Cognitive Control As a Double-Edged Sword

Monitoring pilot trainees' cognitive control under a simulator-based training process with EEG microstate analysis

The objective of pilot training is to equip trainees with the knowledge, judgment, and skills to maintain control of an aircraft and respond to critical flight tasks. The present research aims to investigate changes in trainees' cognitive control levels during a pilot training process while they underwent basic flight maneuvers. EEG microstate analysis was applied together with spectral power features to quantitatively monitor trainees' cognitive control under varied flight tasks during different training sessions on a flight simulator. Not only could EEG data provide an objective measure of cognitive control to complement the current subjective assessments, but the application of EEG microstate analysis is particularly well-suited for capturing rapid dynamic changes in cognitive states that may happen under complex human activities in conducting flight maneuvers. Comparisons were conducted between two types of tasks and across different training stages to monitor how pilot trainees' cognitive control responds to varied flight task types and training stages. The present research provides insights into the changes in trainees' cognitive control during a pilot training process and highlights the potential of EEG microstate analysis for monitoring cognitive control.

Directing Attention Shapes Learning in Adults but Not Children

Children sometimes learn distracting information better than adults do, perhaps because of the development of selective attention. To understand this potential link, we ask how the learning of children (aged 7-9 years) and the learning of adults differ when information is the directed focus of attention versus when it is not. Participants viewed drawings of common objects and were told to attend to the drawings (Experiment 1: 42 children, 35 adults) or indicate when shapes (overlaid on the drawings) repeated (Experiment 2: 53 children, 60 adults). Afterward, participants identified fragments of these drawings as quickly as possible. Adults learned better than children when directed to attend to the drawings; however, when drawings were task irrelevant, children showed better learning than adults in the first half of the test. And although directing attention to the drawings improved learning in adults, children learned the drawings similarly across experiments regardless of whether the drawings were the focus of the task or entirely irrelevant.

Exploration, Distributed Attention, and Development of Category Learning

Category learning is a crucial aspect of cognition that involves organizing entities into equivalence classes. Whereas adults tend to focus on category-relevant features, young children often distribute attention between relevant and irrelevant ones. The reasons for children's distributed attention are not fully understood. In two category-learning experiments with adults and with children aged 4, 5, and 6 (N = 201), we examined potential drivers of distributed attention, including (a) immature filtering of distractors and (b) the general tendency for exploration or broad information sampling. By eliminating distractor competition, we reduced filtering demands. Despite identifying the features critical for accurate categorization, children, regardless of their categorization performance, continued sampling more information than was necessary. These results indicate that the tendency to sample information extensively contributes to distributed attention in young children. We identify candidate drivers of this tendency that need to be examined in future research.

Some young adults hyper-bind too: Attentional control relates to individual differences in hyper-binding

Hyper-binding - the erroneous encoding of target and distractor information into associative pairs in memory - has been described as a unique age effect caused by declines in attentional control. Previous work has found that, on average, young adults do not hyper-bind. However, if hyper-binding is caused by reduced attentional control, then young adults with poor attention regulation should also show evidence of hyper-binding. We tested this question with an individual differences approach, using a battery of attentional control tasks and relating this to individual differences in hyper-binding. Participants (N = 121) completed an implicit associative memory test measuