recently developed deconvolution method. We found that the dynamics of temporal attention in small versus large blinkers differ in a number of ways. Individuals with a relatively small AB magnitude seem better able to preserve temporal order information. In addition, they are quicker to allocate attention to both T1 and T2 than large blinkers. Although a popular explanation of the AB is that it is caused by an unnecessary overinvestment of attention allocated to T1, a more complex picture emerged from our data, suggesting that this may depend on whether one is a small or a large blinker. The use of pupil dilation deconvolution seems to be a powerful approach to study the temporal dynamics of attention, bringing us a step closer to understanding the elusive nature of the AB. We conclude that the timing of attention to targets may be more important than the amount of allocated attention in accounting for individual differences.
Modeling individual differences in working memory performance: a source activation account

PubMed Central

Daily, Larry Z.; Lovett, Marsha C.; Reder, Lynne M.

2008-01-01

Working memory resources are needed for processing and maintenance of information during cognitive tasks. Many models have been developed to capture the effects of limited working memory resources on performance. However, most of these models do not account for the finding that different individuals show different sensitivities to working memory demands, and none of the models predicts individual subjects' patterns of performance. We propose a computational model that accounts for differences in working memory capacity in terms of a quantity called source activation, which is used to maintain goal-relevant information in an available state. We apply this model to capture the working memory effects of individual subjects at a fine level of detail across two experiments. This, we argue, strengthens the interpretation of source activation as working memory capacity. PMID:19079561

HIV+ Men and Women Show Different Performance Patterns on Procedural Learning Tasks

PubMed Central

Martin, Eileen; Gonzalez, Raul; Vassileva, Jasmin; Maki, Pauline

2010-01-01

The literature suggests that nondeclarative, or nonconscious, learning might be impaired among HIV+ individuals compared with HIV− matched control groups, but these studies have included relatively few women. We administered measures of motor skill and probabilistic learning, tasks with a nondeclarative or procedural learning component that are dependent on integrity of prefrontal-striatal systems, to well-matched groups of 148 men and 65 women with a history of substance dependence that included 45 men and 30 women seropositive for HIV. All participants were abstinent at testing. Compared to HIV− women, HIV+ women performed significantly more poorly on both tasks, but HIV+ men’s performance did not differ significantly compared to HIV− men on either task. These different patterns of performance indicate that features of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) can not always be generalized from men to women. Additional studies are needed to address directly the possibility of sex differences in HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) and the possibility that women might be more vulnerable to the effects of HIV and substance dependence on some neurocognitive functions. PMID:20694870
Decomposing Self-Control: Individual Differences in Goal Pursuit Despite Interfering Aversion, Temptation, and Distraction

PubMed Central

Steimke, Rosa; Stelzel, Christine; Gaschler, Robert; Rothkirch, Marcus; Ludwig, Vera U.; Paschke, Lena M.; Trempler, Ima; Kathmann, Norbert; Goschke, Thomas; Walter, Henrik

2016-01-01

Self-control can be defined as the ability to exert control over ones impulses. Currently, most research in the area relies on self-report. Focusing on attentional control processes involved in self-control, we modified a spatial selective attentional cueing task to test three domains of self-control experimentally in one task using aversive, tempting, and neutral picture-distractors. The aims of the study were (1) to investigate individual differences in the susceptibility to aversive, tempting, and neutral distraction within one paradigm and (2) to test the association of these three self-control domains to conventional measures of self-control including self-report. The final sample consisted of 116 participants. The task required participants to identify target letters “E” or “F” presented at a cued target location while the distractors were presented. Behavioral and eyetracking data were obtained during the performance of the task. High task performance was encouraged via monetary incentives. In addition to the attentional self-control task, self-reported self-control was assessed and participants performed a color Stroop task, an unsolvable anagram task and a delay of gratification task using chocolate sweets. We found that aversion, temptation, and neutral distraction were associated with significantly increased error rates, reaction times and gaze pattern deviations. Overall task performance on our task correlated with self-reported self-control ability. Measures of aversion, temptation, and distraction showed moderate split-half reliability, but did not correlate with each other across participants. Additionally, participants who made a self-controlled decision in the delay of gratification task were less distracted by temptations in our task than participants who made an impulsive choice. Our individual differences analyses suggest that (1) the ability to endure aversion, resist temptations and ignore neutral distractions are independent of each
Exploring Possible Neural Mechanisms of Intelligence Differences Using Processing Speed and Working Memory Tasks: An fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Waiter, Gordon D.; Deary, Ian J.; Staff, Roger T.; Murray, Alison D.; Fox, Helen C.; Starr, John M.; Whalley, Lawrence J.

2009-01-01

To explore the possible neural foundations of individual differences in intelligence test scores, we examined the associations between Raven's Matrices scores and two tasks that were administered in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) setting. The two tasks were an n-back working memory (N = 37) task and inspection time (N = 47). The…
Correlated individual differences suggest a common mechanism underlying metacognition in visual perception and visual short-term memory.

PubMed

Samaha, Jason; Postle, Bradley R

2017-11-29

Adaptive behaviour depends on the ability to introspect accurately about one's own performance. Whether this metacognitive ability is supported by the same mechanisms across different tasks is unclear. We investigated the relationship between metacognition of visual perception and metacognition of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Experiments 1 and 2 required subjects to estimate the perceived or remembered orientation of a grating stimulus and rate their confidence. We observed strong positive correlations between individual differences in metacognitive accuracy between the two tasks. This relationship was not accounted for by individual differences in task performance or average confidence, and was present across two different metrics of metacognition and in both experiments. A model-based analysis of data from a third experiment showed that a cross-domain correlation only emerged when both tasks shared the same task-relevant stimulus feature. That is, metacognition for perception and VSTM were correlated when both tasks required orientation judgements, but not when the perceptual task was switched to require contrast judgements. In contrast with previous results comparing perception and long-term memory, which have largely provided evidence for domain-specific metacognitive processes, the current findings suggest that metacognition of visual perception and VSTM is supported by a domain-general metacognitive architecture, but only when both domains share the same task-relevant stimulus feature. © 2017 The Author(s).
The Relation between Individual Differences in Fantasy and Theory of Mind.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Marjorie; Carlson, Stephanie M.

1997-01-01

Examined relation between early fantasy/pretense and knowledge about mental life in 3- and 4-year olds. Found that performance on theory of mind tasks was significantly intercorrelated when effects of verbal intelligence and age were statistically controlled. Individual differences in fantasy/pretense were related to theory of mind performance in…
Reading and lexical-decision tasks generate different patterns of individual variability as a function of condition difficulty.

PubMed

Zoccolotti, Pierluigi; De Luca, Maria; Di Filippo, Gloria; Marinelli, Chiara Valeria; Spinelli, Donatella

2018-06-01

We reanalyzed previous experiments based on lexical-decision and reading-aloud tasks in children with dyslexia and control children and tested the prediction of the difference engine model (DEM) that mean condition reaction times (RTs) and standard deviations (SDs) would be linearly related (Myerson et al., 2003). Then we evaluated the slope and the intercept with the x-axis of these linear functions in comparison with previously reported values (i.e., slope of about 0.30 and intercept of about 300 ms). In the case of lexical decision, the parameters were close to these values; by contrast, in the case of reading aloud, a much steeper slope (0.66) and a greater intercept (482.6 ms) were found. Therefore, interindividual variability grows at a much faster rate as a function of condition difficulty for reading than for lexical-decision tasks (or for other tasks reported in the literature). According to the DEM, the slope of the regression that relates means and SDs indicates the degree of correlation among the durations of the stages of processing. We propose that the need for a close coupling between orthographic and phonological processing in reading is what drives the particularly strong relationship between performance and interindividual variability that we observed in reading tasks.
Strategies used by individuals with multiple sclerosis and with mild disability to maintain dynamic stability during a steering task.

PubMed

Denommé, Luke T; Mandalfino, Patricia; Cinelli, Michael E

2014-06-01

Changing direction during walking is a common task humans encounter every day. This destabilizing event requires the central nervous system (CNS) to quickly produce an appropriate response, maintain stability, and propel the body in the intended direction. Previous research has demonstrated that 'individuals with multiple sclerosis' (IwMS) with mild balance impairment display differences in gait characteristics during clinical tests compared with controls. The current study used dynamic stability margin [DSM, difference between COM (i.e. the weighted average of the central point of an individual's total body mass) and lateral BOS (i.e. the most lateral border of the foot that is in contact with the ground)] calculations in addition to gait kinematics to determine whether dynamic stability differences during a steering task were present between IwMS with mild balance impairment and 'healthy age-matched individuals' (HAMI) as well as between IwMS with mild balance impairment and 'community-dwelling older adults' (OA). All IwMS reported mild balance impairment with expanded disability status scale scores ranging between 1.0 and 3.0. The steering task required participants to walk 3 m towards a pressure sensitive trigger mat that would illuminate one of five lights to indicate the future direction of travel (i.e. straight, 45° or 60° to the left or right of the midline). Results revealed that IwMS displayed reduced walking speed and cadence during the approach phase in addition to a smaller DSM range (i.e. COM remained close to lateral BOS) during the entire steering task when compared with HAMI. However, when compared to OAs, IwMS did not display differences in any of the gait kinematics or DSM calculations. Findings suggest that the IwMS displayed a conservative gait strategy in order to maintain stability during the steering task. Lack of dynamic stability differences between IwMS and OAs indicate that both groups use similar strategies to adapt locomotion as a
Dynamics of response-conflict monitoring and individual differences in response control and behavioral control: an electrophysiological investigation using a stop-signal task.

PubMed

Stahl, Jutta; Gibbons, Henning

2007-03-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional significance of error (related) negativity Ne/ERN and individual differences in human action monitoring. A response-conflict model of Ne/ERN should be tested applying a stop-signal paradigm. After a few modifications of Ne/ERN response-conflict theory (Yeung N, Botvinick MM, Cohen JD. The neural basis of error detection: conflict monitoring and the error-related negativity. Psychological Review 2004:111(4);931-959), strength and time course of response conflict could be modeled as a function of stop-signal delay. In Experiment 1, 35 participants performed a visual two-choice response-time task but tried to withhold the response if an auditory stop signal was presented. Probability of stopping errors was held at 50% using variable delays between visual and auditory stimuli. Experiment 2 (n=10) employed both auditory go and stop signals and confirmed that Ne/ERN effects are due to conflict induced by the auditory stop signal, and not the mere presence or absence of an additional stimulus. As predicted, amplitudes of both the stimulus-locked and response-locked Ne/ERN were largest for non-stopped responses, followed by successfully stopped and go responses. However, independently of response type Ne/ERN also increased with increasing stop-signal delay. Since longer delay invokes stronger response conflict, results specifically support the notion of Ne/ERN reflecting response-conflict monitoring. Furthermore, individual differences related to measures of response control and behavioral control were observed. Both low response control estimated from stop-task performance and high psychometric impulsivity were accompanied by smaller Ne/ERN amplitude on stop trials, suggesting reduced response-conflict monitoring. The present study supported the response-conflict view of Ne/ERN. Furthermore, the observed relationship between impulsivity and Ne/ERN amplitude suggested that individuals with low behavioral
Amygdala task-evoked activity and task-free connectivity independently contribute to feelings of arousal.

PubMed

Touroutoglou, Alexandra; Bickart, Kevin C; Barrett, Lisa Feldman; Dickerson, Bradford C

2014-10-01

Individual differences in the intensity of feelings of arousal while viewing emotional pictures have been associated with the magnitude of task-evoked blood-oxygen dependent (BOLD) response in the amygdala. Recently, we reported that individual differences in feelings of arousal are associated with task-free (resting state) connectivity within the salience network. There has not yet been an investigation of whether these two types of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures are redundant or independent in their relationships to behavior. Here we tested the hypothesis that a combination of task-evoked amygdala activation and task-free amygdala connectivity within the salience network relate to individual differences in feelings of arousal while viewing of negatively potent images. In 25 young adults, results revealed that greater task-evoked amygdala activation and stronger task-free amygdala connectivity within the salience network each contributed independently to feelings of arousal, predicting a total of 45% of its variance. Individuals who had both increased task-evoked amygdala activation and stronger task-free amygdala connectivity within the salience network had the most heightened levels of arousal. Task-evoked amygdala activation and task-free amygdala connectivity within the salience network were not related to each other, suggesting that resting-state and task-evoked dynamic brain imaging measures may provide independent and complementary information about affective experience, and likely other kinds of behaviors as well. Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Phonetic imitation from an individual-difference perspective: subjective attitude, personality and "autistic" traits.

PubMed

Yu, Alan C L; Abrego-Collier, Carissa; Sonderegger, Morgan

2013-01-01

Numerous studies have documented the phenomenon of phonetic imitation: the process by which the production patterns of an individual become more similar on some phonetic or acoustic dimension to those of her interlocutor. Though social factors have been suggested as a motivator for imitation, few studies has established a tight connection between language-external factors and a speaker's likelihood to imitate. The present study investigated the phenomenon of phonetic imitation using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered a phonetic imitation task, which included two speech production tasks separated by a perceptual learning task, and a battery of measures assessing traits associated with Autism-Spectrum Condition, working memory, and personality. To examine the effects of subjective attitude on phonetic imitation, participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions, where the perceived sexual orientation of the narrator (homosexual vs. heterosexual) and the outcome (positive vs. negative) of the story depicted in the exposure materials differed. The extent of phonetic imitation by an individual is significantly modulated by the story outcome, as well as by the participant's subjective attitude toward the model talker, the participant's personality trait of openness and the autistic-like trait associated with attention switching.
Transfer of perceptual learning between different visual tasks

PubMed Central

McGovern, David P.; Webb, Ben S.; Peirce, Jonathan W.

2012-01-01

Practice in most sensory tasks substantially improves perceptual performance. A hallmark of this ‘perceptual learning' is its specificity for the basic attributes of the trained stimulus and task. Recent studies have challenged the specificity of learned improvements, although transfer between substantially different tasks has yet to be demonstrated. Here, we measure the degree of transfer between three distinct perceptual tasks. Participants trained on an orientation discrimination, a curvature discrimination, or a ‘global form' task, all using stimuli comprised of multiple oriented elements. Before and after training they were tested on all three and a contrast discrimination control task. A clear transfer of learning was observed, in a pattern predicted by the relative complexity of the stimuli in the training and test tasks. Our results suggest that sensory improvements derived from perceptual learning can transfer between very different visual tasks. PMID:23048211
Transfer of perceptual learning between different visual tasks.

PubMed

McGovern, David P; Webb, Ben S; Peirce, Jonathan W

2012-10-09

Practice in most sensory tasks substantially improves perceptual performance. A hallmark of this 'perceptual learning' is its specificity for the basic attributes of the trained stimulus and task. Recent studies have challenged the specificity of learned improvements, although transfer between substantially different tasks has yet to be demonstrated. Here, we measure the degree of transfer between three distinct perceptual tasks. Participants trained on an orientation discrimination, a curvature discrimination, or a 'global form' task, all using stimuli comprised of multiple oriented elements. Before and after training they were tested on all three and a contrast discrimination control task. A clear transfer of learning was observed, in a pattern predicted by the relative complexity of the stimuli in the training and test tasks. Our results suggest that sensory improvements derived from perceptual learning can transfer between very different visual tasks.
Individual Differences Influencing Immediate Effects of Internal and External Focus Instructions on Children's Motor Performance.

PubMed

van Abswoude, Femke; Nuijen, Nienke B; van der Kamp, John; Steenbergen, Bert

2018-06-01

A large pool of evidence supports the beneficial effect of an external focus of attention on motor skill performance in adults. In children, this effect has been studied less and results are inconclusive. Importantly, individual differences are often not taken into account. We investigated the role of working memory, conscious motor control, and task-specific focus preferences on performance with an internal and external focus of attention in children. Twenty-five children practiced a golf putting task in both an internal focus condition and external focus condition. Performance was defined as the average distance toward the hole in 3 blocks of 10 trials. Task-specific focus preference was determined by asking how much effort it took to apply the instruction in each condition. In addition, working memory capacity and conscious motor control were assessed. Children improved performance in both the internal focus condition and external focus condition (ŋ p 2 = .47), with no difference between conditions (ŋ p 2 = .01). Task-specific focus preference was the only factor moderately related to the difference between performance with an internal focus and performance with an external focus (r = .56), indicating better performance for the preferred instruction in Block 3. Children can benefit from instruction with both an internal and external focus of attention to improve short-term motor performance. Individual, task-specific focus preference influenced the effect of the instructions, with children performing better with their preferred focus. The results highlight that individual differences are a key factor in the effectiveness in children's motor performance. The precise mechanisms underpinning this effect warrant further research.
Feature-Based Change Detection Reveals Inconsistent Individual Differences in Visual Working Memory Capacity.

PubMed

Ambrose, Joseph P; Wijeakumar, Sobanawartiny; Buss, Aaron T; Spencer, John P

2016-01-01

Visual working memory (VWM) is a key cognitive system that enables people to hold visual information in mind after a stimulus has been removed and compare past and present to detect changes that have occurred. VWM is severely capacity limited to around 3-4 items, although there are robust individual differences in this limit. Importantly, these individual differences are evident in neural measures of VWM capacity. Here, we capitalized on recent work showing that capacity is lower for more complex stimulus dimension. In particular, we asked whether individual differences in capacity remain consistent if capacity is shifted by a more demanding task, and, further, whether the correspondence between behavioral and neural measures holds across a shift in VWM capacity. Participants completed a change detection (CD) task with simple colors and complex shapes in an fMRI experiment. As expected, capacity was significantly lower for the shape dimension. Moreover, there were robust individual differences in behavioral estimates of VWM capacity across dimensions. Similarly, participants with a stronger BOLD response for color also showed a strong neural response for shape within the lateral occipital cortex, intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and superior IPS. Although there were robust individual differences in the behavioral and neural measures, we found little evidence of systematic brain-behavior correlations across feature dimensions. This suggests that behavioral and neural measures of capacity provide different views onto the processes that underlie VWM and CD. Recent theoretical approaches that attempt to bridge between behavioral and neural measures are well positioned to address these findings in future work.
Speed and Accuracy of Accessing Information in Working Memory: An Individual Differences Investigation of Focus Switching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Unsworth, Nash; Engle, Randall W.

2008-01-01

Three experiments examined the nature of individual differences in switching the focus of attention in working memory. Participants performed 3 versions of a continuous counting task that required successive updating and switching between counts. Across all 3 experiments, individual differences in working memory span and fluid intelligence were…
Individual Differences in Children's Ability to Profit from Picture Adjunct Aids.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hughes, Jan N.; Hall, Donald M.

Individual differences in fourth grade students' abilities to profit from experimenter-provided picture adjunct aids on prose recall tasks were examined. It was hypothesized that poor paired associate learners would benefit from picture adjunct aids to a greater extent than good paired associate learners. A secondary aim was to assess the effects…
Identifying and individuating cognitive systems: a task-based distributed cognition alternative to agent-based extended cognition.

PubMed

Davies, Jim; Michaelian, Kourken

2016-08-01

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory.
Individual differences in impulsive and risky choice: effects of environmental rearing conditions.

PubMed

Kirkpatrick, Kimberly; Marshall, Andrew T; Smith, Aaron P; Koci, Juraj; Park, Yoonseong

2014-08-01

The present experiment investigated early-rearing environment modulation of individual differences in impulsive and risky choice. Rats were reared in an isolated condition (IC; n=12), in which they lived alone without novel stimuli, or an enriched condition (EC; n=11), in which they lived among conspecifics with novel stimuli. The impulsive choice task involved choices between smaller-sooner (SS) versus larger-later (LL) rewards. The risky choice task involved choices between certain-smaller (C-S) versus uncertain-larger (U-L) rewards. Following choice testing, incentive motivation to work for food was measured using a progressive ratio task and correlated with choice behavior. HPLC analyses were conducted to determine how monoamine concentrations within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAC) related to behavior in different tasks. IC rats were more impulsive than EC rats, but they did not differ in risky choice behavior. However, choice behavior across tasks was significantly correlated (i.e., the more impulsive rats were also riskier). There were no group differences in monoamine levels, but noradrenergic and serotonergic concentrations were significantly correlated with impulsive and risky choice. Furthermore, serotonin and norepinephrine concentrations in the NAC significantly correlated with incentive motivation and the timing of the reward delays within the choice tasks. These results suggest a role for domain general processes in impulsive and risky choice and indicate the importance of the NAC and/or PFC in timing, reward processing, and choice behavior. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in impulsive and risky choice: Effects of environmental rearing conditions

PubMed Central

Kirkpatrick, Kimberly; Marshall, Andrew T.; Smith, Aaron P.; Koci, Juraj; Park, Yoonseong

2014-01-01

The present experiment investigated early-rearing environment modulation of individual differences in impulsive and risky choice. Rats were reared in an isolated condition (IC; n = 12), in which they lived alone without novel stimuli, or an enriched condition (EC; n = 12), in which they lived among conspecifics with novel stimuli. The impulsive choice task involved choices between smaller-sooner (SS) versus larger-later (LL) rewards. The risky choice task involved choices between certain-smaller (C-S) versus uncertain-larger (U-L) rewards. Following choice testing, incentive motivation to work for food was measured using a progressive ratio task and correlated with choice behavior. HPLC analyses were conducted to determine how monoamine concentrations within the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAC) related to behavior in different tasks. IC rats were more impulsive than EC rats, but they did not differ in risky choice behavior. However, choice behavior across tasks was significantly correlated (i.e., the more impulsive rats were also riskier). There were no group differences in monoamine levels, but noradrenergic and serotonergic concentrations were significantly correlated with impulsive and risky choice. Furthermore, serotonin and norepinephrine concentrations in the NAC significantly correlated with incentive motivation and the timing of the reward delays within the choice tasks. These results suggest a role for domain general processes in impulsive and risky choice and indicate the importance of the NAC and/or PFC in timing, reward processing, and choice behavior. PMID:24769268
Modeling Individual Differences in Response Time and Accuracy in Numeracy

PubMed Central

Ratcliff, Roger; Thompson, Clarissa A.; McKoon, Gail

2015-01-01

In the study of numeracy, some hypotheses have been based on response time (RT) as a dependent variable and some on accuracy, and considerable controversy has arisen about the presence or absence of correlations between RT and accuracy, between RT or accuracy and individual differences like IQ and math ability, and between various numeracy tasks. In this article, we show that an integration of the two dependent variables is required, which we accomplish with a theory-based model of decision making. We report data from four tasks: numerosity discrimination, number discrimination, memory for two-digit numbers, and memory for three-digit numbers. Accuracy correlated across tasks, as did RTs. However, the negative correlations that might be expected between RT and accuracy were not obtained; if a subject was accurate, it did not mean that they were fast (and vice versa). When the diffusion decision-making model was applied to the data (Ratcliff, 1978), we found significant correlations across the tasks between the quality of the numeracy information (drift rate) driving the decision process and between the speed/ accuracy criterion settings, suggesting that similar numeracy skills and similar speed-accuracy settings are involved in the four tasks. In the model, accuracy is related to drift rate and RT is related to speed-accuracy criteria, but drift rate and criteria are not related to each other across subjects. This provides a theoretical basis for understanding why negative correlations were not obtained between accuracy and RT. We also manipulated criteria by instructing subjects to maximize either speed or accuracy, but still found correlations between the criteria settings between and within tasks, suggesting that the settings may represent an individual trait that can be modulated but not equated across subjects. Our results demonstrate that a decision-making model may provide a way to reconcile inconsistent and sometimes contradictory results in numeracy

Age-Related Differences in the Reliance on Executive Control in Working Memory: Role of Task Demand

PubMed Central

Isingrini, Michel; Angel, Lucie; Fay, Séverine; Taconnat, Laurence; Lemaire, Patrick; Bouazzaoui, Badiâa

2015-01-01

We examined the hypothesis that age-related differences in the reliance on executive control may be better explained by variations of task demand than by a mechanism specifically linked to aging. To this end, we compared the relationship between the performance of young and older adults on two executive functioning tests and an updating working-memory task with different load levels. The results revealed a significant interaction between age, task demand, and individual executive capacities, indicating that executive resources were only involved at lower loads in older adults, and only at higher loads in young adults. Overall, the results are not consistent with the proposition that cognition places greater demand on executive control in older adults. However, they support the view that how much young and older adults rely on executive control to accomplish cognitive tasks depends on task demand. Finally, interestingly these results are consistent with the CRUNCH model accounting for age-related differences in brain activations. PMID:26700019
Age-Related Differences in the Reliance on Executive Control in Working Memory: Role of Task Demand.

PubMed

Isingrini, Michel; Angel, Lucie; Fay, Séverine; Taconnat, Laurence; Lemaire, Patrick; Bouazzaoui, Badiâa

2015-01-01

We examined the hypothesis that age-related differences in the reliance on executive control may be better explained by variations of task demand than by a mechanism specifically linked to aging. To this end, we compared the relationship between the performance of young and older adults on two executive functioning tests and an updating working-memory task with different load levels. The results revealed a significant interaction between age, task demand, and individual executive capacities, indicating that executive resources were only involved at lower loads in older adults, and only at higher loads in young adults. Overall, the results are not consistent with the proposition that cognition places greater demand on executive control in older adults. However, they support the view that how much young and older adults rely on executive control to accomplish cognitive tasks depends on task demand. Finally, interestingly these results are consistent with the CRUNCH model accounting for age-related differences in brain activations.
Explorations of Individual Differences Relevant to High Level Skill.

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-12-15

discrete pairs that were responded to in a set order. Many real life tasks are ongoing and the performer must interweave them in some manner. It is... life skill that might relate to the predictors? 18. Individual Differences in the Rate of Repetitive Activity Recently we have begun to investigate...22211 Ale..a.drla. VA 22333 1 Dr. Sesceinve Maddad Prcgrm Manager 1 DR. 8.1. Si.AFKOSIY I Dr. Renter Pletcher Life Sriencea Directorate SCIEMTIPIr ADVISOR
The relation between navigation strategy and associative memory: An individual differences approach.

PubMed

Ngo, Chi T; Weisberg, Steven M; Newcombe, Nora S; Olson, Ingrid R

2016-04-01

Although the hippocampus is implicated in both spatial navigation and associative memory, very little is known about whether individual differences in the 2 domains covary. People who prefer to navigate using a hippocampal-dependent place strategy may show better performance on associative memory tasks than those who prefer a caudate-dependent response strategy (Bohbot, Gupta, Banner, & Dahmani, 2011), but not all studies suggest such an effect (Woollett & Maguire, 2009, 2012). Here we tested nonexpert young adults and found that preference for a place strategy positively correlated with spatial (object-location) associative memory performance but did not correlate with nonspatial (face-name) associative memory performance. Importantly, these correlations differed from each other, indicating that the relation between navigation strategy and associative memory is specific to the spatial domain. In addition, the 2 associative memory tasks significantly correlated, suggesting that object-location memory taps into processes relevant to both hippocampal-dependent navigation and nonspatial associative memory. Our findings also suggest that individual differences in spatial associative memory may account for some of the variance in navigation strategies. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).
Functional connectivity patterns reflect individual differences in conflict adaptation.

PubMed

Wang, Xiangpeng; Wang, Ting; Chen, Zhencai; Hitchman, Glenn; Liu, Yijun; Chen, Antao

2015-04-01

Individuals differ in the ability to utilize previous conflict information to optimize current conflict resolution, which is termed the conflict adaptation effect. Previous studies have linked individual differences in conflict adaptation to distinct brain regions. However, the network-based neural mechanisms subserving the individual differences of the conflict adaptation effect have not been studied. The present study employed a psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis with a color-naming Stroop task to examine this issue. The main results were as follows: (1) the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)-seeded PPI revealed the involvement of the salience network (SN) in conflict adaptation, while the posterior parietal cortex (PPC)-seeded PPI revealed the engagement of the central executive network (CEN). (2) Participants with high conflict adaptation effect showed higher intra-CEN connectivity and lower intra-SN connectivity; while those with low conflict adaptation effect showed higher intra-SN connectivity and lower intra-CEN connectivity. (3) The PPC-centered intra-CEN connectivity positively predicted the conflict adaptation effect; while the ACC-centered intra-SN connectivity had a negative correlation with this effect. In conclusion, our data demonstrated that conflict adaptation is likely supported by the CEN and the SN, providing a new perspective on studying individual differences in conflict adaptation on the basis of large-scale networks. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual Differences in Relative Metacomprehension Accuracy: Variation within and across Task Manipulations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiang, Evelyn S.; Therriault, David J.; Franks, Bridget A.

2010-01-01

In recent decades, increasing numbers of studies have focused on metacomprehension accuracy, or readers' ability to distinguish between texts comprehended more vs. less well. Following early findings that suggested readers are fairly poor at doing so, a number of studies have identified specific tasks to supplement a single reading of text that…
Exploring individual differences in preschoolers' causal stance.

PubMed

Alvarez, Aubry; Booth, Amy E

2016-03-01

Preschoolers, as a group, are highly attuned to causality, and this attunement is known to facilitate memory, learning, and problem solving. However, recent work reveals substantial individual variability in the strength of children's "causal stance," as demonstrated by their curiosity about and preference for new causal information. In this study, we explored the coherence and short-term stability of individual differences in children's causal stance. We also began to investigate the origins of this variability, focusing particularly on the potential role of mothers' explanatory talk in shaping the causal stance of their children. Two measures of causal stance correlated with each other, as well as themselves across time. Both also revealed internal consistency of response. The strength of children's causal stance also correlated with mother's responses on the same tasks and the frequency with which mothers emphasized causality during naturalistic joint activities with their children. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).
Blunted amygdala functional connectivity during a stress task in alcohol dependent individuals: A pilot study.

PubMed

Wade, Natasha E; Padula, Claudia B; Anthenelli, Robert M; Nelson, Erik; Eliassen, James; Lisdahl, Krista M

2017-12-01

Scant research has been conducted on neural mechanisms underlying stress processing in individuals with alcohol dependence (AD). We examined neural substrates of stress in AD individuals compared with controls using an fMRI task previously shown to induce stress, assessing amygdala functional connectivity to medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). For this novel pilot study, 10 abstinent AD individuals and 11 controls completed a modified Trier stress task while undergoing fMRI acquisition. The amygdala was used as a seed region for whole-brain seed-based functional connectivity analysis. After controlling for family-wise error (p = 0.05), there was significantly decreased left and right amygdala connectivity with frontal (specifically mPFC), temporal, parietal, and cerebellar regions. Subjective stress, but not craving, increased from pre-to post-task. This study demonstrated decreased connectivity between the amygdala and regions important for stress and emotional processing in long-term abstinent individuals with AD. These results suggest aberrant stress processing in individuals with AD even after lengthy periods of abstinence.
Individual differences in emotionality and peri-traumatic processing.

PubMed

Logan, Shanna; O'Kearney, Richard

2012-06-01

Recent cognitive models propose that intrusive trauma memories arise and persist because high levels of emotional arousal triggered by the trauma disrupt conceptual processing of elements of the event, while enhancing sensory/perceptual processing. A trauma film analogue design was used to investigate if the predicted facilitating effects on intrusions from inhibiting conceptual processing and predicted attenuating effects on intrusions from inhibiting sensory processing are moderated by individual differences in emotionality. One hundred and five non-clinical participants viewed a traumatic film while undertaking a conceptual interference task, a sensory interference task, or no interference task. Participants recorded the frequency and intensity of intrusions over the following week. There was no facilitating effect for the conceptual interference task compared to no interference task. A significant attenuation of the frequency of intrusions was evident for those undertaking sensory interference (ŋ(2) = .04). This effect, however, was only present for those with high trait anxiety (d = .82) and not for those with low trait anxiety (d = .08). Relative to high trait anxious controls, high anxious participants who undertook sensory interference also reported lower intensity of intrusions (d = .66). This is the first trauma film analogue study to show that the attenuating effect of concurrent sensory/perceptual processing on the frequency and intensity of subsequent intrusions is evident only for people with high trait anxiety. The results have implications for conceptual models of intrusion development and for their application to the prevention of post traumatic distress. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in functional connectivity during naturalistic viewing conditions.

PubMed

Vanderwal, Tamara; Eilbott, Jeffrey; Finn, Emily S; Craddock, R Cameron; Turnbull, Adam; Castellanos, F Xavier

2017-08-15

Naturalistic viewing paradigms such as movies have been shown to reduce participant head motion and improve arousal during fMRI scanning relative to task-free rest, and have been used to study both functional connectivity and stimulus-evoked BOLD-signal changes. These task-based hemodynamic changes are synchronized across subjects and involve large areas of the cortex, and it is unclear whether individual differences in functional connectivity are enhanced or diminished under such naturalistic conditions. This work first aims to characterize variability in BOLD-signal based functional connectivity (FC) across 2 distinct movie conditions and eyes-open rest (n=31 healthy adults, 2 scan sessions each). We found that movies have higher within- and between-subject correlations in cluster-wise FC relative to rest. The anatomical distribution of inter-individual variability was similar across conditions, with higher variability occurring at the lateral prefrontal lobes and temporoparietal junctions. Second, we used an unsupervised test-retest matching algorithm that identifies individual subjects from within a group based on FC patterns, quantifying the accuracy of the algorithm across the three conditions. The movies and resting state all enabled identification of individual subjects based on FC matrices, with accuracies between 61% and 100%. Overall, pairings involving movies outperformed rest, and the social, faster-paced movie attained 100% accuracy. When the parcellation resolution, scan duration, and number of edges used were increased, accuracies improved across conditions, and the pattern of movies>rest was preserved. These results suggest that using dynamic stimuli such as movies enhances the detection of FC patterns that are unique at the individual level. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Relation between Navigation Strategy and Associative Memory: An Individual Differences Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ngo, Chi T.; Weisberg, Steven M.; Newcombe, Nora S.; Olson, Ingrid R.

2016-01-01

Although the hippocampus is implicated in both spatial navigation and associative memory, very little is known about whether individual differences in the 2 domains covary. People who prefer to navigate using a hippocampal-dependent place strategy may show better performance on associative memory tasks than those who prefer a caudate-dependent…
Phonetic Imitation from an Individual-Difference Perspective: Subjective Attitude, Personality and “Autistic” Traits

PubMed Central

Yu, Alan C. L.; Abrego-Collier, Carissa; Sonderegger, Morgan

2013-01-01

Numerous studies have documented the phenomenon of phonetic imitation: the process by which the production patterns of an individual become more similar on some phonetic or acoustic dimension to those of her interlocutor. Though social factors have been suggested as a motivator for imitation, few studies has established a tight connection between language-external factors and a speaker’s likelihood to imitate. The present study investigated the phenomenon of phonetic imitation using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered a phonetic imitation task, which included two speech production tasks separated by a perceptual learning task, and a battery of measures assessing traits associated with Autism-Spectrum Condition, working memory, and personality. To examine the effects of subjective attitude on phonetic imitation, participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions, where the perceived sexual orientation of the narrator (homosexual vs. heterosexual) and the outcome (positive vs. negative) of the story depicted in the exposure materials differed. The extent of phonetic imitation by an individual is significantly modulated by the story outcome, as well as by the participant’s subjective attitude toward the model talker, the participant’s personality trait of openness and the autistic-like trait associated with attention switching. PMID:24098665
Corollary Discharge Failure in an Oculomotor Task Is Related to Delusional Ideation in Healthy Individuals.

PubMed

Malassis, Raphaëlle; Del Cul, Antoine; Collins, Thérèse

2015-01-01

Predicting the sensory consequences of saccadic eye movements likely plays a crucial role in planning sequences of saccades and in maintaining visual stability despite saccade-caused retinal displacements. Deficits in predictive activity, such as that afforded by a corollary discharge signal, have been reported in patients with schizophrenia, and may lead to the emergence of positive symptoms, in particular delusions of control and auditory hallucinations. We examined whether a measure of delusional thinking in the general, non-clinical population correlated with measures of predictive activity in two oculomotor tasks. The double-step task measured predictive activity in motor control, and the in-flight displacement task measured predictive activity in trans-saccadic visual perception. Forty-one healthy adults performed both tasks and completed a questionnaire to assess delusional thinking. The quantitative measure of predictive activity we obtained correlated with the tendency towards delusional ideation, but only for the motor task, and not the perceptual task: Individuals with higher levels of delusional thinking showed less self-movement information use in the motor task. Variation of the degree of self-generated movement knowledge as a function of the prevalence of delusional ideation in the normal population strongly supports the idea that corollary discharge deficits measured in schizophrenic patients in previous researches are not due to neuroleptic medication. We also propose that this difference in results between the perceptual and the motor tasks may point to a dissociation between corollary discharge for perception and corollary discharge for action.
Corollary Discharge Failure in an Oculomotor Task Is Related to Delusional Ideation in Healthy Individuals

PubMed Central

Malassis, Raphaëlle; Del Cul, Antoine; Collins, Thérèse

2015-01-01

Predicting the sensory consequences of saccadic eye movements likely plays a crucial role in planning sequences of saccades and in maintaining visual stability despite saccade-caused retinal displacements. Deficits in predictive activity, such as that afforded by a corollary discharge signal, have been reported in patients with schizophrenia, and may lead to the emergence of positive symptoms, in particular delusions of control and auditory hallucinations. We examined whether a measure of delusional thinking in the general, non-clinical population correlated with measures of predictive activity in two oculomotor tasks. The double-step task measured predictive activity in motor control, and the in-flight displacement task measured predictive activity in trans-saccadic visual perception. Forty-one healthy adults performed both tasks and completed a questionnaire to assess delusional thinking. The quantitative measure of predictive activity we obtained correlated with the tendency towards delusional ideation, but only for the motor task, and not the perceptual task: Individuals with higher levels of delusional thinking showed less self-movement information use in the motor task. Variation of the degree of self-generated movement knowledge as a function of the prevalence of delusional ideation in the normal population strongly supports the idea that corollary discharge deficits measured in schizophrenic patients in previous researches are not due to neuroleptic medication. We also propose that this difference in results between the perceptual and the motor tasks may point to a dissociation between corollary discharge for perception and corollary discharge for action. PMID:26305115
Prospective memory failures in aviation: effects of cue salience, workload, and individual differences.

PubMed

Van Benthem, Kathleen D; Herdman, Chris M; Tolton, Rani G; LeFevre, Jo-Anne

2015-04-01

Prospective memory allows people to complete intended tasks in the future. Prospective memory failures, such as pilots forgetting to inform pattern traffic of their locations, can have fatal consequences. The present research examined the impact of system factors (memory cue salience and workload) and individual differences (pilot age, cognitive health, and expertise) on prospective memory for communication tasks in the cockpit. Pilots (N = 101) flew a Cessna 172 simulator at a non-towered aerodrome while maintaining communication with traffic and attending to flight parameters. Memory cue salience (the prominence of cues that signal an intended action) and workload were manipulated. Prospective memory was measured as radio call completion rates. Pilots' prospective memory was adversely affected by low-salience cues and high workload. An interaction of cue salience, pilots' age, and cognitive health reflected the effects of system and individual difference factors on prospective memory failures. For example, younger pilots with low levels of cognitive health completed 78% of the radio calls associated with low-salience memory cues, whereas older pilots with low cognitive health scores completed just 61% of similar radio calls. Our findings suggest that technologies designed to signal intended future tasks should target those tasks with inherently low-salience memory cues. In addition, increasing the salience of memory cues is most likely to benefit pilots with lower levels of cognitive health in high-workload conditions.
The role of scripts in personal consistency and individual differences.

PubMed

Demorest, Amy; Popovska, Ana; Dabova, Milena

2012-02-01

This article examines the role of scripts in personal consistency and individual differences. Scripts are personally distinctive rules for understanding emotionally significant experiences. In 2 studies, scripts were identified from autobiographical memories of college students (Ns = 47 and 50) using standard categories of events and emotions to derive event-emotion compounds (e.g., Affiliation-Joy). In Study 1, scripts predicted responses to a reaction-time task 1 month later, such that participants responded more quickly to the event from their script when asked to indicate what emotion would be evoked by a series of events. In Study 2, individual differences in 5 common scripts were found to be systematically related to individual differences in traits of the Five-Factor Model. Distinct patterns of correlation revealed the importance of studying events and emotions in compound units, that is, in script form (e.g., Agreeableness was correlated with the script Affiliation-Joy but not with the scripts Fun-Joy or Affiliation-Love). © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Personality © 2012, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Expert cognitive control and individual differences associated with frontal and parietal white matter microstructure

PubMed Central

Roberts, R.E.; Anderson, E. J.; Husain, M.

2011-01-01

Although many functional imaging studies have reported frontal activity associated with ‘cognitive control’ tasks, little is understood about factors underlying individual differences in performance. Here we compared the behaviour and brain structure of healthy controls with fighter pilots, an expert group trained to make precision choices at speed in the presence of conflicting cues. Two different behavioural paradigms – Eriksen Flanker and Change of plan tasks – were used to assess the influence of distractors and the ability to update ongoing action plans. Fighter pilots demonstrated superior cognitive control as indexed by accuracy and post-conflict adaptation on the flanker task, but also showed increased sensitivity to irrelevant, distracting choices. By contrast, when pilots were examined on their ability to inhibit a current action plan in favour of an alternative response, their performance was no better than the control group. Diffusion weighted imaging revealed differences in white matter radial diffusivity between pilots and controls not only in the right dorsomedial frontal region but also in the right parietal lobe. Moreover, analysis of individual differences in reaction time costs for conflict trials on the flanker task demonstrated significant correlations with radial diffusivity at these locations, but in different directions. Post-conflict adaptation effects, however, were confined to the dorsomedial frontal locus. The findings demonstrate that in humans expert cognitive control may surprisingly be mediated by enhanced response gain to both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and is accompanied by structural alterations in the white matter of the frontal and parietal lobe. PMID:21159976
Individual differences in mathematical competence predict parietal brain activation during mental calculation.

PubMed

Grabner, Roland H; Ansari, Daniel; Reishofer, Gernot; Stern, Elsbeth; Ebner, Franz; Neuper, Christa

2007-11-01

Functional neuroimaging studies have revealed that parietal brain circuits subserve arithmetic problem solving and that their recruitment dynamically changes as a function of training and development. The present study investigated whether the brain activation during mental calculation is also modulated by individual differences in mathematical competence. Twenty-five adult students were selected from a larger pool based on their performance on standardized tests of intelligence and arithmetic and divided into groups of individuals with relatively lower and higher mathematical competence. These groups did not differ in their non-numerical intelligence or age. In an fMRI block-design, participants had to verify the correctness of single-digit and multi-digit multiplication problems. Analyses revealed that the individuals with higher mathematical competence displayed stronger activation of the left angular gyrus while solving both types of arithmetic problems. Additional correlational analyses corroborated the association between individual differences in mathematical competence and angular gyrus activation, even when variability in task performance was controlled for. These findings demonstrate that the recruitment of the left angular gyrus during arithmetic problem solving underlies individual differences in mathematical ability and suggests a stronger reliance on automatic, language-mediated processes in more competent individuals.
Working Memory and Mathematics: A Review of Developmental, Individual Difference, and Cognitive Approaches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Raghubar, Kimberly P.; Barnes, Marcia A.; Hecht, Steven A.

2010-01-01

Working memory refers to a mental workspace, involved in controlling, regulating, and actively maintaining relevant information to accomplish complex cognitive tasks (e.g. mathematical processing). Despite the potential relevance of a relation between working memory and math for understanding developmental and individual differences in…
Happiness as a belief system: individual differences and priming in emotion judgments.

PubMed

Robinson, Michael D; Kirkeby, Ben S

2005-08-01

Three studies involving 104 undergraduates sought to examine how an individual's level of life satisfaction organizes their knowledge concerning the self's emotions. Participants judged the self's positive and negative emotions within a computerized task. Key results sought to determine whether judging two positive emotions in a consecutive sequence speeds the second judgment--a pattern of priming that would suggest a tighter, more interconnected structure in semantic memory related to one's positive emotions. As expected, individual differences in life satisfaction predicted the magnitude of this priming effect (Studies 1 & 2), which appeared to be unique to judgments of the self's emotions (Study 3). The results indicate that happy, relative to less happy, individuals organize information concerning their positive emotions in a qualitatively different and tighter semantic manner.

The contribution of attentional lapses to individual differences in visual working memory capacity.

PubMed

Adam, Kirsten C S; Mance, Irida; Fukuda, Keisuke; Vogel, Edward K

2015-08-01

Attentional control and working memory capacity are important cognitive abilities that substantially vary between individuals. Although much is known about how attentional control and working memory capacity relate to each other and to constructs like fluid intelligence, little is known about how trial-by-trial fluctuations in attentional engagement impact trial-by-trial working memory performance. Here, we employ a novel whole-report memory task that allowed us to distinguish between varying levels of attentional engagement in humans performing a working memory task. By characterizing low-performance trials, we can distinguish between models in which working memory performance failures are caused by either (1) complete lapses of attention or (2) variations in attentional control. We found that performance failures increase with set-size and strongly predict working memory capacity. Performance variability was best modeled by an attentional control model of attention, not a lapse model. We examined neural signatures of performance failures by measuring EEG activity while participants performed the whole-report task. The number of items correctly recalled in the memory task was predicted by frontal theta power, with decreased frontal theta power associated with poor performance on the task. In addition, we found that poor performance was not explained by failures of sensory encoding; the P1/N1 response and ocular artifact rates were equivalent for high- and low-performance trials. In all, we propose that attentional lapses alone cannot explain individual differences in working memory performance. Instead, we find that graded fluctuations in attentional control better explain the trial-by-trial differences in working memory that we observe.
Individual differences in current events knowledge: contributions of ability, personality, and interests.

PubMed

Hambrick, David Z; Meinz, Elizabeth J; Oswald, Frederick L

2007-03-01

What accounts for individual differences in the sort of knowledge that people may draw on in everyday cognitive tasks, such as deciding whom to vote for in a presidential election, how to invest money in the stock market, or what team to bet on in a friendly wager? In a large sample of undergraduate students, we investigated correlates of individual differences in recently acquired knowledge of current events in domains such as politics, business, and sports. Structural equation modeling revealed two predictive pathways: one involving cognitive ability factors and the other involving two major nonability factors (personality and interests). The results of this study add to what is known about the sources of individual differences in knowledge and are interpreted in the context of theoretical conceptions of adult intelligence that emphasize the centrality and importance of knowledge (e.g., Ackerman, 1996; Cattell, 1971).
Group benefits in joint perceptual tasks-a review.

PubMed

Wahn, Basil; Kingstone, Alan; König, Peter

2018-05-12

In daily life, humans often perform perceptual tasks together to reach a shared goal. In these situations, individuals may collaborate (e.g., by distributing task demands) to perform the task better than when the task is performed alone (i.e., attain a group benefit). In this review, we identify the factors influencing if, and to what extent, a group benefit is attained and provide a framework of measures to assess group benefits in perceptual tasks. In particular, we integrate findings from two frequently investigated joint perceptual tasks: visuospatial tasks and decision-making tasks. For both task types, we find that an exchange of information between coactors is critical to improve joint performance. Yet, the type of exchanged information and how coactors collaborate differs between tasks. In visuospatial tasks, coactors exchange information about the performed actions to distribute task demands. In perceptual decision-making tasks, coactors exchange their confidence on their individual perceptual judgments to negotiate a joint decision. We argue that these differences can be explained by the task structure: coactors distribute task demands if a joint task allows for a spatial division and stimuli can be accurately processed by one individual. Otherwise, they perform the task individually and then integrate their individual judgments. © 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.
Neuroimaging explanations of age-related differences in task performance.

PubMed

Steffener, Jason; Barulli, Daniel; Habeck, Christian; Stern, Yaakov

2014-01-01

Advancing age affects both cognitive performance and functional brain activity and interpretation of these effects has led to a variety of conceptual research models without always explicitly linking the two effects. However, to best understand the multifaceted effects of advancing age, age differences in functional brain activity need to be explicitly tied to the cognitive task performance. This work hypothesized that age-related differences in task performance are partially explained by age-related differences in functional brain activity and formally tested these causal relationships. Functional MRI data was from groups of young and old adults engaged in an executive task-switching experiment. Analyses were voxel-wise testing of moderated-mediation and simple mediation statistical path models to determine whether age group, brain activity and their interaction explained task performance in regions demonstrating an effect of age group. Results identified brain regions whose age-related differences in functional brain activity significantly explained age-related differences in task performance. In all identified locations, significant moderated-mediation relationships resulted from increasing brain activity predicting worse (slower) task performance in older but not younger adults. Findings suggest that advancing age links task performance to the level of brain activity. The overall message of this work is that in order to understand the role of functional brain activity on cognitive performance, analysis methods should respect theoretical relationships. Namely, that age affects brain activity and brain activity is related to task performance.
Negative Affect during a Collective (but Not an Individual) Task Is Associated with Holistic Attention in East Asian Cultural Context.

PubMed

Tominaga, Hitoshi; Uchida, Yukiko; Miyamoto, Yuri; Yamasaki, Teruo

2017-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that individuals from East Asian cultures are more likely to show holistic attention-a pattern of attention that incorporates contextual information into focal stimuli-than individuals from North American cultures. Holistic attention is also prevalent in communities that require close cooperation. However, it is not yet known how cooperation is related to holistic attention. We theorized that holistic attention increases when people experience negative affect (e.g., worry, sadness, and frustration) during collective tasks (but not during individual tasks) because negative affect in social contexts signals the existence of potential threats to social harmony, thus indicating a need to restore social harmony. To examine this hypothesis, an experiment was conducted in which participants performed a musical duet either with another participant (a collective task requiring cooperation), or individually with a computer (an individual task). After the musical task, the Framed Line Task (FLT) was administered to examine their holistic attention. Participants also reported their emotional states both before and after the music task. Results suggested that negative affect in the collective task-but not the individual task-was positively correlated with a holistic pattern of attention. The function of negative affect in social contexts as motivation to restore relationships and how this enhances holistic attention is discussed. The moderating effect of social context on the link between negative affect and cognition is also discussed.
Face emotion recognition is related to individual differences in psychosis-proneness.

PubMed

Germine, L T; Hooker, C I

2011-05-01

Deficits in face emotion recognition (FER) in schizophrenia are well documented, and have been proposed as a potential intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia liability. However, research on the relationship between psychosis vulnerability and FER has mixed findings and methodological limitations. Moreover, no study has yet characterized the relationship between FER ability and level of psychosis-proneness. If FER ability varies continuously with psychosis-proneness, this suggests a relationship between FER and polygenic risk factors. We tested two large internet samples to see whether psychometric psychosis-proneness, as measured by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief (SPQ-B), is related to differences in face emotion identification and discrimination or other face processing abilities. Experiment 1 (n=2332) showed that psychosis-proneness predicts face emotion identification ability but not face gender identification ability. Experiment 2 (n=1514) demonstrated that psychosis-proneness also predicts performance on face emotion but not face identity discrimination. The tasks in Experiment 2 used identical stimuli and task parameters, differing only in emotion/identity judgment. Notably, the relationships demonstrated in Experiments 1 and 2 persisted even when individuals with the highest psychosis-proneness levels (the putative high-risk group) were excluded from analysis. Our data suggest that FER ability is related to individual differences in psychosis-like characteristics in the normal population, and that these differences cannot be accounted for by differences in face processing and/or visual perception. Our results suggest that FER may provide a useful candidate intermediate phenotype.
Individual differences in behavioural plasticities.

PubMed

Stamps, Judy A

2016-05-01

Interest in individual differences in animal behavioural plasticities has surged in recent years, but research in this area has been hampered by semantic confusion as different investigators use the same terms (e.g. plasticity, flexibility, responsiveness) to refer to different phenomena. The first goal of this review is to suggest a framework for categorizing the many different types of behavioural plasticities, describe examples of each, and indicate why using reversibility as a criterion for categorizing behavioural plasticities is problematic. This framework is then used to address a number of timely questions about individual differences in behavioural plasticities. One set of questions concerns the experimental designs that can be used to study individual differences in various types of behavioural plasticities. Although within-individual designs are the default option for empirical studies of many types of behavioural plasticities, in some situations (e.g. when experience at an early age affects the behaviour expressed at subsequent ages), 'replicate individual' designs can provide useful insights into individual differences in behavioural plasticities. To date, researchers using within-individual and replicate individual designs have documented individual differences in all of the major categories of behavioural plasticities described herein. Another important question is whether and how different types of behavioural plasticities are related to one another. Currently there is empirical evidence that many behavioural plasticities [e.g. contextual plasticity, learning rates, IIV (intra-individual variability), endogenous plasticities, ontogenetic plasticities) can themselves vary as a function of experiences earlier in life, that is, many types of behavioural plasticity are themselves developmentally plastic. These findings support the assumption that differences among individuals in prior experiences may contribute to individual differences in behavioural
Measurement the thickness of the transverse abdominal muscle in different tasks.

PubMed

Pang, Ling; Yin, Liquan; Tajiri, Kimiko; Huo, Ming; Maruyama, Hitoshi

2017-02-01

[Purpose] This study examined the measurement of the thickness of the transverse abdominal muscle in different tasks. [Subjects and Methods] The subjects were eleven healthy adult females. Thicknesses of transverse abdominal muscle were measured in seven tasks in the supine position. The tasks were: 1) Resting state, 2) Maximal contraction of transverse abdominal muscle, 3) Maximal contraction of levator ani muscle, 4) Maximal simultaneous contraction of both transverse abdominal muscle and levator ani muscle, 5) Maximal simultaneous contraction of both transverse abdominal muscle and levator ani muscle with front side resistance added to both knee, 6) Maximal simultaneous contraction of both transverse abdominal muscle and levator ani muscle with diagonal resistance added to both knees, and 7) Maximal simultaneous contraction of both transverse abdominal muscle and levator ani muscle with lateral resistance added to both knees. [Results] The thicknesses of transverse abdominal muscle during maximal simultaneous contraction and maximal simultaneous contraction with resistance were greater than during the resting state. [Conclusion] The muscle output during simultaneous contraction and resistance movement were larger than that of each individual muscle.
The Importance of Encoding-Related Neural Dynamics in the Prediction of Inter-Individual Differences in Verbal Working Memory Performance

PubMed Central

Majerus, Steve; Salmon, Eric; Attout, Lucie

2013-01-01

Studies of brain-behaviour interactions in the field of working memory (WM) have associated WM success with activation of a fronto-parietal network during the maintenance stage, and this mainly for visuo-spatial WM. Using an inter-individual differences approach, we demonstrate here the equal importance of neural dynamics during the encoding stage, and this in the context of verbal WM tasks which are characterized by encoding phases of long duration and sustained attentional demands. Participants encoded and maintained 5-word lists, half of them containing an unexpected word intended to disturb WM encoding and associated task-related attention processes. We observed that inter-individual differences in WM performance for lists containing disturbing stimuli were related to activation levels in a region previously associated with task-related attentional processing, the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and this during stimulus encoding but not maintenance; functional connectivity strength between the left IPS and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) further predicted WM performance. This study highlights the critical role, during WM encoding, of neural substrates involved in task-related attentional processes for predicting inter-individual differences in verbal WM performance, and, more generally, provides support for attention-based models of WM. PMID:23874935
Different roles of the posterior inferior frontal gyrus in Chinese character form judgment differences between literate and illiterate individuals.

PubMed

Wu, Jinglong; Wang, Bin; Yan, Tianyi; Li, Xiujun; Bao, Xuexiang; Guo, Qiyong

2012-01-11

In the present study, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the different roles of the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG) in Chinese character form judgment between literate and illiterate subjects. Using event-related fMRI, 24 healthy right-handed Chinese subjects (12 literates and 12 illiterates) were asked to perform Chinese character and figure form judgment tasks. The blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) differences in pIFG were examined with general linear modeling (GLM). We found differences in reaction times and accuracy between subjects as they performed these tasks. These behavioral differences reflect the different cognitive demands of character form judgment for literate and illiterate individuals. The results showed differences in the BOLD response patterns in the pIFG between the two discrimination tasks and the two subject groups. A comparison of the character and figure tasks showed that literate and illiterate subjects had similar BOLD responses in the inferior frontal gyrus. However, differences in behavioral performance suggest that the pIFG plays a different role in Chinese character form judgment for each subject group. In literate subjects, the left pIFG mediated access to phonology in achieving Chinese character form judgment, whereas the right pIFG participated in the processing of the orthography of Chinese characters. In illiterate subjects, the bilateral frontal gyrus participated in the visual-spatial processing of Chinese characters to achieve form judgment. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Investigating Individual Differences in Toddler Search with Mixture Models

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berthier, Neil E.; Boucher, Kelsea; Weisner, Nina

2015-01-01

Children's performance on cognitive tasks is often described in categorical terms in that a child is described as either passing or failing a test, or knowing or not knowing some concept. We used binomial mixture models to determine whether individual children could be classified as passing or failing two search tasks, the DeLoache model room…
Individual differences in risk-taking tendencies modulate the neural processing of risky and ambiguous decision-making in adolescence.

PubMed

Blankenstein, N E; Schreuders, E; Peper, J S; Crone, E A; van Duijvenvoorde, A C K

2018-05-15

Although many neuroimaging studies have investigated adolescent risk taking, few studies have dissociated between decision-making under risk (known probabilities) and ambiguity (unknown probabilities). Furthermore, which brain regions are sensitive to individual differences in task-related and self-reported risk taking remains elusive. We presented 198 adolescents (11-24 years, an age-range in which individual differences in risk taking are prominent) with an fMRI paradigm that separated decision-making (choosing to gamble or not) and reward outcome processing (gains, no gains) under risky and ambiguous conditions, and related this to task-related and self-reported risk taking. We observed distinct neural mechanisms underlying risky and ambiguous gambling, with risk more prominently associated with activation in parietal cortex, and ambiguity more prominently with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), as well as medial PFC during outcome processing. Individual differences in task-related risk taking were positively associated with ventral striatum activation in the decision phase, specifically for risk, and negatively associated with insula and dorsomedial PFC activation, specifically for ambiguity. Moreover, dorsolateral PFC activation in the outcome phase seemed a prominent marker for individual differences in task-related risk taking under ambiguity as well as self-reported daily-life risk taking, in which greater risk taking was associated with reduced activation in dorsolateral PFC. Together, this study demonstrates the importance of considering multiple risk-taking measures, and contextual moderators, in understanding the neural mechanisms underlying adolescent risk taking. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Emotional intelligence: a theoretical framework for individual differences in affective forecasting.

PubMed

Hoerger, Michael; Chapman, Benjamin P; Epstein, Ronald M; Duberstein, Paul R

2012-08-01

Only recently have researchers begun to examine individual differences in affective forecasting. The present investigation was designed to make a theoretical contribution to this emerging literature by examining the role of emotional intelligence in affective forecasting. Emotional intelligence was hypothesized to be associated with affective forecasting accuracy, memory for emotional reactions, and subsequent improvement on an affective forecasting task involving emotionally evocative pictures. Results from two studies (N = 511) supported our hypotheses. Emotional intelligence was associated with accuracy in predicting, encoding, and consolidating emotional reactions. Furthermore, emotional intelligence was associated with greater improvement on a second affective forecasting task, with the relationship explained by basic memory processes. Implications for future research on basic and applied decision making are discussed.
Individual differences in automatic semantic priming.

PubMed

Andrews, Sally; Lo, Steson; Xia, Violet

2017-05-01

This research investigated whether masked semantic priming in a semantic categorization task that required classification of words as animals or nonanimals was modulated by individual differences in lexical proficiency. A sample of 89 skilled readers, assessed on reading comprehension, vocabulary and spelling ability, classified target words preceded by brief (50 ms) masked primes that were either congruent or incongruent with the category of the target. Congruent primes were also selected to be either high (e.g., hawk EAGLE, pistol RIFLE) or low (e.g., mole EAGLE, boots RIFLE) in semantic feature overlap with the target. "Overall proficiency," indexed by high performance on both a "semantic composite" measure of reading comprehension and vocabulary and a "spelling composite," was associated with stronger congruence priming from both high and low feature overlap primes for animal exemplars, but only predicted priming from low overlap primes for nonexemplars. Classification of high frequency nonexemplars was also significantly modulated by an independent "spelling-meaning" factor, indexed by the discrepancy between the semantic and spelling composites, because relatively higher scores on the semantic than the spelling composite were associated with stronger semantic priming. These findings show that higher lexical proficiency is associated with stronger evidence of automatic semantic priming and suggest that individual differences in lexical quality modulate the division of labor between orthographic and semantic processing in early lexical retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
When intensions do not map onto extensions: Individual differences in conceptualization.

PubMed

Hampton, James A; Passanisi, Alessia

2016-04-01

Concepts are represented in the mind through knowledge of their extensions (the class of items to which the concept applies) and intensions (features that distinguish that class of items). A common assumption among theories of concepts is that the 2 aspects are intimately related. Hence if there is systematic individual variation in concept representation, the variation should correlate between extensional and intensional measures. A pair of individuals with similar extensional beliefs about a given concept should also share similar intensional beliefs. To test this notion, exemplars (extensions) and features (intensions) of common categories were rated for typicality and importance respectively across 2 occasions. Within-subject consistency was greater than between-subjects consensus on each task, providing evidence for systematic individual variation. Furthermore, the similarity structure between individuals for each task was stable across occasions. However, across 5 samples, similarity between individuals for extensional judgments did not map onto similarity between individuals for intensional judgments. The results challenge the assumption common to many theories of conceptual representation that intensions determine extensions and support a hybrid view of concepts where there is a disconnection between the conceptual resources that are used for the 2 tasks. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).
Sources of Individual Differences in L2 Narrative Production: The Contribution of Input, Processing, and Output Anxiety

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trebits, Anna

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of cognitive task complexity and individual differences in input, processing, and output anxiety (IPOA) on L2 narrative production. The participants were enrolled in a bilingual secondary educational program. They performed two narrative tasks in speech and writing. The participants' level of…
The Contribution of Attentional Lapses to Individual Differences in Visual Working Memory Capacity

PubMed Central

Adam, Kirsten C. S.; Mance, Irida; Fukuda, Keisuke; Vogel, Edward K.

2015-01-01

Attentional control and working memory capacity are important cognitive abilities that substantially vary between individuals. Although much is known about how attentional control and working memory capacity relate to each other and to constructs like fluid intelligence, little is known about how trial-by-trial fluctuations in attentional engagement impact trial-by-trial working memory performance. Here, we employ a novel whole-report memory task that allowed us to distinguish between varying levels of attentional engagement in humans performing a working memory task. By characterizing low-performance trials, we can distinguish between models in which working memory performance failures are caused by either (1) complete lapses of attention or (2) variations in attentional control. We found that performance failures increase with set-size and strongly predict working memory capacity. Performance variability was best modeled by an attentional control model of attention, not a lapse model. We examined neural signatures of performance failures by measuring EEG activity while participants performed the whole-report task. The number of items correctly recalled in the memory task was predicted by frontal theta power, with decreased frontal theta power associated with poor performance on the task. In addition, we found that poor performance was not explained by failures of sensory encoding; the P1/N1 response and ocular artifact rates were equivalent for high- and low-performance trials. In all, we propose that attentional lapses alone cannot explain individual differences in working memory performance. Instead, we find that graded fluctuations in attentional control better explain the trial-by-trial differences in working memory that we observe. PMID:25811710
"Peaks, Slumps, and Bumps": Individual Differences in the Development of Creativity in Children and Adolescents.

PubMed

Barbot, Baptiste; Lubart, Todd I; Besançon, Maud

2016-01-01

This article reviews developmental studies of creativity in children and adolescents with a focus on "peaks" and "slumps" that have often been described in the literature. The irregularity of the development of creativity is interpreted in light of conceptual and measurement issues and with regard to the interaction between individual-level resources, task-specific demands, and environmental influences, resulting in apparent individual differences in the development of creativity. The need for longitudinal designs, multidimensional and multi-domain assessment of creative potential limiting the contribution of task-specific factors is outlined and discussed as an important direction for developmental research on creativity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Individual Differences in Accurately Judging Personality From Text.

PubMed

Hall, Judith A; Goh, Jin X; Mast, Marianne Schmid; Hagedorn, Christian

2016-08-01

This research examines correlates of accuracy in judging Big Five traits from first-person text excerpts. Participants in six studies were recruited from psychology courses or online. In each study, participants performed a task of judging personality from text and performed other ability tasks and/or filled out questionnaires. Participants who were more accurate in judging personality from text were more likely to be female; had personalities that were more agreeable, conscientious, and feminine, and less neurotic and dominant (all controlling for participant gender); scored higher on empathic concern; self-reported more interest in, and attentiveness to, people's personalities in their daily lives; and reported reading more for pleasure, especially fiction. Accuracy was not associated with SAT scores but had a significant relation to vocabulary knowledge. Accuracy did not correlate with tests of judging personality and emotion based on audiovisual cues. This research is the first to address individual differences in accurate judgment of personality from text, thus adding to the literature on correlates of the good judge of personality. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Differences in Lower Extremity and Trunk Kinematics between Single Leg Squat and Step Down Tasks

PubMed Central

Lewis, Cara L.; Foch, Eric; Luko, Marc M.; Loverro, Kari L.; Khuu, Anne

2015-01-01

The single leg squat and single leg step down are two commonly used functional tasks to assess movement patterns. It is unknown how kinematics compare between these tasks. The purpose of this study was to identify kinematic differences in the lower extremity, pelvis and trunk between the single leg squat and the step down. Fourteen healthy individuals participated in this research and performed the functional tasks while kinematic data were collected for the trunk, pelvis, and lower extremities using a motion capture system. For the single leg squat task, the participant was instructed to squat as low as possible. For the step down task, the participant was instructed to stand on top of a box, slowly lower him/herself until the non-stance heel touched the ground, and return to standing. This was done from two different heights (16cm and 24cm). The kinematics were evaluated at peak knee flexion as well as at 60° of knee flexion. Pearson correlation coefficients (r) between the angles at those two time points were also calculated to better understand the relationship between each task. The tasks resulted in kinematics differences at the knee, hip, pelvis, and trunk at both time points. The single leg squat was performed with less hip adduction (p ≤ 0.003), but more hip external rotation and knee abduction (p ≤ 0.030), than the step down tasks at 60° of knee flexion. These differences were maintained at peak knee flexion except hip external rotation was only significant in the 24cm step down task (p ≤ 0.029). While there were multiple differences between the two step heights at peak knee flexion, the only difference at 60° of knee flexion was in trunk flexion (p < 0.001). Angles at the knee and hip had a moderate to excellent correlation (r = 0.51–0.98), but less consistently so at the pelvis and trunk (r = 0.21–0.96). The differences in movement patterns between the single leg squat and the step down should be considered when selecting a single leg task

Individual Differences in Biological Stress Responses Moderate the Contribution of Early Peer Victimization to Subsequent Depressive Symptoms

PubMed Central

Rudolph, Karen D.; Troop-Gordon, Wendy; Granger, Douglas A.

2011-01-01

Rationale Some children who are exposed to early peer victimization become depressed, whereas others are resilient. Understanding individual differences in responses to early adversity, such as victimization, is critical for developing both comprehensive theoretical models and effective interventions. Objectives This study examined whether individual differences in biological stress responses (i.e., activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and autonomic nervous system) moderated the contribution of peer victimization to depressive symptoms across a one-year period. Methods Children (N = 132; M age = 9.46 years, SD = .33) completed measures of peer victimization and depressive symptoms, and rated their ruminative responses (i.e., persistent thoughts about negative task-related emotion and experiences) to a laboratory-based social challenge task involving two conflict-of-interests situations with an unfamiliar peer. Children’s saliva was collected prior to, and following, participation in the task, and was later assayed for cortisol and alpha amylase [sAA]. Results Victimization interacted with levels of cortisol measured in anticipation of the task to predict task-related rumination and depressive symptoms one year later, adjusting for initial symptoms. Specifically, victimization served as a risk factor for rumination and depressive symptoms in children with heightened but not dampened anticipatory cortisol; yet, heightened anticipatory cortisol was protective against rumination and depressive symptoms in low-victimized children. Victimization also predicted subsequent depressive symptoms in girls with high sAA reactivity across the task. Conclusions This study advances contemporary theory and research by implicating individual variation in biological stress responses as one determinant of sensitivity to the mental health effects of early adversity. PMID:20505926
Individual differences in the Simon effect are underpinned by differences in the competitive dynamics in the basal ganglia: An experimental verification and a computational model.

PubMed

Stocco, Andrea; Murray, Nicole L; Yamasaki, Brianna L; Renno, Taylor J; Nguyen, Jimmy; Prat, Chantel S

2017-07-01

Cognitive control is thought to be made possible by the activity of the prefrontal cortex, which selectively uses task-specific representations to bias the selection of task-appropriate responses over more automated, but inappropriate, ones. Recent models have suggested, however, that prefrontal representations are in turn controlled by the basal ganglia. In particular, neurophysiological considerations suggest that the basal ganglia's indirect pathway plays a pivotal role in preventing irrelevant information from being incorporated into a task, thus reducing response interference due to the processing of inappropriate stimuli dimensions. Here, we test this hypothesis by showing that individual differences in a non-verbal cognitive control task (the Simon task) are correlated with performance on a decision-making task (the Probabilistic Stimulus Selection task) that tracks the contribution of the indirect pathway. Specifically, the higher the effect of the indirect pathway, the smaller was the behavioral costs associated with suppressing interference in incongruent trials. Additionally, it was found that this correlation was driven by individual differences in incongruent trials only (with little effect on congruent ones) and specific to the indirect pathway (with almost no correlation with the effect of the direct pathways). Finally, it is shown that this pattern of results is precisely what is predicted when competitive dynamics of the basal ganglia are added to the selective attention component of a simple model of the Simon task, thus showing that our experimental results can be fully explained by our initial hypothesis. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Individual Differences in Social Anxiety Affect the Salience of Errors in Social Contexts

PubMed Central

Barker, Tyson V.; Troller-Renfree, Sonya; Pine, Daniel S.; Fox, Nathan A.

2015-01-01

The error-related negativity (ERN) is an event-related potential that occurs approximately 50 ms after an erroneous response. The magnitude of the ERN is influenced by contextual factors, such as when errors are made during social evaluation. The ERN is also influenced by individual differences in anxiety, and it is elevated amongst anxious individuals. However, little research has examined how individual differences in anxiety interact with contextual factors to impact the ERN. Social anxiety involves fear and apprehension of social evaluation. The current study explored how individual differences in social anxiety interact with social contexts to modulate the ERN. The ERN was measured in 43 young adults characterized as either high or low in social anxiety while they completed a flanker task in two contexts: alone and during social evaluation. Results revealed a significant interaction between social anxiety and context, such that the ERN was enhanced in a social relative to a non-social context only among high socially anxious individuals. Furthermore, the degree of such enhancement significantly correlated with individual differences in social anxiety. These findings demonstrate that social anxiety is characterized by enhanced neural activity to errors in social evaluative contexts. PMID:25967929
Dysfunctional frontal lobe activity during inhibitory tasks in individuals with childhood trauma: An event-related potential study.

PubMed

Kim, Sungkean; Kim, Ji Sun; Jin, Min Jin; Im, Chang-Hwan; Lee, Seung-Hwan

2018-01-01

Individuals who experience childhood trauma are vulnerable to various psychological and behavioral problems throughout their lifetime. This study aimed to investigate whether individuals with childhood trauma show altered frontal lobe activity during response inhibition tasks. In total, 157 healthy individuals were recruited and instructed to perform a Go/Nogo task during electroencephalography recording. Source activities of N2 and P3 of Nogo event-related potentials (ERP) were analyzed. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS) were applied. Individuals were divided into three groups based on their total CTQ score: low CTQ, middle CTQ, and high CTQ groups. The high CTQ group exhibited significantly higher BIS scores than the low CTQ group. P3 amplitudes of the differences between Nogo and Go ERP waves exhibited higher mean values in the low CTQ than the high CTQ group, with trending effects. In Nogo-P3, the source activities of the right anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral medial frontal cortex (MFC), bilateral superior frontal gyrus (SFG), and right precentral gyrus were significantly lower in the high CTQ than the low CTQ group. Motor impulsivity showed a significant negative correlation with activities of the bilateral MFC and SFG in Nogo-P3 conditions. Our study revealed that individuals with childhood trauma have inhibitory failure and frontal lobe dysfunction in regions related to Nogo-P3.
Dopaminergic modulation of effort-related choice behavior as assessed by a progressive ratio chow feeding choice task: pharmacological studies and the role of individual differences.

PubMed

Randall, Patrick A; Pardo, Marta; Nunes, Eric J; López Cruz, Laura; Vemuri, V Kiran; Makriyannis, Alex; Baqi, Younis; Müller, Christa E; Correa, Mercè; Salamone, John D

2012-01-01

Mesolimbic dopamine (DA) is involved in behavioral activation and effort-related processes. Rats with impaired DA transmission reallocate their instrumental behavior away from food-reinforced tasks with high response requirements, and instead select less effortful food-seeking behaviors. In the present study, the effects of several drug treatments were assessed using a progressive ratio (PROG)/chow feeding concurrent choice task. With this task, rats can lever press on a PROG schedule reinforced by a preferred high-carbohydrate food pellet, or alternatively approach and consume the less-preferred but concurrently available laboratory chow. Rats pass through each ratio level 15 times, after which the ratio requirement is incremented by one additional response. The DA D(2) antagonist haloperidol (0.025-0.1 mg/kg) reduced number of lever presses and highest ratio achieved but did not reduce chow intake. In contrast, the adenosine A(2A) antagonist MSX-3 increased lever presses and highest ratio achieved, but decreased chow consumption. The cannabinoid CB1 inverse agonist and putative appetite suppressant AM251 decreased lever presses, highest ratio achieved, and chow intake; this effect was similar to that produced by pre-feeding. Furthermore, DA-related signal transduction activity (pDARPP-32(Thr34) expression) was greater in nucleus accumbens core of high responders (rats with high lever pressing output) compared to low responders. Thus, the effects of DA antagonism differed greatly from those produced by pre-feeding or reduced CB1 transmission, and it appears unlikely that haloperidol reduces PROG responding because of a general reduction in primary food motivation or the unconditioned reinforcing properties of food. Furthermore, accumbens core signal transduction activity is related to individual differences in work output.
Males and females differ in brain activation during cognitive tasks.

PubMed

Bell, Emily C; Willson, Morgan C; Wilman, Alan H; Dave, Sanjay; Silverstone, Peter H

2006-04-01

To examine the effect of gender on regional brain activity, we utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a motor task and three cognitive tasks; a word generation task, a spatial attention task, and a working memory task in healthy male (n = 23) and female (n = 10) volunteers. Functional data were examined for group differences both in the number of pixels activated, and the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) magnitude during each task. Males had a significantly greater mean activation than females in the working memory task with a greater number of pixels being activated in the right superior parietal gyrus and right inferior occipital gyrus, and a greater BOLD magnitude occurring in the left inferior parietal lobe. However, despite these fMRI changes, there were no significant differences between males and females on cognitive performance of the task. In contrast, in the spatial attention task, men performed better at this task than women, but there were no significant functional differences between the two groups. In the word generation task, there were no external measures of performance, but in the functional measurements, males had a significantly greater mean activation than females, where males had a significantly greater BOLD signal magnitude in the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the right inferior parietal lobe, and the cingulate. In neither of the motor tasks (right or left hand) did males and females perform differently. Our fMRI findings during the motor tasks were a greater mean BOLD signal magnitude in males in the right hand motor task, compared to females where males had an increased BOLD signal magnitude in the right inferior parietal gyrus and in the left inferior frontal gyrus. In conclusion, these results demonstrate differential patterns of activation in males and females during a variety of cognitive tasks, even though performance in these tasks may not vary, and also that variability in performance may not
Differences in MEG gamma oscillatory power during performance of a prosaccade task in adolescents with FASD

PubMed Central

Stephen, Julia M.; Coffman, Brian A.; Stone, David B.; Kodituwakku, Piyadasa

2013-01-01

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is characterized by a broad range of behavioral and cognitive deficits that impact the long-term quality of life for affected individuals. However, the underlying changes in brain structure and function associated with these cognitive impairments are not well-understood. Previous studies identified deficits in behavioral performance of prosaccade tasks in children with FASD. In this study, we investigated group differences in gamma oscillations during performance of a prosaccade task. We collected magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from 15 adolescents with FASD and 20 age-matched healthy controls (HC) with a mean age of 15.9 ± 0.4 years during performance of a prosaccade task. Eye movement was recorded and synchronized to the MEG data using an MEG compatible eye-tracker. The MEG data were analyzed relative to the onset of the visual saccade. Time-frequency analysis was performed using Fieldtrip with a focus on group differences in gamma-band oscillations. Following left target presentation, we identified four clusters over right frontal, right parietal, and left temporal/occipital cortex, with significantly different gamma-band (30–50 Hz) power between FASD and HC. Furthermore, visual M100 latencies described in Coffman etal. (2012) corresponded with increased gamma power over right central cortex in FASD only. Gamma-band differences were not identified for stimulus-averaged responses implying that these gamma-band differences were related to differences in saccade network functioning. These differences in gamma-band power may provide indications of atypical development of cortical networks in individuals with FASD. PMID:24399957
Perceptual context and individual differences in the language proficiency of preschool children.

PubMed

Banai, Karen; Yifat, Rachel

2016-02-01

Although the contribution of perceptual processes to language skills during infancy is well recognized, the role of perception in linguistic processing beyond infancy is not well understood. In the experiments reported here, we asked whether manipulating the perceptual context in which stimuli are presented across trials influences how preschool children perform visual (shape-size identification; Experiment 1) and auditory (syllable identification; Experiment 2) tasks. Another goal was to determine whether the sensitivity to perceptual context can explain part of the variance in oral language skills in typically developing preschool children. Perceptual context was manipulated by changing the relative frequency with which target visual (Experiment 1) and auditory (Experiment 2) stimuli were presented in arrays of fixed size, and identification of the target stimuli was tested. Oral language skills were assessed using vocabulary, word definition, and phonological awareness tasks. Changes in perceptual context influenced the performance of the majority of children on both identification tasks. Sensitivity to perceptual context accounted for 7% to 15% of the variance in language scores. We suggest that context effects are an outcome of a statistical learning process. Therefore, the current findings demonstrate that statistical learning can facilitate both visual and auditory identification processes in preschool children. Furthermore, consistent with previous findings in infants and in older children and adults, individual differences in statistical learning were found to be associated with individual differences in language skills of preschool children. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Negative Affect during a Collective (but Not an Individual) Task Is Associated with Holistic Attention in East Asian Cultural Context

PubMed Central

Tominaga, Hitoshi; Uchida, Yukiko; Miyamoto, Yuri; Yamasaki, Teruo

2017-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that individuals from East Asian cultures are more likely to show holistic attention—a pattern of attention that incorporates contextual information into focal stimuli—than individuals from North American cultures. Holistic attention is also prevalent in communities that require close cooperation. However, it is not yet known how cooperation is related to holistic attention. We theorized that holistic attention increases when people experience negative affect (e.g., worry, sadness, and frustration) during collective tasks (but not during individual tasks) because negative affect in social contexts signals the existence of potential threats to social harmony, thus indicating a need to restore social harmony. To examine this hypothesis, an experiment was conducted in which participants performed a musical duet either with another participant (a collective task requiring cooperation), or individually with a computer (an individual task). After the musical task, the Framed Line Task (FLT) was administered to examine their holistic attention. Participants also reported their emotional states both before and after the music task. Results suggested that negative affect in the collective task—but not the individual task—was positively correlated with a holistic pattern of attention. The function of negative affect in social contexts as motivation to restore relationships and how this enhances holistic attention is discussed. The moderating effect of social context on the link between negative affect and cognition is also discussed. PMID:28824483
Age-related decrements in dual-task performance: Comparison of different mobility and cognitive tasks. A cross sectional study.

PubMed

Brustio, Paolo Riccardo; Magistro, Daniele; Zecca, Massimiliano; Rabaglietti, Emanuela; Liubicich, Monica Emma

2017-01-01

This cross-sectional study investigated the age-related differences in dual-task performance both in mobility and cognitive tasks and the additive dual-task costs in a sample of older, middle-aged and young adults. 74 older adults (M = 72.63±5.57 years), 58 middle-aged adults (M = 46.69±4.68 years) and 63 young adults (M = 25.34±3.00 years) participated in the study. Participants performed different mobility and subtraction tasks under both single- and dual-task conditions. Linear regressions, repeated-measures and one-way analyses of covariance were used, The results showed: significant effects of the age on the dual and mobility tasks (p<0.05) and differences among the age-groups in the combined dual-task costs (p<0.05); significant decreases in mobility performance under dual-task conditions in all groups (p<0.05) and a decrease in cognitive performance in the older group (p<0.05). Dual-task activity affected mobility and cognitive performance, especially in older adults who showed a higher dual-task cost, suggesting that dual-tasks activities are affected by the age and consequently also mobility and cognitive tasks are negatively influenced.
Age-related decrements in dual-task performance: Comparison of different mobility and cognitive tasks. A cross sectional study

PubMed Central

Brustio, Paolo Riccardo; Zecca, Massimiliano; Rabaglietti, Emanuela; Liubicich, Monica Emma

2017-01-01

This cross-sectional study investigated the age-related differences in dual-task performance both in mobility and cognitive tasks and the additive dual-task costs in a sample of older, middle-aged and young adults. 74 older adults (M = 72.63±5.57 years), 58 middle-aged adults (M = 46.69±4.68 years) and 63 young adults (M = 25.34±3.00 years) participated in the study. Participants performed different mobility and subtraction tasks under both single- and dual-task conditions. Linear regressions, repeated-measures and one-way analyses of covariance were used, The results showed: significant effects of the age on the dual and mobility tasks (p<0.05) and differences among the age-groups in the combined dual-task costs (p<0.05); significant decreases in mobility performance under dual-task conditions in all groups (p<0.05) and a decrease in cognitive performance in the older group (p<0.05). Dual-task activity affected mobility and cognitive performance, especially in older adults who showed a higher dual-task cost, suggesting that dual-tasks activities are affected by the age and consequently also mobility and cognitive tasks are negatively influenced. PMID:28732080
Classroom Demonstrations: Individual Differences.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singer, Sandra M.

These demonstrations stress individual differences, a concept becoming increasingly important in psychological research. Intended for use in undergraduate psychology courses, four demonstrations that illustrate common examples of human variation are described. The demonstrations deal with the following individual differences: taste blindness,…
Not All Skilled Readers Have Cracked the Code: Individual Differences in Masked Form Priming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andrews, Sally; Lo, Steson

2012-01-01

This experiment investigated whether individual differences in written language proficiency among university students predict the early stages of lexical retrieval tapped by the masked form priming lexical decision task. To separate the contributions of sublexical facilitation and lexical competition to masked form priming, the effects of prime…
Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity Predict Action Monitoring and the Error-Related Negativity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, A. Eve; Watson, Jason M.; Strayer, David L.

2012-01-01

Neuroscience suggests that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is responsible for conflict monitoring and the detection of errors in cognitive tasks, thereby contributing to the implementation of attentional control. Though individual differences in frontally mediated goal maintenance have clearly been shown to influence outward behavior in…
Emotional Intelligence: A Theoretical Framework for Individual Differences in Affective Forecasting

PubMed Central

Hoerger, Michael; Chapman, Benjamin P.; Epstein, Ronald M.; Duberstein, Paul R.

2011-01-01

Only recently have researchers begun to examine individual differences in affective forecasting. The present investigation was designed to make a theoretical contribution to this emerging literature by examining the role of emotional intelligence in affective forecasting. Emotional intelligence was hypothesized to be associated with affective forecasting accuracy, memory for emotional reactions, and subsequent improvement on an affective forecasting task involving emotionally-evocative pictures. Results from two studies (N = 511) supported our hypotheses. Emotional intelligence was associated with accuracy in predicting, encoding, and consolidating emotional reactions. Furthermore, emotional intelligence was associated with greater improvement on a second affective forecasting task, with the relationship explained by basic memory processes. Implications for future research on basic and applied decision making are discussed. PMID:22251053
Individual differences in the strength of taxonomic versus thematic relations

PubMed Central

Mirman, Daniel; Graziano, Kristen M.

2011-01-01

Knowledge about word and object meanings can be organized taxonomically (fruits, mammals, etc.) based on shared features, or thematically (eating breakfast, taking a dog for a walk, etc.) based on participation in events or scenarios. An eye-tracking study showed that both kinds of knowledge are activated during comprehension of a single spoken word, even when the listener is not required to perform any active task. The results further revealed that an individual’s relative activation of taxonomic relations compared to thematic relations predicts that individual’s tendency to favor taxonomic over thematic relations when asked to choose between them in a similarity judgment task. These results argue that individuals differ in the relative strengths of their taxonomic and thematic semantic knowledge and suggest that meaning information is organized in two parallel, complementary semantic systems. PMID:22201413
Engagement of large-scale networks is related to individual differences in inhibitory control

PubMed Central

Congdon, Eliza; Mumford, Jeanette A.; Cohen, Jessica R.; Galvan, Adriana; Aron, Adam R.; Xue, Gui; Miller, Eric; Poldrack, Russell A.

2010-01-01

Understanding which brain regions regulate the execution, and suppression, of goal-directed behavior has implications for a number of areas of research. In particular, understanding which brain regions engaged during tasks requiring the execution and inhibition of a motor response provides insight into the mechanisms underlying individual differences in response inhibition ability. However, neuroimaging studies examing the relation between activation and stopping have been inconsistent regarding the direction of the relationship, and also regarding the anatomical location of regions that correlate with behavior. These limitations likely arise from the relatively low power of vox-elwise correlations with small sample sizes. Here, we pooled data over five separate fMRI studies of the Stop-signal task in order to obtain a sufficiently large sample size to robustly detect brain/behavior correlations. In addition, rather than performing mass univariate correlation analysis across all voxels, we increased statistical power by reducing the dimensionality of the data set using independent components analysis and then examined correlations between behavior and the resulting component scores. We found that components reflecting activity in regions thought to be involved in stopping were associated with better stopping ability, while activity in a default-mode network was associated with poorer stopping ability across individuals. These results clearly show a relationship between individual differences in stopping ability in specific activated networks, including regions known to be critical for the behavior. The results also highlight the usefulness of using dimensionality reduction to increase the power to detect brain/behavior correlations in individual differences research. PMID:20600962
Motor planning and execution in left- and right-handed individuals during a bimanual grasping and placing task.

PubMed

Hughes, Charmayne M L; Reissig, Paola; Seegelke, Christian

2011-09-01

The issue of handedness has been the topic of great interest for researchers in a number of scientific domains. It is typically observed that the dominant hand yields numerous behavioral advantages over the non-dominant hand during unimanual tasks, which provides evidence of hemispheric specialization. In contrast to advantages for the dominant hand during motor execution, recent research has demonstrated that the right hand has advantages during motor planning (regardless of handedness), indicating that motor planning is a specialized function of the left hemisphere. In the present study we explored hemispheric advantages in motor planning and execution in left- and right-handed individuals during a bimanual grasping and placing task. Replicating previous findings, both motor planning and execution was influenced by object end-orientation congruency. In addition, although motor planning (i.e., end-state comfort) was not influenced by hand or handedness, motor execution differed between left and right hand, with shorter object transport times observed for the left hand, regardless of handedness. These results demonstrate that the hemispheric advantages often observed in unimanual tasks do not extend to discrete bimanual tasks. We propose that the differences in object transport time between the two hands arise from overt shifting visual fixation between the two hands/objects. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Age-related cognitive task effects on gait characteristics: do different working memory components make a difference?

PubMed

Qu, Xingda

2014-10-27

Though it is well recognized that gait characteristics are affected by concurrent cognitive tasks, how different working memory components contribute to dual task effects on gait is still unknown. The objective of the present study was to investigate dual-task effects on gait characteristics, specifically the application of cognitive tasks involving different working memory components. In addition, we also examined age-related differences in such dual-task effects. Three cognitive tasks (i.e. 'Random Digit Generation', 'Brooks' Spatial Memory', and 'Counting Backward') involving different working memory components were examined. Twelve young (6 males and 6 females, 20 ~ 25 years old) and 12 older participants (6 males and 6 females, 60 ~ 72 years old) took part in two phases of experiments. In the first phase, each cognitive task was defined at three difficulty levels, and perceived difficulty was compared across tasks. The cognitive tasks perceived to be equally difficult were selected for the second phase. In the second phase, four testing conditions were defined, corresponding to a baseline and the three equally difficult cognitive tasks. Participants walked on a treadmill at their self-selected comfortable speed in each testing condition. Body kinematics were collected during treadmill walking, and gait characteristics were assessed using spatial-temporal gait parameters. Application of the concurrent Brooks' Spatial Memory task led to longer step times compared to the baseline condition. Larger step width variability was observed in both the Brooks' Spatial Memory and Counting Backward dual-task conditions than in the baseline condition. In addition, cognitive task effects on step width variability differed between two age groups. In particular, the Brooks' Spatial Memory task led to significantly larger step width variability only among older adults. These findings revealed that cognitive tasks involving the visuo-spatial sketchpad interfered with
Modelling individual difference in visual categorization.

PubMed

Shen, Jianhong; Palmeri, Thomas J

Recent years has seen growing interest in understanding, characterizing, and explaining individual differences in visual cognition. We focus here on individual differences in visual categorization. Categorization is the fundamental visual ability to group different objects together as the same kind of thing. Research on visual categorization and category learning has been significantly informed by computational modeling, so our review will focus both on how formal models of visual categorization have captured individual differences and how individual difference have informed the development of formal models. We first examine the potential sources of individual differences in leading models of visual categorization, providing a brief review of a range of different models. We then describe several examples of how computational models have captured individual differences in visual categorization. This review also provides a bit of an historical perspective, starting with models that predicted no individual differences, to those that captured group differences, to those that predict true individual differences, and to more recent hierarchical approaches that can simultaneously capture both group and individual differences in visual categorization. Via this selective review, we see how considerations of individual differences can lead to important theoretical insights into how people visually categorize objects in the world around them. We also consider new directions for work examining individual differences in visual categorization.

Learning Efficiency: Identifying Individual Differences in Learning Rate and Retention in Healthy Adults.

PubMed

Zerr, Christopher L; Berg, Jeffrey J; Nelson, Steven M; Fishell, Andrew K; Savalia, Neil K; McDermott, Kathleen B

2018-06-01

People differ in how quickly they learn information and how long they remember it, yet individual differences in learning abilities within healthy adults have been relatively neglected. In two studies, we examined the relation between learning rate and subsequent retention using a new foreign-language paired-associates task (the learning-efficiency task), which was designed to eliminate ceiling effects that often accompany standardized tests of learning and memory in healthy adults. A key finding was that quicker learners were also more durable learners (i.e., exhibited better retention across a delay), despite studying the material for less time. Additionally, measures of learning and memory from this task were reliable in Study 1 ( N = 281) across 30 hr and Study 2 ( N = 92; follow-up n = 46) across 3 years. We conclude that people vary in how efficiently they learn, and we describe a reliable and valid method for assessing learning efficiency within healthy adults.
Learning and Individual Differences: An Ability/Information-Processing Framework for Skill Acquisition

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-03-15

state of the test -taker (e.g., time-of-day, arousal level; see Revelle, Humphreys, Simon, & Gilliland, 1980) and the psychological state of the test ...the psychology of individual differences. Test directions almost never tell the examinee how to approach the task. Theoretically, style of performance...J. (1949). Essentials of psychological testing . New York: Harper & Row. Cronbach. L. J. (1984). Essentials of psychological testing (4th edition
Learning and Individual Differences: An Ability/Information - Processing Framework for Skill Acquisition

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-03-15

1992, Journal of Applied Psychology ).] This study represented an attempt to extend and test the Ackerman (1988) theory of the cognitive ability...both the physical state of the test -taker (e.g., time-of-day, arousal level; see Revelle, Humphreys, Simon, & Gilliland, 1980) and the psychological ...little consideration in the psychology of individual differences. -. Test directions almost never tell the examinee how to approach the task. Theoretically
Bridging the Gap: Individual Growth and Development Indicators--The Which One Doesn't Belong Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rodriguez, Megan I.; Wackerle-Hollman, Alisha K.

2015-01-01

The Individual Growth and Development Indicator (IGDI): Which One Doesn't Belong (WODB) task is an early comprehension screening assessment designed for use in pre-Kindergarten multi-tiered systems of support. This article summarizes the purpose, procedures, and evidence base currently available in the literature to support the WODB task. Example…
Individual differences in brain activity during visuo-spatial processing assessed by slow cortical potentials and LORETA.

PubMed

Lamm, Claus; Fischmeister, Florian Ph S; Bauer, Herbert

2005-12-01

Using slow-cortical potentials (SCPs), Vitouch et al. demonstrated that subjects with low ability to solve a complex visuo-spatial imagery task show higher activity in occipital, parietal and frontal cortex during task processing than subjects with high ability. This finding has been interpreted in the sense of the so-called "neural efficiency" hypothesis, which assumes that the central nervous system of individuals with higher intellectual abilities is functioning in a more efficient way than the one of individuals with lower abilities. Using a higher spatial resolution of SCP recordings, and by employing the source localization method of LORETA (low-resolution electromagnetic tomography), we investigated this hypothesis by performing an extended replication of Vitouch et al.'s study. SCPs during processing of a visuo-spatial imagery task were recorded in pre-selected subjects with either high or low abilities in solving the imagery task. Topographic and LORETA analyses of SCPs revealed that a distributed network of extrastriate occipital, superior parietal, temporal, medial frontal and prefrontal areas was active during task solving. This network is well in line with former studies of the functional neuroanatomy of visuo-spatial imagery. Contrary to our expectations, however, the results of Vitouch et al. as well as of other studies supporting the neural efficiency hypothesis could not be confirmed since no difference in brain activity between groups was observed. This inconsistency between studies might be due to differing task processing strategies. While subjects with high abilities in the Vitouch et al. study seemed to use a visuo-perceptual task solving approach, all other subjects relied upon a visuo-motor task processing strategy.
Executive function and intelligence in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity: an individual differences investigation.

PubMed

Engelhardt, Paul E; Nigg, Joel T; Ferreira, Fernanda

2017-07-01

In the current study, we examined the role of intelligence and executive functions in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity using an individual differences approach. Data were collected from 174 adolescents and adults who completed a battery of cognitive tests as well as a sentence comprehension task. The critical items for the comprehension task consisted of object/subject garden paths (e.g., While Anna dressed the baby that was small and cute played in the crib), and participants answered a comprehension question (e.g., Did Anna dress the baby?) following each one. Previous studies have shown that garden-path misinterpretations tend to persist into final interpretations. Results showed that both intelligence and processing speed interacted with ambiguity. Individuals with higher intelligence and faster processing were more likely to answer the comprehension questions correctly and, specifically, following ambiguous as opposed to unambiguous sentences. Inhibition produced a marginal effect, but the variance in inhibition was largely shared with intelligence. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their impact on syntactic ambiguity resolution.
Executive function and intelligence in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity: an individual differences investigation

PubMed Central

Engelhardt, Paul E.; Nigg, Joel T.; Ferreira, Fernanda

2016-01-01

In the current study, we examined the role of intelligence and executive functions in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity using an individual differences approach. Data were collected from 174 adolescents and adults who completed a battery of cognitive tests as well as a sentence comprehension task. The critical items for the comprehension task consisted of object/subject garden paths (e.g., While Anna dressed the baby that was small and cute played in the crib), and participants answered a comprehension question (e.g., Did Anna dress the baby?) following each one. Previous studies have shown that garden-path misinterpretations tend to persist into final interpretations. Results showed that both intelligence and processing speed interacted with ambiguity. Individuals with higher intelligence and faster processing were more likely to answer the comprehension questions correctly and, specifically, following ambiguous as opposed to unambiguous sentences. Inhibition produced a marginal effect, but the variance in inhibition was largely shared with intelligence. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their impact on syntactic ambiguity resolution. PMID:27150661
Patterns of Sympathetic Responses Induced by Different Stress Tasks

PubMed Central

Fechir, M; Schlereth, T; Purat, T; Kritzmann, S; Geber, C; Eberle, T; Gamer, M; Birklein, F

2008-01-01

Stress tasks are used to induce sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal. However, the efficacy and the patterns of SNS activation have not been systematically compared between different tasks. Therefore, we analyzed SNS activation during the following stress tasks: Presentation of negative, positive, and – as a control – neutral affective pictures, Color-Word interference test (CWT), mental arithmetic under time limit, singing a song aloud, and giving a spontaneous talk. We examined 11 healthy subjects and recorded the following SNS parameters: Activation of emotional sweating by quantitative sudometry, skin vasoconstriction by laser-Doppler flowmetry, heart rate by ECG, blood pressure by determination of pulse wave transit time (PWTT), and electromyographic (EMG) activity of the trapezius muscle. Moreover, subjective stress ratings were acquired for each task using a visual analog scale. All tasks were felt significantly stressful when compared to viewing neutral pictures. However, SNS activation was not reliable: Affective pictures did not induce a significant SNS response; singing, giving a talk and mental arithmetic selectively increased heart rate and emotional sweating. Only the CWT globally activated the SNS. Regarding all tasks, induction of emotional sweating, increase of heart rate and blood pressure significantly correlated with subjective stress ratings, in contrast to EMG and skin vasoconstriction. Our results show that the activation of the SNS widely varies depending on the stress task. Different stress tasks differently activate the SNS, which is an important finding when considering sympathetic reactions - in clinical situations and in research. PMID:19018304
Improvements in motor tasks through the use of smartphone technology for individuals with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

PubMed

Capelini, Camila Miliani; da Silva, Talita Dias; Tonks, James; Watson, Suzanna; Alvarez, Mayra Priscila Boscolo; de Menezes, Lilian Del Ciello; Favero, Francis Meire; Caromano, Fátima Aparecida; Massetti, Thais; de Mello Monteiro, Carlos Bandeira

2017-01-01

In individuals severely affected with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), virtual reality has recently been used as a tool to enhance community interaction. Smartphones offer the exciting potential to improve communication, access, and participation, and present the unique opportunity to directly deliver functionality to people with disabilities. To verify whether individuals with DMD improve their motor performance when undertaking a visual motor task using a smartphone game. Fifty individuals with DMD and 50 healthy, typically developing (TD) controls, aged 10-34 years participated in the study. The functional characterization of the sample was determined through Vignos, Egen Klassifikation, and the Motor Function Measure scales. To complete the task, individuals moved a virtual ball around a virtual maze and the time in seconds was measured after every attempt in order to analyze improvement of performance after the practice trials. Motor performance (time to finish each maze) was measured in phases of acquisition, short-term retention, and transfer. Use of the smartphone maze game promoted improvement in performance during acquisition in both groups, which remained in the retention phase. At the transfer phases, with alternative maze tasks, the performance in DMD group was similar to the performance of TD group, with the exception of the transfer to the contralateral hand (nondominant). However, the group with DMD demonstrated longer movement time at all stages of learning, compared with the TD group. The practice of a visual motor task delivered via smartphone game promoted an improvement in performance with similar patterns of learning in both groups. Performance can be influenced by task difficulty, and for people with DMD, motor deficits are responsible for the lower speed of execution. This study indicates that individuals with DMD showed improved performance in a short-term motor learning protocol using a smartphone. We advocate that this technology could
Modelling individual difference in visual categorization

PubMed Central

Shen, Jianhong; Palmeri, Thomas J.

2016-01-01

Recent years has seen growing interest in understanding, characterizing, and explaining individual differences in visual cognition. We focus here on individual differences in visual categorization. Categorization is the fundamental visual ability to group different objects together as the same kind of thing. Research on visual categorization and category learning has been significantly informed by computational modeling, so our review will focus both on how formal models of visual categorization have captured individual differences and how individual difference have informed the development of formal models. We first examine the potential sources of individual differences in leading models of visual categorization, providing a brief review of a range of different models. We then describe several examples of how computational models have captured individual differences in visual categorization. This review also provides a bit of an historical perspective, starting with models that predicted no individual differences, to those that captured group differences, to those that predict true individual differences, and to more recent hierarchical approaches that can simultaneously capture both group and individual differences in visual categorization. Via this selective review, we see how considerations of individual differences can lead to important theoretical insights into how people visually categorize objects in the world around them. We also consider new directions for work examining individual differences in visual categorization. PMID:28154496
Some factors underlying individual differences in speech recognition on PRESTO: a first report.

PubMed

Tamati, Terrin N; Gilbert, Jaimie L; Pisoni, David B

2013-01-01

Previous studies investigating speech recognition in adverse listening conditions have found extensive variability among individual listeners. However, little is currently known about the core underlying factors that influence speech recognition abilities. To investigate sensory, perceptual, and neurocognitive differences between good and poor listeners on the Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set (PRESTO), a new high-variability sentence recognition test under adverse listening conditions. Participants who fell in the upper quartile (HiPRESTO listeners) or lower quartile (LoPRESTO listeners) on key word recognition on sentences from PRESTO in multitalker babble completed a battery of behavioral tasks and self-report questionnaires designed to investigate real-world hearing difficulties, indexical processing skills, and neurocognitive abilities. Young, normal-hearing adults (N = 40) from the Indiana University community participated in the current study. Participants' assessment of their own real-world hearing difficulties was measured with a self-report questionnaire on situational hearing and hearing health history. Indexical processing skills were assessed using a talker discrimination task, a gender discrimination task, and a forced-choice regional dialect categorization task. Neurocognitive abilities were measured with the Auditory Digit Span Forward (verbal short-term memory) and Digit Span Backward (verbal working memory) tests, the Stroop Color and Word Test (attention/inhibition), the WordFam word familiarity test (vocabulary size), the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult Version (BRIEF-A) self-report questionnaire on executive function, and two performance subtests of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) Performance Intelligence Quotient (IQ; nonverbal intelligence). Scores on self-report questionnaires and behavioral tasks were tallied and analyzed by listener group (HiPRESTO and LoPRESTO). The extreme
Some Factors Underlying Individual Differences in Speech Recognition on PRESTO: A First Report

PubMed Central

Tamati, Terrin N.; Gilbert, Jaimie L.; Pisoni, David B.

2013-01-01

Background Previous studies investigating speech recognition in adverse listening conditions have found extensive variability among individual listeners. However, little is currently known about the core, underlying factors that influence speech recognition abilities. Purpose To investigate sensory, perceptual, and neurocognitive differences between good and poor listeners on PRESTO, a new high-variability sentence recognition test under adverse listening conditions. Research Design Participants who fell in the upper quartile (HiPRESTO listeners) or lower quartile (LoPRESTO listeners) on key word recognition on sentences from PRESTO in multitalker babble completed a battery of behavioral tasks and self-report questionnaires designed to investigate real-world hearing difficulties, indexical processing skills, and neurocognitive abilities. Study Sample Young, normal-hearing adults (N = 40) from the Indiana University community participated in the current study. Data Collection and Analysis Participants’ assessment of their own real-world hearing difficulties was measured with a self-report questionnaire on situational hearing and hearing health history. Indexical processing skills were assessed using a talker discrimination task, a gender discrimination task, and a forced-choice regional dialect categorization task. Neurocognitive abilities were measured with the Auditory Digit Span Forward (verbal short-term memory) and Digit Span Backward (verbal working memory) tests, the Stroop Color and Word Test (attention/inhibition), the WordFam word familiarity test (vocabulary size), the BRIEF-A self-report questionnaire on executive function, and two performance subtests of the WASI Performance IQ (non-verbal intelligence). Scores on self-report questionnaires and behavioral tasks were tallied and analyzed by listener group (HiPRESTO and LoPRESTO). Results The extreme groups did not differ overall on self-reported hearing difficulties in real-world listening environments
Different Neuroplasticity for Task Targets and Distractors

PubMed Central

Spingath, Elsie Y.; Kang, Hyun Sug; Plummer, Thane; Blake, David T.

2011-01-01

Adult learning-induced sensory cortex plasticity results in enhanced action potential rates in neurons that have the most relevant information for the task, or those that respond strongly to one sensory stimulus but weakly to its comparison stimulus. Current theories suggest this plasticity is caused when target stimulus evoked activity is enhanced by reward signals from neuromodulatory nuclei. Prior work has found evidence suggestive of nonselective enhancement of neural responses, and suppression of responses to task distractors, but the differences in these effects between detection and discrimination have not been directly tested. Using cortical implants, we defined physiological responses in macaque somatosensory cortex during serial, matched, detection and discrimination tasks. Nonselective increases in neural responsiveness were observed during detection learning. Suppression of responses to task distractors was observed during discrimination learning, and this suppression was specific to cortical locations that sampled responses to the task distractor before learning. Changes in receptive field size were measured as the area of skin that had a significant response to a constant magnitude stimulus, and these areal changes paralleled changes in responsiveness. From before detection learning until after discrimination learning, the enduring changes were selective suppression of cortical locations responsive to task distractors, and nonselective enhancement of responsiveness at cortical locations selective for target and control skin sites. A comparison of observations in prior studies with the observed plasticity effects suggests that the non-selective response enhancement and selective suppression suffice to explain known plasticity phenomena in simple spatial tasks. This work suggests that differential responsiveness to task targets and distractors in primary sensory cortex for a simple spatial detection and discrimination task arise from nonselective
Pre-trauma individual differences in extinction learning predict posttraumatic stress.

PubMed

Lommen, Miriam J J; Engelhard, Iris M; Sijbrandij, Marit; van den Hout, Marcel A; Hermans, Dirk

2013-02-01

In the aftermath of a traumatic event, many people suffer from psychological distress, but only a minority develops posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Pre-trauma individual differences in fear conditioning, most notably reduced extinction learning, have been proposed as playing an important role in the etiology of PTSD. However, prospective data are lacking. In this study, we prospectively tested whether reduced extinction was a predictor for later posttraumatic stress. Dutch soldiers (N = 249) were administered a conditioning task before their four-month deployment to Afghanistan to asses individual differences in extinction learning. After returning home, posttraumatic stress was measured. Results showed that reduced extinction learning before deployment predicted subsequent PTSD symptom severity, over and beyond degree of pre-deployment stress symptoms, neuroticism, and exposure to stressors on deployment. The findings suggest that reduced extinction learning may play a role in the development of PTSD. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual variation in cone photoreceptor density in house sparrows: implications for between-individual differences in visual resolution and chromatic contrast.

PubMed

Ensminger, Amanda L; Fernández-Juricic, Esteban

2014-01-01

Between-individual variation has been documented in a wide variety of taxa, especially for behavioral characteristics; however, intra-population variation in sensory systems has not received similar attention in wild animals. We measured a key trait of the visual system, the density of retinal cone photoreceptors, in a wild population of house sparrows (Passer domesticus). We tested whether individuals differed from each other in cone densities given within-individual variation across the retina and across eyes. We further tested whether the existing variation could lead to individual differences in two aspects of perception: visual resolution and chromatic contrast. We found consistent between-individual variation in the densities of all five types of avian cones, involved in chromatic and achromatic vision. Using perceptual modeling, we found that this degree of variation translated into significant between-individual differences in visual resolution and the chromatic contrast of a plumage signal that has been associated with mate choice and agonistic interactions. However, there was no evidence for a relationship between individual visual resolution and chromatic contrast. The implication is that some birds may have the sensory potential to perform "better" in certain visual tasks, but not necessarily in both resolution and contrast simultaneously. Overall, our findings (a) highlight the need to consider multiple individuals when characterizing sensory traits of a species, and (b) provide some mechanistic basis for between-individual variation in different behaviors (i.e., animal personalities) and for testing the predictions of several widely accepted hypotheses (e.g., honest signaling).
Individual Variation in Cone Photoreceptor Density in House Sparrows: Implications for Between-Individual Differences in Visual Resolution and Chromatic Contrast

PubMed Central

Ensminger, Amanda L.; Fernández-Juricic, Esteban

2014-01-01

Between-individual variation has been documented in a wide variety of taxa, especially for behavioral characteristics; however, intra-population variation in sensory systems has not received similar attention in wild animals. We measured a key trait of the visual system, the density of retinal cone photoreceptors, in a wild population of house sparrows (Passer domesticus). We tested whether individuals differed from each other in cone densities given within-individual variation across the retina and across eyes. We further tested whether the existing variation could lead to individual differences in two aspects of perception: visual resolution and chromatic contrast. We found consistent between-individual variation in the densities of all five types of avian cones, involved in chromatic and achromatic vision. Using perceptual modeling, we found that this degree of variation translated into significant between-individual differences in visual resolution and the chromatic contrast of a plumage signal that has been associated with mate choice and agonistic interactions. However, there was no evidence for a relationship between individual visual resolution and chromatic contrast. The implication is that some birds may have the sensory potential to perform “better” in certain visual tasks, but not necessarily in both resolution and contrast simultaneously. Overall, our findings (a) highlight the need to consider multiple individuals when characterizing sensory traits of a species, and (b) provide some mechanistic basis for between-individual variation in different behaviors (i.e., animal personalities) and for testing the predictions of several widely accepted hypotheses (e.g., honest signaling). PMID:25372039
People with stroke spend more time in active task practice, but similar time in walking practice, when physiotherapy rehabilitation is provided in circuit classes compared to individual therapy sessions: an observational study.

PubMed

English, Coralie; Hillier, Susan; Kaur, Gurpreet; Hundertmark, Laura

2014-03-01

Do people with stroke spend more time in active task practice during circuit class therapy sessions versus individual physiotherapy sessions? Do people with stroke practise different tasks during circuit class therapy sessions versus individual physiotherapy sessions? Prospective, observational study. Twenty-nine people with stroke in inpatient rehabilitation settings. Individual therapy sessions and circuit class therapy sessions provided within a larger randomised controlled trial. Seventy-nine therapy sessions were video-recorded and the footage was analysed for time spent engaged in various categories of activity. In a subsample of 28 videos, the number of steps taken by people with stroke per therapy session was counted. Circuit class therapy sessions were of a longer duration (mean difference 38.0minutes, 95% CI 29.9 to 46.1), and participants spent more time engaged in active task practice (mean difference 23.8minutes, 95% CI 16.1 to 31.4) compared with individual sessions. A greater percentage of time in circuit class therapy sessions was spent practising tasks in sitting (mean difference 5.3%, 95% CI 2.4 to 8.2) and in sit-to-stand practice (mean difference 2.7%, 95% CI 1.4 to 4.1), and a lower percentage of time in walking practice (mean difference 19.1%, 95% CI 10.0 to 28.1) compared with individual sessions. PARTICIPANTS took an average of 371 steps (SD 418) during therapy sessions and this did not differ significantly between group and individual sessions. People with stroke spent more time in active task practice, but a similar amount of time in walking practice when physiotherapy was offered in circuit class therapy sessions versus individual therapy sessions. There is a need for effective strategies to increase the amount of walking practice during physiotherapy sessions for people after stroke. Copyright © 2014 Australian Physiotherapy Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Individual Differences in Toddlers' Prosociality: Experiences in Early Relationships Explain Variability in Prosocial Behavior

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Newton, Emily K.; Thompson, Ross A.; Goodman, Miranda

2016-01-01

Latent class logistic regression analysis was used to investigate sources of individual differences in profiles of prosocial behavior. Eighty-seven 18-month-olds were observed in tasks assessing sharing with a neutral adult, instrumentally helping a neutral adult, and instrumentally helping a sad adult. Maternal mental state language (MSL) and…
Frontal theta accounts for individual differences in the cost of conflict on decision making.

PubMed

Pinner, John F L; Cavanagh, James F

2017-10-01

Cognitive conflict is often experienced as a difficult, frustrating, and aversive state. Recent studies have indicated that conflict acts as an implicit cost during learning, valuation, and the instantiation of cognitive control. Here we investigated if an implicit manipulation of conflict also influences explicit decision making to risk. Participants were required to perform a Balloon Analogue Risk Task wherein the virtual balloon was inflated by performing a flankers task. By varying the percent of incongruent flanker trials between balloons, we hypothesized that participants would pump the balloon fewer times in conditions of higher conflict and that frontal midline theta would account for significant variance in this relationship. Across two studies, we demonstrate that conflict did not elicit reliable behavioral changes in this task across participants. However, individual differences in frontal theta power accounted for significant variance by predicting diminished balloon pumps. Thus, while conflict costs may act as investments to some individuals (invigorating behavior), it is aversive to others (diminishing behavior), and frontal midline theta power accounts for these varying behavioral tendencies between individuals. These findings demonstrate how frontal midline theta is not only a candidate mechanism for implementing cognitive control, but it is sensitive to the inherent costs therein. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Different motor tasks impact differently on cognitive performance of older persons during dual task tests.

PubMed

Simoni, David; Rubbieri, Gaia; Baccini, Marco; Rinaldi, Lucio; Becheri, Dimitri; Forconi, Tatiana; Mossello, Enrico; Zanieri, Samanta; Marchionni, Niccolò; Di Bari, Mauro

2013-07-01

Dual task paradigm states that the introduction of a second task during a cognitive or motor performance results in a decreased performance in either task. Treadmill walk, often used in clinical applications of dual task testing, has never been compared to overground walk, to ascertain its susceptibility to interference from a second task. We compared the effects of overground and treadmill gait on dual task performance. Gait kinematic parameters and cognitive performance were obtained in 29 healthy older adults (mean age 75 years, 14 females) when they were walking freely on a sensorized carpet or during treadmill walking with an optoelectronic system, in single task or dual task conditions, using alternate repetition of letters as a cognitive verbal task. During overground walking, speed, cadence, step length stride length, and double support time (all with P value<0.001) and cognitive performance (number of correct words, P<0.001) decreased substantially from single to dual task testing. When subjects walked at a fixed speed on the treadmill, cadence decreased significantly (P=0.005), whereas cognitive performance remained unaffected. Both motor and cognitive performances decline during dual task testing with overground walking. Conversely, cognitive performance remains unaffected in dual task testing on the treadmill. In the light of current dual task paradigm, these findings may have relevant implication for our understanding of motor control, as they suggest that treadmill walk does not involve brain areas susceptible to interference from the introduction of a cognitive task. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Inter-individual Differences in Heart Rate Variability Are Associated with Inter-individual Differences in Empathy and Alexithymia.

PubMed

Lischke, Alexander; Pahnke, Rike; Mau-Moeller, Anett; Behrens, Martin; Grabe, Hans J; Freyberger, Harald J; Hamm, Alfons O; Weippert, Matthias

2018-01-01

In the present study, we investigated whether inter-individual differences in vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) would be associated with inter-individual differences in empathy and alexithymia. To this end, we determined resting state HF-HRV in 90 individuals that also completed questionnaires assessing inter-individual differences in empathy and alexithymia. Our categorical and dimensional analyses revealed that inter-individual differences in HF-HRV were differently associated with inter-individual differences in empathy and alexithymia. We found that individuals with high HF-HRV reported more empathy and less alexithymia than individuals with low HF-HRV. Moreover, we even found that an increase in HF-HRV was associated with an increase in empathy and a decrease in alexithymia across all participants. Taken together, these findings indicate that individuals with high HF-HRV are more empathetic and less alexithymic than individuals with low HF-HRV. These differences in empathy and alexithymia may explain why individuals with high HF-HRV are more successful in sharing and understanding the mental and emotional states of others than individuals with low HF-HRV.
Individual differences in impulsive action and dopamine transporter function in rat orbitofrontal cortex.

PubMed

Yates, J R; Darna, M; Beckmann, J S; Dwoskin, L P; Bardo, M T

2016-01-28

Impulsivity, which can be subdivided into impulsive action and impulsive choice, is implicated as a factor underlying drug abuse vulnerability. Although previous research has shown that dopamine (DA) systems in prefrontal cortex are involved in impulsivity and substance abuse, it is not known if inherent variation in DA transporter (DAT) function contributes to impulsivity. The current study determined if individual differences in either impulsive action or impulsive choice are related to DAT function in orbitofrontal (OFC) and/or medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Rats were first tested both for impulsive action in a cued go/no-go task and for impulsive choice in a delay-discounting task. Following behavioral evaluation, in vitro [(3)H]DA uptake assays were performed in OFC and mPFC isolated from individual rats. Vmax in OFC, but not mPFC, was correlated with performance in the cued go/no-go task, with decreased OFC DAT function being associated with high impulsive action. In contrast, Vmax in OFC and mPFC was not correlated with performance in the delay-discounting task. The current results demonstrate that impulsive behavior in cued go/no-go performance is associated with decreased DAT function in OFC, suggesting that hyperdopaminergic tone in this prefrontal subregion mediates, at least in part, increased impulsive action. Copyright © 2015 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual Differences in Recovery Time From Attentional Capture

PubMed Central

Fukuda, Keisuke; Vogel, Edward K.

2015-01-01

Working memory capacity reflects a core ability of the individual that affects performance on many cognitive tasks. Recent work has suggested that an important covariate of memory capacity is attentional control, and specifically that low-capacity individuals are more susceptible to attentional capture by distractors than high-capacity individuals are, with the latter being able to resist capture. Here, we tested an alternative account according to which all individuals are equally susceptible to attentional capture, but high-capacity individuals recover more quickly than low-capacity individuals. Using psychophysical and electrophysiological methods, we measured recovery time from attentional capture. In two experiments, we found that high- and low-capacity individuals showed equivalent attentional capture effects in the initial moments following capture, but that low-capacity individuals took much longer to recover than high-capacity individuals did. These results suggest that the poor attentional control associated with low capacity is due to slow disengagement from distractors. PMID:21310945
Procedural Error and Task Interruption

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-09-30

red for research on errors and individual differences . Results indicate predictive validity for fluid intelligence and specifi c forms of work...TERMS procedural error, task interruption, individual differences , fluid intelligence, sleep deprivation 16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: 17...and individual differences . It generates rich data on several kinds of errors, including procedural errors in which steps are skipped or repeated
Neural efficiency as a function of task demands☆

PubMed Central

Dunst, Beate; Benedek, Mathias; Jauk, Emanuel; Bergner, Sabine; Koschutnig, Karl; Sommer, Markus; Ischebeck, Anja; Spinath, Birgit; Arendasy, Martin; Bühner, Markus; Freudenthaler, Heribert; Neubauer, Aljoscha C.

2014-01-01

The neural efficiency hypothesis describes the phenomenon that brighter individuals show lower brain activation than less bright individuals when working on the same cognitive tasks. The present study investigated whether the brain activation–intelligence relationship still applies when more versus less intelligent individuals perform tasks with a comparable person-specific task difficulty. In an fMRI-study, 58 persons with lower (n = 28) or respectively higher (n = 30) intelligence worked on simple and difficult inductive reasoning tasks having the same person-specific task difficulty. Consequently, less bright individuals received sample-based easy and medium tasks, whereas bright subjects received sample-based medium and difficult tasks. This design also allowed a comparison of lower versus higher intelligent individuals when working on the same tasks (i.e. sample-based medium task difficulty). In line with expectations, differences in task performance and in brain activation were only found for the subset of tasks with the same sample-based task difficulty, but not when comparing tasks with the same person-specific task difficulty. These results suggest that neural efficiency reflects an (ability-dependent) adaption of brain activation to the respective task demands. PMID:24489416
Interference of Different Types of Seats on Postural Control System during a Forward-Reaching Task in Individuals with Paraplegia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de Abreu, Daniela Cristina Carvalho; Takara, Kelly; Metring, Nathalia Lopes; Reis, Julia Guimaraes; Cliquet, Alberto, Jr.

2012-01-01

We aimed to evaluate the influence of different types of wheelchair seats on paraplegic individuals' postural control using a maximum anterior reaching test. Balance evaluations during 50, 75, and 90% of each individual's maximum reach in the forward direction using two different cushions on seat (one foam and one gel) and a no-cushion condition…
Individual differences in response to automation: the five factor model of personality.

PubMed

Szalma, James L; Taylor, Grant S

2011-06-01

This study examined the relationship of operator personality (Five Factor Model) and characteristics of the task and of adaptive automation (reliability and adaptiveness-whether the automation was well-matched to changes in task demand) to operator performance, workload, stress, and coping. This represents the first investigation of how the Five Factors relate to human response to automation. One-hundred-sixty-one college students experienced either 75% or 95% reliable automation provided with task loads of either two or four displays to be monitored. The task required threat detection in a simulated uninhabited ground vehicle (UGV) task. Task demand exerted the strongest influence on outcome variables. Automation characteristics did not directly impact workload or stress, but effects did emerge in the context of trait-task interactions that varied as a function of the dimension of workload and stress. The pattern of relationships of traits to dependent variables was generally moderated by at least one task factor. Neuroticism was related to poorer performance in some conditions, and all five traits were associated with at least one measure of workload and stress. Neuroticism generally predicted increased workload and stress and the other traits predicted decreased levels of these states. However, in the case of the relation of Extraversion and Agreeableness to Worry, Frustration, and avoidant coping, the direction of effects varied across task conditions. The results support incorporation of individual differences into automation design by identifying the relevant person characteristics and using the information to determine what functions to automate and the form and level of automation.
Individual Differences in Motor Timing and Its Relation to Cognitive and Fine Motor Skills

PubMed Central

Lorås, Håvard; Stensdotter, Ann-Katrin; Öhberg, Fredrik; Sigmundsson, Hermundur

2013-01-01

The present study investigated the relationship between individual differences in timing movements at the level of milliseconds and performance on selected cognitive and fine motor skills. For this purpose, young adult participants (N = 100) performed a repetitive movement task paced by an auditory metronome at different rates. Psychometric measures included the digit-span and symbol search subtasks from the Wechsler battery as well as the Raven SPM. Fine motor skills were assessed with the Purdue Pegboard test. Motor timing performance was significantly related (mean r = .3) to cognitive measures, and explained both unique and shared variance with information-processing speed of Raven's scores. No significant relations were found between motor timing measures and fine motor skills. These results show that individual differences in cognitive and motor timing performance is to some extent dependent upon shared processing not associated with individual differences in manual dexterity. PMID:23874952
Individual differences in motor timing and its relation to cognitive and fine motor skills.

PubMed

Lorås, Håvard; Stensdotter, Ann-Katrin; Öhberg, Fredrik; Sigmundsson, Hermundur

2013-01-01

The present study investigated the relationship between individual differences in timing movements at the level of milliseconds and performance on selected cognitive and fine motor skills. For this purpose, young adult participants (N = 100) performed a repetitive movement task paced by an auditory metronome at different rates. Psychometric measures included the digit-span and symbol search subtasks from the Wechsler battery as well as the Raven SPM. Fine motor skills were assessed with the Purdue Pegboard test. Motor timing performance was significantly related (mean r = .3) to cognitive measures, and explained both unique and shared variance with information-processing speed of Raven's scores. No significant relations were found between motor timing measures and fine motor skills. These results show that individual differences in cognitive and motor timing performance is to some extent dependent upon shared processing not associated with individual differences in manual dexterity.
Age-related differences in reaction time task performance in young children.

PubMed

Kiselev, Sergey; Espy, Kimberly Andrews; Sheffield, Tiffany

2009-02-01

Performance of reaction time (RT) tasks was investigated in young children and adults to test the hypothesis that age-related differences in processing speed supersede a "global" mechanism and are a function of specific differences in task demands and processing requirements. The sample consisted of 54 4-year-olds, 53 5-year-olds, 59 6-year-olds, and 35 adults from Russia. Using the regression approach pioneered by Brinley and the transformation method proposed by Madden and colleagues and Ridderinkhoff and van der Molen, age-related differences in processing speed differed among RT tasks with varying demands. In particular, RTs differed between children and adults on tasks that required response suppression, discrimination of color or spatial orientation, reversal of contingencies of previously learned stimulus-response rules, and greater stimulus-response complexity. Relative costs of these RT task differences were larger than predicted by the global difference hypothesis except for response suppression. Among young children, age-related differences larger than predicted by the global difference hypothesis were evident when tasks required color or spatial orientation discrimination and stimulus-response rule complexity, but not for response suppression or reversal of stimulus-response contingencies. Process-specific, age-related differences in processing speed that support heterochronicity of brain development during childhood were revealed.
Taking your own path: Individual differences in executive function and language processing skills in child learners.

PubMed

Woodard, Kristina; Pozzan, Lucia; Trueswell, John C

2016-01-01

Children as old as 5 or 6 years display selective difficulties in revising initial interpretive commitments, as indicated by both online and offline measures of sentence comprehension. It is likely, however, that individual children differ in how well they can recover from misinterpretations and in the age at which they become adult-like in these abilities. To better understand the cognitive functions that support sentence processing and revision, the current work investigated how individual differences in children's ability to interpret temporarily ambiguous sentences relate to individual differences in other linguistic and domain-general cognitive abilities. Children were tested over 2 days on a battery of executive function, working memory, and language comprehension tasks. Performance on these tasks was then used to predict online and offline measures of children's ability to revise initial misinterpretations of temporarily ambiguous sentences. We found two measures of children's cognitive flexibility to be related to their ambiguity resolution abilities. These results provide converging evidence for the hypothesis that the ability to revise initial interpretive commitments is supported by domain-general executive function abilities, which are highly variable and not fully developed in children. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Examining the Relationships among Item Recognition, Source Recognition, and Recall from an Individual Differences Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Unsworth, Nash; Brewer, Gene A.

2009-01-01

The authors of the current study examined the relationships among item-recognition, source-recognition, free recall, and other memory and cognitive ability tasks via an individual differences analysis. Two independent sources of variance contributed to item-recognition and source-recognition performance, and these two constructs related…
Eye movements provide insight into individual differences in children's analogical reasoning strategies.

PubMed

Starr, Ariel; Vendetti, Michael S; Bunge, Silvia A

2018-05-01

Analogical reasoning is considered a key driver of cognitive development and is a strong predictor of academic achievement. However, it is difficult for young children, who are prone to focusing on perceptual and semantic similarities among items rather than relational commonalities. For example, in a classic A:B::C:? propositional analogy task, children must inhibit attention towards items that are visually or semantically similar to C, and instead focus on finding a relational match to the A:B pair. Competing theories of reasoning development attribute improvements in children's performance to gains in either executive functioning or semantic knowledge. Here, we sought to identify key drivers of the development of analogical reasoning ability by using eye gaze patterns to infer problem-solving strategies used by six-year-old children and adults. Children had a greater tendency than adults to focus on the immediate task goal and constrain their search based on the C item. However, large individual differences existed within children, and more successful reasoners were able to maintain the broader goal in mind and constrain their search by initially focusing on the A:B pair before turning to C and the response choices. When children adopted this strategy, their attention was drawn more readily to the correct response option. Individual differences in children's reasoning ability were also related to rule-guided behavior but not to semantic knowledge. These findings suggest that both developmental improvements and individual differences in performance are driven by the use of more efficient reasoning strategies regarding which information is prioritized from the start, rather than the ability to disengage from attractive lure items. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Individual Differences in a Positional Learning Task across the Adult Lifespan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rast, Philippe; Zimprich, Daniel

2010-01-01

This study aimed at modeling individual and average non-linear trajectories of positional learning using a structured latent growth curve approach. The model is based on an exponential function which encompasses three parameters: Initial performance, learning rate, and asymptotic performance. These learning parameters were compared in a positional…
Visual Working Memory Capacity: From Psychophysics and Neurobiology to Individual Differences

PubMed Central

Luck, Steven J.; Vogel, Edward K.

2013-01-01

Visual working memory capacity is of great interest because it is strongly correlated with overall cognitive ability, can be understood at the level of neural circuits, and is easily measured. Recent studies have shown that capacity influences tasks ranging from saccade targeting to analogical reasoning. A debate has arisen over whether capacity is constrained by a limited number of discrete representations or by an infinitely divisible resource, but the empirical evidence and neural network models currently favor a discrete item limit. Capacity differs markedly across individuals and groups, and recent research indicates that some of these differences reflect true differences in storage capacity whereas others reflect variations in the ability to use memory capacity efficiently. PMID:23850263
Intra-individual variability across cognitive task in drug-naïve pediatric patients with obsessive compulsive disorder.

PubMed

Okazaki, Kosuke; Yamamuro, Kazuhiko; Iida, Junzo; Ota, Toyosaku; Nakanishi, Yoko; Matsuura, Hiroki; Uratani, Mitsuhiro; Sawada, Satomi; Azechi, Takahiro; Kishimoto, Naoko; Kishimoto, Toshifumi

2018-06-01

Attention deficit is commonly observed in several psychiatric conditions. In particular, patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder exhibit not only attention deficit, but also intra-individual variability in response times (IIV-RT) during the performance of cognitive tasks related to attention span and sustained attention. Although obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is commonly observed across childhood, little is known about abnormalities in IIV-RT during the auditory odd-ball task, and how these changes relate to event-related potentials (ERPs) components. In the present study, we compared the ERPs of 15 adolescent and pediatric patients with OCD with 15 healthy age, sex, and IQ-matched controls. We found that tau of IIV-TR was not significantly different between the OCD group and controls, whereas the OCD group exhibited lower mu and sigma compared to controls. Furthermore, we revealed that P300 amplitude was significantly attenuated in the OCD group at Fz, C3, and C4, compared with controls. The present study thereby provided the first evidence that individuals with pediatric or adolescent OCD exhibit lower variability in reaction time in IIV-RT during an auditory odd-ball task than controls. These results suggest that there are no impairments in attention span and sustained attention in pediatric and adolescent patients with OCD. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Feasibility of High-Repetition, Task-Specific Training for Individuals With Upper-Extremity Paresis

PubMed Central

Waddell, Kimberly J.; Birkenmeier, Rebecca L.; Moore, Jennifer L.; Hornby, T. George

2014-01-01

OBJECTIVE. We investigated the feasibility of delivering an individualized, progressive, high-repetition upper-extremity (UE) task-specific training protocol for people with stroke in the inpatient rehabilitation setting. METHOD. Fifteen patients with UE paresis participated in this study. Task-specific UE training was scheduled for 60 min/day, 4 days/wk, during occupational therapy for the duration of a participant’s inpatient stay. During each session, participants were challenged to complete ≥300 repetitions of various tasks. RESULTS. Participants averaged 289 repetitions/session, spending 47 of 60 min in active training. Participants improved on impairment and activity level outcome measures. CONCLUSION. People with stroke in an inpatient setting can achieve hundreds of repetitions of task-specific training in 1-hr sessions. As expected, all participants improved on functional outcome measures. Future studies are needed to determine whether this high-repetition training program results in better outcomes than current UE interventions. PMID:25005508
Individual Differences in Children's Corepresentation of Self and Other in Joint Action.

PubMed

Milward, Sophie J; Kita, Sotaro; Apperly, Ian A

2017-05-01

Previous research has shown that children aged 4-5 years, but not 2-3 years, show adult-like interference from a partner when performing a joint task (Milward, Kita, & Apperly, 2014). This raises questions about the cognitive skills involved in the development of such "corepresentation (CR)" of a partner (Sebanz, Knoblich, & Prinz, 2003). Here, individual differences data from one hundred and thirteen 4- to 5-year-olds showed theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control (IC) as predictors of ability to avoid CR interference, suggesting that children with better ToM abilities are more likely to succeed in decoupling self and other representations in a joint task, while better IC is likely to help children avoid interference from a partner's response when selecting their own response on the task. © 2016 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development.
Improvements in motor tasks through the use of smartphone technology for individuals with Duchenne muscular dystrophy

PubMed Central

Capelini, Camila Miliani; da Silva, Talita Dias; Tonks, James; Watson, Suzanna; Alvarez, Mayra Priscila Boscolo; de Menezes, Lilian Del Ciello; Favero, Francis Meire; Caromano, Fátima Aparecida; Massetti, Thais; de Mello Monteiro, Carlos Bandeira

2017-01-01

Background In individuals severely affected with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), virtual reality has recently been used as a tool to enhance community interaction. Smartphones offer the exciting potential to improve communication, access, and participation, and present the unique opportunity to directly deliver functionality to people with disabilities. Objective To verify whether individuals with DMD improve their motor performance when undertaking a visual motor task using a smartphone game. Patients and methods Fifty individuals with DMD and 50 healthy, typically developing (TD) controls, aged 10–34 years participated in the study. The functional characterization of the sample was determined through Vignos, Egen Klassifikation, and the Motor Function Measure scales. To complete the task, individuals moved a virtual ball around a virtual maze and the time in seconds was measured after every attempt in order to analyze improvement of performance after the practice trials. Motor performance (time to finish each maze) was measured in phases of acquisition, short-term retention, and transfer. Results Use of the smartphone maze game promoted improvement in performance during acquisition in both groups, which remained in the retention phase. At the transfer phases, with alternative maze tasks, the performance in DMD group was similar to the performance of TD group, with the exception of the transfer to the contralateral hand (nondominant). However, the group with DMD demonstrated longer movement time at all stages of learning, compared with the TD group. Conclusion The practice of a visual motor task delivered via smartphone game promoted an improvement in performance with similar patterns of learning in both groups. Performance can be influenced by task difficulty, and for people with DMD, motor deficits are responsible for the lower speed of execution. This study indicates that individuals with DMD showed improved performance in a short-term motor learning
Developmental Differences in Intra-Individual Variability in Children with ADHD and ASD

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Belle, Janna; van Hulst, Branko M.; Durston, Sarah

2015-01-01

Background: Intra-individual variability reflects temporal variation within an individual's performance on a cognitive task. Children with developmental disorders, such as ADHD and ASD show increased levels of intra-individual variability. In typical development, intra-individual variability decreases sharply between the ages 6 and 20. The tight…

The Nature of Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity: Active Maintenance in Primary Memory and Controlled Search from Secondary Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Unsworth, Nash; Engle, Randall W.

2007-01-01

Studies examining individual differences in working memory capacity have suggested that individuals with low working memory capacities demonstrate impaired performance on a variety of attention and memory tasks compared with individuals with high working memory capacities. This working memory limitation can be conceived of as arising from 2…
Two-year stability of individual differences in (para)sympathetic and HPA-axis responses to public speaking in childhood and adolescence.

PubMed

van den Bos, Esther; Westenberg, P Michiel

2015-03-01

Long-term stability of individual differences in stress responses has repeatedly been demonstrated in adults, but few studies have investigated the development of stability in adolescence. The present study was the first to investigate the stability of individual differences in heart rate, parasympathetic (RMSSD, pNN50, HF), sympathetic (LF/HF, SC), and HPA-axis (salivary cortisol) responses in a youth sample (8-19 years). Responses to public speaking were measured twice over 2 years. Stability was moderate for absolute responses and task delta responses of HR, RMSSD, pNN50, and HF. Stability was lower for SC and task delta responses of LF/HF and cortisol. Anticipation delta responses showed low stability for HR and cortisol. The latter was moderated by age or puberty, so that individual differences were more stable in more mature individuals. The results support the suggestion that stress responses may be reset during adolescence, but only for the HPA axis. © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.
Studying Different Tasks of Implicit Learning across Multiple Test Sessions Conducted on the Web

PubMed Central

Sævland, Werner; Norman, Elisabeth

2016-01-01

Implicit learning is usually studied through individual performance on a single task, with the most common tasks being the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task, the Dynamic System Control (DSC) task, and Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL). Few attempts have been made to compare performance across different implicit learning tasks within the same study. The current study was designed to explore the relationship between performance on the DSC Sugar factory task and the Alternating Serial Reaction Time (ASRT) task. We also addressed another limitation of traditional implicit learning experiments, namely that implicit learning is usually studied in laboratory settings over a restricted time span lasting for less than an hour. In everyday situations, implicit learning is assumed to involve a gradual accumulation of knowledge across several learning episodes over a longer time span. One way to increase the ecological validity of implicit learning experiments could be to present the learning material repeatedly across shorter test sessions. This can most easily be done by using a web-based setup in which participants can access the material from home. We therefore created an online web-based system for measuring implicit learning that could be administered in either single or multiple sessions. Participants (n = 66) were assigned to either a single session or a multiple session condition. Learning occurred on both tasks, and awareness measures suggested that acquired knowledge was not fully conscious on either of the tasks. Learning and the degree of conscious awareness of the learned regularities were compared across conditions and tasks. On the DSC task, performance was not affected by whether learning had taken place in one or over multiple sessions. On the ASRT task, RT improvement across blocks was larger in the multiple-session condition. Learning in the two tasks was not related. PMID:27375512
Individual differences in posterior cortical volume correlate with proneness to pride and gratitude

PubMed Central

Zahn, Roland; Garrido, Griselda; Moll, Jorge

2014-01-01

Proneness to specific moral sentiments (e.g. pride, gratitude, guilt, indignation) has been linked with individual variations in functional MRI (fMRI) response within anterior brain regions whose lesion leads to inappropriate behaviour. However, the role of structural anatomical differences in rendering individuals prone to particular moral sentiments relative to others is unknown. Here, we investigated grey matter volumes (VBM8) and proneness to specific moral sentiments on a well-controlled experimental task in healthy individuals. Individuals with smaller cuneus, and precuneus volumes were more pride-prone, whereas those with larger right inferior temporal volumes experienced gratitude more readily. Although the primary analysis detected no associations with guilt- or indignation-proneness, subgenual cingulate fMRI responses to guilt were negatively correlated with grey matter volumes in the left superior temporal sulcus and anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (right >left). This shows that individual variations in functional activations within critical areas for moral sentiments were not due to grey matter volume differences in the same areas. Grey matter volume differences between healthy individuals may nevertheless play an important role by affecting posterior cortical brain systems that are non-critical but supportive for the experience of specific moral sentiments. This may be of particular relevance when their experience depends on visuo-spatial elaboration. PMID:24106333
Individual differences in spontaneous analogical transfer.

PubMed

Kubricht, James R; Lu, Hongjing; Holyoak, Keith J

2017-05-01

Research on analogical problem solving has shown that people often fail to spontaneously notice the relevance of a semantically remote source analog when solving a target problem, although they are able to form mappings and derive inferences when given a hint to recall the source. Relatively little work has investigated possible individual differences that predict spontaneous transfer, or how such differences may interact with interventions that facilitate transfer. In this study, fluid intelligence was measured for participants in an analogical problem-solving task, using an abridged version of the Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) test. In two experiments, we systematically compared the effect of augmenting verbal descriptions of the source with animations or static diagrams. Solution rates to Duncker's radiation problem were measured across varying source presentation conditions, and participants' understanding of the relevant source material was assessed. The pattern of transfer was best fit by a moderated mediation model: the positive impact of fluid intelligence on spontaneous transfer was mediated by its influence on source comprehension; however, this path was in turn modulated by provision of a supplemental animation via its influence on comprehension of the source. Animated source depictions were most beneficial in facilitating spontaneous transfer for those participants with low scores on the fluid intelligence measure.
Intelligent tutoring systems as tools for investigating individual differences in learning

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shute, Valerie J.

1987-01-01

The ultimate goal of this research is to build an improved model-based selection and classification system for the United States Air Force. Researchers are developing innovative approaches to ability testing. The Learning Abilities Measurement Program (LAMP) examines individual differences in learning abilities, seeking answers to the questions of why some people learn more and better than others and whether there are basic cognitive processes applicable across tasks and domains that are predictive of successful performance (or whether there are more complex problem solving behaviors involved).
Interactive effects of the COMT gene and training on individual differences in supervisory control of unmanned vehicles.

PubMed

Parasuraman, Raja; Kidwell, Brian; Olmstead, Ryan; Lin, Ming-Kuan; Jankord, Ryan; Greenwood, Pamela

2014-06-01

We examined whether a gene known to influence dopamine availability in the prefrontal cortex is associated with individual differences in learning a supervisory control task. Methods are needed for selection and training of human operators who can effectively supervise multiple unmanned vehicles (UVs). Compared to the valine (Val) allele, the methionine (Met) allele of the COMT gene has been linked to superior executive function, but it is not known whether it is associated with training-related effects in multi-UV supervisory control performance. Ninety-nine healthy adults were genotyped for the COMT Val158Met single nucleotide polymorphism (rs4680) and divided into Met/Met, Val/Met, and Val/Val groups. Participants supervised six UVs in an air defense mission requiring them to attack incoming enemy aircraft and protect a no-fly zone from intruders in conditions of low and high task load (numbers of enemy aircraft). Training effects were examined across four blocks of trials in each task load condition. Compared to the Val/Met and Val/Val groups, Met/Met individuals exhibited a greater increase in enemy targets destroyed and greater reduction in enemy red zone incursions across training blocks. Individuals with the COMT Met/Met genotype can acquire skill in executive function tasks, such as multi-UV supervisory control, to a higher level and/or faster than other genotype groups. Potential applications of this research include the development of individualized training methods for operators of multi-UV systems and selecting personnel for complex supervisory control tasks.
Mixing of Honeybees with Different Genotypes Affects Individual Worker Behavior and Transcription of Genes in the Neuronal Substrate

PubMed Central

Bienefeld, Kaspar; Beye, Martin

2012-01-01

Division of labor in social insects has made the evolution of collective traits possible that cannot be achieved by individuals alone. Differences in behavioral responses produce variation in engagement in behavioral tasks, which as a consequence, generates a division of labor. We still have little understanding of the genetic components influencing these behaviors, although several candidate genomic regions and genes influencing individual behavior have been identified. Here, we report that mixing of worker honeybees with different genotypes influences the expression of individual worker behaviors and the transcription of genes in the neuronal substrate. These indirect genetic effects arise in a colony because numerous interactions between workers produce interacting phenotypes and genotypes across organisms. We studied hygienic behavior of honeybee workers, which involves the cleaning of diseased brood cells in the colony. We mixed ∼500 newly emerged honeybee workers with genotypes of preferred Low (L) and High (H) hygienic behaviors. The L/H genotypic mixing affected the behavioral engagement of L worker bees in a hygienic task, the cooperation among workers in uncapping single brood cells, and switching between hygienic tasks. We found no evidence that recruiting and task-related stimuli are the primary source of the indirect genetic effects on behavior. We suggested that behavioral responsiveness of L bees was affected by genotypic mixing and found evidence for changes in the brain in terms of 943 differently expressed genes. The functional categories of cell adhesion, cellular component organization, anatomical structure development, protein localization, developmental growth and cell morphogenesis were overrepresented in this set of 943 genes, suggesting that indirect genetic effects can play a role in modulating and modifying the neuronal substrate. Our results suggest that genotypes of social partners affect the behavioral responsiveness and the neuronal
Sight and sound persistently out of synch: stable individual differences in audiovisual synchronisation revealed by implicit measures of lip-voice integration

PubMed Central

Ipser, Alberta; Agolli, Vlera; Bajraktari, Anisa; Al-Alawi, Fatimah; Djaafara, Nurfitriani; Freeman, Elliot D.

2017-01-01

Are sight and sound out of synch? Signs that they are have been dismissed for over two centuries as an artefact of attentional and response bias, to which traditional subjective methods are prone. To avoid such biases, we measured performance on objective tasks that depend implicitly on achieving good lip-synch. We measured the McGurk effect (in which incongruent lip-voice pairs evoke illusory phonemes), and also identification of degraded speech, while manipulating audiovisual asynchrony. Peak performance was found at an average auditory lag of ~100 ms, but this varied widely between individuals. Participants’ individual optimal asynchronies showed trait-like stability when the same task was re-tested one week later, but measures based on different tasks did not correlate. This discounts the possible influence of common biasing factors, suggesting instead that our different tasks probe different brain networks, each subject to their own intrinsic auditory and visual processing latencies. Our findings call for renewed interest in the biological causes and cognitive consequences of individual sensory asynchronies, leading potentially to fresh insights into the neural representation of sensory timing. A concrete implication is that speech comprehension might be enhanced, by first measuring each individual’s optimal asynchrony and then applying a compensatory auditory delay. PMID:28429784
Sex differences on a computerized mental rotation task disappear with computer familiarization.

PubMed

Roberts, J E; Bell, M A

2000-12-01

The area of cognitive research that has produced the most consistent sex differences is spatial ability. Particularly, men consistently perform better on mental rotation tasks than do women. This study examined the effects of familiarization with a computer on performance of a computerized two-dimensional mental rotation task. Two groups of college students (N=44) performed the rotation task, with one group performing a color-matching task that allowed them to be familiarized with the computer prior to the rotation task. Among the participants who only performed the rotation task, the 11 men performed better than the 11 women. Among the participants who performed the computer familiarization task before the rotation task, how ever, there were no sex differences on the mental rotation task between the 10 men and 12 women. These data indicate that sex differences on this two-dimensional task may reflect familiarization with the computer, not the mental rotation component of the task. Further research with larger samples and increased range of task difficulty is encouraged.
Measuring language lateralisation with different language tasks: a systematic review

PubMed Central

Thompson, Paul A.; Wilson, Alexander C.; Bishop, Dorothy V.M.; Woodhead, Zoe V.J.

2017-01-01

Language lateralisation refers to the phenomenon in which one hemisphere (typically the left) shows greater involvement in language functions than the other. Measurement of laterality is of interest both to researchers investigating the neural organisation of the language system and to clinicians needing to establish an individual’s hemispheric dominance for language prior to surgery, as in patients with intractable epilepsy. Recently, there has been increasing awareness of the possibility that different language processes may develop hemispheric lateralisation independently, and to varying degrees. However, it is not always clear whether differences in laterality across language tasks with fMRI are reflective of meaningful variation in hemispheric lateralisation, or simply of trivial methodological differences between paradigms. This systematic review aims to assess different language tasks in terms of the strength, reliability and robustness of the laterality measurements they yield with fMRI, to look at variability that is both dependent and independent of aspects of study design, such as the baseline task, region of interest, and modality of the stimuli. Recommendations are made that can be used to guide task design; however, this review predominantly highlights that the current high level of methodological variability in language paradigms prevents conclusions as to how different language functions may lateralise independently. We conclude with suggestions for future research using tasks that engage distinct aspects of language functioning, whilst being closely matched on non-linguistic aspects of task design (e.g., stimuli, task timings etc); such research could produce more reliable and conclusive insights into language lateralisation. This systematic review was registered as a protocol on Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/5vmpt/. PMID:29085748
Task conflict and proactive control: A computational theory of the Stroop task.

PubMed

Kalanthroff, Eyal; Davelaar, Eddy J; Henik, Avishai; Goldfarb, Liat; Usher, Marius

2018-01-01

The Stroop task is a central experimental paradigm used to probe cognitive control by measuring the ability of participants to selectively attend to task-relevant information and inhibit automatic task-irrelevant responses. Research has revealed variability in both experimental manipulations and individual differences. Here, we focus on a particular source of Stroop variability, the reverse-facilitation (RF; faster responses to nonword neutral stimuli than to congruent stimuli), which has recently been suggested as a signature of task conflict. We first review the literature that shows RF variability in the Stroop task, both with regard to experimental manipulations and to individual differences. We suggest that task conflict variability can be understood as resulting from the degree of proactive control that subjects recruit in advance of the Stroop stimulus. When the proactive control is high, task conflict does not arise (or is resolved very quickly), resulting in regular Stroop facilitation. When proactive control is low, task conflict emerges, leading to a slow-down in congruent and incongruent (but not in neutral) trials and thus to Stroop RF. To support this suggestion, we present a computational model of the Stroop task, which includes the resolution of task conflict and its modulation by proactive control. Results show that our model (a) accounts for the variability in Stroop-RF reported in the experimental literature, and (b) solves a challenge to previous Stroop models-their ability to account for reaction time distributional properties. Finally, we discuss theoretical implications to Stroop measures and control deficits observed in some psychopathologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Higher similarity in beta topography between tasks than subjects.

PubMed

Basile, Luis F H; Sato, João R; Pasquini, Henrique A; Velasques, Bruna; Ribeiro, Pedro; Anghinah, Renato

2018-05-01

We have recently provided evidence for highly idiosyncratic topographic distributions of beta oscillations (as well as slow potentials) across individuals. More recently, by emphasizing the analysis of similarity instead of differences across tasks, we concluded that differences between an attention task and quiet resting may be negligible or at least unsystematic across subjects. Due to the possibility that individual differences could be due to noise in a wide sense or some inherent instability of beta activity, we designed a replication study to explicitly test whether pairs of individuals matched for head size and shape would still present less similar beta topography than each individual between sessions or tasks. We used independent component analysis (ICA) for an exhaustive decomposition of beta activity in a visual attention task and in quiet resting, recorded by 256-channel EEG in 20 subjects, on two separate days. We evaluated whether each ICA component obtained in one task and in one given individual could be explained by a linear regression model based on the topographic patterns of the complementary task (correlation between one component with a linear combination of components from complementary conditions), of the same task in a second session and of a matched individual. Results again showed a high topographic similarity between conditions, as previously seen between reasoning and simple visual attention beta correlates. From an overall number of 16 components representing brain activity obtained for the tasks (out of 60 originally computed where the remaining were considered noise), over 92% could satisfactorily be explained by the complementary task. Although the similarity between sessions was significantly smaller than between tasks on each day, the similarity between sessions was statistically higher than that between subjects in a highly significant way. We discuss the possible biases of group spatial averaging and the emphasis on differences
Sex Differences in Task Distribution and Task Exposures among Danish House Painters: An Observational Study Combining Questionnaire Data with Biomechanical Measurements

PubMed Central

Heilskov-Hansen, Thomas; Wulff Svendsen, Susanne; Frølund Thomsen, Jane; Mikkelsen, Sigurd; Hansson, Gert-Åke

2014-01-01

Objectives Sex differences in occupational biomechanical exposures may be part of the explanation why musculoskeletal complaints and disorders tend to be more common among women than among men. We aimed to determine possible sex differences in task distribution and task-specific postures and movements of the upper extremities among Danish house painters, and to establish sex-specific task exposure matrices. Methods To obtain task distributions, we sent out a questionnaire to all members of the Painters' Union in Denmark (N = 9364), of whom 53% responded. Respondents reported their task distributions in a typical week. To obtain task exposures, postures and movements were measured in 25 male and 25 female house painters for one whole working day per person. We used goniometers on the wrists, and inclinometers on the forehead and the upper arms. Participants filled in a logbook allowing task-specific exposures to be identified. Percentiles and % time with non-neutral postures were used to characterise postures. Velocity, range of motion, repetitiveness, and variation were used as measures of movement. Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel statistics and unpaired double-sided t-tests with post-hoc Bonferroni correction were used to evaluate sex differences. Results Statistically significant (p<0.05) sex differences were revealed in task proportions, but the proportions differed by less than 4%. For task exposures, no statistically significant sex differences were found. Conclusions Only minor sex differences were found in task distribution and task exposures regarding postures and movements among Danish house painters. Sex-specific task exposure matrices were established. PMID:25365301
A task-invariant cognitive reserve network.

PubMed

Stern, Yaakov; Gazes, Yunglin; Razlighi, Qolomreza; Steffener, Jason; Habeck, Christian

2018-05-14

The concept of cognitive reserve (CR) can explain individual differences in susceptibility to cognitive or functional impairment in the presence of age or disease-related brain changes. Epidemiologic evidence indicates that CR helps maintain performance in the face of pathology across multiple cognitive domains. We therefore tried to identify a single, "task-invariant" CR network that is active during the performance of many disparate tasks. In imaging data acquired from 255 individuals age 20-80 while performing 12 different cognitive tasks, we used an iterative approach to derive a multivariate network that was expressed during the performance of all tasks, and whose degree of expression correlated with IQ, a proxy for CR. When applied to held out data or forward applied to fMRI data from an entirely different activation task, network expression correlated with IQ. Expression of the CR pattern accounted for additional variance in fluid reasoning performance over and above the influence of cortical thickness, and also moderated between cortical thickness and reasoning performance, consistent with the behavior of a CR network. The identification of a task-invariant CR network supports the idea that life experiences may result in brain processing differences that might provide reserve against age- or disease-related changes across multiple tasks. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Auditory working memory predicts individual differences in absolute pitch learning.

PubMed

Van Hedger, Stephen C; Heald, Shannon L M; Koch, Rachelle; Nusbaum, Howard C

2015-07-01

Absolute pitch (AP) is typically defined as the ability to label an isolated tone as a musical note in the absence of a reference tone. At first glance the acquisition of AP note categories seems like a perceptual learning task, since individuals must assign a category label to a stimulus based on a single perceptual dimension (pitch) while ignoring other perceptual dimensions (e.g., loudness, octave, instrument). AP, however, is rarely discussed in terms of domain-general perceptual learning mechanisms. This is because AP is typically assumed to depend on a critical period of development, in which early exposure to pitches and musical labels is thought to be necessary for the development of AP precluding the possibility of adult acquisition of AP. Despite this view of AP, several previous studies have found evidence that absolute pitch category learning is, to an extent, trainable in a post-critical period adult population, even if the performance typically achieved by this population is below the performance of a "true" AP possessor. The current studies attempt to understand the individual differences in learning to categorize notes using absolute pitch cues by testing a specific prediction regarding cognitive capacity related to categorization - to what extent does an individual's general auditory working memory capacity (WMC) predict the success of absolute pitch category acquisition. Since WMC has been shown to predict performance on a wide variety of other perceptual and category learning tasks, we predict that individuals with higher WMC should be better at learning absolute pitch note categories than individuals with lower WMC. Across two studies, we demonstrate that auditory WMC predicts the efficacy of learning absolute pitch note categories. These results suggest that a higher general auditory WMC might underlie the formation of absolute pitch categories for post-critical period adults. Implications for understanding the mechanisms that underlie the
Goal orientation, perceived task outcome and task demands in mathematics tasks: effects on students' attitude in actual task settings.

PubMed

Seegers, Gerard; van Putten, Cornelis M; de Brabander, Cornelis J

2002-09-01

In earlier studies, it has been found that students' domain-specific cognitions and personal learning goals (goal orientation) influence task-specific appraisals of actual learning tasks. The relations between domain-specific and task-specific variables have been specified in the model of adaptive learning. In this study, additional influences, i.e., perceived task outcome on a former occasion and variations in task demands, were investigated. The purpose of this study was to identify personality and situational variables that mediate students' attitude when confronted with a mathematics task. Students worked on a mathematics task in two subsequent sessions. Effects of perceived task outcome at the first session on students' attitude at the second session were investigated. In addition, we investigated how differences in task demands influenced students' attitude. Variations in task demands were provoked by different conditions in task-instruction. In one condition, students were told that the result on the test would add to their mark on mathematics. This outcome orienting condition was contrasted with a task-orienting condition where students were told that the results on the test would not be used to give individual grades. Participants were sixth grade students (N = 345; aged 11-12 years) from 14 primary schools. Multivariate and univariate analyses of (co)variance were applied to the data. Independent variables were goal orientation, task demands, and perceived task outcome, with task-specific variables (estimated competence for the task, task attraction, task relevance, and willingness to invest effort) as the dependent variables. The results showed that previous perceived task outcome had a substantial impact on students' attitude. Additional but smaller effects were found for variation in task demands. Furthermore, effects of previous perceived task outcome and task demands were related to goal orientation. The resulting pattern confirmed that, in general
The neurotic wandering mind: An individual differences investigation of neuroticism, mind-wandering, and executive control.

PubMed

Robison, Matthew K; Gath, Katherine I; Unsworth, Nash

2017-04-01

Cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience have recently developed a keen interest in the phenomenon of mind-wandering. People mind-wander frequently, and mind-wandering is associated with decreased cognitive performance. But why do people mind-wander so much? Previous investigations have focused on cognitive abilities like working memory capacity and attention control. But an individual's tendency to worry, feel anxious, and entertain personal concerns also influences mind-wandering. The Control Failure × Concerns model of mind-wandering. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 188-197] argues that individual differences in the propensity to mind-wander are jointly determined by cognitive abilities and by the presence of personally salient concerns that intrude on task focus. In order to test this model, we investigated individual differences in mind-wandering, executive attention, and personality with a focus on neuroticism. The results showed that neurotic individuals tended to report more mind-wandering during cognitive tasks, lower working memory capacity, and poorer attention control. Thus the trait of neuroticism adds an additional source of variance in the tendency to mind-wander, which offers support for the Control Failure × Concerns model. The results help bridge the fields of clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, affective neuroscience, and cognitive neuroscience as a means of developing a more complete understanding of the complex relationship between cognition, personality, and emotion.
Personality correlates of individual differences in the recruitment of cognitive mechanisms when rewards are at stake.

PubMed

Heritage, Allan J; Long, Laura J; Woodman, Geoffrey F; Zald, David H

2018-02-01

Individuals differ greatly in their sensitivity to rewards and punishments. In the extreme, these differences are implicated in a range of psychiatric disorders from addiction to depression. However, it is unclear how these differences influence the recruitment of attention, working memory, and long-term memory when responding to potential rewards. Here, we used a rewarded memory-guided visual search task and ERPs to examine the influence of individual differences in self-reported reward/punishment sensitivity, as measured by the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS)/Behavioral Activation System (BAS) scales, on the recruitment of cognitive mechanisms in conditions of potential reward. Select subscales of the BAS, including the fun seeking and reward responsiveness scales, showed unique relationships with context updating to reward cues and working memory maintenance of potentially rewarded stimuli. In contrast, BIS scores showed unique relationships with deployment of attention at different points in the task. These results suggest that sensitivity to rewards (i.e., BAS) and to punishment (i.e., BIS) may play an important role in the recruitment of specific and distinct cognitive mechanisms in conditions of potential rewards. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.
The Nature and Organization of Individual Differences in Executive Functions: Four General Conclusions

PubMed Central

Miyake, Akira; Friedman, Naomi P.

2012-01-01

Executive functions (EFs)—a set of general-purpose control processes that regulate one’s thoughts and behaviors—have become a popular research topic lately and have been studied in many subdisciplines of psychological science. This article summarizes the EF research that our group has conducted to understand the nature of individual differences in EFs and their cognitive and biological underpinnings. In the context of a new theoretical framework that we have been developing (the unity/diversity framework), we describe four general conclusions that have emerged from our research. Specifically, we argue that individual differences in EFs, as measured with simple laboratory tasks, (1) show both unity and diversity (different EFs are correlated yet separable); (2) reflect substantial genetic contributions; (3) are related to various clinically and societally important phenomena; and (4) show some developmental stability. PMID:22773897

Individual differences in schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Lu, Wenlian; Wan, Lin; Yan, Hao; Wang, Chuanyue; Yang, Fude; Tan, Yunlong; Li, Lingjiang; Yu, Hao; Liddle, Peter F.; Palaniyappan, Lena; Zhang, Dai

2017-01-01

Background Whether there are distinct subtypes of schizophrenia is an important issue to advance understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. Aims To understand and treat individuals with schizophrenia, the aim was to advance understanding of differences between individuals, whether there are discrete subtypes, and how first-episode patients (FEP) may differ from multiple episode patients (MEP). Method These issues were analysed in 687 FEP and 1880 MEP with schizophrenia using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for (PANSS) schizophrenia before and after antipsychotic medication for 6 weeks. Results The seven Negative Symptoms were correlated with each other and with P2 (conceptual disorganisation), G13 (disturbance of volition), and G7 (motor retardation). The main difference between individuals was in the cluster of seven negative symptoms, which had a continuous unimodal distribution. Medication decreased the PANSS scores for all the symptoms, which were similar in the FEP and MEP groups. Conclusions The negative symptoms are a major source of individual differences, and there are potential implications for treatment. Declaration of interests L.P. received speaker fees from Otsuka Canada and educational grant from Janssen Canada in 2017. Copyright and usage © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2017. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license. PMID:29163982
Individual Differences in Toddlers' Prosociality: Experiences in Early Relationships Explain Variability in Prosocial Behavior.

PubMed

Newton, Emily K; Thompson, Ross A; Goodman, Miranda

2016-11-01

Latent class logistic regression analysis was used to investigate sources of individual differences in profiles of prosocial behavior. Eighty-seven 18-month-olds were observed in tasks assessing sharing with a neutral adult, instrumentally helping a neutral adult, and instrumentally helping a sad adult. Maternal mental state language (MSL) and maternal sensitivity were also assessed. Despite differing motivational demands across tasks, we found consistency in children's prosocial behavior with three latent classes: no prosocial behavior, moderate prosocial behavior, and frequent instrumental helping across emotional situations. Maternal sensitivity, MSL, and their interaction predicted toddlers' membership in the classes. These findings evidence moderate consistency in early prosocial behaviors and suggest that these capacities are motivated in early relationships with caregivers. © 2016 The Authors. Child Development © 2016 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
Naturalistic Assessment of Everyday Functioning in Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: The Day Out Task

PubMed Central

Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen; McAlister, Courtney; Weakley, Alyssa

2012-01-01

Objective The Day Out Task (DOT), a naturalistic task that requires multitasking in a real-world setting, was used to examine everyday functioning in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Method Thirty-eight participants with MCI and 38 cognitively healthy older adult controls prioritized, organized, initiated and completed a number of subtasks in a campus apartment to prepare for a day out (e.g., determine and gather change for bus, bring a magazine). Participants also completed tests assessing cognitive constructs important in multitasking (i.e., retrospective memory, prospective memory, planning). Results Compared to controls, the MCI group required more time to complete the DOT and demonstrated poorer task accuracy, performing more subtasks incompletely and inaccurately. Despite poorer DOT task accuracy, the MCI and control groups approached completion of the DOT in a similar manner. For the MCI group, retrospective memory was a unique predictor of the number of subtasks left incomplete and inaccurate, while prospective memory was a unique predictor of DOT sequencing. The DOT measures, but not the cognitive tests, were predictive of knowledgeable informant report of everyday functioning. Conclusions These findings suggest that difficulty remembering and keeping track of multiple goals and subgoals may contribute to the poorer performance of individuals with MCI in complex everyday situations. PMID:22846035
Spontaneous individual differences in cognitive performances of young adult rats predict locomotor response to amphetamine.

PubMed

Dellu-Hagedorn, F

2005-01-01

Inter-individual differences in cognitive capacities of young adult rats have largely been ignored. To explore this variability and its neurobiological bases, the relationships between individual differences in working memory and locomotor responses to novelty and to amphetamine were investigated in SD rats. Groups of good and poor learners were isolated, the latter demonstrating a markedly slower learning of the task compared to performant rats, with more perseverations independently to motivational state. They also presented a much higher increase in amphetamine-induced locomotion that remained significant for more than 1h after the injection. These results provide evidence that variability in cognitive capacities can be used to reveal their neurobiological substrates. They open new perspectives to study a possible cognitive origin of addictive behaviors and to investigate the involvement of these inter-individual differences on those observed later in life.
Individual differneces in degraded speech perception

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carbonell, Kathy M.

One of the lasting concerns in audiology is the unexplained individual differences in speech perception performance even for individuals with similar audiograms. One proposal is that there are cognitive/perceptual individual differences underlying this vulnerability and that these differences are present in normal hearing (NH) individuals but do not reveal themselves in studies that use clear speech produced in quiet (because of a ceiling effect). However, previous studies have failed to uncover cognitive/perceptual variables that explain much of the variance in NH performance on more challenging degraded speech tasks. This lack of strong correlations may be due to either examining the wrong measures (e.g., working memory capacity) or to there being no reliable differences in degraded speech performance in NH listeners (i.e., variability in performance is due to measurement noise). The proposed project has 3 aims; the first, is to establish whether there are reliable individual differences in degraded speech performance for NH listeners that are sustained both across degradation types (speech in noise, compressed speech, noise-vocoded speech) and across multiple testing sessions. The second aim is to establish whether there are reliable differences in NH listeners' ability to adapt their phonetic categories based on short-term statistics both across tasks and across sessions; and finally, to determine whether performance on degraded speech perception tasks are correlated with performance on phonetic adaptability tasks, thus establishing a possible explanatory variable for individual differences in speech perception for NH and hearing impaired listeners.
Foot force direction control during a pedaling task in individuals post-stroke

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Appropriate magnitude and directional control of foot-forces is required for successful execution of locomotor tasks. Earlier evidence suggested, following stroke, there is a potential impairment in foot-force control capabilities both during stationary force generation and locomotion. The purpose of this study was to investigate the foot-pedal surface interaction force components, in non-neurologically-impaired and stroke-impaired individuals, in order to determine how fore/aft shear-directed foot/pedal forces are controlled. Methods Sixteen individuals with chronic post-stroke hemiplegia and 10 age-similar non-neurologically-impaired controls performed a foot placement maintenance task under a stationary and a pedaling condition, achieving a target normal pedal force. Electromyography and force profiles were recorded. We expected generation of unduly large magnitude shear pedal forces and reduced participation of multiple muscles that can contribute forces in appropriate directions in individuals post-stroke. Results We found lower force output, inconsistent modulation of muscle activity and reduced ability to change foot force direction in the paretic limbs, but we did not observe unduly large magnitude shear pedal surface forces by the paretic limbs as we hypothesized. Conclusion These findings suggested the preservation of foot-force control capabilities post-stroke under minimal upright postural control requirements. Further research must be conducted to determine whether inappropriate shear force generation will be revealed under non-seated, postural demanding conditions, where subjects have to actively control for upright body suspension. PMID:24739234
Predicting individual differences in decision-making process from signature movement styles: an illustrative study of leaders.

PubMed

Connors, Brenda L; Rende, Richard; Colton, Timothy J

2013-01-01

There has been a surge of interest in examining the utility of methods for capturing individual differences in decision-making style. We illustrate the potential offered by Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA), an observational methodology that has been used in business and by the US Department of Defense to record body movements that provide predictive insight into individual differences in decision-making motivations and actions. Twelve military officers participated in an intensive 2-h interview that permitted detailed and fine-grained observation and coding of signature movements by trained practitioners using MPA. Three months later, these subjects completed four hypothetical decision-making tasks in which the amount of information sought out before coming to a decision, as well as the time spent on the tasks, were under the partial control of the subject. A composite MPA indicator of how a person allocates decision-making actions and motivations to balance both Assertion (exertion of tangible movement effort on the environment to make something occur) and Perspective (through movements that support shaping in the body to perceive and create a suitable viewpoint for action) was highly correlated with the total number of information draws and total response time-individuals high on Assertion reached for less information and had faster response times than those high on Perspective. Discussion focuses on the utility of using movement-based observational measures to capture individual differences in decision-making style and the implications for application in applied settings geared toward investigations of experienced leaders and world statesmen where individuality rules the day.
Predicting individual differences in decision-making process from signature movement styles: an illustrative study of leaders

PubMed Central

Connors, Brenda L.; Rende, Richard; Colton, Timothy J.

2013-01-01

There has been a surge of interest in examining the utility of methods for capturing individual differences in decision-making style. We illustrate the potential offered by Movement Pattern Analysis (MPA), an observational methodology that has been used in business and by the US Department of Defense to record body movements that provide predictive insight into individual differences in decision-making motivations and actions. Twelve military officers participated in an intensive 2-h interview that permitted detailed and fine-grained observation and coding of signature movements by trained practitioners using MPA. Three months later, these subjects completed four hypothetical decision-making tasks in which the amount of information sought out before coming to a decision, as well as the time spent on the tasks, were under the partial control of the subject. A composite MPA indicator of how a person allocates decision-making actions and motivations to balance both Assertion (exertion of tangible movement effort on the environment to make something occur) and Perspective (through movements that support shaping in the body to perceive and create a suitable viewpoint for action) was highly correlated with the total number of information draws and total response time—individuals high on Assertion reached for less information and had faster response times than those high on Perspective. Discussion focuses on the utility of using movement-based observational measures to capture individual differences in decision-making style and the implications for application in applied settings geared toward investigations of experienced leaders and world statesmen where individuality rules the day. PMID:24069012
Pencil grasp and children's handwriting legibility during different-length writing tasks.

PubMed

Dennis, J L; Swinth, Y

2001-01-01

This study examined the influence ofpencil grasp on handwriting legibility during both short and long writing tasks in 46fourth-grade students who were typically developing. Matched samples were used to controlfor variability. Regular classroom writing assignments were scoredfor word and letter legibility, and scores were compared using a mixed repeated-measures analysis of variance design. The two independent variables were pencil grasp (dynamic tripod grasp vs. atypical grasp) and task length (short vs. long). A significant difference was found between the letter legibility scores on the short task and the letter legibility scores on the long task. Students' legibility was greater on the short task than on the long task across both grasp conditions. No significant difference was found in scores between students who used dynamic tripod grasps and those who used atypical grasps, nor was there a significant interaction between grasp and task length. No significant differences were found between word legibility scores. The results indicate that although the students in this study wrote more legibly on the short task than on the long task, the type of grasp they used did not affect their legibility. Because of the limited sample size, the results of this study should be interpreted cautiously. More research in handwriting performance and pencil grasp is needed to provide clear expectations and treatment options for students.
New tests to measure individual differences in matching and labelling facial expressions of emotion, and their association with ability to recognise vocal emotions and facial identity.

PubMed

Palermo, Romina; O'Connor, Kirsty B; Davis, Joshua M; Irons, Jessica; McKone, Elinor

2013-01-01

Although good tests are available for diagnosing clinical impairments in face expression processing, there is a lack of strong tests for assessing "individual differences"--that is, differences in ability between individuals within the typical, nonclinical, range. Here, we develop two new tests, one for expression perception (an odd-man-out matching task in which participants select which one of three faces displays a different expression) and one additionally requiring explicit identification of the emotion (a labelling task in which participants select one of six verbal labels). We demonstrate validity (careful check of individual items, large inversion effects, independence from nonverbal IQ, convergent validity with a previous labelling task), reliability (Cronbach's alphas of.77 and.76 respectively), and wide individual differences across the typical population. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the tests by addressing theoretical questions regarding the structure of face processing, specifically the extent to which the following processes are common or distinct: (a) perceptual matching and explicit labelling of expression (modest correlation between matching and labelling supported partial independence); (b) judgement of expressions from faces and voices (results argued labelling tasks tap into a multi-modal system, while matching tasks tap distinct perceptual processes); and (c) expression and identity processing (results argued for a common first step of perceptual processing for expression and identity).
Individual differences in false memory from misinformation: cognitive factors.

PubMed

Zhu, Bi; Chen, Chuansheng; Loftus, Elizabeth F; Lin, Chongde; He, Qinghua; Chen, Chunhui; Li, He; Xue, Gui; Lu, Zhonglin; Dong, Qi

2010-07-01

This research investigated the cognitive correlates of false memories that are induced by the misinformation paradigm. A large sample of Chinese college students (N=436) participated in a misinformation procedure and also took a battery of cognitive tests. Results revealed sizable and systematic individual differences in false memory arising from exposure to misinformation. False memories were significantly and negatively correlated with measures of intelligence (measured with Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), perception (Motor-Free Visual Perception Test, Change Blindness, and Tone Discrimination), memory (Wechsler Memory Scales and 2-back Working Memory tasks), and face judgement (Face Recognition and Facial Expression Recognition). These findings suggest that people with relatively low intelligence and poor perceptual abilities might be more susceptible to the misinformation effect.
Liquid conservation in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and humans (Homo sapiens): individual differences and perceptual strategies.

PubMed

Call, J; Rochat, P

1996-09-01

Four orangutans (1 juvenile, 2 subadults, and 1 adult) and ten 6-8-year-old children were tested in 4 liquid conservation tasks of increasing levels of difficulty. Task difficulty depended on the type of transformation (continuous vs. discontinuous quantities) and the relative contrast between the shapes of the containers. Results indicate that orangutans did not display conservation in the strict sense; instead they showed "partial" conservation (intermediate reactions according to J. Piaget & B. Inhelder, 1941). In contrast, some of the children provided evidence of conservation in all 4 tasks, showing "true" or logically necessary conservation in the original sense proposed by J. Piaget and B. Inhelder (1941). Although orangutans did not show conservation in the strict sense, as J. Piaget (1955) and others have generally agreed it should be defined, orangutans behaved as individual and creative problem solvers, adopting different perceptual strategies depending on the task.
On the relationship between response selection and response inhibition: An individual differences approach.

PubMed

Bender, Angela D; Filmer, Hannah L; Garner, K G; Naughtin, Claire K; Dux, Paul E

2016-11-01

The abilities to select appropriate responses and suppress unwanted actions are key executive functions that enable flexible and goal-directed behavior. However, to date it has been unclear whether these two cognitive operations tap a common action control resource or reflect two distinct processes. In the present study, we used an individual differences approach to examine the underlying relationships across seven paradigms that varied in their response selection and response inhibition requirements: stop-signal, go-no-go, Stroop, flanker, single-response selection, psychological refractory period, and attentional blink tasks. A confirmatory factor analysis suggested that response inhibition and response selection are separable, with stop-signal and go-no-go task performance being related to response inhibition, and performance in the psychological refractory period, Stroop, single-response selection, and attentional blink tasks being related to response selection. These findings provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that response selection and response inhibition reflect two distinct cognitive operations.
Individual differences in selective attention predict speech identification at a cocktail party.

PubMed

Oberfeld, Daniel; Klöckner-Nowotny, Felicitas

2016-08-31

Listeners with normal hearing show considerable individual differences in speech understanding when competing speakers are present, as in a crowded restaurant. Here, we show that one source of this variance are individual differences in the ability to focus selective attention on a target stimulus in the presence of distractors. In 50 young normal-hearing listeners, the performance in tasks measuring auditory and visual selective attention was associated with sentence identification in the presence of spatially separated competing speakers. Together, the measures of selective attention explained a similar proportion of variance as the binaural sensitivity for the acoustic temporal fine structure. Working memory span, age, and audiometric thresholds showed no significant association with speech understanding. These results suggest that a reduced ability to focus attention on a target is one reason why some listeners with normal hearing sensitivity have difficulty communicating in situations with background noise.
Individual differences in heart rate variability are associated with the avoidance of negative emotional events.

PubMed

Katahira, Kentaro; Fujimura, Tomomi; Matsuda, Yoshi-Taka; Okanoya, Kazuo; Okada, Masato

2014-12-01

Although the emotional outcome of a choice generally affects subsequent decisions, humans can inhibit the influence of emotion. Heart rate variability (HRV) has emerged as an objective measure of individual differences in the capacity for inhibitory control. In the present study, we investigated how individual differences in HRV at rest are associated with the emotional effects of the outcome of a choice on subsequent decision making using a decision-making task in which emotional pictures appeared as decision outcomes. We used a reinforcement learning model to characterize the observed behaviors according to several parameters, namely, the learning rate and the motivational value of positive and negative pictures. Consequently, we found that individuals with a lower resting HRV exhibited a greater negative motivational value in response to negative pictures, suggesting that these individuals tend to avoid negative pictures compared with individuals with a higher resting HRV. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Of goals and habits: age-related and individual differences in goal-directed decision-making.

PubMed

Eppinger, Ben; Walter, Maik; Heekeren, Hauke R; Li, Shu-Chen

2013-01-01

In this study we investigated age-related and individual differences in habitual (model-free) and goal-directed (model-based) decision-making. Specifically, we were interested in three questions. First, does age affect the balance between model-based and model-free decision mechanisms? Second, are these age-related changes due to age differences in working memory (WM) capacity? Third, can model-based behavior be affected by manipulating the distinctiveness of the reward value of choice options? To answer these questions we used a two-stage Markov decision task in in combination with computational modeling to dissociate model-based and model-free decision mechanisms. To affect model-based behavior in this task we manipulated the distinctiveness of reward probabilities of choice options. The results show age-related deficits in model-based decision-making, which are particularly pronounced if unexpected reward indicates the need for a shift in decision strategy. In this situation younger adults explore the task structure, whereas older adults show perseverative behavior. Consistent with previous findings, these results indicate that older adults have deficits in the representation and updating of expected reward value. We also observed substantial individual differences in model-based behavior. In younger adults high WM capacity is associated with greater model-based behavior and this effect is further elevated when reward probabilities are more distinct. However, in older adults we found no effect of WM capacity. Moreover, age differences in model-based behavior remained statistically significant, even after controlling for WM capacity. Thus, factors other than decline in WM, such as deficits in the in the integration of expected reward value into strategic decisions may contribute to the observed impairments in model-based behavior in older adults.
Of goals and habits: age-related and individual differences in goal-directed decision-making

PubMed Central

Eppinger, Ben; Walter, Maik; Heekeren, Hauke R.; Li, Shu-Chen

2013-01-01

In this study we investigated age-related and individual differences in habitual (model-free) and goal-directed (model-based) decision-making. Specifically, we were interested in three questions. First, does age affect the balance between model-based and model-free decision mechanisms? Second, are these age-related changes due to age differences in working memory (WM) capacity? Third, can model-based behavior be affected by manipulating the distinctiveness of the reward value of choice options? To answer these questions we used a two-stage Markov decision task in in combination with computational modeling to dissociate model-based and model-free decision mechanisms. To affect model-based behavior in this task we manipulated the distinctiveness of reward probabilities of choice options. The results show age-related deficits in model-based decision-making, which are particularly pronounced if unexpected reward indicates the need for a shift in decision strategy. In this situation younger adults explore the task structure, whereas older adults show perseverative behavior. Consistent with previous findings, these results indicate that older adults have deficits in the representation and updating of expected reward value. We also observed substantial individual differences in model-based behavior. In younger adults high WM capacity is associated with greater model-based behavior and this effect is further elevated when reward probabilities are more distinct. However, in older adults we found no effect of WM capacity. Moreover, age differences in model-based behavior remained statistically significant, even after controlling for WM capacity. Thus, factors other than decline in WM, such as deficits in the in the integration of expected reward value into strategic decisions may contribute to the observed impairments in model-based behavior in older adults. PMID:24399925
Risk-prone individuals prefer the wrong options on a rat version of the Iowa Gambling Task.

PubMed

Rivalan, Marion; Ahmed, Serge H; Dellu-Hagedorn, Françoise

2009-10-15

Decision making in complex and conflicting situations, as measured in the widely used Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), can be profoundly impaired in psychiatric disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, drug addiction, and also in healthy individuals for whom immediate gratification prevails over long-term gain. The cognitive processes underlying these deficits are poorly understood, in part due to a lack of suitable animal models assessing complex decision making with good construct validity. We developed a rat gambling task analogous to the IGT that tracks, for the first time, the ongoing decision process within a single session in an operant cage. Rats could choose between various options. Disadvantageous options, as opposed to advantageous ones, offered bigger immediate food reward but were followed by longer, unpredictable penalties (time-out). The majority of rats can evaluate and deduce favorable options more or less rapidly according to task complexity, whereas others systematically choose disadvantageously. These interindividual differences are stable over time and do not depend on task difficulty or on the level of food restriction. We find that poor decision making does not result from a failure to acquire relevant information but from hypersensitivity to reward and higher risk taking in anxiogenic situations. These results suggest that rats, as well as human poor performers, share similar traits to those observed in decision-making related psychiatric disorders. These traits could constitute risk factors of developing such disorders. The rapid identification of poor decision makers using the rat gambling task should promote the discovery of the specific brain dysfunctions that cause maladapted decision making.
Understanding balance differences in individuals with multiple sclerosis with mild disability: An investigation of differences in sensory feedback on postural and dynamic balance control

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Denomme, Luke T.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS) and causes a broad range of neurological symptoms. One of the most common symptoms experienced by individuals with MS is poor balance control during standing and walking. The main mechanism underlying impaired balance control in MS appears to result from slowed somatosensory conduction and impaired central integration. The current thesis assessed postural and dynamic control of balance of 'individuals with MS with mild disability' (IwMS). IwMS were compared to 'healthy age-matched individuals' (HAMI) and community-dwelling 'older adults' (OA). The purpose of this thesis was to quantify differences in postural and dynamic control of balance in IwMS to the two populations who display balance control differences across the lifespan and represent two extreme ends of the balance control continuum due to natural aging. IwMS (n = 12, x¯age: 44 +/- 9.4 years), HAMI (n = 12, x¯age: 45 +/- 9.9 years) and community-dwelling OA (n = 12, x¯ age: 68.1 +/- 4.5 years) postural and dynamic balance control were evaluated during a Romberg task as well as a dynamic steering task. The Romberg task required participants to stand with their feet together and hands by their sides for 45 seconds with either their eyes open or closed. The dynamic steering task required participants to walk and change direction along the M-L plane towards a visual goal. Results from these two tasks reveal that IwMS display differences in postural control when compared to HAMI when vision was removed as well as differences in dynamic stability margin during steering situations. During the postural control task IwMS displayed faster A-P and M-L COP velocities when vision was removed and their COP position was closer to their self-selected maximum stability limits compared to HAMI. Assessment of dynamic stability during the steering task revealed that IwMS displayed reduced walking speed and cadence during the
Individual differences in learning correlate with modulation of brain activity induced by transcranial direct current stimulation

PubMed Central

Falcone, Brian; Wada, Atsushi; Parasuraman, Raja

2018-01-01

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been shown to enhance cognitive performance on a variety of tasks. It is hypothesized that tDCS enhances performance by affecting task related cortical excitability changes in networks underlying or connected to the site of stimulation facilitating long term potentiation. However, many recent studies have called into question the reliability and efficacy of tDCS to induce modulatory changes in brain activity. In this study, our goal is to investigate the individual differences in tDCS induced modulatory effects on brain activity related to the degree of enhancement in performance, providing insight into this lack of reliability. In accomplishing this goal, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) concurrently with tDCS stimulation (1 mA, 30 minutes duration) using a visual search task simulating real world conditions. The experiment consisted of three fMRI sessions: pre-training (no performance feedback), training (performance feedback which included response accuracy and target location and either real tDCS or sham stimulation given), and post-training (no performance feedback). The right posterior parietal cortex was selected as the site of anodal tDCS based on its known role in visual search and spatial attention processing. Our results identified a region in the right precentral gyrus, known to be involved with visual spatial attention and orienting, that showed tDCS induced task related changes in cortical excitability that were associated with individual differences in improved performance. This same region showed greater activity during the training session for target feedback of incorrect (target-error feedback) over correct trials for the tDCS stim over sham group indicating greater attention to target features during training feedback when trials were incorrect. These results give important insight into the nature of neural excitability induced by tDCS as it relates to variability in

A Novel Eye-Tracking Method to Assess Attention Allocation in Individuals with and without Aphasia Using a Dual-Task Paradigm

PubMed Central

Heuer, Sabine; Hallowell, Brooke

2015-01-01

Numerous authors report that people with aphasia have greater difficulty allocating attention than people without neurological disorders. Studying how attention deficits contribute to language deficits is important. However, existing methods for indexing attention allocation in people with aphasia pose serious methodological challenges. Eye-tracking methods have great potential to address such challenges. We developed and assessed the validity of a new dual-task method incorporating eye tracking to assess attention allocation. Twenty-six adults with aphasia and 33 control participants completed auditory sentence comprehension and visual search tasks. To test whether the new method validly indexes well-documented patterns in attention allocation, demands were manipulated by varying task complexity in single- and dual-task conditions. Differences in attention allocation were indexed via eye-tracking measures. For all participants significant increases in attention allocation demands were observed from single- to dual-task conditions and from simple to complex stimuli. Individuals with aphasia had greater difficulty allocating attention with greater task demands. Relationships between eye-tracking indices of comprehension during single and dual tasks and standardized testing were examined. Results support the validity of the novel eye-tracking method for assessing attention allocation in people with and without aphasia. Clinical and research implications are discussed. PMID:25913549
The Effect of Writing Task and Task Conditions on Colombian EFL Learners' Language Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McDonough, Kim; Fuentes, César García

2015-01-01

This classroom study examines whether English L2 writers' language use differs depending on the writing task (operationalized as paragraph type), and task conditions (operationalized as individual or collaborative writing). The texts written by English L2 university students in Colombia (N = 26) in response to problem/solution and cause/effect…
Individual Differences in Childhood Sleep Problems Predict Later Cognitive Executive Control

PubMed Central

Friedman, Naomi P.; Corley, Robin P.; Hewitt, John K.; Wright, Kenneth P.

2009-01-01

Study Objective: To determine whether individual differences in developmental patterns of general sleep problems are associated with 3 executive function abilities—inhibiting, updating working memory, and task shifting—in late adolescence. Participants: 916 twins (465 female, 451 male) and parents from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study. Measurements and Results: Parents reported their children's sleep problems at ages 4 years, 5 y, 7 y, and 9–16 y based on a 7-item scale from the Child-Behavior Checklist; a subset of children (n = 568) completed laboratory assessments of executive functions at age 17. Latent variable growth curve analyses were used to model individual differences in longitudinal trajectories of childhood sleep problems. Sleep problems declined over time, with ~70% of children having ≥ 1 problem at age 4 and ~33% of children at age 16. However, significant individual differences in both the initial levels of problems (intercept) and changes across time (slope) were observed. When executive function latent variables were added to the model, the intercept did not significantly correlate with the later executive function latent variables; however, the slope variable significantly (P < 0.05) negatively correlated with inhibiting (r = −0.27) and updating (r = −0.21), but not shifting (r = −0.10) abilities. Further analyses suggested that the slope variable predicted the variance common to the 3 executive functions (r = −0.29). Conclusions: Early levels of sleep problems do not seem to have appreciable implications for later executive functioning. However, individuals whose sleep problems decrease more across time show better general executive control in late adolescence. Citation: Friedman NP; Corley RP; Hewitt JK; Wright KP. Individual differences in childhood sleep problems predict later cognitive executive control. SLEEP 2009;32(3):323-333. PMID:19294952
Increased distractibility in schizotypy: Independent of individual differences in working memory capacity?

PubMed

Marsh, John E; Vachon, François; Sörqvist, Patrik

2017-03-01

Individuals with schizophrenia typically show increased levels of distractibility. This has been attributed to impaired working memory capacity (WMC), since lower WMC is typically associated with higher distractibility, and schizophrenia is typically associated with impoverished WMC. Here, participants performed verbal and spatial serial recall tasks that were accompanied by to-be-ignored speech tokens. For the few trials wherein one speech token was replaced with a different token, impairment was produced to task scores (a deviation effect). Participants subsequently completed a schizotypy questionnaire and a WMC measure. Higher schizotypy scores were associated with lower WMC (as measured with operation span, OSPAN), but WMC and schizotypy scores explained unique variance in relation to the mean magnitude of the deviation effect. These results suggest that schizotypy is associated with heightened domain-general distractibility, but that this is independent of its relationship with WMC.
Individual differences in strategic flight management and scheduling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wickens, Christopher D.; Raby, Mireille

1991-01-01

A group of 30 instrument-rated pilots was made to fly simulator approaches to three airports under conditions of low, medium, and high workload conditions. An analysis is presently conducted of the difference in discrete task scheduling between the group of 10 highest and 10 lowest performing pilots in the sample; this categorization was based on the mean of various flight-profile measures. The two groups were found to differ from each other only in terms of the time when specific events were conducted, and of the optimality of scheduling for certain high-priority tasks. These results are assessed in view of the relative independence of task-management skills from aircraft-control skills.
Who multi-tasks and why? Multi-tasking ability, perceived multi-tasking ability, impulsivity, and sensation seeking.

PubMed

Sanbonmatsu, David M; Strayer, David L; Medeiros-Ward, Nathan; Watson, Jason M

2013-01-01

The present study examined the relationship between personality and individual differences in multi-tasking ability. Participants enrolled at the University of Utah completed measures of multi-tasking activity, perceived multi-tasking ability, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. In addition, they performed the Operation Span in order to assess their executive control and actual multi-tasking ability. The findings indicate that the persons who are most capable of multi-tasking effectively are not the persons who are most likely to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously. To the contrary, multi-tasking activity as measured by the Media Multitasking Inventory and self-reported cell phone usage while driving were negatively correlated with actual multi-tasking ability. Multi-tasking was positively correlated with participants' perceived ability to multi-task ability which was found to be significantly inflated. Participants with a strong approach orientation and a weak avoidance orientation--high levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking--reported greater multi-tasking behavior. Finally, the findings suggest that people often engage in multi-tasking because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task. Participants with less executive control--low scorers on the Operation Span task and persons high in impulsivity--tended to report higher levels of multi-tasking activity.
Escher in color space: individual-differences multidimensional scaling of color dissimilarities collected with a gestalt formation task.

PubMed

Bimler, David; Kirkland, John; Pichler, Shaun

2004-02-01

The structure of color perception can be examined by collecting judgments about color dissimilarities. In the procedure used here, stimuli are presented three at a time on a computer monitor and the spontaneous grouping of most-similar stimuli into gestalts provides the dissimilarity comparisons. Analysis with multidimensional scaling allows such judgments to be pooled from a number of observers without obscuring the variations among them. The anomalous perceptions of color-deficient observers produce comparisons that are represented well by a geometric model of compressed individual color spaces, with different forms of deficiency distinguished by different directions of compression. The geometrical model is also capable of accommodating the normal spectrum of variation, so that there is greater variation in compression parameters between tests on normal subjects than in those between repeated tests on individual subjects. The method is sufficiently sensitive and the variations sufficiently large that they are not obscured by the use of a range of monitors, even under somewhat loosely controlled conditions.
Ambiguity between self and other: Individual differences in action attribution.

PubMed

de Bézenac, Christophe E; Sluming, Vanessa; O'Sullivan, Noreen; Corcoran, Rhiannon

2015-09-01

Individuals differ in their ability to attribute actions to self or other. This variance is thought to explain, in part, the experience of voice-hearing. Misattribution can also be context-driven. For example, causal ambiguity can arise when the actions of two or more individuals are coordinated and produce similar effects (e.g., music-making). Experience in such challenging contexts may refine skills of action attribution. Forty participants completed a novel finger-tapping task which parametrically manipulated the proportion of control that 'self' versus 'other' possessed over resulting auditory tones. Results showed that action misattribution peaked in the middle of the self-to-other continuum and was biased towards other. This pattern was related to both high hallucination-proneness and to low musical-experience. Findings suggest not only that causal ambiguity plays a key role in agency but also that action attribution abilities may improve with practice, potentially providing an avenue for remediation of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in the perception of biological motion and fragmented figures are not correlated.

PubMed

Jung, Eunice L; Zadbood, Asieh; Lee, Sang-Hun; Tomarken, Andrew J; Blake, Randolph

2013-01-01

WE LIVE IN A CLUTTERED, DYNAMIC VISUAL ENVIRONMENT THAT POSES A CHALLENGE FOR THE VISUAL SYSTEM: for objects, including those that move about, to be perceived, information specifying those objects must be integrated over space and over time. Does a single, omnibus mechanism perform this grouping operation, or does grouping depend on separate processes specialized for different feature aspects of the object? To address this question, we tested a large group of healthy young adults on their abilities to perceive static fragmented figures embedded in noise and to perceive dynamic point-light biological motion figures embedded in dynamic noise. There were indeed substantial individual differences in performance on both tasks, but none of the statistical tests we applied to this data set uncovered a significant correlation between those performance measures. These results suggest that the two tasks, despite their superficial similarity, require different segmentation and grouping processes that are largely unrelated to one another. Whether those processes are embodied in distinct neural mechanisms remains an open question.
Individual differences in decision making: Drive and Reward Responsiveness affect strategic bargaining in economic games.

PubMed

Scheres, Anouk; Sanfey, Alan G

2006-10-18

In the growing body of literature on economic decision making, the main focus has typically been on explaining aggregate behavior, with little interest in individual differences despite considerable between-subject variability in decision responses. In this study, we were interested in asking to what degree individual differences in fundamental psychological processes can mediate economic decision-making behavior. Specifically, we studied a personality dimension that may influence economic decision-making, the Behavioral Activation System, (BAS) which is composed of three components: Reward Responsiveness, Drive, and Fun Seeking. In order to assess economic decision making, we utilized two commonly-used tasks, the Ultimatum Game and Dictator Game. Individual differences in BAS were measured by completion of the BIS/BAS Scales, and correlations between the BAS scales and monetary offers made in the two tasks were computed. We found that higher scores on BAS Drive and on BAS Reward Responsiveness were associated with a pattern of higher offers on the Ultimatum Game, lower offers on the Dictator Game, and a correspondingly larger discrepancy between Ultimatum Game and Dictator Game offers. These findings are consistent with an interpretation that high scores on Drive and Reward Responsiveness are associated with a strategy that first seeks to maximize the likelihood of reward, and then to maximize the amount of reward. More generally, these results suggest that there are additional factors other than empathy, fairness and selfishness that contribute to strategic decision-making.
Neural correlates of individual differences in manual imitation fidelity

PubMed Central

Braadbaart, Lieke; Waiter, Gordon D.; Williams, Justin H. G.

2012-01-01

Imitation is crucial for social learning, and so it is important to identify what determines between-subject variability in imitation fidelity. This might help explain what makes some people, like those with social difficulties such as in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), significantly worse at performance on these tasks than others. A novel paradigm was developed to provide objective measures of imitation fidelity in which participants used a touchscreen to imitate videos of a model drawing different shapes. Comparisons between model and participants' kinematic data provided three measures of imitative fidelity. We hypothesized that imitative ability would predict variation in BOLD signal whilst performing a simple imitation task in the MRI-scanner. In particular, an overall measure of accuracy (correlation between model and imitator) would predict activity in the overarching imitation system, whereas bias would be subject to more general aspects of motor control. Participants lying in the MRI-scanner were instructed to imitate different grips on a handle, or to watch someone or a circle moving the handle. Our hypothesis was partly confirmed as correlation between model and imitator was mediated by somatosensory cortex but also ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and bias was mediated mainly by cerebellum but also by the medial frontal and parietal cortices and insula. We suggest that this variance differentially reflects cognitive functions such as feedback-sensitivity and reward-dependent learning, contributing significantly to variability in individuals' imitative abilities as characterized by objective kinematic measures. PMID:23087625
Grip force and force sharing in two different manipulation tasks with bottles.

PubMed

Cepriá-Bernal, Javier; Pérez-González, Antonio; Mora, Marta C; Sancho-Bru, Joaquín L

2017-07-01

Grip force and force sharing during two activities of daily living were analysed experimentally in 10 right-handed subjects. Four different bottles, filled to two different levels, were manipulated for two tasks: transporting and pouring. Each test subject's hand was instrumented with eight thin wearable force sensors. The grip force and force sharing were significantly different for each bottle model. Increasing the filling level resulted in an increase in grip force, but the ratio of grip force to load force was higher for lighter loads. The task influenced the force sharing but not the mean grip force. The contributions of the thumb and ring finger were higher in the pouring task, whereas the contributions of the palm and the index finger were higher in the transport task. Mean force sharing among fingers was 30% for index, 29% for middle, 22% for ring and 19% for little finger. Practitioner Summary: We analysed grip force and force sharing in two manipulation tasks with bottles: transporting and pouring. The objective was to understand the effects of the bottle features, filling level and task on the contribution of different areas of the hand to the grip force. Force sharing was different for each task and the bottles features affected to both grip force and force sharing.
Individual Differences, Intelligence, and Behavior Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Ben; Myerson, Joel; Hale, Sandra

2008-01-01

Despite its avowed goal of understanding individual behavior, the field of behavior analysis has largely ignored the determinants of consistent differences in level of performance among individuals. The present article discusses major findings in the study of individual differences in intelligence from the conceptual framework of a functional…
From neural signatures of emotional modulation to social cognition: individual differences in healthy volunteers and psychiatric participants

PubMed Central

Aguado, Jaume; Baez, Sandra; Huepe, David; Lopez, Vladimir; Ortega, Rodrigo; Sigman, Mariano; Mikulan, Ezequiel; Lischinsky, Alicia; Torrente, Fernando; Cetkovich, Marcelo; Torralva, Teresa; Bekinschtein, Tristan; Manes, Facundo

2014-01-01

It is commonly assumed that early emotional signals provide relevant information for social cognition tasks. The goal of this study was to test the association between (a) cortical markers of face emotional processing and (b) social-cognitive measures, and also to build a model which can predict this association (a and b) in healthy volunteers as well as in different groups of psychiatric patients. Thus, we investigated the early cortical processing of emotional stimuli (N170, using a face and word valence task) and their relationship with the social-cognitive profiles (SCPs, indexed by measures of theory of mind, fluid intelligence, speed processing and executive functions). Group comparisons and individual differences were assessed among schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and their relatives, individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), individuals with euthymic bipolar disorder (BD) and healthy participants (educational level, handedness, age and gender matched). Our results provide evidence of emotional N170 impairments in the affected groups (SCZ and relatives, ADHD and BD) as well as subtle group differences. Importantly, cortical processing of emotional stimuli predicted the SCP, as evidenced by a structural equation model analysis. This is the first study to report an association model of brain markers of emotional processing and SCP. PMID:23685775
An evolutionary ecology of individual differences

PubMed Central

Dall, Sasha R. X.; Bell, Alison M.; Bolnick, Daniel I.; Ratnieks, Francis L. W.

2014-01-01

Individuals often differ in what they do. This has been recognised since antiquity. Nevertheless, the ecological and evolutionary significance of such variation is attracting widespread interest, which is burgeoning to an extent that is fragmenting the literature. As a first attempt at synthesis, we focus on individual differences in behaviour within populations that exceed the day-to-day variation in individual behaviour (i.e. behavioural specialisation). Indeed, the factors promoting ecologically relevant behavioural specialisation within natural populations are likely to have far-reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences. We discuss such individual differences from three distinct perspectives: individual niche specialisations, the division of labour within insect societies and animal personality variation. In the process, while recognising that each area has its own unique motivations, we identify a number of opportunities for productive ‘crossfertilisation’ among the (largely independent) bodies of work. We conclude that a complete understanding of evolutionarily and ecologically relevant individual differences must specify how ecological interactions impact the basic biological process (e.g. Darwinian selection, development and information processing) that underpin the organismal features determining behavioural specialisations. Moreover, there is likely to be covariation amongst behavioural specialisations. Thus, we sketch the key elements of a general framework for studying the evolutionary ecology of individual differences. PMID:22897772
Acute alcohol effects on set-shifting and its moderation by baseline individual differences: a latent variable analysis.

PubMed

Korucuoglu, Ozlem; Sher, Kenneth J; Wood, Phillip K; Saults, John Scott; Altamirano, Lee; Miyake, Akira; Bartholow, Bruce D

2017-03-01

To compare the acute effects of alcohol on set-shifting task performance (relative to sober baseline performance) during ascending and descending limb breath alcohol concentration (BrAC), as well as possible moderation of these effects by baseline individual differences. Shifting performance was tested during an initial baseline and a subsequent drinking session, during which participants were assigned randomly to one of three beverage conditions (alcohol, placebo or control) and one of two BrAC limb conditions [ascending and descending (A/D) or descending-only (D-only)]. A human experimental laboratory on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, MO, USA. A total of 222 moderate-drinking adults (ages 21-30 years) recruited from Columbia, MO and tested between 2010 and 2013. The outcome measure was performance on set-shifting tasks under the different beverage and limb conditions. Shifting performance assessed at baseline was a key moderator. Although performance improved across sessions, this improvement was reduced in the alcohol compared with no-alcohol groups (post-drink latent mean comparison across groups, all Ps ≤ 0.05), and this effect was more pronounced in individuals with lower pre-drink performance (comparison of pre- to post-drink path coefficients across groups, all Ps ≤ 0.05). In the alcohol group, performance was better on descending compared with ascending limb (P ≤ 0.001), but descending limb performance did not differ across the A/D and D-only groups. Practising tasks before drinking moderates the acute effects of alcohol on the ability to switch between tasks. Greater impairment in shifting ability on descending compared with ascending breath alcohol concentration is not related to task practice. © 2016 Society for the Study of Addiction.
Individual differences in executive processing predict susceptibility to interference in verbal working memory.

PubMed

Hedden, Trey; Yoon, Carolyn

2006-09-01

Recent theories have suggested that resistance to interference is a unifying principle of executive function and that individual differences in interference may be explained by executive function (M. J. Kane & R. W. Engle, 2002). Measures of executive function, memory, and perceptual speed were obtained from 121 older adults (ages 63-82). We used structural equation modeling to investigate the relationships of these constructs with interference in a working memory task. Executive function was best described as two related subcomponent processes: shifting and updating goal-relevant representations and inhibition of proactive interference. These subcomponents were distinct from verbal and visual memory and speed. Individual differences in interference susceptibility and recollection were best predicted by shifting and updating and by resistance to proactive interference, and variability in familiarity was predicted by resistance to proactive interference and speed. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Individual differences in posterior cortical volume correlate with proneness to pride and gratitude.

PubMed

Zahn, Roland; Garrido, Griselda; Moll, Jorge; Grafman, Jordan

2014-11-01

Proneness to specific moral sentiments (e.g. pride, gratitude, guilt, indignation) has been linked with individual variations in functional MRI (fMRI) response within anterior brain regions whose lesion leads to inappropriate behaviour. However, the role of structural anatomical differences in rendering individuals prone to particular moral sentiments relative to others is unknown. Here, we investigated grey matter volumes (VBM8) and proneness to specific moral sentiments on a well-controlled experimental task in healthy individuals. Individuals with smaller cuneus, and precuneus volumes were more pride-prone, whereas those with larger right inferior temporal volumes experienced gratitude more readily. Although the primary analysis detected no associations with guilt- or indignation-proneness, subgenual cingulate fMRI responses to guilt were negatively correlated with grey matter volumes in the left superior temporal sulcus and anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (right >left). This shows that individual variations in functional activations within critical areas for moral sentiments were not due to grey matter volume differences in the same areas. Grey matter volume differences between healthy individuals may nevertheless play an important role by affecting posterior cortical brain systems that are non-critical but supportive for the experience of specific moral sentiments. This may be of particular relevance when their experience depends on visuo-spatial elaboration. Published by Oxford University Press 2013. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the US.
Not Everybody Sees the Ness in the Darkness: Individual Differences in Masked Suffix Priming

PubMed Central

Medeiros, Joyse; Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni

2016-01-01

The present study explores the role of individual differences in polymorphemic word recognition. Participants completed a masked priming lexical decision experiment on suffixed words in which targets could be preceded by suffix-related words (words sharing the same suffix) or by affixed primes with a different suffix. Participants also completed a monomorphemic word lexical decision and were divided in two groups (fast and slow readers) according to their performance in this task. When the suffix priming data were analyzed taking into consideration participants' reading speed as a proxy for their greater reliance on orthography or on semantics, a significant interaction between reading speed and the magnitude of the masked suffix priming effects emerged. Only slow participants showed significant priming effects, whereas faster participants showed negligible masked suffix priming effects. These results demonstrate that different reading profiles modulate the access to morphological information in a qualitatively different manner and that individual differences in reading determine the manner in which polymorphemic words are processed. PMID:27790180
Individual differences in selective attention predict speech identification at a cocktail party

PubMed Central

Oberfeld, Daniel; Klöckner-Nowotny, Felicitas

2016-01-01

Listeners with normal hearing show considerable individual differences in speech understanding when competing speakers are present, as in a crowded restaurant. Here, we show that one source of this variance are individual differences in the ability to focus selective attention on a target stimulus in the presence of distractors. In 50 young normal-hearing listeners, the performance in tasks measuring auditory and visual selective attention was associated with sentence identification in the presence of spatially separated competing speakers. Together, the measures of selective attention explained a similar proportion of variance as the binaural sensitivity for the acoustic temporal fine structure. Working memory span, age, and audiometric thresholds showed no significant association with speech understanding. These results suggest that a reduced ability to focus attention on a target is one reason why some listeners with normal hearing sensitivity have difficulty communicating in situations with background noise. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16747.001 PMID:27580272

Aiding the search: Examining individual differences in multiply-constrained problem solving.

PubMed

Ellis, Derek M; Brewer, Gene A

2018-07-01

Understanding and resolving complex problems is of vital importance in daily life. Problems can be defined by the limitations they place on the problem solver. Multiply-constrained problems are traditionally examined with the compound remote associates task (CRAT). Performance on the CRAT is partially dependent on an individual's working memory capacity (WMC). These findings suggest that executive processes are critical for problem solving and that there are reliable individual differences in multiply-constrained problem solving abilities. The goals of the current study are to replicate and further elucidate the relation between WMC and CRAT performance. To achieve these goals, we manipulated preexposure to CRAT solutions and measured WMC with complex-span tasks. In Experiment 1, we report evidence that preexposure to CRAT solutions improved problem solving accuracy, WMC was correlated with problem solving accuracy, and that WMC did not moderate the effect of preexposure on problem solving accuracy. In Experiment 2, we preexposed participants to correct and incorrect solutions. We replicated Experiment 1 and found that WMC moderates the effect of exposure to CRAT solutions such that high WMC participants benefit more from preexposure to correct solutions than low WMC (although low WMC participants have preexposure benefits as well). Broadly, these results are consistent with theories of working memory and problem solving that suggest a mediating role of attention control processes. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Gender differences in plantar loading during three soccer-specific tasks.

PubMed

Sims, E L; Hardaker, W M; Queen, R M

2008-04-01

Examine the effect of gender on plantar loading during three football-specific tasks. Thirty-four athletes (17 men, 17 women) ran an agility course five times while wearing the Nike Vitoria hard ground cleat. Plantar loading data were recorded during a side cut, a cross-over cut and a forward acceleration task using Pedar-X insoles. Controlled laboratory study. No history of lower extremity injury in the past 6 months, no previous foot or ankle surgery, not currently wearing foot orthotics and play a cleated sport at least two times per week. Contact area, maximum force and the force-time integral (FTI) in the medial and lateral midfoot, medial, middle and lateral forefoot as well as the hallux. A univariate ANCOVA (alpha = 0.05) was performed on each dependent variable (covariate was course speed). Significant gender differences existed in the force and force-time integral beneath the lateral midfoot and forefoot during the cross-over cut task as well as in the middle forefoot during the side cut task with the men demonstrating an increased force. No significant differences existed in the loading on the medial side of the foot during any tasks. The results of this study indicate that the increase in plantar loading on the lateral portion of the midfoot and forefoot in men could be one possible explanation for the increased incidence of fifth metatarsal stress fractures in men. Gender differences in loading patterns need to be considered when comparing different movements as well as different footwear conditions.
New Tests to Measure Individual Differences in Matching and Labelling Facial Expressions of Emotion, and Their Association with Ability to Recognise Vocal Emotions and Facial Identity

PubMed Central

Palermo, Romina; O’Connor, Kirsty B.; Davis, Joshua M.; Irons, Jessica; McKone, Elinor

2013-01-01

Although good tests are available for diagnosing clinical impairments in face expression processing, there is a lack of strong tests for assessing “individual differences” – that is, differences in ability between individuals within the typical, nonclinical, range. Here, we develop two new tests, one for expression perception (an odd-man-out matching task in which participants select which one of three faces displays a different expression) and one additionally requiring explicit identification of the emotion (a labelling task in which participants select one of six verbal labels). We demonstrate validity (careful check of individual items, large inversion effects, independence from nonverbal IQ, convergent validity with a previous labelling task), reliability (Cronbach’s alphas of.77 and.76 respectively), and wide individual differences across the typical population. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the tests by addressing theoretical questions regarding the structure of face processing, specifically the extent to which the following processes are common or distinct: (a) perceptual matching and explicit labelling of expression (modest correlation between matching and labelling supported partial independence); (b) judgement of expressions from faces and voices (results argued labelling tasks tap into a multi-modal system, while matching tasks tap distinct perceptual processes); and (c) expression and identity processing (results argued for a common first step of perceptual processing for expression and identity). PMID:23840821
Parallel processing considerations for image recognition tasks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Simske, Steven J.

2011-01-01

Many image recognition tasks are well-suited to parallel processing. The most obvious example is that many imaging tasks require the analysis of multiple images. From this standpoint, then, parallel processing need be no more complicated than assigning individual images to individual processors. However, there are three less trivial categories of parallel processing that will be considered in this paper: parallel processing (1) by task; (2) by image region; and (3) by meta-algorithm. Parallel processing by task allows the assignment of multiple workflows-as diverse as optical character recognition [OCR], document classification and barcode reading-to parallel pipelines. This can substantially decrease time to completion for the document tasks. For this approach, each parallel pipeline is generally performing a different task. Parallel processing by image region allows a larger imaging task to be sub-divided into a set of parallel pipelines, each performing the same task but on a different data set. This type of image analysis is readily addressed by a map-reduce approach. Examples include document skew detection and multiple face detection and tracking. Finally, parallel processing by meta-algorithm allows different algorithms to be deployed on the same image simultaneously. This approach may result in improved accuracy.
Resistance-training exercises with different stability requirements: time course of task specificity.

PubMed

Saeterbakken, Atle Hole; Andersen, Vidar; Behm, David G; Krohn-Hansen, Espen Krogseth; Smaamo, Mats; Fimland, Marius Steiro

2016-12-01

The aim of the study was to assess the task-specificity (greater improvements in trained compared to non-trained tasks), transferability and time-course adaptations of resistance-training programs with varying instability requirements. Thirty-six resistance-trained men were randomized to train chest press 2 days week -1 for 10 week (6 repetitions × 4 series) using a Swiss ball, Smith machine or dumbbells. A six-repetition maximum-strength test with the aforementioned exercises and traditional barbell chest press were performed by all participants at the first, 7th, 14th and final training session in addition to electromyographic activities of the prime movers measured during isometric bench press. The groups training with the unstable Swiss-ball and dumbbells, but not the stable Smith-machine, demonstrated task-specificity, which became apparent in the early phase and remained throughout the study. The improvements in the trained exercise tended to increase more with instability (dumbbells vs. Smith machine, p = 0.061). The group training with Smith machine had similar improvements in the non-trained exercises. Greater improvements were observed in the early phase of the strength-training program (first-7th session) for all groups in all three exercises, but most notably for the unstable exercises. No differences were observed between the groups or testing times for EMG activity. These findings suggest that among resistance-trained individuals, the concept of task-specificity could be most relevant in resistance training with greater stability requirements, particularly due to rapid strength improvements for unstable resistance exercises.
Cultural differences in attention: Eye movement evidence from a comparative visual search task.

PubMed

Alotaibi, Albandri; Underwood, Geoffrey; Smith, Alastair D

2017-10-01

Individual differences in visual attention have been linked to thinking style: analytic thinking (common in individualistic cultures) is thought to promote attention to detail and focus on the most important part of a scene, whereas holistic thinking (common in collectivist cultures) promotes attention to the global structure of a scene and the relationship between its parts. However, this theory is primarily based on relatively simple judgement tasks. We compared groups from Great Britain (an individualist culture) and Saudi Arabia (a collectivist culture) on a more complex comparative visual search task, using simple natural scenes. A higher overall number of fixations for Saudi participants, along with longer search times, indicated less efficient search behaviour than British participants. Furthermore, intra-group comparisons of scan-path for Saudi participants revealed less similarity than within the British group. Together, these findings suggest that there is a positive relationship between an analytic cognitive style and controlled attention. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Electrophysiological correlates of preparation and implementation for different types of task shifts.

PubMed

Hsieh, Shulan; Wu, Mengyao

2011-11-14

The ability to flexibly shift between tasks is central to cognitive control, but whether the same brain mechanisms mediate shifting across different tasks is unknown. In this study, we investigated whether variations in stimulus-dimensions or response-mapping might influence task switching in terms of its preparatory processes, as reflected in cue-locked event-related potentials (ERPs), and its implementation processes, as reflected in stimulus-locked ERPs. Participants judged pairs of digits as same or different in one of two conditions. In one condition, the task-relevant stimulus-dimension was either repeated or switched across trials while the response-mapping rule was kept constant. In the other condition, the task-relevant stimulus-dimension was kept constant while the response-mapping rule was repeated or switched across trials. The length of the preparatory interval was manipulated. Data revealed switch-related preparatory ERP components (including N2 and a late slow positivity) that were associated with both types of task shifting and an N400-like negativity that distinguished between the two types. Several switch-related implementation ERP components associated with both types of task shifting were found at posterior sites. Distinct frontal modulations of the N1, P2, and N2 were found to associate with the implementation of the response-mapping shift, whereas a slow positivity was associated with the implementation of the stimulus-dimension shift. Therefore, this study demonstrates that there are shared and distinct processes across different types of task shifting. Finally, because the same transition-cue was used for different task shifts, the distinct processes cannot be explained simply by differences in cue processing. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Reduced self-regulation mirrors the distorting effects of burnout symptomatology on task difficulty perception during an inhibition task.

PubMed

Wekenborg, Magdalena Katharina; Hill, LaBarron K; Miller, Robert; Stalder, Tobias; Thayer, Julian Francis; Sophie Penz, Marlene; Kirschbaum, Clemens

2018-06-09

Burnout, a pathological consequence of chronic work stress, shows an increasing incidence rate in industrialized countries. Previous findings indicate that burnout may be linked to a detachment of the negative association between subjectively appraised task demand and cognitive performance, which is typically seen in healthy individuals. The present study sought to confirm this relationship and to investigate whether this dissociation is mirrored in a biological marker of self-regulation, i.e., resting vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV). A heterogeneous sample (N = 65) of working adults (M age = 43.3, SD = 10; 23.1 % male) with varying degrees of burnout symptomatology completed three cognitive tasks (2-back, number-letter, and go/nogo) to assess different domains of executive functioning (updating, set-shifting, and inhibition), and respective demand ratings. Additionally, vagally mediated HRV at rest, operationalized as the root-mean square differences of successive R-R intervals (RMSSD), was recorded. Burnout symptomatology moderated the association between subjective task difficulty and performance parameters of the go/nogo task, such that higher burnout scores were associated with reductions in the naturally occurring negative association between self-rated task demand and response inhibition. Intriguingly, this pattern was mirrored when replacing burnout with HRV. These findings suggest that burnout symptomatology, and individual differences in self-regulatory capacities (indexed by resting HRV), may alter one's capacity for accurate task evaluation, a mechanism which could potentially underlie the dissociation between self-rated cognitive function and actual performance among individuals experiencing burnout.
Individual differences in working memory and reasoning-remembering relationships in solving class-inclusion problems.

PubMed

Howe, M L; Rabinowitz, F M; Powell, T L

1998-09-01

In the present experiment, we evaluated the effects of individual differences in reading span and variation in memory demands on class-inclusion performance. One hundred twenty college students whose reading spans ranged from low to medium to high (as indexed by a computerized version of the Daneman and Carpenter [1980] reading-span task) solved 48 class-inclusion problems. Half of the subjects had the solution information available when the problems were presented; the other half performed a detection task between solution information and problem presentation. The results from both standard statistical analyses and from a mathematical model indicated that differences in reading span and memory load had predictable, similar effects. Specifically, the sophistication of reasoning strategies declined when memory demands increased or when reading spans decreased. Surprisingly, these effects were primarily additive. The results were interpreted in terms of global resource models and findings from the developmental literature.
Individual differences in cognition among teleost fishes.

PubMed

Lucon-Xiccato, Tyrone; Bisazza, Angelo

2017-08-01

Individual differences in cognitive abilities have been thoroughly investigated in humans and to a lesser extent in other mammals. Despite the growing interest in studying cognition in other taxonomic groups, data on individual differences are scarce for non-mammalian species. Here, we review the literature on individual differences in cognitive abilities in teleost fishes. Relatively few studies have directly addressed this topic and have provided evidence of consistent and heritable individual variation in cognitive abilities in fish. We found much more evidence of individual cognitive differences in other research areas, namely sex differences, personality differences, cerebral lateralisation and comparison between populations. Altogether, these studies suggest that individual differences in cognition are as common in fish as in warm-blooded vertebrates. Based on the example of research on mammals, we suggest directions for future investigation in fish. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Cognitive Style: Individual Differences.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saracho, Olivia N.

1989-01-01

A literature review describes several dimensions of cognitive styles in an effort to illustrate individual stylistic differences. Discusses the field dependence-independence dimension, taking into account age, sex, and cultural differences. Suggests that cognitive style theory needs to be structured in a broader theoretical framework. (NH)
The Tapley and Bryden test of performance differences between the hands: The original data, newer data, and the relation to pegboard and other tasks.

PubMed

McManus, I C; Van Horn, John Darrell; Bryden, Pamela J

2016-02-08

Tapley and Bryden (T&B)'s 1985 circle-marking task is a group-administered task assessing performance differences between the hands. The bimodal distribution clearly separates self-described right- and left-handers. Using Phil's original datafiles we analyse the test in more detail, providing raw scores for each hands which are useful forensically, and we provide reliability estimates. Van Horn's unpublished 1992 PhD thesis studied T&B tasks and Annett pegboards varying in difficulty. A striking finding, that Phil Bryden called "the Van Horn problem," was that hand differences (R - L) were unrelated to task difficulty. That result was the starting point for Pamela Bryden's 1998 thesis, firstly replicating Van Horn, but then showing that task difficulty did relate to hand differences for Grooved pegboards. Pamela Bryden's model for those effects is presented here. Comparing across tasks, the T&B and pegboard tasks showed almost complete consistency for direction of handedness. Likewise, within each task, degree of handedness intercorrelated strongly across variants. In strong contrast, degree of handedness for T&B tasks showed minimal correlation with degree of handedness for pegboards. At the highest level, therefore, direction of handedness is consistent within individuals (conventional right and left handedness), but there are separable processes determining dominant-non-dominant hands differences for each particular task.
Do detour tasks provide accurate assays of inhibitory control?

PubMed Central

Whiteside, Mark A.; Laker, Philippa R.; Beardsworth, Christine E.

2018-01-01

Transparent Cylinder and Barrier tasks are used to purportedly assess inhibitory control in a variety of animals. However, we suspect that performances on these detour tasks are influenced by non-cognitive traits, which may result in inaccurate assays of inhibitory control. We therefore reared pheasants under standardized conditions and presented each bird with two sets of similar tasks commonly used to measure inhibitory control. We recorded the number of times subjects incorrectly attempted to access a reward through transparent barriers, and their latencies to solve each task. Such measures are commonly used to infer the differential expression of inhibitory control. We found little evidence that their performances were consistent across the two different Putative Inhibitory Control Tasks (PICTs). Improvements in performance across trials showed that pheasants learned the affordances of each specific task. Critically, prior experience of transparent tasks, either Barrier or Cylinder, also improved subsequent inhibitory control performance on a novel task, suggesting that they also learned the general properties of transparent obstacles. Individual measures of persistence, assayed in a third task, were positively related to their frequency of incorrect attempts to solve the transparent inhibitory control tasks. Neophobia, Sex and Body Condition had no influence on individual performance. Contrary to previous studies of primates, pheasants with poor performance on PICTs had a wider dietary breadth assayed using a free-choice task. Our results demonstrate that in systems or taxa where prior experience and differences in development cannot be accounted for, individual differences in performance on commonly used detour-dependent PICTS may reveal more about an individual's prior experience of transparent objects, or their motivation to acquire food, than providing a reliable measure of their inhibitory control. PMID:29593115
Gender differences in brain activation on a mental rotation task.

PubMed

Semrud-Clikeman, Margaret; Fine, Jodene Goldenring; Bledsoe, Jesse; Zhu, David C

2012-10-01

Few neuroimaging studies have explored gender differences on mental rotation tasks. Most studies have utilized samples with both genders, samples mainly consisting of men, or samples with six or fewer females. Graduate students in science fields or liberal arts programs (20 males, 20 females) completed a mental rotation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). When a pair of cube figures was shown, the participant made a keypad response based on whether the pair is the same/similar or different. Regardless of gender, the bilateral middle frontal gyrus, bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and the left precuneus were activated when a subject tried to solve the mental rotation task. Increased activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus/middle frontal gyrus, the left precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex/cuneus region, and the left middle occipital gyrus was found for men as compared to women. Better accuracy and shorter response times were correlated with an increased activation in the bilateral intraparietal sulcus. No significant brain activity differences related to mental rotation were found between academic majors. These findings suggest that networks involved in visual attention appear to be more strongly activated in the mental rotation tasks in men as compared to women. It also suggests that men use a more automatic process when analyzing complex visual reasoning tasks while women use a more top-down process.
Lapses in Sustained Attention and Their Relation to Executive Control and Fluid Abilities: An Individual Differences Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Unsworth, Nash; Redick, Thomas S.; Lakey, Chad E.; Young, Diana L.

2010-01-01

A latent variable analysis was conducted to examine the nature of individual differences in lapses of attention and their relation to executive and fluid abilities. Participants performed a sustained attention task along with multiple measures of executive control and fluid abilities. Lapses of attention were indexed based on the slowest reaction…
The development of strategy use in elementary school children: working memory and individual differences.

PubMed

Imbo, Ineke; Vandierendonck, André

2007-04-01

The current study tested the development of working memory involvement in children's arithmetic strategy selection and strategy efficiency. To this end, an experiment in which the dual-task method and the choice/no-choice method were combined was administered to 10- to 12-year-olds. Working memory was needed in retrieval, transformation, and counting strategies, but the ratio between available working memory resources and arithmetic task demands changed across development. More frequent retrieval use, more efficient memory retrieval, and more efficient counting processes reduced the working memory requirements. Strategy efficiency and strategy selection were also modified by individual differences such as processing speed, arithmetic skill, gender, and math anxiety. Short-term memory capacity, in contrast, was not related to children's strategy selection or strategy efficiency.
Single Trial EEG Patterns for the Prediction of Individual Differences in Fluid Intelligence.

PubMed

Qazi, Emad-Ul-Haq; Hussain, Muhammad; Aboalsamh, Hatim; Malik, Aamir Saeed; Amin, Hafeez Ullah; Bamatraf, Saeed

2016-01-01

Assessing a person's intelligence level is required in many situations, such as career counseling and clinical applications. EEG evoked potentials in oddball task and fluid intelligence score are correlated because both reflect the cognitive processing and attention. A system for prediction of an individual's fluid intelligence level using single trial Electroencephalography (EEG) signals has been proposed. For this purpose, we employed 2D and 3D contents and 34 subjects each for 2D and 3D, which were divided into low-ability (LA) and high-ability (HA) groups using Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM) test. Using visual oddball cognitive task, neural activity of each group was measured and analyzed over three midline electrodes (Fz, Cz, and Pz). To predict whether an individual belongs to LA or HA group, features were extracted using wavelet decomposition of EEG signals recorded in visual oddball task and support vector machine (SVM) was used as a classifier. Two different types of Haar wavelet transform based features have been extracted from the band (0.3 to 30 Hz) of EEG signals. Statistical wavelet features and wavelet coefficient features from the frequency bands 0.0-1.875 Hz (delta low) and 1.875-3.75 Hz (delta high), resulted in the 100 and 98% prediction accuracies, respectively, both for 2D and 3D contents. The analysis of these frequency bands showed clear difference between LA and HA groups. Further, discriminative values of the features have been validated using statistical significance tests and inter-class and intra-class variation analysis. Also, statistical test showed that there was no effect of 2D and 3D content on the assessment of fluid intelligence level. Comparisons with state-of-the-art techniques showed the superiority of the proposed system.
Individual Differences in Adaptability to Isolated, Confined, and Extreme Environments.

PubMed

Bartone, Paul T; Krueger, Gerald P; Bartone, Jocelyn V

2018-06-01

Future deep space missions will expose astronauts to more intense stressors than previously encountered. Isolation will be greater and more prolonged, living and work areas more confined, and communications and resupply channels to Earth longer and less reliable. Astronauts will need to function more autonomously, with less guidance and support from Earth. Thus, it is important to select and train astronauts who can adapt and function effectively under extreme and variable conditions. In order to identify factors linked to individual adaptability, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on cognitive and behavioral adaptation to isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments. We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and PsychINFO databases for studies addressing individual adaptability to ICE environments. Studies were rated for quality and fidelity to long-duration space missions and key results extracted. There were 73 studies that met all inclusion criteria. Adaptability attributes for ICE environments include intelligence, emotional stability, self-control, openness, achievement facets of conscientiousness, optimism, mastery, introversion, hardiness, task-oriented coping, past experience, low need for social support, and adequate sleep. This review identifies individual factors linked to adaptability under ICE conditions. Further studies are needed to verify causal directions and determine the relative importance of these factors.Bartone PT, Krueger GP, Bartone JV. Individual differences in adaptability to isolated, confined, and extreme environments. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2018; 89(6):536-546.
Individual differences in face-looking behavior generalize from the lab to the world.

PubMed

Peterson, Matthew F; Lin, Jing; Zaun, Ian; Kanwisher, Nancy

2016-05-01

Recent laboratory studies have found large, stable individual differences in the location people first fixate when identifying faces, ranging from the brows to the mouth. Importantly, this variation is strongly associated with differences in fixation-specific identification performance such that individuals' recognition ability is maximized when looking at their preferred location (Mehoudar, Arizpe, Baker, & Yovel, 2014; Peterson & Eckstein, 2013). This finding suggests that face representations are retinotopic and individuals enact gaze strategies that optimize identification, yet the extent to which this behavior reflects real-world gaze behavior is unknown. Here, we used mobile eye trackers to test whether individual differences in face gaze generalize from lab to real-world vision. In-lab fixations were measured with a speeded face identification task, while real-world behavior was measured as subjects freely walked around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. We found a strong correlation between the patterns of individual differences in face gaze in the lab and real-world settings. Our findings support the hypothesis that individuals optimize real-world face identification by consistently fixating the same location and thus strongly constraining the space of retinotopic input. The methods developed for this study entailed collecting a large set of high-definition, wide field-of-view natural videos from head-mounted cameras and the viewer's fixation position, allowing us to characterize subjects' actually experienced real-world retinotopic images. These images enable us to ask how vision is optimized not just for the statistics of the "natural images" found in web databases, but of the truly natural, retinotopic images that have landed on actual human retinae during real-world experience.
Individual differences in cardiorespiratory measures of mental workload: An investigation of negative affectivity and cognitive avoidant coping in pilot candidates.

PubMed

Grassmann, Mariel; Vlemincx, Elke; von Leupoldt, Andreas; Van den Bergh, Omer

2017-03-01

Cardiorespiratory measures provide useful information in addition to well-established self-report measures when monitoring operator capacity. The purpose of our study was to refine the assessment of operator load by considering individual differences in personality and their associations with cardiorespiratory activation. Physiological and self-report measures were analyzed in 115 pilot candidates at rest and while performing a multiple task covering perceptual speed, spatial orientation, and working memory. In the total sample and particularly in individuals with a general tendency to worry a lot, a cognitive avoidant coping style was associated with a smaller task-related increase in heart rate. Negative affectivity was found to moderate the association between cardiac and self-reported arousal. Given that physiological and self-report measures of mental workload are usually combined when evaluating operator load (e.g., in pilot selection and training), our findings suggest that integrating individual differences may reduce unexplained variance and increase the validity of workload assessments. Copyright Â© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Attention orienting and inhibitory control across the different mood states in bipolar disorder: an emotional antisaccade task.

PubMed

García-Blanco, Ana C; Perea, Manuel; Salmerón, Ladislao

2013-12-01

An antisaccade experiment, using happy, sad, and neutral faces, was conducted to examine the effect of mood-congruent information on inhibitory control (antisaccade task) and attentional orienting (prosaccade task) during the different episodes of bipolar disorder (BD) - manic (n=22), depressive (n=25), and euthymic (n=24). A group of 28 healthy controls was also included. Results revealed that symptomatic patients committed more antisaccade errors than healthy individuals, especially with mood-congruent faces. The manic group committed more antisaccade errors in response to happy faces, while the depressed group tended to commit more antisaccade errors in response to sad faces. Additionally, antisaccade latencies were slower in BD patients than in healthy individuals, whereas prosaccade latencies were slower in symptomatic patients. Taken together, these findings revealed the following: (a) slow inhibitory control in BD patients, regardless of their episode (i.e., a trait), and (b) impaired inhibitory control restricted to symptomatic patients (i.e., a state). Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Cultural differences are not always reducible to individual differences.

PubMed

Na, Jinkyung; Grossmann, Igor; Varnum, Michael E W; Kitayama, Shinobu; Gonzalez, Richard; Nisbett, Richard E

2010-04-06

We show that differences in social orientation and in cognition that exist between cultures and social classes do not necessarily have counterparts in individual differences within those groups. Evidence comes from a large-scale study conducted with 10 measures of independent vs. interdependent social orientation and 10 measures of analytic vs. holistic cognitive style. The social measures successfully distinguish between interdependence (viewing oneself as embedded in relations with others) and independence (viewing oneself as disconnected from others) at the group level. However, the correlations among the measures were negligible. Similar results were obtained for the cognitive measures, for which there are no coherent individual differences despite the validity of the construct at the group level. We conclude that behavioral constructs that distinguish among groups need not be valid as measures of individual differences.
Task-switching costs promote the evolution of division of labor and shifts in individuality

PubMed Central

Goldsby, Heather J.; Dornhaus, Anna; Kerr, Benjamin; Ofria, Charles

2012-01-01

From microbes to humans, the success of many organisms is achieved by dividing tasks among specialized group members. The evolution of such division of labor strategies is an important aspect of the major transitions in evolution. As such, identifying specific evolutionary pressures that give rise to group-level division of labor has become a topic of major interest among biologists. To overcome the challenges associated with studying this topic in natural systems, we use actively evolving populations of digital organisms, which provide a unique perspective on the de novo evolution of division of labor in an open-ended system. We provide experimental results that address a fundamental question regarding these selective pressures: Does the ability to improve group efficiency through the reduction of task-switching costs promote the evolution of division of labor? Our results demonstrate that as task-switching costs rise, groups increasingly evolve division of labor strategies. We analyze the mechanisms by which organisms coordinate their roles and discover strategies with striking biological parallels, including communication, spatial patterning, and task-partitioning behaviors. In many cases, under high task-switching costs, individuals cease to be able to perform tasks in isolation, instead requiring the context of other group members. The simultaneous loss of functionality at a lower level and emergence of new functionality at a higher level indicates that task-switching costs may drive both the evolution of division of labor and also the loss of lower-level autonomy, which are both key components of major transitions in evolution. PMID:22872867
Investigating Inter-Individual Differences in Short-Term Intra-Individual Variability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Lijuan; Hamaker, Ellen; Bergeman, C. S.

2012-01-01

Intra-individual variability over a short period of time may contain important information about how individuals differ from each other. In this article we begin by discussing diverse indicators for quantifying intra-individual variability and indicate their advantages and disadvantages. Then we propose an alternative method that models…
Effects of Dual-Task Management and Resistance Training on Gait Performance in Older Individuals: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

PubMed

Wollesen, Bettina; Mattes, Klaus; Schulz, Sören; Bischoff, Laura L; Seydell, L; Bell, Jeffrey W; von Duvillard, Serge P

2017-01-01

Background: Dual-task (DT) training is a well-accepted modality for fall prevention in older adults. DT training should include task-managing strategies such as task switching or task prioritization to improve gait performance under DT conditions. Methods: We conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate a balance and task managing training (BDT group) in gait performance compared to a single task (ST) strength and resistance training and a control group, which received no training. A total of 78 older individuals (72.0 ± 4.9 years) participated in this study. The DT group performed task managing training incorporating balance and coordination tasks while the ST group performed resistance training only. Training consisted of 12 weekly sessions, 60 min each, for 12 weeks. We assessed the effects of ST and BDT training on walking performance under ST and DT conditions in independent living elderly adults. ST and DT walking (visual verbal Stroop task) were measured utilizing a treadmill at self-selected walking speed (mean for all groups: 4.4 ± 1 km h -1 ). Specific gait variables, cognitive performance, and fear of falling were compared between all groups. > Results: Training improved gait performance for step length ( p < 0.001) and gait-line (ST: p < 0.01; DT p < 0.05) in both training groups. The BDT training group showed greater improvements in step length ( p < 0.001) and gait-line ( p < 0.01) during DT walking but did not have changes in cognitive performance. Both interventions reduced fear of falling ( p < 0.05). Conclusion: Implementation of task management strategies into balance and strength training in our population revealed a promising modality to prevent falls in older individuals. Trial registration: German register of clinical trials DRKS00012382.
Individual Differences in Automatic Emotion Regulation Interact with Primed Emotion Regulation during an Anger Provocation.

PubMed

Zhang, Jing; Lipp, Ottmar V; Hu, Ping

2017-01-01

The current study investigated the interactive effects of individual differences in automatic emotion regulation (AER) and primed emotion regulation strategy on skin conductance level (SCL) and heart rate during provoked anger. The study was a 2 × 2 [AER tendency (expression vs. control) × priming (expression vs. control)] between subject design. Participants were assigned to two groups according to their performance on an emotion regulation-IAT (differentiating automatic emotion control tendency and automatic emotion expression tendency). Then participants of the two groups were randomly assigned to two emotion regulation priming conditions (emotion control priming or emotion expression priming). Anger was provoked by blaming participants for slow performance during a subsequent backward subtraction task. In anger provocation, SCL of individuals with automatic emotion control tendencies in the control priming condition was lower than of those with automatic emotion control tendencies in the expression priming condition. However, SCL of individuals with automatic emotion expression tendencies did no differ in the automatic emotion control priming or the automatic emotion expression priming condition. Heart rate during anger provocation was higher in individuals with automatic emotion expression tendencies than in individuals with automatic emotion control tendencies regardless of priming condition. This pattern indicates an interactive effect of individual differences in AER and emotion regulation priming on SCL, which is an index of emotional arousal. Heart rate was only sensitive to the individual differences in AER, and did not reflect this interaction. This finding has implications for clinical studies of the use of emotion regulation strategy training suggesting that different practices are optimal for individuals who differ in AER tendencies.
Physiological and psychological individual differences influence resting brain function measured by ASL perfusion.

PubMed

Kano, M; Coen, S J; Farmer, A D; Aziz, Q; Williams, S C R; Alsop, D C; Fukudo, S; O'Gorman, R L

2014-09-01

Effects of physiological and/or psychological inter-individual differences on the resting brain state have not been fully established. The present study investigated the effects of individual differences in basal autonomic tone and positive and negative personality dimensions on resting brain activity. Whole-brain resting cerebral perfusion images were acquired from 32 healthy subjects (16 males) using arterial spin labeling perfusion MRI. Neuroticism and extraversion were assessed with the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised. Resting autonomic activity was assessed using a validated measure of baseline cardiac vagal tone (CVT) in each individual. Potential associations between the perfusion data and individual CVT (27 subjects) and personality score (28 subjects) were tested at the level of voxel clusters by fitting a multiple regression model at each intracerebral voxel. Greater baseline perfusion in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and cerebellum was associated with lower CVT. At a corrected significance threshold of p < 0.01, strong positive correlations were observed between extraversion and resting brain perfusion in the right caudate, brain stem, and cingulate gyrus. Significant negative correlations between neuroticism and regional cerebral perfusion were identified in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, ACC, and orbitofrontal cortex. These results suggest that individual autonomic tone and psychological variability influence resting brain activity in brain regions, previously shown to be associated with autonomic arousal (dorsal ACC) and personality traits (amygdala, caudate, etc.) during active task processing. The resting brain state may therefore need to be taken into account when interpreting the neurobiology of individual differences in structural and functional brain activity.
Individual differences in fundamental social motives.

PubMed

Neel, Rebecca; Kenrick, Douglas T; White, Andrew Edward; Neuberg, Steven L

2016-06-01

Motivation has long been recognized as an important component of how people both differ from, and are similar to, each other. The current research applies the biologically grounded fundamental social motives framework, which assumes that human motivational systems are functionally shaped to manage the major costs and benefits of social life, to understand individual differences in social motives. Using the Fundamental Social Motives Inventory, we explore the relations among the different fundamental social motives of Self-Protection, Disease Avoidance, Affiliation, Status, Mate Seeking, Mate Retention, and Kin Care; the relationships of the fundamental social motives to other individual difference and personality measures including the Big Five personality traits; the extent to which fundamental social motives are linked to recent life experiences; and the extent to which life history variables (e.g., age, sex, childhood environment) predict individual differences in the fundamental social motives. Results suggest that the fundamental social motives are a powerful lens through which to examine individual differences: They are grounded in theory, have explanatory value beyond that of the Big Five personality traits, and vary meaningfully with a number of life history variables. A fundamental social motives approach provides a generative framework for considering the meaning and implications of individual differences in social motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).
Individual differences in situation awareness: Validation of the Situationism Scale

PubMed Central

Roberts, Megan E.; Gibbons, Frederick X.; Gerrard, Meg; Klein, William M. P.

2015-01-01

This paper concerns the construct of lay situationism—an individual’s belief in the importance of a behavior’s context. Study 1 identified a 13-item Situationism Scale, which demonstrated good reliability and validity. In particular, higher situationism was associated with greater situation-control (strategies to manipulate the environment in order to avoid temptation). Subsequent laboratory studies indicated that people higher on the situationism subscales used greater situation-control by sitting farther from junk food (Study 2) and choosing to drink non-alcoholic beverages before a cognitive task (Study 3). Overall, findings provide preliminary support for the psychometric validity and predictive utility of the Situationism Scale and offer this individual difference construct as a means to expand self-regulation theory. PMID:25329242
Age-Related Differences in Reaction Time Task Performance in Young Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kiselev, Sergey; Espy, Kimberlay Andrews; Sheffield, Tiffany

2009-01-01

Performance of reaction time (RT) tasks was investigated in young children and adults to test the hypothesis that age-related differences in processing speed supersede a "global" mechanism and are a function of specific differences in task demands and processing requirements. The sample consisted of 54 4-year-olds, 53 5-year-olds, 59…
When a Social Experimenter Overwrites Effects of Salient Objects in an Individual Go/No-Go Simon Task - An ERP Study.

PubMed

Michel, René; Bölte, Jens; Liepelt, Roman

2018-01-01

When two persons share a Simon task, a joint Simon effect occurs. The task co-representation account assumes that the joint Simon effect is the product of a vicarious representation of the co-actor's task. In contrast, recent studies show that even (non-human) event-producing objects could elicit a Simon effect in an individual go/no-go Simon task arguing in favor of the referential coding account. For the human-induced Simon effect, a modulation of the P300 component in Electroencephalography (EEG) is typically considered as a neural indicator of the joint Simon effect and task co-representation. Showing that the object-induced Simon effects also modulates the P300 would lead to a re-evaluation of the interpretation of the P300 in individual go/no-go and joint Simon task contexts. To do so, the present study conceptually replicated Experiment 1 from Dolk et al. (2013a) adding EEG recordings and an experimenter controlling the EEG computer to test whether a modulation of the P300 can also be elicited by adding a Japanese waving cat to the task context. Subjects performed an individual go/no-go Simon task with or without a cat placed next to them. Results show an overall Simon effect regardless of the cat's presence and no modulatory influence of the cat on the P300 (Experiment 1), even when conceivably interfering context factors are diminished (Experiment 2). These findings may suggest that the presence of a spatially aligned experimenter in the laboratory may produce an overall Simon effect overwriting a possible modulation of the Japanese waving cat.
IT-adoption and the interaction of task, technology and individuals: a fit framework and a case study

PubMed Central

Ammenwerth, Elske; Iller, Carola; Mahler, Cornelia

2006-01-01

Background Factors of IT adoption have largely been discussed in the literature. However, existing frameworks (such as TAM or TTF) are failing to include one important aspect, the interaction between user and task. Method Based on a literature study and a case study, we developed the FITT framework to help analyse the socio-organisational-technical factors that influence IT adoption in a health care setting. Results Our FITT framework ("Fit between Individuals, Task and Technology") is based on the idea that IT adoption in a clinical environment depends on the fit between the attributes of the individual users (e.g. computer anxiety, motivation), attributes of the technology (e.g. usability, functionality, performance), and attributes of the clinical tasks and processes (e.g. organisation, task complexity). We used this framework in the retrospective analysis of a three-year case study, describing the adoption of a nursing documentation system in various departments in a German University Hospital. We will show how the FITT framework helped analyzing the process of IT adoption during an IT implementation: we were able to describe every found IT adoption problem with regard to the three fit dimensions, and any intervention on the fit can be described with regard to the three objects of the FITT framework (individual, task, technology). We also derive facilitators and barriers to IT adoption of clinical information systems. Conclusion This work should support a better understanding of the reasons for IT adoption failures and therefore enable better prepared and more successful IT introduction projects. We will discuss, however, that from a more epistemological point of view, it may be difficult or even impossible to analyse the complex and interacting factors that predict success or failure of IT projects in a socio-technical environment. PMID:16401336
Structural encoding processes contribute to individual differences in face and object cognition: Inferences from psychometric test performance and event-related brain potentials.

PubMed

Nowparast Rostami, Hadiseh; Sommer, Werner; Zhou, Changsong; Wilhelm, Oliver; Hildebrandt, Andrea

2017-10-01

The enhanced N1 component in event-related potentials (ERP) to face stimuli, termed N170, is considered to indicate the structural encoding of faces. Previously, individual differences in the latency of the N170 have been related to face and object cognition abilities. By orthogonally manipulating content domain (faces vs objects) and task demands (easy/speed vs difficult/accuracy) in both psychometric and EEG tasks, we investigated the uniqueness of the processes underlying face cognition as compared with object cognition and the extent to which the N1/N170 component can explain individual differences in face and object cognition abilities. Data were recorded from N = 198 healthy young adults. Structural equation modeling (SEM) confirmed that the accuracies of face perception (FP) and memory are specific abilities above general object cognition; in contrast, the speed of face processing was not differentiable from the speed of object cognition. Although there was considerable domain-general variance in the N170 shared with the N1, there was significant face-specific variance in the N170. The brain-behavior relationship showed that faster face-specific processes for structural encoding of faces are associated with higher accuracy in both perceiving and memorizing faces. Moreover, in difficult task conditions, qualitatively different processes are additionally needed for recognizing face and object stimuli as compared with easy tasks. The difficulty-dependent variance components in the N170 amplitude were related with both face and object memory (OM) performance. We discuss implications for understanding individual differences in face cognition. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
From neural signatures of emotional modulation to social cognition: individual differences in healthy volunteers and psychiatric participants.

PubMed

Ibáñez, Agustín; Aguado, Jaume; Baez, Sandra; Huepe, David; Lopez, Vladimir; Ortega, Rodrigo; Sigman, Mariano; Mikulan, Ezequiel; Lischinsky, Alicia; Torrente, Fernando; Cetkovich, Marcelo; Torralva, Teresa; Bekinschtein, Tristan; Manes, Facundo

2014-07-01

It is commonly assumed that early emotional signals provide relevant information for social cognition tasks. The goal of this study was to test the association between (a) cortical markers of face emotional processing and (b) social-cognitive measures, and also to build a model which can predict this association (a and b) in healthy volunteers as well as in different groups of psychiatric patients. Thus, we investigated the early cortical processing of emotional stimuli (N170, using a face and word valence task) and their relationship with the social-cognitive profiles (SCPs, indexed by measures of theory of mind, fluid intelligence, speed processing and executive functions). Group comparisons and individual differences were assessed among schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and their relatives, individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), individuals with euthymic bipolar disorder (BD) and healthy participants (educational level, handedness, age and gender matched). Our results provide evidence of emotional N170 impairments in the affected groups (SCZ and relatives, ADHD and BD) as well as subtle group differences. Importantly, cortical processing of emotional stimuli predicted the SCP, as evidenced by a structural equation model analysis. This is the first study to report an association model of brain markers of emotional processing and SCP. © The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Working memory capacity and the antisaccade task: A microanalytic-macroanalytic investigation of individual differences in goal activation and maintenance.

PubMed

Meier, Matt E; Smeekens, Bridget A; Silvia, Paul J; Kwapil, Thomas R; Kane, Michael J

2018-01-01

The association between working memory capacity (WMC) and the antisaccade task, which requires subjects to move their eyes and attention away from a strong visual cue, supports the claim that WMC is partially an attentional construct (Kane, Bleckley, Conway, & Engle, 2001; Unsworth, Schrock, & Engle, 2004). Specifically, the WMC-antisaccade relation suggests that WMC helps maintain and execute task goals despite interference from habitual actions. Related work has recently shown that mind wandering (McVay & Kane, 2009, 2012a, 2012b) and reaction time (RT) variability (Unsworth, 2015) are also related to WMC and they partially explain WMC's prediction of cognitive abilities. Here, we tested whether mind-wandering propensity and intraindividual RT variation account for WMC's associations with 2 antisaccade-cued choice RT tasks. In addition, we asked whether any influences of WMC, mind wandering, or intraindividual RT variation on antisaccade are moderated by (a) the temporal gap between fixation and the flashing location cue, and (b) whether targets switch sides on consecutive trials. Our quasi-experimental study reexamined a published dataset (Kane et al., 2016) comprising 472 subjects who completed 6 WMC tasks, 5 attentional tasks with mind-wandering probes, 5 tasks from which we measured intraindividual RT variation, and 2 antisaccade tasks with varying fixation-cue gap durations. The WMC-antisaccade association was not accounted for by mind wandering or intraindividual RT variation. WMC's effects on antisaccade performance were greater with longer fixation-to-cue intervals, suggesting that goal activation processes-beyond the ability to control mind wandering and RT variability-are partially responsible for the WMC-antisaccade relation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Individual differences in the perception of biological motion and fragmented figures are not correlated

PubMed Central

Jung, Eunice L.; Zadbood, Asieh; Lee, Sang-Hun; Tomarken, Andrew J.; Blake, Randolph

2013-01-01

We live in a cluttered, dynamic visual environment that poses a challenge for the visual system: for objects, including those that move about, to be perceived, information specifying those objects must be integrated over space and over time. Does a single, omnibus mechanism perform this grouping operation, or does grouping depend on separate processes specialized for different feature aspects of the object? To address this question, we tested a large group of healthy young adults on their abilities to perceive static fragmented figures embedded in noise and to perceive dynamic point-light biological motion figures embedded in dynamic noise. There were indeed substantial individual differences in performance on both tasks, but none of the statistical tests we applied to this data set uncovered a significant correlation between those performance measures. These results suggest that the two tasks, despite their superficial similarity, require different segmentation and grouping processes that are largely unrelated to one another. Whether those processes are embodied in distinct neural mechanisms remains an open question. PMID:24198799
The Children's Social Understanding Scale: construction and validation of a parent-report measure for assessing individual differences in children's theories of mind.

PubMed

Tahiroglu, Deniz; Moses, Louis J; Carlson, Stephanie M; Mahy, Caitlin E V; Olofson, Eric L; Sabbagh, Mark A

2014-11-01

Children's theory of mind (ToM) is typically measured with laboratory assessments of performance. Although these measures have generated a wealth of informative data concerning developmental progressions in ToM, they may be less useful as the sole source of information about individual differences in ToM and their relation to other facets of development. In the current research, we aimed to expand the repertoire of methods available for measuring ToM by developing and validating a parent-report ToM measure: the Children's Social Understanding Scale (CSUS). We present 3 studies assessing the psychometric properties of the CSUS. Study 1 describes item analysis, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and relation of the scale to children's performance on laboratory ToM tasks. Study 2 presents cross-validation data for the scale in a different sample of preschool children with a different set of ToM tasks. Study 3 presents further validation data for the scale with a slightly older age group and a more advanced ToM task, while controlling for several other relevant cognitive abilities. The findings indicate that the CSUS is a reliable and valid measure of individual differences in children's ToM that may be of great value as a complement to standard ToM tasks in many different research contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
Group social rank is associated with performance on a spatial learning task.

PubMed

Langley, Ellis J G; van Horik, Jayden O; Whiteside, Mark A; Madden, Joah R

2018-02-01

Dominant individuals differ from subordinates in their performances on cognitive tasks across a suite of taxa. Previous studies often only consider dyadic relationships, rather than the more ecologically relevant social hierarchies or networks, hence failing to account for how dyadic relationships may be adjusted within larger social groups. We used a novel statistical method: randomized Elo-ratings, to infer the social hierarchy of 18 male pheasants, Phasianus colchicus , while in a captive, mixed-sex group with a linear hierarchy. We assayed individual learning performance of these males on a binary spatial discrimination task to investigate whether inter-individual variation in performance is associated with group social rank. Task performance improved with increasing trial number and was positively related to social rank, with higher ranking males showing greater levels of success. Motivation to participate in the task was not related to social rank or task performance, thus indicating that these rank-related differences are not a consequence of differences in motivation to complete the task. Our results provide important information about how variation in cognitive performance relates to an individual's social rank within a group. Whether the social environment causes differences in learning performance or instead, inherent differences in learning ability predetermine rank remains to be tested.
Emotion and attention interaction: a trade-off between stimuli relevance, motivation and individual differences

PubMed Central

Oliveira, Leticia; Mocaiber, Izabela; David, Isabel A.; Erthal, Fátima; Volchan, Eliane; Pereira, Mirtes G.

2013-01-01

Mounting evidence suggests that the neural processing of emotional stimuli is prioritized. However, whether the processing of emotional stimuli is dependent on attention remains debatable. Several studies have investigated this issue by testing the capacity of emotional distracters to divert processing resources from an attentional main task. The attentional load theory postulates that the perceptual load of the main task determines the selective processing of the distracter. Although we agree with this theory, we also suggest that other factors could be important in determining the association between the load of the main task and distracter processing, namely, (1) the relevance of the to-be ignored stimuli and (2) the engagement in the main task due to motivation. We postulate that these factors function as opposite forces to influence distracter processing. In addition, we propose that this trade-off is modulated by individual differences. In summary, we suggest that the relationship between emotion and attention is flexible rather than rigid and depends on several factors. Considering this perspective may help us to understand the divergence in the results described by several studies in this field. PMID:23874284
Emotion and attention interaction: a trade-off between stimuli relevance, motivation and individual differences.

PubMed

Oliveira, Leticia; Mocaiber, Izabela; David, Isabel A; Erthal, Fátima; Volchan, Eliane; Pereira, Mirtes G

2013-01-01

Mounting evidence suggests that the neural processing of emotional stimuli is prioritized. However, whether the processing of emotional stimuli is dependent on attention remains debatable. Several studies have investigated this issue by testing the capacity of emotional distracters to divert processing resources from an attentional main task. The attentional load theory postulates that the perceptual load of the main task determines the selective processing of the distracter. Although we agree with this theory, we also suggest that other factors could be important in determining the association between the load of the main task and distracter processing, namely, (1) the relevance of the to-be ignored stimuli and (2) the engagement in the main task due to motivation. We postulate that these factors function as opposite forces to influence distracter processing. In addition, we propose that this trade-off is modulated by individual differences. In summary, we suggest that the relationship between emotion and attention is flexible rather than rigid and depends on several factors. Considering this perspective may help us to understand the divergence in the results described by several studies in this field.

A multilevel modeling approach to examining individual differences in skill acquisition for a computer-based task.

PubMed

Nair, Sankaran N; Czaja, Sara J; Sharit, Joseph

2007-06-01

This article explores the role of age, cognitive abilities, prior experience, and knowledge in skill acquisition for a computer-based simulated customer service task. Fifty-two participants aged 50-80 performed the task over 4 consecutive days following training. They also completed a battery that assessed prior computer experience and cognitive abilities. The data indicated that overall quality and efficiency of performance improved with practice. The predictors of initial level of performance and rate of change in performance varied according to the performance parameter assessed. Age and fluid intelligence predicted initial level and rate of improvement in overall quality, whereas crystallized intelligence and age predicted initial e-mail processing time, and crystallized intelligence predicted rate of change in e-mail processing time over days. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design of intervention strategies.
Conflict monitoring and adjustment in the task-switching paradigm under different memory load conditions: an ERP/sLORETA analysis.

PubMed

Deng, Yuqin; Wang, Yan; Ding, Xiaoqian; Tang, Yi-Yuan

2015-02-11

The aim of the present study was to examine electrophysiological and behavioral changes caused by different memory loads in a task-switching paradigm. A total of 31 healthy individuals were subjected to a task, in which the stimulus-response reversal paradigm was combined with the task-switching paradigm. The event-related potentials were recorded and the N2 component, an index of conflict processing, was measured. In addition, the neural sources of N2 were further analyzed by standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography. The event-related potential results showed that high memory load triggered a higher N2 mean amplitude. Moreover, the standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography data showed that high memory load caused an increase in current densities at the anterior cingulate cortex and the prefrontal cortex in the task-switching paradigm. In summary, our findings provide electrophysiological evidence to interpret possible influences of memory loads on conflict monitoring and modulation during the task switching. These results imply that the working memory load overrules the influence of task-switching performance on the intensification of cognitive control.
The Effect of Hierarchical Task Representations on Task Selection in Voluntary Task Switching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weaver, Starla M.; Arrington, Catherine M.

2013-01-01

The current study explored the potential for hierarchical representations to influence action selection during voluntary task switching. Participants switched between 4 individual task elements. In Experiment 1, participants were encouraged to represent the task elements as grouped within a hierarchy based on experimental manipulations of varying…
Blurring emotional memories using eye movements: individual differences and speed of eye movements.

PubMed

van Schie, Kevin; van Veen, Suzanne C; Engelhard, Iris M; Klugkist, Irene; van den Hout, Marcel A

2016-01-01

In eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), patients make eye movements (EM) while recalling traumatic memories. Making EM taxes working memory (WM), which leaves less resources available for imagery of the memory. This reduces memory vividness and emotionality during future recalls. WM theory predicts that individuals with small working memory capacities (WMCs) benefit more from low levels of taxing (i.e., slow EM) whereas individuals with large WMC benefit more from high levels of taxing (i.e., fast EM). We experimentally examined and tested four prespecified hypotheses regarding the role of WMC and EM speed in reducing emotionality and vividness ratings: 1) EM-regardless of WMC and EM speed-are more effective compared to no dual task, 2) increasing EM speed only affects the decrease in memory ratings irrespective of WMC, 3) low-WMC individuals-compared to high-WMC individuals-benefit more from making either type of EM, 4) the EM intervention is most effective when-as predicted by WM theory-EM are adjusted to WMC. Undergraduates with low (n=31) or high (n=35) WMC recalled three emotional memories and rated vividness and emotionality before and after each condition (recall only, recall + slow EM, and recall + fast EM). Contrary to the theory, the data do not support the hypothesis that EM speed should be adjusted to WMC (hypothesis 4). However, the data show that a dual task in general is more effective in reducing memory ratings than no dual task (hypothesis 1), and that a more cognitively demanding dual task increases the intervention's effectiveness (hypothesis 2). Although adjusting EM speed to an individual's WMC seems a straightforward clinical implication, the data do not show any indication that such a titration is helpful.
Continuous Performance Tasks: Not Just about Sustaining Attention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roebuck, Hettie; Freigang, Claudia; Barry, Johanna G.

2016-01-01

Purpose: Continuous performance tasks (CPTs) are used to measure individual differences in sustained attention. Many different stimuli have been used as response targets without consideration of their impact on task performance. Here, we compared CPT performance in typically developing adults and children to assess the role of stimulus processing…
Individual differences in human brain development.

PubMed

Brown, Timothy T

2017-01-01

This article discusses recent scientific advances in the study of individual differences in human brain development. Focusing on structural neuroimaging measures of brain morphology and tissue properties, two kinds of variability are related and explored: differences across individuals of the same age and differences across age as a result of development. A recent multidimensional modeling study is explained, which was able to use brain measures to predict an individual's chronological age within about one year on average, in children, adolescents, and young adults between 3 and 20 years old. These findings reveal great regularity in the sequence of the aggregate brain state across different ages and phases of development, despite the pronounced individual differences people show on any single brain measure at any given age. Future research is suggested, incorporating additional measures of brain activity and function. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1389. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1389 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. © 2016 The Authors. WIREs Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Information Use Differences in Hot and Cold Risk Processing: When Does Information About Probability Count in the Columbia Card Task?

PubMed

Markiewicz, Łukasz; Kubińska, Elżbieta

2015-01-01

This paper aims to provide insight into information processing differences between hot and cold risk taking decision tasks within a single domain. Decision theory defines risky situations using at least three parameters: outcome one (often a gain) with its probability and outcome two (often a loss) with a complementary probability. Although a rational agent should consider all of the parameters, s/he could potentially narrow their focus to only some of them, particularly when explicit Type 2 processes do not have the resources to override implicit Type 1 processes. Here we investigate differences in risky situation parameters' influence on hot and cold decisions. Although previous studies show lower information use in hot than in cold processes, they do not provide decision weight changes and therefore do not explain whether this difference results from worse concentration on each parameter of a risky situation (probability, gain amount, and loss amount) or from ignoring some parameters. Two studies were conducted, with participants performing the Columbia Card Task (CCT) in either its Cold or Hot version. In the first study, participants also performed the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) to monitor their ability to override Type 1 processing cues (implicit processes) with Type 2 explicit processes. Because hypothesis testing required comparison of the relative importance of risky situation decision weights (gain, loss, probability), we developed a novel way of measuring information use in the CCT by employing a conjoint analysis methodology. Across the two studies, results indicated that in the CCT Cold condition decision makers concentrate on each information type (gain, loss, probability), but in the CCT Hot condition they concentrate mostly on a single parameter: probability of gain/loss. We also show that an individual's CRT score correlates with information use propensity in cold but not hot tasks. Thus, the affective dimension of hot tasks inhibits correct
Individual differences in adult foreign language learning: the mediating effect of metalinguistic awareness.

PubMed

Brooks, Patricia J; Kempe, Vera

2013-02-01

In this study, we sought to identify cognitive predictors of individual differences in adult foreign-language learning and to test whether metalinguistic awareness mediated the observed relationships. Using a miniature language-learning paradigm, adults (N = 77) learned Russian vocabulary and grammar (gender agreement and case marking) over six 1-h sessions, completing tasks that encouraged attention to phrases without explicitly teaching grammatical rules. The participants' ability to describe the Russian gender and case-marking patterns mediated the effects of nonverbal intelligence and auditory sequence learning on grammar learning and generalization. Hence, even under implicit-learning conditions, individual differences stemmed from explicit metalinguistic awareness of the underlying grammar, which, in turn, was linked to nonverbal intelligence and auditory sequence learning. Prior knowledge of languages with grammatical gender (predominantly Spanish) predicted learning of gender agreement. Transfer of knowledge of gender from other languages to Russian was not mediated by awareness, which suggests that transfer operates through an implicit process akin to structural priming.
Discrimination Task Reveals Differences in Neural Bases of Tinnitus and Hearing Impairment

PubMed Central

Husain, Fatima T.; Pajor, Nathan M.; Smith, Jason F.; Kim, H. Jeff; Rudy, Susan; Zalewski, Christopher; Brewer, Carmen; Horwitz, Barry

2011-01-01

We investigated auditory perception and cognitive processing in individuals with chronic tinnitus or hearing loss using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our participants belonged to one of three groups: bilateral hearing loss and tinnitus (TIN), bilateral hearing loss without tinnitus (HL), and normal hearing without tinnitus (NH). We employed pure tones and frequency-modulated sweeps as stimuli in two tasks: passive listening and active discrimination. All subjects had normal hearing through 2 kHz and all stimuli were low-pass filtered at 2 kHz so that all participants could hear them equally well. Performance was similar among all three groups for the discrimination task. In all participants, a distributed set of brain regions including the primary and non-primary auditory cortices showed greater response for both tasks compared to rest. Comparing the groups directly, we found decreased activation in the parietal and frontal lobes in the participants with tinnitus compared to the HL group and decreased response in the frontal lobes relative to the NH group. Additionally, the HL subjects exhibited increased response in the anterior cingulate relative to the NH group. Our results suggest that a differential engagement of a putative auditory attention and short-term memory network, comprising regions in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortices and the anterior cingulate, may represent a key difference in the neural bases of chronic tinnitus accompanied by hearing loss relative to hearing loss alone. PMID:22066003
Brain areas consistently linked to individual differences in perceptual decision-making in younger as well as older adults before and after training.

PubMed

Kühn, Simone; Schmiedek, Florian; Schott, Björn; Ratcliff, Roger; Heinze, Hans-Jochen; Düzel, Emrah; Lindenberger, Ulman; Lövden, Martin

2011-09-01

Perceptual decision-making performance depends on several cognitive and neural processes. Here, we fit Ratcliff's diffusion model to accuracy data and reaction-time distributions from one numerical and one verbal two-choice perceptual-decision task to deconstruct these performance measures into the rate of evidence accumulation (i.e., drift rate), response criterion setting (i.e., boundary separation), and peripheral aspects of performance (i.e., nondecision time). These theoretical processes are then related to individual differences in brain activation by means of multiple regression. The sample consisted of 24 younger and 15 older adults performing the task in fMRI before and after 100 daily 1-hr behavioral training sessions in a multitude of cognitive tasks. Results showed that individual differences in boundary separation were related to striatal activity, whereas differences in drift rate were related to activity in the inferior parietal lobe. These associations were not significantly modified by adult age or perceptual expertise. We conclude that the striatum is involved in regulating response thresholds, whereas the inferior parietal lobe might represent decision-making evidence related to letters and numbers.
Measuring task-related changes in heart rate variability.

PubMed

Moses, Ziev B; Luecken, Linda J; Eason, James C

2007-01-01

Small beat-to-beat differences in heart rate are the result of dynamic control of the cardiovascular system by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Heart rate variability (HRV) has been positively correlated with both mental and physical health. While many studies measure HRV under rest conditions, few have measured HRV during stressful situations. We describe an experimental protocol designed to measure baseline, task, and recovery values of HRV as a function of three different types of stressors. These stressors involve an attention task, a cold pressor test, and a videotaped speech presentation. We found a measurable change in heart rate in participants (n=10) during each task (all p's < 0.05). The relative increase or decrease from pre-task heart rate was predicted by task (one-way ANOVA, p= 0.0001). Spectral analysis of HRV during the attention task revealed consistently decreased measures of both high (68+/-7%, mean+/-S.E.) and low (62+/-13%) frequency HRV components as compared to baseline. HRV spectra for the cold pressor and speech tasks revealed no consistent patterns of increase or decrease from baseline measurements. We also found no correlation in reactivity measures between any of our tasks. These findings suggest that each of the tasks in our experimental design elicits a different type of stress response in an individual. Our experimental approach may prove useful to biobehavioral researchers searching for factors that determine individual differences in responses to stress in daily life.
Neural network configuration and efficiency underlies individual differences in spatial orientation ability.

PubMed

Arnold, Aiden E G F; Protzner, Andrea B; Bray, Signe; Levy, Richard M; Iaria, Giuseppe

2014-02-01

Spatial orientation is a complex cognitive process requiring the integration of information processed in a distributed system of brain regions. Current models on the neural basis of spatial orientation are based primarily on the functional role of single brain regions, with limited understanding of how interaction among these brain regions relates to behavior. In this study, we investigated two sources of variability in the neural networks that support spatial orientation--network configuration and efficiency--and assessed whether variability in these topological properties relates to individual differences in orientation accuracy. Participants with higher accuracy were shown to express greater activity in the right supramarginal gyrus, the right precentral cortex, and the left hippocampus, over and above a core network engaged by the whole group. Additionally, high-performing individuals had increased levels of global efficiency within a resting-state network composed of brain regions engaged during orientation and increased levels of node centrality in the right supramarginal gyrus, the right primary motor cortex, and the left hippocampus. These results indicate that individual differences in the configuration of task-related networks and their efficiency measured at rest relate to the ability to spatially orient. Our findings advance systems neuroscience models of orientation and navigation by providing insight into the role of functional integration in shaping orientation behavior.
Musical training, individual differences and the cocktail party problem.

PubMed

Swaminathan, Jayaganesh; Mason, Christine R; Streeter, Timothy M; Best, Virginia; Kidd, Gerald; Patel, Aniruddh D

2015-06-26

Are musicians better able to understand speech in noise than non-musicians? Recent findings have produced contradictory results. Here we addressed this question by asking musicians and non-musicians to understand target sentences masked by other sentences presented from different spatial locations, the classical 'cocktail party problem' in speech science. We found that musicians obtained a substantial benefit in this situation, with thresholds ~6 dB better than non-musicians. Large individual differences in performance were noted particularly for the non-musically trained group. Furthermore, in different conditions we manipulated the spatial location and intelligibility of the masking sentences, thus changing the amount of 'informational masking' (IM) while keeping the amount of 'energetic masking' (EM) relatively constant. When the maskers were unintelligible and spatially separated from the target (low in IM), musicians and non-musicians performed comparably. These results suggest that the characteristics of speech maskers and the amount of IM can influence the magnitude of the differences found between musicians and non-musicians in multiple-talker "cocktail party" environments. Furthermore, considering the task in terms of the EM-IM distinction provides a conceptual framework for future behavioral and neuroscientific studies which explore the underlying sensory and cognitive mechanisms contributing to enhanced "speech-in-noise" perception by musicians.
Sex-related differences on a task of volume and density

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Howe, Ann C.; Shayer, Michael

A sex-related difference, favoring boys, was found on initial performance of two samples (one British, one American) of 10- and 11-year-old children on a task of volume and density. After a period of classroom instruction that included opportunities for children to interact with appropriate materials and each other, both boys and girls performed at a higher level on the task, but the difference between them remained the same. There was no indication of a sex-related difference other than a time lag, in pattern of development of the concept. The question of why there is a sex-related difference, which persists in spite of experience and instruction, is discussed.
Higher Balance Task Demands are Associated with an Increase in Individual Alpha Peak Frequency

PubMed Central

Hülsdünker, Thorben; Mierau, Andreas; Strüder, Heiko K.

2016-01-01

Balance control is fundamental for most daily motor activities, and its impairment is associated with an increased risk of falling. Growing evidence suggests the human cortex is essentially contributing to the control of standing balance. However, the exact mechanisms remain unclear and need further investigation. In a previous study, we introduced a new protocol to identify electrocortical activity associated with performance of different continuous balance tasks with the eyes opened. The aim of this study was to extend our previous results by investigating the individual alpha peak frequency (iAPF), a neurophysiological marker of thalamo-cortical information transmission, which remained unconsidered so far in balance research. Thirty-seven subjects completed nine balance tasks varying in surface stability and base of support. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 32 scalp locations throughout balancing with the eyes closed to ensure reliable identification of the iAPF. Balance performance was quantified as the sum of anterior-posterior and medio-lateral movements of the supporting platform. The iAPF, as well as power in the theta, lower alpha and upper alpha frequency bands were determined for each balance task after applying an ICA-based artifact rejection procedure. Higher demands on balance control were associated with a global increase in iAPF and a decrease in lower alpha power. These results may indicate increased thalamo-cortical information transfer and general cortical activation, respectively. In addition, a significant increase in upper alpha activity was observed in the fronto-central region whereas it decreased in the centro-parietal region. Furthermore, midline theta increased with higher task demands probably indicating activation of error detection/processing mechanisms. IAPF as well as theta and alpha power were correlated with platform movements. The results provide new insights into spectral and spatial characteristics of cortical
Higher Balance Task Demands are Associated with an Increase in Individual Alpha Peak Frequency.

PubMed

Hülsdünker, Thorben; Mierau, Andreas; Strüder, Heiko K

2015-01-01

Balance control is fundamental for most daily motor activities, and its impairment is associated with an increased risk of falling. Growing evidence suggests the human cortex is essentially contributing to the control of standing balance. However, the exact mechanisms remain unclear and need further investigation. In a previous study, we introduced a new protocol to identify electrocortical activity associated with performance of different continuous balance tasks with the eyes opened. The aim of this study was to extend our previous results by investigating the individual alpha peak frequency (iAPF), a neurophysiological marker of thalamo-cortical information transmission, which remained unconsidered so far in balance research. Thirty-seven subjects completed nine balance tasks varying in surface stability and base of support. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 32 scalp locations throughout balancing with the eyes closed to ensure reliable identification of the iAPF. Balance performance was quantified as the sum of anterior-posterior and medio-lateral movements of the supporting platform. The iAPF, as well as power in the theta, lower alpha and upper alpha frequency bands were determined for each balance task after applying an ICA-based artifact rejection procedure. Higher demands on balance control were associated with a global increase in iAPF and a decrease in lower alpha power. These results may indicate increased thalamo-cortical information transfer and general cortical activation, respectively. In addition, a significant increase in upper alpha activity was observed in the fronto-central region whereas it decreased in the centro-parietal region. Furthermore, midline theta increased with higher task demands probably indicating activation of error detection/processing mechanisms. IAPF as well as theta and alpha power were correlated with platform movements. The results provide new insights into spectral and spatial characteristics of cortical
Individual differences in the balance of GABA to glutamate in pFC predict the ability to select among competing options.

PubMed

de la Vega, Alejandro; Brown, Mark S; Snyder, Hannah R; Singel, Debra; Munakata, Yuko; Banich, Marie T

2014-11-01

Individuals vary greatly in their ability to select one item or response when presented with a multitude of options. Here we investigate the neural underpinnings of these individual differences. Using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, we found that the balance of inhibitory versus excitatory neurotransmitters in pFC predicts the ability to select among task-relevant options in two language production tasks. The greater an individual's concentration of GABA relative to glutamate in the lateral pFC, the more quickly he or she could select a relevant word from among competing options. This outcome is consistent with our computational modeling of this task [Snyder, H. R., Hutchison, N., Nyhus, E., Curran, T., Banich, M. T., O'Reilly, R. C., et al. Neural inhibition enables selection during language processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 107, 16483-16488, 2010], which predicts that greater net inhibition in pFC increases the efficiency of resolving competition among task-relevant options. Moreover, the association with the GABA/glutamate ratio was specific to selection and was not observed for executive function ability in general. These findings are the first to link the balance of excitatory and inhibitory neural transmission in pFC to specific aspects of executive function.
Individual Differences in Resting Corticospinal Excitability Are Correlated with Reaction Time and GABA Content in Motor Cortex

PubMed Central

Ivry, Richard B.

2017-01-01

Individuals differ in the intrinsic excitability of their corticospinal pathways and, perhaps more generally, their entire nervous system. At present, we have little understanding of the mechanisms underlying these differences and how variation in intrinsic excitability relates to behavior. Here, we examined the relationship between individual differences in intrinsic corticospinal excitability, local cortical GABA levels, and reaction time (RT) in a group of 20 healthy human adults. We measured corticospinal excitability at rest with transcranial magnetic stimulation, local concentrations of basal GABA with magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and RT with a behavioral task. All measurements were repeated in two separate sessions, and tests of reliability confirmed the presence of stable individual differences. There was a negative correlation between corticospinal excitability and RT, such that larger motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) measured at rest were associated with faster RTs. Interestingly, larger MEPs were associated with higher levels of GABA in M1, but not in three other cortical regions. Together, these results suggest that individuals with more excitable corticospinal pathways are faster to initiate planned responses and have higher levels of GABA within M1, possibly to compensate for a more excitable motor system. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT This study brings together physiological, behavioral, and neurochemical evidence to examine variability in the excitability of the human motor system. Previous work has focused on state-based factors (e.g., preparedness, uncertainty), with little attention given to the influence of inherent stable characteristics. Here, we examined how the excitability of the motor system relates to reaction time and the regional content of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. Importantly, motor pathway excitability and GABA concentrations were measured at rest, outside a task context, providing assays of intrinsic properties of the
Does Guiding Toward Task-Relevant Information Help Improve Graph Processing and Graph Comprehension of Individuals with Low or High Numeracy? An Eye-Tracker Experiment.

PubMed

Keller, Carmen; Junghans, Alex

2017-11-01

Individuals with low numeracy have difficulties with understanding complex graphs. Combining the information-processing approach to numeracy with graph comprehension and information-reduction theories, we examined whether high numerates' better comprehension might be explained by their closer attention to task-relevant graphical elements, from which they would expect numerical information to understand the graph. Furthermore, we investigated whether participants could be trained in improving their attention to task-relevant information and graph comprehension. In an eye-tracker experiment ( N = 110) involving a sample from the general population, we presented participants with 2 hypothetical scenarios (stomach cancer, leukemia) showing survival curves for 2 treatments. In the training condition, participants received written instructions on how to read the graph. In the control condition, participants received another text. We tracked participants' eye movements while they answered 9 knowledge questions. The sum constituted graph comprehension. We analyzed visual attention to task-relevant graphical elements by using relative fixation durations and relative fixation counts. The mediation analysis revealed a significant ( P < 0.05) indirect effect of numeracy on graph comprehension through visual attention to task-relevant information, which did not differ between the 2 conditions. Training had a significant main effect on visual attention ( P < 0.05) but not on graph comprehension ( P < 0.07). Individuals with high numeracy have better graph comprehension due to their greater attention to task-relevant graphical elements than individuals with low numeracy. With appropriate instructions, both groups can be trained to improve their graph-processing efficiency. Future research should examine (e.g., motivational) mediators between visual attention and graph comprehension to develop appropriate instructions that also result in higher graph comprehension.
Individual differences and specificity of prefrontal gamma frequency-tACS on fluid intelligence capabilities.

PubMed

Santarnecchi, E; Muller, T; Rossi, S; Sarkar, A; Polizzotto, N R; Rossi, A; Cohen Kadosh, R

2016-02-01

Emerging evidence suggests that transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is an effective, frequency-specific modulator of endogenous brain oscillations, with the potential to alter cognitive performance. Here, we show that reduction in response latencies to solve complex logic problem indexing fluid intelligence is obtained through 40 Hz-tACS (gamma band) applied to the prefrontal cortex. This improvement in human performance depends on individual ability, with slower performers at baseline receiving greater benefits. The effect could have not being explained by regression to the mean, and showed task and frequency specificity: it was not observed for trials not involving logical reasoning, as well as with the application of low frequency 5 Hz-tACS (theta band) or non-periodic high frequency random noise stimulation (101-640 Hz). Moreover, performance in a spatial working memory task was not affected by brain stimulation, excluding possible effects on fluid intelligence enhancement through an increase in memory performance. We suggest that such high-level cognitive functions are dissociable by frequency-specific neuromodulatory effects, possibly related to entrainment of specific brain rhythms. We conclude that individual differences in cognitive abilities, due to acquired or developmental origins, could be reduced during frequency-specific tACS, a finding that should be taken into account for future individual cognitive rehabilitation studies. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Parent-Child Positive Touch: Gender, Age, and Task Differences.

PubMed

Aznar, Ana; Tenenbaum, Harriet R

2016-01-01

This study examined gender, age, and task differences in positive touch and physical proximity during mother-child and father-child conversations. Sixty-five Spanish mothers and fathers and their 4- ( M = 53.50 months, SD = 3.54) and 6-year-old ( M = 77.07 months, SD = 3.94) children participated in this study. Positive touch was examined during a play-related storytelling task and a reminiscence task (conversation about past emotions). Fathers touched their children positively more frequently during the play-related storytelling task than did mothers. Both mothers and fathers were in closer proximity to their 6-year-olds than their 4-year-olds. Mothers and fathers touched their children positively more frequently when reminiscing than when playing. Finally, 6-year-olds remained closer to their parents than did 4-year-olds. Implications of these findings for future research on children's socioemotional development are discussed.
The roles of sensory function and cognitive load in age differences in inhibition: Evidence from the Stroop task.

PubMed

Peng, Huamao; Gao, Yue; Mao, Xiaofei

2017-02-01

To explore the roles of visual function and cognitive load in aging of inhibition, the present study adopted a 2 (visual perceptual stress: noise, nonnoise) × 2 (cognitive load: low, high) × 2 (age: young, old) mixed design. The Stroop task was adopted to measure inhibition. The task presentation was masked with Gaussian noise according to the visual function of each individual in order to match visual perceptual stress between age groups. The results indicated that age differences in the Stroop effect were influenced by visual function and cognitive load. When the cognitive load was low, older adults exhibited a larger Stroop effect than did younger adults in the nonnoise condition, and this age difference disappeared when the visual noise of the 2 age groups was matched. Conversely, in the high cognitive load condition, we observed significant age differences in the Stroop effect in both the nonnoise and noise conditions. The additional cognitive load made the age differences in the Stroop task reappear even when visual perceptual stress was equivalent. These results demonstrate that visual function plays an important role in the aging of inhibition and its role is moderated by cognitive load. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
A Gesture Recognition System to Transition Autonomously through Vocational Tasks for Individuals with Cognitive Impairments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Yao-Jen; Chen, Shu-Fang; Chuang, An-Fu

2011-01-01

This study assessed the possibility of training two individuals with cognitive impairments using a Kinect-based task prompting system. This study was carried out according to an ABAB sequence in which A represented the baseline and B represented intervention phases. Data showed that the two participants significantly increased their target…
Individual Differences in Autobiographical Memory.

PubMed

Palombo, Daniela J; Sheldon, Signy; Levine, Brian

2018-07-01

Although humans have a remarkable capacity to recall a wealth of detail from the past, there are marked interindividual differences in the quantity and quality of our mnemonic experiences. Such differences in autobiographical memory may appear self-evident, yet there has been little research on this topic. In this review, we synthesize an emerging body of research regarding individual differences in autobiographical memory. We focus on two syndromes that fall at the extremes of the 'remembering' dimension: highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) and severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM). We also discuss findings from research on less extreme individual differences in autobiographical memory. This avenue of research is pivotal for a full description of the behavioral and neural substrates of autobiographical memory. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Children exhibit different performance patterns in explicit and implicit theory of mind tasks.

PubMed

Oktay-Gür, Nese; Schulz, Alexandra; Rakoczy, Hannes

2018-04-01

Three studies tested scope and limits of children's implicit and explicit theory of mind. In Studies 1 and 2, three- to six-year-olds (N = 84) were presented with closely matched explicit false belief tasks that differed in whether or not they required an understanding of aspectuality. Results revealed that children performed equally well in the different tasks, and performance was strongly correlated. Study 3 tested two-year-olds (N = 81) in implicit interactive versions of these tasks and found evidence for dis-unity: children performed competently only in those tasks that did not require an understanding of aspectuality. Taken together, the present findings suggest that early implicit and later explicit theory of mind tasks may tap different forms of cognitive capacities. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in choice (in)flexibility but not impulsivity in the common marmoset: an automated, operant-behavior choice task.

PubMed

Adriani, Walter; Romani, Chiara; Manciocco, Arianna; Vitale, Augusto; Laviola, Giovanni

2013-11-01

Individual differences in behavioural flexibility are a significant issue in human psychopathology as well as in its animal models. We aimed to investigate individual variations of operant-choice behaviour in the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), a small New World primate, using a new operant panel with two hand-poking holes. Experimental subjects (N=16) were presented with a choice between a Small & Soon (SS) vs a Large & Late (LL) food reward. After extensive training (31 daily sessions with no delay, during which a basal, large-reward preference developed), the delay before release of LL was progressively increased (from 0 to 60 s, during 16 daily sessions; indifferent point at delay=9 s). Subjects were classified as either "flexible" or "non-flexible", respectively, based on a decrease (or not) in the preference for LL with increasing delays. Each subject was also classified as "maximizer" (or "non-maximizer") based on capacity (or not) to maximize the food payoff as delay increased. Upon delays shorter than the indifferent point (<9s), none of the subjects showed a shift from LL to SS, denoting a lack of delay-induced, cognitive impulsivity. Individual differences only emerged upon delays longer than the indifferent point (>9 s), when a preference shift could be interpreted as economically-driven. In general, a profile of few unrewarded hand-pokes in reaction to initial delays (i.e., a low motor impulsivity) and of clear-cut basal LL preference seemed to predict elevated flexibility of choices and better food payoff, which was typical of subjects classified as both "flexible & maximizer". These results provide normative data on the marmosets, which can be used as a model for the investigation of 1) individual differences in behavioural flexibility, as well as 2) biological mechanisms rooted in our evolutionary history. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Surgical simulation tasks challenge visual working memory and visual-spatial ability differently.

PubMed

Schlickum, Marcus; Hedman, Leif; Enochsson, Lars; Henningsohn, Lars; Kjellin, Ann; Felländer-Tsai, Li

2011-04-01

New strategies for selection and training of physicians are emerging. Previous studies have demonstrated a correlation between visual-spatial ability and visual working memory with surgical simulator performance. The aim of this study was to perform a detailed analysis on how these abilities are associated with metrics in simulator performance with different task content. The hypothesis is that the importance of visual-spatial ability and visual working memory varies with different task contents. Twenty-five medical students participated in the study that involved testing visual-spatial ability using the MRT-A test and visual working memory using the RoboMemo computer program. Subjects were also trained and tested for performance in three different surgical simulators. The scores from the psychometric tests and the performance metrics were then correlated using multivariate analysis. MRT-A score correlated significantly with the performance metrics Efficiency of screening (p = 0.006) and Total time (p = 0.01) in the GI Mentor II task and Total score (p = 0.02) in the MIST-VR simulator task. In the Uro Mentor task, both the MRT-A score and the visual working memory 3-D cube test score as presented in the RoboMemo program (p = 0.02) correlated with Total score (p = 0.004). In this study we have shown that some differences exist regarding the impact of visual abilities and task content on simulator performance. When designing future cognitive training programs and testing regimes, one might have to consider that the design must be adjusted in accordance with the specific surgical task to be trained in mind.
Age difference in dual-task interference effects on procedural learning in children.

PubMed

Lejeune, Caroline; Desmottes, Lise; Catale, Corinne; Meulemans, Thierry

2015-01-01

The current study aimed to investigate the role played by explicit mechanisms during procedural learning in two age groups of children (7 and 10 years) using a dual-task paradigm. To do this, we explored the effect of an interference task during the early and late phases of a mirror tracing learning task. The results showed a differential impact of the secondary task on the two age groups, but only during the first learning phase; the performance of 10-year-olds was affected by the second task, whereas in 7-year-olds no performance difference was found between the single- and dual-task conditions. Overall, our study suggests that there are differences in the amount of effortful processing in which 7- and 10-year-olds engage at the beginning of the learning process; procedural learning in young children is mainly implicit, as attested by its lesser sensitivity to an interference task, whereas high-level explicit mechanisms seem to contribute to the procedural performance of 10-year-olds. However, these explicit mechanisms, even if they have an effect on performance, might not have an impact on the learning curve given that no difference in rate of acquisition was found between age groups. These findings are discussed in the light of classical conceptions of procedural learning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in working memory: introduction to the special section.

PubMed

Miyake, A

2001-06-01

This special section includes a set of 5 articles that examine the nature of inter- and intraindividual differences in working memory, using working memory span tasks as the main research tools. These span tasks are different from traditional short-term memory spans (e.g., digit or word span) in that they require participants to maintain some target memory items (e.g., words) while simultaneously performing some other tasks (e.g., reading sentences). In this introduction, a brief discussion of these working memory span tasks and their characteristics is provided first. This is followed by an overview of 2 major theoretical issues that are addressed by the subsequent articles--(a) the factors influencing the inter- and intraindividual differences in working memory performance and (b) the domain generality versus domain specificity of working memory--and also of some important issues that must be kept in mind when readers try to evaluate the claims regarding these 2 theoretical issues.
Sex differences in the Simon task help to interpret sex differences in selective attention.

PubMed

Stoet, Gijsbert

2017-05-01

In the last decade, a number of studies have reported sex differences in selective attention, but a unified explanation for these effects is still missing. This study aims to better understand these differences and put them in an evolutionary psychological context. 418 adult participants performed a computer-based Simon task, in which they responded to the direction of a left or right pointing arrow appearing left or right from a fixation point. Women were more strongly influenced by task-irrelevant spatial information than men (i.e., the Simon effect was larger in women, Cohen's d = 0.39). Further, the analysis of sex differences in behavioral adjustment to errors revealed that women slow down more than men following mistakes (d = 0.53). Based on the combined results of previous studies and the current data, it is proposed that sex differences in selective attention are caused by underlying sex differences in core abilities, such as spatial or verbal cognition.
Effect of type of cognitive task and walking speed on cognitive-motor interference during dual-task walking.

PubMed

Patel, P; Lamar, M; Bhatt, T

2014-02-28

We aimed to determine the effect of distinctly different cognitive tasks and walking speed on cognitive-motor interference of dual-task walking. Fifteen healthy adults performed four cognitive tasks: visuomotor reaction time (VMRT) task, word list generation (WLG) task, serial subtraction (SS) task, and the Stroop (STR) task while sitting and during walking at preferred-speed (dual-task normal walking) and slow-speed (dual-task slow-speed walking). Gait speed was recorded to determine effect on walking. Motor and cognitive costs were measured. Dual-task walking had a significant effect on motor and cognitive parameters. At preferred-speed, the motor cost was lowest for the VMRT task and highest for the STR task. In contrast, the cognitive cost was highest for the VMRT task and lowest for the STR task. Dual-task slow walking resulted in increased motor cost and decreased cognitive cost only for the STR task. Results show that the motor and cognitive cost of dual-task walking depends heavily on the type and perceived complexity of the cognitive task being performed. Cognitive cost for the STR task was low irrespective of walking speed, suggesting that at preferred-speed individuals prioritize complex cognitive tasks requiring higher attentional and processing resources over walking. While performing VMRT task, individuals preferred to prioritize more complex walking task over VMRT task resulting in lesser motor cost and increased cognitive cost for VMRT task. Furthermore, slow walking can assist in diverting greater attention towards complex cognitive tasks, improving its performance while walking. Copyright © 2013 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Differences in shame and pride as a function of children's gender and task difficulty.

PubMed

Lewis, M; Alessandri, S M; Sullivan, M W

1992-06-01

3-year-old children were presented with easy and difficult tasks and their emotional responses of shame and pride were observed. No shame was shown when subjects succeeded on the tasks and no pride was shown when they failed. Significantly more shame was shown when subjects failed easy tasks than when they failed difficult tasks, and significantly more pride was shown when subjects succeeded on difficult than on easy tasks. While there were no sex differences in task failures, girls showed more shame than boys. There were no sex differences in pride when subjects succeeded.
Differences in spatial working memory as a function of team sports expertise: the Corsi Block-tapping task in sport psychological assessment.

PubMed

Furley, Philip; Memmert, Daniel

2010-06-01

Individual differences in visuospatial abilities were investigated in experienced basketball players compared with nonathletes. Most research shows that experts and novices do not differ on basic cognitive ability tests. Nevertheless, there are some equivocal findings indicating there are differences in basic cognitive abilities such as attention. The goal of the present research was to investigate team-ball athletes in regard to their visuospatial abilities. 112 male college students (54 basketball players, 58 nonathlete college students) were tested in their spatial capacity with the Corsi Block-tapping Task. No differences in spatial capacity were evident between basketball players and nonathlete college students. The results are discussed in the context of the expert performance approach and individual difference research.
Study of EEG during Sternberg Tasks with Different Direction of Arrangement for Letters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kamihoriuchi, Kenji; Nuruki, Atsuo; Matae, Tadashi; Kurono, Asutsugu; Yunokuchi, Kazutomo

In previous study, we recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) of patients with dementia and healthy subjects during Sternberg task. But, only one presentation method of Sternberg task was considered in previous study. Therefore, we examined whether the EEG was different in two different presentation methods wrote letters horizontally and wrote letters vertically in this study. We recorded EEG of six healthy subjects during Sternberg task using two different presentation methods. The result was not different in EEG topography of all subjects. In all subjects, correct rate increased in case of vertically arranged letters.
Sex-Differences, Handedness, and Lateralization in the Iowa Gambling Task

PubMed Central

Singh, Varsha

2016-01-01

In a widely used decision-making task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), male performance is observed to be superior to that of females, and is attributed to right lateralization (i.e., right hemispheric dominance). It is as yet unknown whether sex-differences in affect and motor lateralization have implications for sex-specific lateralization in the IGT, and specifically, whether sex-difference in performance in the IGT changes with right-handedness or with affect lateralization (decision valence, and valence-directed motivation). The present study (N = 320; 160 males) examined the effects of right-handedness (right-handedness vs. non-right-handedness) as a measure of motor lateralization, decision valence (reward vs. punishment IGT), and valence-directedness of task motivation (valence-directed vs. non-directed instructions), as measures of affective lateralization on IGT decision making. Analyses of variance revealed that both male and female participants showed valence-induced inconsistencies in advantageous decision-making; however, right-handed females made more disadvantageous decisions in a reward IGT. These results suggest that IGT decision-making may be largely right-lateralized in right-handed males, and show that sex and lateralized differences (motor and affect) have implications for sex-differences in IGT decision-making. Implications of the results are discussed with reference to lateralization and sex-differences in cognition. PMID:27303316
Level of recall, retrieval speed, and variability on the Cued-Recall Retrieval Speed Task (CRRST) in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Ramratan, Wendy S; Rabin, Laura A; Wang, Cuiling; Zimmerman, Molly E; Katz, Mindy J; Lipton, Richard B; Buschke, Herman

2012-03-01

Individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) show deficits on traditional episodic memory tasks and reductions in speed of performance on reaction time tasks. We present results on a novel task, the Cued-Recall Retrieval Speed Task (CRRST), designed to simultaneously measure level and speed of retrieval. A total of 390 older adults (mean age, 80.2 years), learned 16 words based on corresponding categorical cues. In the retrieval phase, we measured accuracy (% correct) and retrieval speed/reaction time (RT; time from cue presentation to voice onset of a correct response) across 6 trials. Compared to healthy elderly adults (HEA, n = 303), those with aMCI (n = 87) exhibited poorer performance in retrieval speed (difference = -0.13; p < .0001) and accuracy on the first trial (difference = -0.19; p < .0001), and their rate of improvement in retrieval speed was slower over subsequent trials. Those with aMCI also had greater within-person variability in processing speed (variance ratio = 1.22; p = .0098) and greater between-person variability in accuracy (variance ratio = 2.08; p = .0001) relative to HEA. Results are discussed in relation to the possibility that computer-based measures of cued-learning and processing speed variability may facilitate early detection of dementia in at-risk older adults.
Individual strategy ratings improve the control for task difficulty effects in arithmetic problem solving paradigms.

PubMed

Tschentscher, Nadja; Hauk, Olaf

2015-01-01

Mental arithmetic is a powerful paradigm to study problem solving using neuroimaging methods. However, the evaluation of task complexity varies significantly across neuroimaging studies. Most studies have parameterized task complexity by objective features such as the number size. Only a few studies used subjective rating procedures. In fMRI, we provided evidence that strategy self-reports control better for task complexity across arithmetic conditions than objective features (Tschentscher and Hauk, 2014). Here, we analyzed the relative predictive value of self-reported strategies and objective features for performance in addition and multiplication tasks, by using a paradigm designed for neuroimaging research. We found a superiority of strategy ratings as predictor of performance above objective features. In a Principal Component Analysis on reaction times, the first component explained over 90 percent of variance and factor loadings reflected percentages of self-reported strategies well. In multiple regression analyses on reaction times, self-reported strategies performed equally well or better than objective features, depending on the operation type. A Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis confirmed this result. Reaction times classified task complexity better when defined by individual ratings. This suggests that participants' strategy ratings are reliable predictors of arithmetic complexity and should be taken into account in neuroimaging research.
Individual strategy ratings improve the control for task difficulty effects in arithmetic problem solving paradigms

PubMed Central

Tschentscher, Nadja; Hauk, Olaf

2015-01-01

Mental arithmetic is a powerful paradigm to study problem solving using neuroimaging methods. However, the evaluation of task complexity varies significantly across neuroimaging studies. Most studies have parameterized task complexity by objective features such as the number size. Only a few studies used subjective rating procedures. In fMRI, we provided evidence that strategy self-reports control better for task complexity across arithmetic conditions than objective features (Tschentscher and Hauk, 2014). Here, we analyzed the relative predictive value of self-reported strategies and objective features for performance in addition and multiplication tasks, by using a paradigm designed for neuroimaging research. We found a superiority of strategy ratings as predictor of performance above objective features. In a Principal Component Analysis on reaction times, the first component explained over 90 percent of variance and factor loadings reflected percentages of self-reported strategies well. In multiple regression analyses on reaction times, self-reported strategies performed equally well or better than objective features, depending on the operation type. A Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis confirmed this result. Reaction times classified task complexity better when defined by individual ratings. This suggests that participants’ strategy ratings are reliable predictors of arithmetic complexity and should be taken into account in neuroimaging research. PMID:26321997
Task factor usability ratings for different age groups writing Chinese.

PubMed

Chan, A H S; So, J C Y

2009-11-01

This study evaluated how different task factors affect performance and user subjective preferences for three different age groups of Chinese subjects (6-11, 20-23, 65-70 years) when hand writing Chinese characters. The subjects copied Chinese character sentences with different settings for the task factors of writing plane angle (horizontal 0 degrees , slanted 15 degrees ), writing direction (horizontal, vertical), and line spacing (5 mm, 7 mm and no lines). Writing speed was measured and subjective preferences (effectiveness and satisfaction) were assessed for each of the task factor settings. The result showed that there was a conflict between writing speed and personal preference for the line spacing factor; 5 mm line spacing increased writing speed but it was the least preferred. It was also found that: vertical and horizontal writing directions and a slanted work surface suited school-aged children; a horizontal work surface and horizontal writing direction suited university students; and a horizontal writing direction with either a horizontal or slanted work surface suited the older adults.
Dual-task training effects on motor and cognitive functional abilities in individuals with stroke: a systematic review.

PubMed

He, Ying; Yang, Lei; Zhou, Jing; Yao, Liqing; Pang, Marco Yiu Chung

2018-02-01

This systematic review aimed to examine the effects of dual-task balance and mobility training in people with stroke. An extensive electronic databases literature search was conducted using MEDLINE, PubMed, EBSCO, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, SCOPUS, and Wiley Online Library. Randomized controlled studies that assessed the effects of dual-task training in stroke patients were included for the review (last search in December 2017). The methodological quality was evaluated using the Cochrane Collaboration recommendation, and level of evidence was determined according to the criteria described by the Oxford Center for Evidence-Based Medicine. About 13 articles involving 457 participants were included in this systematic review. All had substantial risk of bias and thus provided level IIb evidence only. Dual-task mobility training was found to induce more improvement in single-task walking function (standardized effect size = 0.14-2.24), when compared with single-task mobility training. Its effect on dual-task walking function was not consistent. Cognitive-motor balance training was effective in improving single-task balance function (standardized effect size = 0.27-1.82), but its effect on dual-task balance ability was not studied. The beneficial effect of dual-task training on cognitive function was provided by one study only and thus inconclusive. There is some evidence that dual-task training can improve single-task walking and balance function in individuals with stroke. However, any firm recommendation cannot be made due to the weak methodology of the studies reviewed.

Different Levels of Food Restriction Reveal Genotype-Specific Differences in Learning a Visual Discrimination Task

PubMed Central

Makowiecki, Kalina; Hammond, Geoff; Rodger, Jennifer

2012-01-01

In behavioural experiments, motivation to learn can be achieved using food rewards as positive reinforcement in food-restricted animals. Previous studies reduce animal weights to 80–90% of free-feeding body weight as the criterion for food restriction. However, effects of different degrees of food restriction on task performance have not been assessed. We compared learning task performance in mice food-restricted to 80 or 90% body weight (BW). We used adult wildtype (WT; C57Bl/6j) and knockout (ephrin-A2−/−) mice, previously shown to have a reverse learning deficit. Mice were trained in a two-choice visual discrimination task with food reward as positive reinforcement. When mice reached criterion for one visual stimulus (80% correct in three consecutive 10 trial sets) they began the reverse learning phase, where the rewarded stimulus was switched to the previously incorrect stimulus. For the initial learning and reverse phase of the task, mice at 90%BW took almost twice as many trials to reach criterion as mice at 80%BW. Furthermore, WT 80 and 90%BW groups significantly differed in percentage correct responses and learning strategy in the reverse learning phase, whereas no differences between weight restriction groups were observed in ephrin-A2−/− mice. Most importantly, genotype-specific differences in reverse learning strategy were only detected in the 80%BW groups. Our results indicate that increased food restriction not only results in better performance and a shorter training period, but may also be necessary for revealing behavioural differences between experimental groups. This has important ethical and animal welfare implications when deciding extent of diet restriction in behavioural studies. PMID:23144936
Different levels of food restriction reveal genotype-specific differences in learning a visual discrimination task.

PubMed

Makowiecki, Kalina; Hammond, Geoff; Rodger, Jennifer

2012-01-01

In behavioural experiments, motivation to learn can be achieved using food rewards as positive reinforcement in food-restricted animals. Previous studies reduce animal weights to 80-90% of free-feeding body weight as the criterion for food restriction. However, effects of different degrees of food restriction on task performance have not been assessed. We compared learning task performance in mice food-restricted to 80 or 90% body weight (BW). We used adult wildtype (WT; C57Bl/6j) and knockout (ephrin-A2⁻/⁻) mice, previously shown to have a reverse learning deficit. Mice were trained in a two-choice visual discrimination task with food reward as positive reinforcement. When mice reached criterion for one visual stimulus (80% correct in three consecutive 10 trial sets) they began the reverse learning phase, where the rewarded stimulus was switched to the previously incorrect stimulus. For the initial learning and reverse phase of the task, mice at 90%BW took almost twice as many trials to reach criterion as mice at 80%BW. Furthermore, WT 80 and 90%BW groups significantly differed in percentage correct responses and learning strategy in the reverse learning phase, whereas no differences between weight restriction groups were observed in ephrin-A2⁻/⁻ mice. Most importantly, genotype-specific differences in reverse learning strategy were only detected in the 80%BW groups. Our results indicate that increased food restriction not only results in better performance and a shorter training period, but may also be necessary for revealing behavioural differences between experimental groups. This has important ethical and animal welfare implications when deciding extent of diet restriction in behavioural studies.
"One Task Fits All"? The Roles of Task Complexity, Modality, and Working Memory Capacity in L2 Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zalbidea, Janire

2017-01-01

The present study explores the independent and interactive effects of task complexity and task modality on linguistic dimensions of second language (L2) performance and investigates how these effects are modulated by individual differences in working memory capacity. Thirty-two intermediate learners of L2 Spanish completed less and more complex…
Numbers in action: individual differences and interactivity in mental arithmetic.

PubMed

Guthrie, Lisa G; Vallée-Tourangeau, Frédéric

2018-02-03

Previous research indicates that interactive arithmetic tasks may alleviate the deleterious impact of maths anxiety on arithmetic performance. Our aim here was to further test the impact of interactivity on maths-anxious individuals and those with poorer numeracy skills. In the experiment reported here participants completed sums in two interactivity contexts. In a low-interactivity condition, sums were completed with hands down. In a second, high-interactivity condition, participants used moveable number tokens. As anticipated, accuracy and efficiency were greater in the high compared to the low-interactivity condition. Correlational analyses indicated that maths anxiety, objective numeracy, measures of maths expertise and working memory were stronger predictors of performance in the low- than in the high-interactivity conditions. Interactivity transformed the deployment of arithmetic skills, improved performance, and reduced the gap between high- and low-ability individuals. These findings suggest that traditional psychometric efforts that identify the cognitive capacities and dispositions involved in mental arithmetic should take into account the degree of interactivity afforded by the task environment.
Classification of autistic individuals and controls using cross-task characterization of fMRI activity

PubMed Central

Chanel, Guillaume; Pichon, Swann; Conty, Laurence; Berthoz, Sylvie; Chevallier, Coralie; Grèzes, Julie

2015-01-01

Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) has been applied successfully to task-based and resting-based fMRI recordings to investigate which neural markers distinguish individuals with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) from controls. While most studies have focused on brain connectivity during resting state episodes and regions of interest approaches (ROI), a wealth of task-based fMRI datasets have been acquired in these populations in the last decade. This calls for techniques that can leverage information not only from a single dataset, but from several existing datasets that might share some common features and biomarkers. We propose a fully data-driven (voxel-based) approach that we apply to two different fMRI experiments with social stimuli (faces and bodies). The method, based on Support Vector Machines (SVMs) and Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), is first trained for each experiment independently and each output is then combined to obtain a final classification output. Second, this RFE output is used to determine which voxels are most often selected for classification to generate maps of significant discriminative activity. Finally, to further explore the clinical validity of the approach, we correlate phenotypic information with obtained classifier scores. The results reveal good classification accuracy (range between 69% and 92.3%). Moreover, we were able to identify discriminative activity patterns pertaining to the social brain without relying on a priori ROI definitions. Finally, social motivation was the only dimension which correlated with classifier scores, suggesting that it is the main dimension captured by the classifiers. Altogether, we believe that the present RFE method proves to be efficient and may help identifying relevant biomarkers by taking advantage of acquired task-based fMRI datasets in psychiatric populations. PMID:26793434
Individual differences in degree of handedness and somesthetic asymmetry predict individual differences in left-right confusion.

PubMed

Vingerhoets, Guy; Sarrechia, Iemke

2009-12-01

Confusion or frustration connected with daily demands involving left-right discrimination is a common observation even in neurologically intact adults. We aimed to test the hypothesis that the degree of left-right confusion is associated with bodily asymmetry. Sixty-two female volunteers performed a left-right decision task that required fast responses to visually presented directional words (left, right, up, down) or pictograms (<--, -->, upward arrow, downward arrow). Participants also performed several tests that measured asymmetry of handedness, grip strength, and tactile sensitivity, and completed self-reports on left-right confusion and perceived bodily asymmetry. Results showed significant correlations between left-right confusion and the degree of handedness and asymmetry in tactile sensitivity. These results suggest that individuals who reveal a stronger internal bias between both sides of the body show less left-right confusion than people with less salient bodily asymmetry.
Does extending the dual-task functional exercises workout improve postural balance in individuals with ID?

PubMed

Mikolajczyk, Edyta; Jankowicz-Szymanska, Agnieszka

2015-03-01

Maintaining postural balance, overcoming visual and motor coordination disorders and experiencing problems with low general fitness - typical of intellectually disabled individuals - adversely affect the performance quality of their activities of daily living (ADLs). Physical fitness and postural balance can be improved by taking part in special intervention programs. Our study was designed to test whether extending the dual-task intervention program (combining ADLs with balance exercises on unstable surfaces) from 12 to 24 weeks additionally improved postural balance in individuals with intellectual disability (ID). We also attempted to assess whether the effects of the above intervention program were still noticeable after 8 weeks of holidays, in which participants did not take any rehabilitation exercises. A total of 34 adolescents, aged 14-16 years (15.06±0.9), with moderate ID took part in our study. The experimental group (E) consisted of 17 individuals, who continued the intervention program originated 3 months earlier, and the control group (C) comprised the same number of participants. Postural balance was assessed on a stabilometric platform Alfa. Having extended the workout period by another 12 weeks, we noticed that the path length of the center of pressure (COP) covered by participants on tests with their eyes open and closed significantly shortened. After a lapse of 8 weeks from the completion of the program, the experimental group revealed a statistically significant decrease in the velocity along the medio-lateral (M/L) and anterior-posterior (A/P) axes. The remaining variables stayed at the same level and the control group did not demonstrate any statistically significant changes. Dual-task exercises, in which enhancing functional tasks of daily living is combined with a parallel stimulation of balance reactions, may improve static balance in persons with ID. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in holistic processing predict the own-race advantage in recognition memory.

PubMed

Degutis, Joseph; Mercado, Rogelio J; Wilmer, Jeremy; Rosenblatt, Andrew

2013-01-01

Individuals are consistently better at recognizing own-race faces compared to other-race faces (other-race effect, ORE). One popular hypothesis is that this recognition memory ORE is caused by differential own- and other-race holistic processing, the simultaneous integration of part and configural face information into a coherent whole. Holistic processing may create a more rich, detailed memory representation of own-race faces compared to other-race faces. Despite several studies showing that own-race faces are processed more holistically than other-race faces, studies have yet to link the holistic processing ORE and the recognition memory ORE. In the current study, we sought to use a more valid method of analyzing individual differences in holistic processing by using regression to statistically remove the influence of the control condition (part trials in the part-whole task) from the condition of interest (whole trials in the part-whole task). We also employed regression to separately examine the two components of the ORE: own-race advantage (regressing other-race from own-race performance) and other-race decrement (regressing own-race from other-race performance). First, we demonstrated that own-race faces were processed more holistically than other-race faces, particularly the eye region. Notably, using regression, we showed a significant association between the own-race advantage in recognition memory and the own-race advantage in holistic processing and that these associations were weaker when examining the other-race decrement. We also demonstrated that performance on own- and other-race faces across all of our tasks was highly correlated, suggesting that the differences we found between own- and other-race faces are quantitative rather than qualitative. Together, this suggests that own- and other-race faces recruit largely similar mechanisms, that own-race faces more thoroughly engage holistic processing, and that this greater engagement of holistic
Individual Differences in Holistic Processing Predict the Own-Race Advantage in Recognition Memory

PubMed Central

DeGutis, Joseph; Mercado, Rogelio J.; Wilmer, Jeremy; Rosenblatt, Andrew

2013-01-01

Individuals are consistently better at recognizing own-race faces compared to other-race faces (other-race effect, ORE). One popular hypothesis is that this recognition memory ORE is caused by differential own- and other-race holistic processing, the simultaneous integration of part and configural face information into a coherent whole. Holistic processing may create a more rich, detailed memory representation of own-race faces compared to other-race faces. Despite several studies showing that own-race faces are processed more holistically than other-race faces, studies have yet to link the holistic processing ORE and the recognition memory ORE. In the current study, we sought to use a more valid method of analyzing individual differences in holistic processing by using regression to statistically remove the influence of the control condition (part trials in the part-whole task) from the condition of interest (whole trials in the part-whole task). We also employed regression to separately examine the two components of the ORE: own-race advantage (regressing other-race from own-race performance) and other-race decrement (regressing own-race from other-race performance). First, we demonstrated that own-race faces were processed more holistically than other-race faces, particularly the eye region. Notably, using regression, we showed a significant association between the own-race advantage in recognition memory and the own-race advantage in holistic processing and that these associations were weaker when examining the other-race decrement. We also demonstrated that performance on own- and other-race faces across all of our tasks was highly correlated, suggesting that the differences we found between own- and other-race faces are quantitative rather than qualitative. Together, this suggests that own- and other-race faces recruit largely similar mechanisms, that own-race faces more thoroughly engage holistic processing, and that this greater engagement of holistic
Age-related differences in dual task performance: A cross-sectional study on women.

PubMed

Brustio, Paolo R; Magistro, Daniele; Rabaglietti, Emanuela; Liubicich, Monica E

2017-02-01

Simultaneous performances of motor and attention-demanding tasks are common in activities of everyday life. The present cross-sectional study examined the changes and age-related differences on mobility performance with an additional cognitive or motor task, and evaluated the relative dual-task cost (DTC) on the motor performance in young, middle-aged and older women. A total of 30 young (mean age 25.12 ± 3.00 years), 30 middle-aged (mean age 47.82 ± 5.06 years) and 30 older women (mean age 72.74 ± 5.95 years) were recruited. Participants carried out: (i) single task: Timed Up & Go Test; (ii) cognitive dual-task: Timed Up & Go Test while counting backwards by three; (iii) manual dual-task: Timed Up & Go Test while carrying a glass of water. A repeated measures anova with between-factor as age groups and within-factor as tasks was carried out to assess the effect of aging on the performance of mobility tasks. DTC was calculated as ([performance in single-task - performance in dual-task] / performance in single task) × 100%. One-way ancova were carried out to compare the DTC among the three age groups. A significant interaction between age groups and task (F 4,172 = 6.716, P < 0.001, partial η 2 = 0.135) was observed. Specifically, older women showed a worse mobility performance under dual-task condition compared with young and middle-aged groups. Furthermore, DTC differences in cognitive task were observed in older women compared with younger and middle-aged women (F 2,86 = 7.649, P < 0.001, partial η 2 = 0.151), but not in manual task. Dual-task conditions might affect mobility performance differently across the lifespan, and could be particularly challenging in older women. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2017; 17: 315-321. © 2015 Japan Geriatrics Society.
Early auditory evoked potential is modulated by selective attention and related to individual differences in visual working memory capacity.

PubMed

Giuliano, Ryan J; Karns, Christina M; Neville, Helen J; Hillyard, Steven A

2014-12-01

A growing body of research suggests that the predictive power of working memory (WM) capacity for measures of intellectual aptitude is due to the ability to control attention and select relevant information. Crucially, attentional mechanisms implicated in controlling access to WM are assumed to be domain-general, yet reports of enhanced attentional abilities in individuals with larger WM capacities are primarily within the visual domain. Here, we directly test the link between WM capacity and early attentional gating across sensory domains, hypothesizing that measures of visual WM capacity should predict an individual's capacity to allocate auditory selective attention. To address this question, auditory ERPs were recorded in a linguistic dichotic listening task, and individual differences in ERP modulations by attention were correlated with estimates of WM capacity obtained in a separate visual change detection task. Auditory selective attention enhanced ERP amplitudes at an early latency (ca. 70-90 msec), with larger P1 components elicited by linguistic probes embedded in an attended narrative. Moreover, this effect was associated with greater individual estimates of visual WM capacity. These findings support the view that domain-general attentional control mechanisms underlie the wide variation of WM capacity across individuals.
Individual differences in self-reported self-control predict successful emotion regulation

PubMed Central

Dörfel, Denise; Steimke, Rosa; Trempler, Ima; Magrabi, Amadeus; Ludwig, Vera U.; Schubert, Torsten; Stelzel, Christine; Walter, Henrik

2016-01-01

Both self-control and emotion regulation enable individuals to adapt to external circumstances and social contexts, and both are assumed to rely on the overlapping neural resources. Here, we tested whether high self-reported self-control is related to successful emotion regulation on the behavioral and neural level. One hundred eight participants completed three self-control questionnaires and regulated their negative emotions during functional magnetic resonance imaging using reappraisal (distancing). Trait self-control correlated positively with successful emotion regulation both subjectively and neurally, as indicated by online ratings of negative emotions and functional connectivity strength between the amygdala and prefrontal areas, respectively. This stronger overall connectivity of the left amygdala was related to more successful subjective emotion regulation. Comparing amygdala activity over time showed that high self-controllers successfully maintained down-regulation of the left amygdala over time, while low self-controllers failed to down-regulate towards the end of the experiment. This indicates that high self-controllers are better at maintaining a motivated state supporting emotion regulation over time. Our results support assumptions concerning a close relation of self-control and emotion regulation as two domains of behavioral control. They further indicate that individual differences in functional connectivity between task-related brain areas directly relate to differences in trait self-control. PMID:27013102
Alternative Perspectives on Risk: Individual Differences in Problem Structuring

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Orasanu, Judith; Fischer, Ute; Connors, Mary M. (Technical Monitor)

1997-01-01

Team decision making involves contributions of multiple players toward a common goal. While much has been written about the importance of developing shared mental models in order for teams to work together effectively, little has been done to determine the value of alternative perspectives on problem solving and decision making. Early studies of expertise contrasted experts with novices and noted that the two groups differ in the way they structure problems and in their selection of information as salient. Little attention has been given to differences among experts who differ in their specializations. A series of experiments was conducted to determine: (1) what dimensions of flight-related problem situations pilots judge to be most important when making flight-relevant decisions; and (2) whether pilots in different crew positions differ in the way they interpret problems relating to flight decisions. A sorting task was used to identify underlying dimensions judged as salient to individual pilots. Captains, first officers, and flight engineers from two major carriers participated in the study. Twenty-two flight scenarios were developed based on ASRS reports. Pilots were required to make judgments about how they would respond in each case and to sort the scenarios on the basis of similarity of decision factors. They were also asked to provide a verbal label that described each of their sorted categories. A second study required a different group of pilots (also captains, first officers and flight engineers) to sort on predetermined bases.
Use of Internal Consistency Coefficients for Estimating Reliability of Experimental Tasks Scores

PubMed Central

Green, Samuel B.; Yang, Yanyun; Alt, Mary; Brinkley, Shara; Gray, Shelley; Hogan, Tiffany; Cowan, Nelson

2017-01-01

Reliabilities of scores for experimental tasks are likely to differ from one study to another to the extent that the task stimuli change, the number of trials varies, the type of individuals taking the task changes, the administration conditions are altered, or the focal task variable differs. Given reliabilities vary as a function of the design of these tasks and the characteristics of the individuals taking them, making inferences about the reliability of scores in an ongoing study based on reliability estimates from prior studies is precarious. Thus, it would be advantageous to estimate reliability based on data from the ongoing study. We argue that internal consistency estimates of reliability are underutilized for experimental task data and in many applications could provide this information using a single administration of a task. We discuss different methods for computing internal consistency estimates with a generalized coefficient alpha and the conditions under which these estimates are accurate. We illustrate use of these coefficients using data for three different tasks. PMID:26546100
How Do Task Characteristics Affect Learning and Performance? The Roles of Variably Mapped and Dynamic Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Macnamara, Brooke N.; Frank, David J.

2018-01-01

For well over a century, scientists have investigated individual differences in performance. The majority of studies have focused on either differences in practice, or differences in cognitive resources. However, the predictive ability of either practice or cognitive resources varies considerably across tasks. We are the first to examine task…
Musical training, individual differences and the cocktail party problem

PubMed Central

Swaminathan, Jayaganesh; Mason, Christine R.; Streeter, Timothy M.; Best, Virginia; Kidd, Jr, Gerald; Patel, Aniruddh D.

2015-01-01

Are musicians better able to understand speech in noise than non-musicians? Recent findings have produced contradictory results. Here we addressed this question by asking musicians and non-musicians to understand target sentences masked by other sentences presented from different spatial locations, the classical ‘cocktail party problem’ in speech science. We found that musicians obtained a substantial benefit in this situation, with thresholds ~6 dB better than non-musicians. Large individual differences in performance were noted particularly for the non-musically trained group. Furthermore, in different conditions we manipulated the spatial location and intelligibility of the masking sentences, thus changing the amount of ‘informational masking’ (IM) while keeping the amount of ‘energetic masking’ (EM) relatively constant. When the maskers were unintelligible and spatially separated from the target (low in IM), musicians and non-musicians performed comparably. These results suggest that the characteristics of speech maskers and the amount of IM can influence the magnitude of the differences found between musicians and non-musicians in multiple-talker “cocktail party” environments. Furthermore, considering the task in terms of the EM-IM distinction provides a conceptual framework for future behavioral and neuroscientific studies which explore the underlying sensory and cognitive mechanisms contributing to enhanced “speech-in-noise” perception by musicians. PMID:26112910
Large sex difference in adolescents on a timed line judgment task: attentional contributors and task relationship to mathematics.

PubMed

Collaer, Marcia L; Hill, Erica M

2006-01-01

Visuospatial performance, assessed with the new, group-administered Judgment of Line Angle and Position test (JLAP-13), varied with sex and mathematical competence in a group of adolescents. The JLAP-13, a low-level perceptual task, was modeled after a neuropsychological task dependent upon functioning of the posterior region of the right hemisphere [Benton et al, 1994 Contributions to Neuropsychological Assessment: A Clinical Manual (New York: Oxford University Press)]. High-school boys (N = 52) performed better than girls (N = 62), with a large effect for sex (d = 1.11). Performance increased with mathematical competence, but the sex difference did not vary significantly across different levels of mathematics coursework. On the basis of earlier work, it was predicted that male, but not female, performance in line judgment would decline with disruptions to task geometry (page frame), and that the sex difference would disappear with disruptions to geometry. These predictions were supported by a number of univariate and sex-specific analyses, although an omnibus repeated-measures analysis did not detect the predicted interaction, most likely owing to limitations in power. Thus, there is partial support for the notion that attentional predispositions or strategies may contribute to visuospatial sex differences, with males more likely than females to attend to, and rely upon, internal or external representations of task geometry. Additional support for this hypothesis may require development of new measures or experimental manipulations with more powerful geometrical disruptions.
Age-related differences in processing visual device and task characteristics when using technical devices.

PubMed

Oehl, M; Sutter, C

2015-05-01

With aging visual feedback becomes increasingly relevant in action control. Consequently, visual device and task characteristics should more and more affect tool use. Focussing on late working age, the present study aims to investigate age-related differences in processing task irrelevant (display size) and task relevant visual information (task difficulty). Young and middle-aged participants (20-35 and 36-64 years of age, respectively) sat in front of a touch screen with differently sized active touch areas (4″ to 12″) and performed pointing tasks with differing task difficulties (1.8-5 bits). Both display size and age affected pointing performance, but the two variables did not interact and aiming duration moderated both effects. Furthermore, task difficulty affected the pointing durations of middle-aged adults moreso than those of young adults. Again, aiming duration accounted for the variance in the data. The onset of an age-related decline in aiming duration can be clearly located in middle adulthood. Thus, the fine psychomotor ability "aiming" is a moderator and predictor for age-related differences in pointing tasks. The results support a user-specific design for small technical devices with touch interfaces. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd and The Ergonomics Society. All rights reserved.
Inhibition in task switching: The reliability of the n - 2 repetition cost.

PubMed

Kowalczyk, Agnieszka W; Grange, James A

2017-12-01

The n - 2 repetition cost seen in task switching is the effect of slower response times performing a recently completed task (e.g. an ABA sequence) compared to performing a task that was not recently completed (e.g. a CBA sequence). This cost is thought to reflect cognitive inhibition of task representations and as such, the n - 2 repetition cost has begun to be used as an assessment of individual differences in inhibitory control; however, the reliability of this measure has not been investigated in a systematic manner. The current study addressed this important issue. Seventy-two participants performed three task switching paradigms; participants were also assessed on rumination traits and processing speed-measures of individual differences potentially modulating the n - 2 repetition cost. We found significant n - 2 repetition costs for each paradigm. However, split-half reliability tests revealed that this cost was not reliable at the individual-difference level. Neither rumination tendencies nor processing speed predicted this cost. We conclude that the n - 2 repetition cost is not reliable as a measure of individual differences in inhibitory control.
Evaluating the sources and functions of gradiency in phoneme categorization: An individual differences approach.

PubMed

Kapnoula, Efthymia C; Winn, Matthew B; Kong, Eun Jong; Edwards, Jan; McMurray, Bob

2017-09-01

During spoken language comprehension listeners transform continuous acoustic cues into categories (e.g., /b/ and /p/). While long-standing research suggests that phonetic categories are activated in a gradient way, there are also clear individual differences in that more gradient categorization has been linked to various communication impairments such as dyslexia and specific language impairments (Joanisse, Manis, Keating, & Seidenberg, 2000; López-Zamora, Luque, Álvarez, & Cobos, 2012; Serniclaes, Van Heghe, Mousty, Carré, & Sprenger-Charolles, 2004; Werker & Tees, 1987). Crucially, most studies have used 2-alternative forced choice (2AFC) tasks to measure the sharpness of between-category boundaries. Here we propose an alternative paradigm that allows us to measure categorization gradiency in a more direct way. Furthermore, we follow an individual differences approach to (a) link this measure of gradiency to multiple cue integration, (b) explore its relationship to a set of other cognitive processes, and (c) evaluate its role in individuals' ability to perceive speech in noise. Our results provide validation for this new method of assessing phoneme categorization gradiency and offer preliminary insights into how different aspects of speech perception may be linked to each other and to more general cognitive processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Response inhibition predicts painful task duration and performance in healthy individuals performing a cold pressor task in a motivational context.

PubMed

Karsdorp, P A; Geenen, R; Vlaeyen, J W S

2014-01-01

Long-term avoidance of painful activities has shown to be dysfunctional in chronic pain. Pain may elicit escape or avoidance responses automatically, particularly when pain-related fear is high. A conflict may arise between opposing short-term escape/avoidance goals to reduce pain and long-term approach goals to receive a reward. An inhibitory control system may resolve this conflict. It was hypothesized that reduced response inhibition would be associated with greater escape/avoidance during pain, particularly among subjects with higher pain-related fear. Response inhibition was measured with the stop-signal task, and pain-related fear with the Fear of Pain Questionnaire. Participants completed a tone-detection task (TDT) in which they could earn money while being exposed to cold pressor pain. Escape/avoidance was operationalized as the hand immersion time during a cold pressor task (CPT) and the performance on the TDT. Poorer response inhibition was associated with shorter CPT immersion duration and with worse TDT performance. Pain after the CPT was associated with pain-related fear, but not with response inhibition. No supportive evidence was found for the hypothesis that the relation between inhibition and escape/avoidance would be most pronounced for those with higher pain-related fear. In contrast, the relation between response inhibition and number of hits on the TDT was most pronounced for those with lower pain-related fear. The findings suggest that individuals with a stronger ability to inhibit responses in a stop-signal task are better able to inhibit escape/avoidance responses elicited by pain, in the service of a conflicting approach goal. © 2013 European Pain Federation - EFIC®
Individual differences in infant fearfulness and cognitive performance: a testing, performance, or competence effect?

PubMed

Rieser-Danner, Loretta A

2003-02-01

The author conducted 2 studies to examine the relations between infant fear and cognitive testing performance in 12-month-old infants. In Study 1, fear was assessed by using 2 standard temperament questionnaires and a laboratory-based, standardized stranger approach. Individual differences in cognitive development were assessed using the Object Permanence Scale of the Infant Psychological Development Scales (I. C. Uzgiris & J. M. Hunt, 1975). All 3 assessments of fear significantly predicted object permanence performance, with correlations ranging from -.32 to -.35. In Study 2, fear was assessed via a maternal report questionnaire, and habituation performance was assessed via a basic-level categorization task. Familiarity with the examiner and with the testing environment was manipulated to test for a familiarity influence on performance. Testing revealed individual differences in both fear and habituation. Results suggest that highly fearful infants required more trials to habituate and were less likely to meet the habituation criterion than infants who were less fearful. Methodological and conceptual implications of these results are discussed.
Age, sex and individual differences in punishment sensitivity: factors influencing the feedback-related negativity.

PubMed

Santesso, Diane L; Dzyundzyak, Angela; Segalowitz, Sidney J

2011-11-01

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is central to evaluating performance outcomes and has been linked to individual differences in affective responses to feedback. We used electrophysiological source localization to examine the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and related ACC activity during a gambling task in relation to punishment and reward sensitivity among 16- to 17-year-old adolescents (n=20) and 18- to 29-year-old adults (n=30). The FRN was larger for monetary loss compared to win feedback and larger for high relative to low monetary value feedback, with no age differences in the FRN for win or loss feedback. Self-reported sensitivity to punishment accounted for unique variance (over sex and sensitivity to reward) in FRNs, with higher scores relating to larger FRNs and increased rostral ACC activity. These results support the ACC role in experiencing negative performance feedback, especially for individuals highly sensitive to punishment. Copyright © 2011 Society for Psychophysiological Research.
Self-control and Task Timing Shift Self-efficacy and Influence Willingness to Engage in Effortful Tasks

PubMed Central

Ein-Gar, Danit; Steinhart, Yael

2017-01-01

Self-efficacy constitutes a key factor that influences people's inclination to engage in effortful tasks. In this study, we focus on an interesting interplay between two prominent factors known to influence engagement in effortful tasks: the timing of the task (i.e., whether the task is scheduled to take place in the near or distant future) and individuals' levels of self-control. Across three studies, we show that these two factors have an interacting effect on self-efficacy. Low self-control (LSC) individuals report higher self-efficacy for distant-future effortful tasks than for near-future tasks, whereas high self-control (HSC) individuals report higher self-efficacy for near-future tasks than for distant future tasks. We further demonstrate how self-efficacy then molds individuals' willingness to engage in those effortful tasks. Given that a particular task may comprise effortful aspects alongside more enjoyable aspects, we show that the effects we observe emerge with regard to a task whose effortful aspects are salient and that the effects are eliminated when the enjoyable aspects of that same task are highlighted. PMID:29075225
Individual Differences in Affect.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haviland, Jeannette

This paper argues that infants' affect patterns are innate and are meaningful indicators of individual differences in internal state. Videotapes of seven infants' faces were coded using an ethogram; the movement of the eyebrow, eye direction, eye openness, mouth shape, mouth position, lip position, and tongue protrusion were assessed…
Modeling individual differences in text reading fluency: a different pattern of predictors for typically developing and dyslexic readers

PubMed Central

Zoccolotti, Pierluigi; De Luca, Maria; Marinelli, Chiara V.; Spinelli, Donatella

2014-01-01

This study was aimed at predicting individual differences in text reading fluency. The basic proposal included two factors, i.e., the ability to decode letter strings (measured by discrete pseudo-word reading) and integration of the various sub-components involved in reading (measured by Rapid Automatized Naming, RAN). Subsequently, a third factor was added to the model, i.e., naming of discrete digits. In order to use homogeneous measures, all contributing variables considered the entire processing of the item, including pronunciation time. The model, which was based on commonality analysis, was applied to data from a group of 43 typically developing readers (11- to 13-year-olds) and a group of 25 chronologically matched dyslexic children. In typically developing readers, both orthographic decoding and integration of reading sub-components contributed significantly to the overall prediction of text reading fluency. The model prediction was higher (from ca. 37 to 52% of the explained variance) when we included the naming of discrete digits variable, which had a suppressive effect on pseudo-word reading. In the dyslexic readers, the variance explained by the two-factor model was high (69%) and did not change when the third factor was added. The lack of a suppression effect was likely due to the prominent individual differences in poor orthographic decoding of the dyslexic children. Analyses on data from both groups of children were replicated by using patches of colors as stimuli (both in the RAN task and in the discrete naming task) obtaining similar results. We conclude that it is possible to predict much of the variance in text-reading fluency using basic processes, such as orthographic decoding and integration of reading sub-components, even without taking into consideration higher-order linguistic factors such as lexical, semantic and contextual abilities. The approach validity of using proximal vs. distal causes to predict reading fluency is discussed. PMID
Developmental gender differences in children in a virtual spatial memory task.

PubMed

León, Irene; Cimadevilla, José Manuel; Tascón, Laura

2014-07-01

Behavioral achievements are the product of brain maturation. During postnatal development, the medial temporal lobe completes its maturation, and children acquire new memory abilities. In recent years, virtual reality-based tasks have been introduced in the neuropsychology field to assess different cognitive functions. In this work, desktop virtual reality tasks are combined with classic psychometric tests to assess spatial abilities in 4- to 10-year-old children. Fifty boys and 50 girls 4-10-years of age participated in this study. Spatial reference memory and spatial working memory were assessed using a desktop virtual reality-based task. Other classic psychometric tests were also included in this work (e.g., the Corsi Block Tapping Test, digit tests, 10/36 Spatial Recall Test). In general terms, 4- and 5-year-old groups showed poorer performance than the older groups. However, 5-year-old children showed basic spatial navigation abilities with little difficulty. In addition, boys outperformed girls from the 6-8-year-old groups. Gender differences only emerged in the reference-memory version of the spatial task, whereas both sexes displayed similar performances in the working-memory version. There was general improvement in the performance of different tasks in children older than 5 years. However, results also suggest that brain regions involved in allocentric memory are functional even at the age of 5. In addition, the brain structures underlying reference memory mature later in girls than those required for the working memory.
The Procedural Syllabus and the Task Syllabus: How Similar, How Different?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baleghizadeh, Sasan

2016-01-01

The present paper aims to convince readers that the terms procedural and task syllabuses, often used interchangeably and synonymously, are fundamentally different from each other. After reviewing the underlying principles of these two syllabuses, it is contended that they both view pedagogic tasks as the point of departure in designing…
Information Use Differences in Hot and Cold Risk Processing: When Does Information About Probability Count in the Columbia Card Task?

PubMed Central

Markiewicz, Łukasz; Kubińska, Elżbieta

2015-01-01

Objective: This paper aims to provide insight into information processing differences between hot and cold risk taking decision tasks within a single domain. Decision theory defines risky situations using at least three parameters: outcome one (often a gain) with its probability and outcome two (often a loss) with a complementary probability. Although a rational agent should consider all of the parameters, s/he could potentially narrow their focus to only some of them, particularly when explicit Type 2 processes do not have the resources to override implicit Type 1 processes. Here we investigate differences in risky situation parameters' influence on hot and cold decisions. Although previous studies show lower information use in hot than in cold processes, they do not provide decision weight changes and therefore do not explain whether this difference results from worse concentration on each parameter of a risky situation (probability, gain amount, and loss amount) or from ignoring some parameters. Methods: Two studies were conducted, with participants performing the Columbia Card Task (CCT) in either its Cold or Hot version. In the first study, participants also performed the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) to monitor their ability to override Type 1 processing cues (implicit processes) with Type 2 explicit processes. Because hypothesis testing required comparison of the relative importance of risky situation decision weights (gain, loss, probability), we developed a novel way of measuring information use in the CCT by employing a conjoint analysis methodology. Results: Across the two studies, results indicated that in the CCT Cold condition decision makers concentrate on each information type (gain, loss, probability), but in the CCT Hot condition they concentrate mostly on a single parameter: probability of gain/loss. We also show that an individual's CRT score correlates with information use propensity in cold but not hot tasks. Thus, the affective dimension of
When do chronic differences in self-regulation count? Regulatory focus effects in easy and difficult soccer tasks.

PubMed

Vogel, Tobias; Genschow, Oliver

2013-04-01

Research on regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) suggests that performance increases if instructions fit with sportspersons' dispositions. Sportspersons who chronically focus on wins (i.e., promotion-oriented individuals) perform best if instructions frame the objective as a promotion goal (e.g., "Try to hit!"). By contrast, sportspersons who chronically focus on losses (i.e., prevention-oriented individuals) perform best if instructions frame the objective as a prevention goal (e.g., "Try not to miss!"). Recent theorizing also suggests that regulatory focus interacts with task difficulty. In an experiment, we assessed soccer performance as a function of chronic focus, instructional focus, and task difficulty. Results support that task difficulty moderates the effects of fit on performance; fitting instructions to match the sportsperson's chronic regulatory focus improved performance in the easy rather than the difficult task. Findings are discussed regarding the role of regulatory fit in altering subjective pressure during sports performance.
A combined experimental and individual-differences investigation into mind wandering during a video lecture.

PubMed

Kane, Michael J; Smeekens, Bridget A; von Bastian, Claudia C; Lurquin, John H; Carruth, Nicholas P; Miyake, Akira

2017-11-01

A combined experimental-correlational study with a diverse sample (N = 182) from 2 research sites tested a set of 5 a priori hypotheses about mind wandering and learning, using a realistic video lecture on introductory statistics. Specifically, the study examined whether students' vulnerability to mind wandering during the lecture would predict learning from, and situational interest in, the video and also whether longhand note-taking would help reduce mind wandering, at least for some students. One half of the participants took notes during the video, and all were subsequently tested on lecture content without notes. Regression and mediation analyses indicated that (a) several individual-differences variables (e.g., pretest score, prior math interest, classroom media multitasking habits) uniquely predicted in-lecture mind wandering frequency; (b) although the note-taking manipulation did not reduce mind wandering at the group level, note-taking still reduced mind wandering for some individuals (i.e., those with lower prior knowledge and those who took notes of high quality and quantity); (c) mind wandering uniquely predicted both learning (posttest) and situational interest outcomes above and beyond all other individual-differences variables; (d) moreover, mind wandering significantly mediated the effects of several individual differences; and, finally, (e) not all types of mind wandering were problematic-in fact, off-task reflections about lecture-related topics positively predicted learning. These results, which were generally robust across the 2 sites, suggest that educationally focused cognitive research may benefit from considering attentional processes during learning as well as cognitive and noncognitive individual differences that affect attention and learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
Temperament and parenting antecedents of individual differences in three-year-old boys' pride and shame reactions.

PubMed

Belsky, J; Domitrovich, C; Crnic, K

1997-06-01

To examine individual differences in pride and shame reactions of 3-year-olds and their temperamental and parenting antecedents, 110 boys were studied at ages 36 and 37 months in a "rigged" achievement situation. After being trained to complete explicitly stipulated "easy" and "difficult" tasks before a buzzer sounded, success and failure were manipulated by artificially "rigging" how much time the child had to work on these tasks. Children's facial, verbal, and postural reactions to success and failure were composited to create pride scores following success and shame scores following failure. As expected, pride reactions were greater following success on the difficult than on the easy task, and shame reactions were greater following failure on the easy than on the difficult task. Early temperament (at 12/13 months) proved unrelated to pride and shame. With respect to parenting, measurements composited across 15, 21, 27, and 33 months showed that mothers and fathers who were more positive in their parenting had children who displayed less pride, and that children whose parents (especially mothers) were more negative in their parenting evinced less shame. These counterintuitive findings are discussed in terms of differences between assessments of parenting obtained in this investigation of parenting antecedents and those obtained in other studies of parental responses in the achievement situation itself. Directions for future research are outlined.
Differences in Visuo-Motor Control in Skilled vs. Novice Martial Arts Athletes during Sustained and Transient Attention Tasks: A Motor-Related Cortical Potential Study

PubMed Central

Sanchez-Lopez, Javier; Fernandez, Thalia; Silva-Pereyra, Juan; Martinez Mesa, Juan A.; Di Russo, Francesco

2014-01-01

Cognitive and motor processes are essential for optimal athletic performance. Individuals trained in different skills and sports may have specialized cognitive abilities and motor strategies related to the characteristics of the activity and the effects of training and expertise. Most studies have investigated differences in motor-related cortical potential (MRCP) during self-paced tasks in athletes but not in stimulus-related tasks. The aim of the present study was to identify the differences in performance and MRCP between skilled and novice martial arts athletes during two different types of tasks: a sustained attention task and a transient attention task. Behavioral and electrophysiological data from twenty-two martial arts athletes were obtained while they performed a continuous performance task (CPT) to measure sustained attention and a cued continuous performance task (c-CPT) to measure transient attention. MRCP components were analyzed and compared between groups. Electrophysiological data in the CPT task indicated larger prefrontal positive activity and greater posterior negativity distribution prior to a motor response in the skilled athletes, while novices showed a significantly larger response-related P3 after a motor response in centro-parietal areas. A different effect occurred in the c-CPT task in which the novice athletes showed strong prefrontal positive activity before a motor response and a large response-related P3, while in skilled athletes, the prefrontal activity was absent. We propose that during the CPT, skilled athletes were able to allocate two different but related processes simultaneously according to CPT demand, which requires controlled attention and controlled motor responses. On the other hand, in the c-CPT, skilled athletes showed better cue facilitation, which permitted a major economy of resources and “automatic” or less controlled responses to relevant stimuli. In conclusion, the present data suggest that motor expertise
Differences in visuo-motor control in skilled vs. novice martial arts athletes during sustained and transient attention tasks: a motor-related cortical potential study.

PubMed

Sanchez-Lopez, Javier; Fernandez, Thalia; Silva-Pereyra, Juan; Martinez Mesa, Juan A; Di Russo, Francesco

2014-01-01

Cognitive and motor processes are essential for optimal athletic performance. Individuals trained in different skills and sports may have specialized cognitive abilities and motor strategies related to the characteristics of the activity and the effects of training and expertise. Most studies have investigated differences in motor-related cortical potential (MRCP) during self-paced tasks in athletes but not in stimulus-related tasks. The aim of the present study was to identify the differences in performance and MRCP between skilled and novice martial arts athletes during two different types of tasks: a sustained attention task and a transient attention task. Behavioral and electrophysiological data from twenty-two martial arts athletes were obtained while they performed a continuous performance task (CPT) to measure sustained attention and a cued continuous performance task (c-CPT) to measure transient attention. MRCP components were analyzed and compared between groups. Electrophysiological data in the CPT task indicated larger prefrontal positive activity and greater posterior negativity distribution prior to a motor response in the skilled athletes, while novices showed a significantly larger response-related P3 after a motor response in centro-parietal areas. A different effect occurred in the c-CPT task in which the novice athletes showed strong prefrontal positive activity before a motor response and a large response-related P3, while in skilled athletes, the prefrontal activity was absent. We propose that during the CPT, skilled athletes were able to allocate two different but related processes simultaneously according to CPT demand, which requires controlled attention and controlled motor responses. On the other hand, in the c-CPT, skilled athletes showed better cue facilitation, which permitted a major economy of resources and "automatic" or less controlled responses to relevant stimuli. In conclusion, the present data suggest that motor expertise
The role of physical content in piagetian spatial tasks: Sex differences in spatial knowledge?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Golbeck, Susan L.

Sex-related differences on Piagetian horizontality (water level) and verticality (plumb line) tasks were examined in 64 college students. It was hypothesized that females' difficulties on these Euclidean spatial problems are due not to differences in underlying spatial competence, but rather to differences in knowledge of task specific information about the physical properties of water levels and plumb lines. This was tested by presenting subjects with the standard water level and plumb line problems and also modified problems not requiring knowledge of physical principles (i.e., drawing straight up and down or straight across lines inside tipped rectangles). While males were expected to outperform females on the standard tasks, no sex differences were expected on the modified tasks. Results of an ANOVA on scores for horizontality and verticality each showed main effects for sex and task version but failed to reveal the hypothesized interaction. However, performance on the Euclidean spatial tasks was also considered in terms of overall success versus failure. While males were more successful than females in the standard format, males and females were equally successful in the modified, nonphysical, format. Hence, college aged males and females generally do not differ in spatial competence although they may be differentially influenced by task content. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory and practice. It is emphasized that science educators must be especially aware of such task influences for females so that performance deficits are not mistaken for competence deficits.
Manual lateralization in macaques: handedness, target laterality and task complexity.

PubMed

Regaiolli, Barbara; Spiezio, Caterina; Vallortigara, Giorgio

2016-01-01

Non-human primates represent models to understand the evolution of handedness in humans. Despite several researches have been investigating non-human primates handedness, few studies examined the relationship between target position, hand preference and task complexity. This study aimed at investigating macaque handedness in relation to target laterality and tastiness, as well as task complexity. Seven pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina) were involved in three different "two alternative choice" tests: one low-level task and two high-level tasks (HLTs). During the first and the third tests macaques could select a preferred food and a non-preferred food, whereas by modifying the design of the second test, macaques were presented with no-difference alternative per trial. Furthermore, a simple-reaching test was administered to assess hand preference in a social context. Macaques showed hand preference at individual level both in simple and complex tasks, but not in the simple-reaching test. Moreover, target position seemed to affect hand preference in retrieving an object in the low-level task, but not in the HLT. Additionally, individual hand preference seemed to be affected from the tastiness of the item to be retrieved. The results suggest that both target laterality and individual motivation might influence hand preference of macaques, especially in simple tasks.
Right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex mediates individual differences in conflict-driven cognitive control.

PubMed

Egner, Tobias

2011-12-01

Conflict adaptation--a conflict-triggered improvement in the resolution of conflicting stimulus or response representations--has become a widely used probe of cognitive control processes in both healthy and clinical populations. Previous fMRI studies have localized activation foci associated with conflict resolution to dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC). The traditional group analysis approach employed in these studies highlights regions that are, on average, activated during conflict resolution, but does not necessarily reveal areas mediating individual differences in conflict resolution, because between-subject variance is treated as noise. Here, we employed a complementary approach to elucidate the neural bases of variability in the proficiency of conflict-driven cognitive control. We analyzed two independent fMRI data sets of face-word Stroop tasks by using individual variability in the behavioral expression of conflict adaptation as the metric against which brain activation was regressed while controlling for individual differences in mean RT and Stroop interference. Across the two experiments, a replicable neural substrate of individual variation in conflict adaptation was found in ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC), specifically, in the right inferior frontal gyrus, pars orbitalis (BA 47). Unbiased regression estimates showed that variability in activity in this region accounted for ∼ 40% of the variance in behavioral expression of conflict adaptation across subjects, thus documenting a heretofore unsuspected key role for vlPFC in mediating conflict-driven adjustments in cognitive control. We speculate that vlPFC plays a primary role in conflict control that is supplemented by dlPFC recruitment under conditions of suboptimal performance.
Developmental trends and individual differences in brain systems involved in intertemporal choice during adolescence.

PubMed

Banich, Marie T; De La Vega, Alejandro; Andrews-Hanna, Jessica R; Mackiewicz Seghete, Kristen; Du, Yiping; Claus, Eric D

2013-06-01

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural systems activated during an intertemporal choice task in a group of 14- to 19-year-old adolescents, as well as the relationship of such activation patterns to individual differences in the self-reported ability to engage in nonimmediate thinking (i.e., less impulsive and more future-oriented thoughts and action). With increasing age, there was greater differentiation between patterns of brain activity for immediate versus future choices across three distinct brain systems involved in intertemporal choice--those involved in exerting control over behavior, attributing affective value to choices, and imagining future outcomes. Furthermore, a greater propensity toward self-reported nonimmediate thinking was associated with decreased activity in the systems involved in cognitive control, possibly suggesting that individuals with greater self-reported nonimmediate thinking need to rely less on cognitive control regions during conditions of intertemporal choice. These results highlight the role that both developmental age and individual differences play in influencing neural systems involved in intertemporal choice. Implications for understanding the onset of substance abuse disorders during adolescence are discussed. 2013 APA, all rights reserved
Resting-state functional connectivity in multiple sclerosis: an examination of group differences and individual differences.

PubMed

Janssen, Alisha L; Boster, Aaron; Patterson, Beth A; Abduljalil, Amir; Prakash, Ruchika Shaurya

2013-11-01

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative, inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, resulting in physical and cognitive disturbances. The goal of the current study was to examine the association between network integrity and composite measures of cognition and disease severity in individuals with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), relative to healthy controls. All participants underwent a neuropsychological and neuroimaging session, where resting-state data was collected. Independent component analysis and dual regression were employed to examine network integrity in individuals with MS, relative to healthy controls. The MS sample exhibited less connectivity in the motor and visual networks, relative to healthy controls, after controlling for group differences in gray matter volume. However, no alterations were observed in the frontoparietal, executive control, or default-mode networks, despite previous evidence of altered neuronal patterns during tasks of exogenous processing. Whole-brain, voxel-wise regression analyses with disease severity and processing speed composites were also performed to elucidate the brain-behavior relationship with neuronal network integrity. Individuals with higher levels of disease severity demonstrated reduced intra-network connectivity of the motor network, and the executive control network, while higher disease burden was associated with greater inter-network connectivity between the medial visual network and areas involved in visuomotor learning. Our findings underscore the importance of examining resting-state oscillations in this population, both as a biomarker of disease progression and a potential target for therapeutic intervention. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual Differences in Numeracy and Cognitive Reflection, with Implications for Biases and Fallacies in Probability Judgment.

PubMed

Liberali, Jordana M; Reyna, Valerie F; Furlan, Sarah; Stein, Lilian M; Pardo, Seth T

2012-10-01

Despite evidence that individual differences in numeracy affect judgment and decision making, the precise mechanisms underlying how such differences produce biases and fallacies remain unclear. Numeracy scales have been developed without sufficient theoretical grounding, and their relation to other cognitive tasks that assess numerical reasoning, such as the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), has been debated. In studies conducted in Brazil and in the USA, we administered an objective Numeracy Scale (NS), Subjective Numeracy Scale (SNS), and the CRT to assess whether they measured similar constructs. The Rational-Experiential Inventory, inhibition (go/no-go task), and intelligence were also investigated. By examining factor solutions along with frequent errors for questions that loaded on each factor, we characterized different types of processing captured by different items on these scales. We also tested the predictive power of these factors to account for biases and fallacies in probability judgments. In the first study, 259 Brazilian undergraduates were tested on the conjunction and disjunction fallacies. In the second study, 190 American undergraduates responded to a ratio-bias task. Across the different samples, the results were remarkably similar. The results indicated that the CRT is not just another numeracy scale, that objective and subjective numeracy scales do not measure an identical construct, and that different aspects of numeracy predict different biases and fallacies. Dimensions of numeracy included computational skills such as multiplying, proportional reasoning, mindless or verbatim matching, metacognitive monitoring, and understanding the gist of relative magnitude, consistent with dual-process theories such as fuzzy-trace theory.

Individual Differences in Numeracy and Cognitive Reflection, with Implications for Biases and Fallacies in Probability Judgment

PubMed Central

LIBERALI, JORDANA M.; REYNA, VALERIE F.; FURLAN, SARAH; STEIN, LILIAN M.; PARDO, SETH T.

2013-01-01

Despite evidence that individual differences in numeracy affect judgment and decision making, the precise mechanisms underlying how such differences produce biases and fallacies remain unclear. Numeracy scales have been developed without sufficient theoretical grounding, and their relation to other cognitive tasks that assess numerical reasoning, such as the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), has been debated. In studies conducted in Brazil and in the USA, we administered an objective Numeracy Scale (NS), Subjective Numeracy Scale (SNS), and the CRT to assess whether they measured similar constructs. The Rational–Experiential Inventory, inhibition (go/no-go task), and intelligence were also investigated. By examining factor solutions along with frequent errors for questions that loaded on each factor, we characterized different types of processing captured by different items on these scales. We also tested the predictive power of these factors to account for biases and fallacies in probability judgments. In the first study, 259 Brazilian undergraduates were tested on the conjunction and disjunction fallacies. In the second study, 190 American undergraduates responded to a ratio-bias task. Across the different samples, the results were remarkably similar. The results indicated that the CRT is not just another numeracy scale, that objective and subjective numeracy scales do not measure an identical construct, and that different aspects of numeracy predict different biases and fallacies. Dimensions of numeracy included computational skills such as multiplying, proportional reasoning, mindless or verbatim matching, metacognitive monitoring, and understanding the gist of relative magnitude, consistent with dual-process theories such as fuzzy-trace theory. PMID:23878413
Individual Differences in Human Reliability Analysis

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jeffrey C. Joe; Ronald L. Boring

2014-06-01

While human reliability analysis (HRA) methods include uncertainty in quantification, the nominal model of human error in HRA typically assumes that operator performance does not vary significantly when they are given the same initiating event, indicators, procedures, and training, and that any differences in operator performance are simply aleatory (i.e., random). While this assumption generally holds true when performing routine actions, variability in operator response has been observed in multiple studies, especially in complex situations that go beyond training and procedures. As such, complexity can lead to differences in operator performance (e.g., operator understanding and decision-making). Furthermore, psychological research hasmore » shown that there are a number of known antecedents (i.e., attributable causes) that consistently contribute to observable and systematically measurable (i.e., not random) differences in behavior. This paper reviews examples of individual differences taken from operational experience and the psychological literature. The impact of these differences in human behavior and their implications for HRA are then discussed. We propose that individual differences should not be treated as aleatory, but rather as epistemic. Ultimately, by understanding the sources of individual differences, it is possible to remove some epistemic uncertainty from analyses.« less
BDNF polymorphism predicts the rate of decline in skilled task performance and hippocampal volume in healthy individuals

PubMed Central

Sanchez, M Millan; Das, D; Taylor, J L; Noda, A; Yesavage, J A; Salehi, A

2011-01-01

Numerous studies have indicated a link between the presence of polymorphism in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and cognitive and affective disorders. However, only a few have studied these effects longitudinally along with structural changes in the brain. This study was carried out to investigate whether valine-to-methionine substitution at position 66 (val66met) of pro-BDNF could be linked to alterations in the rate of decline in skilled task performance and structural changes in hippocampal volume. Participants consisted of 144 healthy Caucasian pilots (aged 40–69 years) who completed a minimum of 3 consecutive annual visits. Standardized flight simulator score (SFSS) was measured as a reliable and quantifiable indicator for skilled task performance. In addition, a subset of these individuals was assessed for hippocampal volume alterations using magnetic resonance imaging. We found that val66met substitution in BDNF correlated longitudinally with the rate of decline in SFSS. Structurally, age-dependent hippocampal volume changes were also significantly altered by this substitution. Our study suggests that val66met polymorphism in BDNF can be linked to the rate of decline in skilled task performance. Furthermore, this polymorphism could be used as a predictor of the effects of age on the structure of the hippocampus in healthy individuals. Such results have implications for understanding possible disabilities in older adults performing skilled tasks who are at a higher risk for cognitive and affective disorders. PMID:22833197
Do dyslexic individuals present a reduced visual attention span? Evidence from visual recognition tasks of non-verbal multi-character arrays.

PubMed

Yeari, Menahem; Isser, Michal; Schiff, Rachel

2017-07-01

A controversy has recently developed regarding the hypothesis that developmental dyslexia may be caused, in some cases, by a reduced visual attention span (VAS). To examine this hypothesis, independent of phonological abilities, researchers tested the ability of dyslexic participants to recognize arrays of unfamiliar visual characters. Employing this test, findings were rather equivocal: dyslexic participants exhibited poor performance in some studies but normal performance in others. The present study explored four methodological differences revealed between the two sets of studies that might underlie their conflicting results. Specifically, in two experiments we examined whether a VAS deficit is (a) specific to recognition of multi-character arrays as wholes rather than of individual characters within arrays, (b) specific to characters' position within arrays rather than to characters' identity, or revealed only under a higher attention load due to (c) low-discriminable characters, and/or (d) characters' short exposure. Furthermore, in this study we examined whether pure dyslexic participants who do not have attention disorder exhibit a reduced VAS. Although comorbidity of dyslexia and attention disorder is common and the ability to sustain attention for a long time plays a major rule in the visual recognition task, the presence of attention disorder was neither evaluated nor ruled out in previous studies. Findings did not reveal any differences between the performance of dyslexic and control participants on eight versions of the visual recognition task. These findings suggest that pure dyslexic individuals do not present a reduced visual attention span.
A Location-Based Prompting System to Transition Autonomously through Vocational Tasks for Individuals with Cognitive Impairments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Yao-Jen; Wang, Tsen-Yung; Chen, Yan-Ru

2011-01-01

This study assessed the possibility of training two individuals with cognitive impairments using location-based task prompting system in a supported employment program. This study was carried out according to an ABAB sequence in which A represented the baseline and B represented intervention phases. Data showed that the two participants…
Effects of disease severity and medication state on postural control asymmetry during challenging postural tasks in individuals with Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Barbieri, Fabio A; Polastri, Paula F; Baptista, André M; Lirani-Silva, Ellen; Simieli, Lucas; Orcioli-Silva, Diego; Beretta, Victor S; Gobbi, Lilian T B

2016-04-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of disease severity and medication state on postural control asymmetry during challenging tasks in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Nineteen people with PD and 11 neurologically healthy individuals performed three standing task conditions: bipedal standing, tandem and unipedal adapted standing; the individuals with PD performed the tasks in ON and OFF medication state. The participants with PD were distributed into 2 groups according to disease severity: unilateral group (n=8) and bilateral group (n=11). The two PD groups performed the evaluations both under and without the medication. Two force plates were used to analyze the posture. The symmetric index was calculated for various of center of pressure. ANOVA one-way (groups) and two-way (PD groups×medication), with repeated measures for medication, were calculated. For main effects of group, the bilateral group was more asymmetric than CG. For main effects of medication, only unipedal adapted standing presented effects of PD medication. There was PD groups×medication interaction. Under the effects of medication, the unilateral group presented lower asymmetry of RMS in anterior-posterior direction and area than the bilateral group in unipedal adapted standing. In addition, the unilateral group presented lower asymmetry of mean velocity, RMS in anterior-posterior direction and area in unipedal standing and area in tandem adapted standing after a medication dose. Postural control asymmetry during challenging postural tasks was dependent on disease severity and medication state in people with PD. The bilateral group presented higher postural control asymmetry than the control and unilateral groups in challenging postural tasks. Finally, the medication dose was able to reduce postural control asymmetry in the unilateral group during challenging postural tasks. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Effect of priming cooperation or individualism on a collective and interdependent task: changeover speed in the 4 x 100-meter relay race.

PubMed

Bry, Clémentine; Meyer, Thierry; Oberlé, Dominique; Gherson, Thibault

2009-06-01

Priming effects of cooperation vs. individualism were investigated on changeover speed within a 4 x 100-m relay race. Ten teams of four adult beginner athletes ran two relays, a pretest race and an experimental race 3 weeks later. Just before the experimental race, athletes were primed with either cooperation or individualism through a scrambled-sentence task. Comparing to the pretest performance, cooperation priming improved baton speed in the exchange zone (+30 cm/s). Individualism priming did not impair changeover performance. The boundary conditions of priming effects applied to collective and interdependent tasks are discussed within the implicit coordination framework.
The functional neuroanatomy of multitasking: combining dual tasking with a short term memory task.

PubMed

Deprez, Sabine; Vandenbulcke, Mathieu; Peeters, Ron; Emsell, Louise; Amant, Frederic; Sunaert, Stefan

2013-09-01

Insight into the neural architecture of multitasking is crucial when investigating the pathophysiology of multitasking deficits in clinical populations. Presently, little is known about how the brain combines dual-tasking with a concurrent short-term memory task, despite the relevance of this mental operation in daily life and the frequency of complaints related to this process, in disease. In this study we aimed to examine how the brain responds when a memory task is added to dual-tasking. Thirty-three right-handed healthy volunteers (20 females, mean age 39.9 ± 5.8) were examined with functional brain imaging (fMRI). The paradigm consisted of two cross-modal single tasks (a visual and auditory temporal same-different task with short delay), a dual-task combining both single tasks simultaneously and a multi-task condition, combining the dual-task with an additional short-term memory task (temporal same-different visual task with long delay). Dual-tasking compared to both individual visual and auditory single tasks activated a predominantly right-sided fronto-parietal network and the cerebellum. When adding the additional short-term memory task, a larger and more bilateral frontoparietal network was recruited. We found enhanced activity during multitasking in components of the network that were already involved in dual-tasking, suggesting increased working memory demands, as well as recruitment of multitask-specific components including areas that are likely to be involved in online holding of visual stimuli in short-term memory such as occipito-temporal cortex. These results confirm concurrent neural processing of a visual short-term memory task during dual-tasking and provide evidence for an effective fMRI multitasking paradigm. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in neural responses to social rejection: the joint effect of self-esteem and attentional control

PubMed Central

Hooker, Christine I.; Miyakawa, Asako; Verosky, Sara; Luerssen, Anna; Ayduk, Özlem N.

2012-01-01

Individuals with low self-esteem have been found to react more negatively to signs of interpersonal rejection than those with high self-esteem. However, previous research has found that individual differences in attentional control can attenuate negative reactions to social rejection among vulnerable, low self-esteem individuals. The current fMRI study sought to elucidate the neurobiological substrate of this buffering effect. We hypothesized and found that while looking at scenes of social rejection (vs negative scenes) low self-esteem high attentional control individuals engaged the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), an area of the brain associated with emotional control, more than their low self-esteem low attentional control peers. Furthermore, we found that low self-esteem high attentional control individuals evaluated social rejection as less arousing and less rejecting in a separate behavioral task. Importantly, activation in the rACC fully mediated the relationship between the interaction of self-esteem and attentional control and emotional evaluations, suggesting that the rACC activation underlies the buffering effects of attentional control. Results are discussed in terms of individual differences in emotional vulnerability and protection and by highlighting the role of rACC in emotion regulation. PMID:21609969
Sex differences in mental rotation tasks: Not just in the mental rotation process!

PubMed

Boone, Alexander P; Hegarty, Mary

2017-07-01

The paper-and-pencil Mental Rotation Test (Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978) consistently produces large sex differences favoring men (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). In this task, participants select 2 of 4 answer choices that are rotations of a probe stimulus. Incorrect choices (i.e., foils) are either mirror reflections of the probe or structurally different. In contrast, in the mental rotation experimental task (Shepard & Metzler, 1971) participants judge whether 2 stimuli are the same but rotated or different by mirror reflection. The goal of the present research was to examine sources of sex differences in mental rotation, including the ability to capitalize on the availability of structure foils. In 2 experiments, both men and women had greater accuracy and faster reaction times (RTs) for structurally different compared with mirror foils in different versions of the Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotation Test (Experiment 1) and the Shepard and Metzler experimental task (Experiment 2). A significant male advantage in accuracy but not response time was found for both trial types. The male advantage was evident when all foils were structure foils so that mental rotation was not necessary (Experiment 3); however, when all foils were structure foils and participants were instructed to look for structure foils a significant sex difference was no longer evident (Experiment 4). Results suggest that the mental rotation process is not the only source of the sex difference in mental rotation tasks. Alternative strategy use is another source of sex differences in these tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
Testing cognition in the wild: factors affecting performance and individual consistency in two measures of avian cognition.

PubMed

Shaw, Rachael C

2017-01-01

Developing cognitive tasks to reliably quantify individual differences in cognitive ability is critical to advance our understanding of the fitness consequences of cognition in the wild. Several factors may influence individual performance in a cognitive task, with some being unrelated to the cognitive ability that is the target of the test. It is therefore essential to assess how extraneous factors may affect task performance, particularly for those tasks that are frequently used to quantify individual differences in cognitive ability. The current study therefore measured the performance of wild North Island robins in two tasks commonly used to measure individual differences in avian cognition: a novel motor task and a detour reaching task. The robins' performance in the motor task was affected by prior experience; individuals that had previously participated in a similar task that required a different motor action pattern outperformed naïve subjects. By contrast, detour reaching performance was influenced by an individual's body condition, suggesting that energetic state may affect inhibitory control in robins. Designing tasks that limit the influence of past experience and developing means of standardising motivation across animals tested in the wild remain key challenges to improving current measurements of cognitive ability in birds. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Individual differences in components of impulsivity and effortful control moderate the relation between borderline personality disorder traits and emotion recognition in a sample of university students.

PubMed

Preti, Emanuele; Richetin, Juliette; Suttora, Chiara; Pisani, Alberto

2016-04-30

Dysfunctions in social cognition characterize personality disorders. However, mixed results emerged from literature on emotion processing. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) traits are either associated with enhanced emotion recognition, impairments, or equal functioning compared to controls. These apparent contradictions might result from the complexity of emotion recognition tasks used and from individual differences in impulsivity and effortful control. We conducted a study in a sample of undergraduate students (n=80), assessing BPD traits, using an emotion recognition task that requires the processing of only visual information or both visual and acoustic information. We also measured individual differences in impulsivity and effortful control. Results demonstrated the moderating role of some components of impulsivity and effortful control on the capability of BPD traits in predicting anger and happiness recognition. We organized the discussion around the interaction between different components of regulatory functioning and task complexity for a better understanding of emotion recognition in BPD samples. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
The suppression of scale-free fMRI brain dynamics across three different sources of effort: aging, task novelty and task difficulty.

PubMed

Churchill, Nathan W; Spring, Robyn; Grady, Cheryl; Cimprich, Bernadine; Askren, Mary K; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A; Jung, Mi Sook; Peltier, Scott; Strother, Stephen C; Berman, Marc G

2016-08-08

There is growing evidence that fluctuations in brain activity may exhibit scale-free ("fractal") dynamics. Scale-free signals follow a spectral-power curve of the form P(f ) ∝ f(-β), where spectral power decreases in a power-law fashion with increasing frequency. In this study, we demonstrated that fractal scaling of BOLD fMRI signal is consistently suppressed for different sources of cognitive effort. Decreases in the Hurst exponent (H), which quantifies scale-free signal, was related to three different sources of cognitive effort/task engagement: 1) task difficulty, 2) task novelty, and 3) aging effects. These results were consistently observed across multiple datasets and task paradigms. We also demonstrated that estimates of H are robust across a range of time-window sizes. H was also compared to alternative metrics of BOLD variability (SDBOLD) and global connectivity (Gconn), with effort-related decreases in H producing similar decreases in SDBOLD and Gconn. These results indicate a potential global brain phenomenon that unites research from different fields and indicates that fractal scaling may be a highly sensitive metric for indexing cognitive effort/task engagement.
The suppression of scale-free fMRI brain dynamics across three different sources of effort: aging, task novelty and task difficulty

PubMed Central

Churchill, Nathan W.; Spring, Robyn; Grady, Cheryl; Cimprich, Bernadine; Askren, Mary K.; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A.; Jung, Mi Sook; Peltier, Scott; Strother, Stephen C.; Berman, Marc G.

2016-01-01

There is growing evidence that fluctuations in brain activity may exhibit scale-free (“fractal”) dynamics. Scale-free signals follow a spectral-power curve of the form P(f ) ∝ f−β, where spectral power decreases in a power-law fashion with increasing frequency. In this study, we demonstrated that fractal scaling of BOLD fMRI signal is consistently suppressed for different sources of cognitive effort. Decreases in the Hurst exponent (H), which quantifies scale-free signal, was related to three different sources of cognitive effort/task engagement: 1) task difficulty, 2) task novelty, and 3) aging effects. These results were consistently observed across multiple datasets and task paradigms. We also demonstrated that estimates of H are robust across a range of time-window sizes. H was also compared to alternative metrics of BOLD variability (SDBOLD) and global connectivity (Gconn), with effort-related decreases in H producing similar decreases in SDBOLD and Gconn. These results indicate a potential global brain phenomenon that unites research from different fields and indicates that fractal scaling may be a highly sensitive metric for indexing cognitive effort/task engagement. PMID:27498696
Developmental differences in intra-individual variability in children with ADHD and ASD.

PubMed

van Belle, Janna; van Hulst, Branko M; Durston, Sarah

2015-12-01

Intra-individual variability reflects temporal variation within an individual's performance on a cognitive task. Children with developmental disorders, such as ADHD and ASD show increased levels of intra-individual variability. In typical development, intra-individual variability decreases sharply between the ages 6 and 20. The tight link between intra-individual variability and age has led to the suggestion that it may be marker of neural development. As there is accumulating evidence that ADHD and ASD are characterised by atypical neurodevelopmental trajectories, we set out to explore developmental changes in intra-individual variability in subjects with ADHD and ASD. We used propensity score matching to match a cross-sectional sample of children with ADHD, ASD and control subjects (N = 405, aged 6-19 years old) for age, IQ and gender. We used ex-Gaussian distribution parameters to characterise intra-individual variability on fast responses (sigma) and slow responses (tau). Results showed that there was a similar decrease in mean response times with age across groups, and an interaction between age and group for measures of variability, where there was a much lower rate of change in the variability parameters (sigma and tau) for subjects with ASD compared with the other two groups. Subjects with ADHD had higher intra-individual variability, reflected by both sigma and tau, but the rate of decrease in variability with age was similar to that of the controls. These results suggest that subjects with ADHD, ASD and controls differ in the rate at which intra-individual variability decreases during development, and support the idea that intra-individual variability may be a marker of neural development, mimicking the neurodevelopmental changes in these disorders. © 2015 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
Developmental Trajectories in Toddlers' Self-Restraint Predict Individual Differences in Executive Functions 14 Years Later: A Behavioral Genetic Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Friedman, Naomi P.; Miyake, Akira; Robinson, JoAnn L.; Hewitt, John K.

2011-01-01

We examined whether self-restraint in early childhood predicted individual differences in 3 executive functions (EFs; inhibiting prepotent responses, updating working memory, and shifting task sets) in late adolescence in a sample of approximately 950 twins. At ages 14, 20, 24, and 36 months, the children were shown an attractive toy and told not…
Differences in perceptual learning transfer as a function of training task.

PubMed

Green, C Shawn; Kattner, Florian; Siegel, Max H; Kersten, Daniel; Schrater, Paul R

2015-01-01

A growing body of research--including results from behavioral psychology, human structural and functional imaging, single-cell recordings in nonhuman primates, and computational modeling--suggests that perceptual learning effects are best understood as a change in the ability of higher-level integration or association areas to read out sensory information in the service of particular decisions. Work in this vein has argued that, depending on the training experience, the "rules" for this read-out can either be applicable to new contexts (thus engendering learning generalization) or can apply only to the exact training context (thus resulting in learning specificity). Here we contrast learning tasks designed to promote either stimulus-specific or stimulus-general rules. Specifically, we compare learning transfer across visual orientation following training on three different tasks: an orientation categorization task (which permits an orientation-specific learning solution), an orientation estimation task (which requires an orientation-general learning solution), and an orientation categorization task in which the relevant category boundary shifts on every trial (which lies somewhere between the two tasks above). While the simple orientation-categorization training task resulted in orientation-specific learning, the estimation and moving categorization tasks resulted in significant orientation learning generalization. The general framework tested here--that task specificity or generality can be predicted via an examination of the optimal learning solution--may be useful in building future training paradigms with certain desired outcomes.
Attention bias towards personally relevant stimuli: the individual emotional Stroop task.

PubMed

Wingenfeld, Katja; Bullig, Renate; Mensebach, Christoph; Hartje, Wolfgang; Driessen, Martin; Beblo, Thomas

2006-12-01

The emotional Stroop task is a widely used method for investigating attentional bias towards stimuli due to mood or affect. In general, standardized stimuli are used, which might not be appropriate when investigating individual contextual frameworks. It was investigated whether words chosen to be related to individuals' personal life events would produce more pronounced Stroop interference (as an indicator of attentional bias) than stimuli without any personal relevance. Twenty-six nonclinical subjects, 20 female and 6 male, participated in the study. Mean age was 36.1 yr. (SD = 18.1). All were recruited by means of local advertising. Stimulus material consisted of four word types: personal words related to negative life events with and without current personal relevance, and negative and neutral words without any personal relevance. Words were presented in three blocks. Analysis of variance showed main effects for word type and blocks, with slower reactions in the personally relevant conditions than in the negative, or neutral conditions, and in response to the first blocks as opposed to the last. These findings indicate that regardless of the word valence, personally relevant stimuli evoke more pronounced Stroop interference than do stimuli without personal relevance.
Cross-cultural differences for three visual memory tasks in Brazilian children.

PubMed

Santos, F H; Mello, C B; Bueno, O F A; Dellatolas, G

2005-10-01

Norms for three visual memory tasks, including Corsi's block tapping test and the BEM 144 complex figures and visual recognition, were developed for neuropsychological assessment in Brazilian children. The tasks were measured in 127 children ages 7 to 10 years from rural and urban areas of the States of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Analysis indicated age-related but not sex-related differences. A cross-cultural effect was observed in relation to copying and recall of Complex pictures. Different performances between rural and urban children were noted.
Virtual reality-based navigation task to reveal obstacle avoidance performance in individuals with visuospatial neglect.

PubMed

Aravind, Gayatri; Darekar, Anuja; Fung, Joyce; Lamontagne, Anouk

2015-03-01

Persons with post-stroke visuospatial neglect (VSN) often collide with moving obstacles while walking. It is not well understood whether the collisions occur as a result of attentional-perceptual deficits caused by VSN or due to post-stroke locomotor deficits. We assessed individuals with VSN on a seated, joystick-driven obstacle avoidance task, thus eliminating the influence of locomotion. Twelve participants with VSN were tested on obstacle detection and obstacle avoidance tasks in a virtual environment that included three obstacles approaching head-on or 30 (°) contralesionally/ipsilesionally. Our results indicate that in the detection task, the contralesional and head-on obstacles were detected at closer proximities compared to the ipsilesional obstacle. For the avoidance task collisions were observed only for the contralesional and head-on obstacle approaches. For the contralesional obstacle approach, participants initiated their avoidance strategies at smaller distances from the obstacle and maintained smaller minimum distances from the obstacles. The distance at detection showed a negative association with the distance at the onset of avoidance strategy for all three obstacle approaches. We conclusion the observation of collisions with contralesional and head-on obstacles, in the absence of locomotor burden, provides evidence that attentional-perceptual deficits due to VSN, independent of post-stroke locomotor deficits, alter obstacle avoidance abilities.

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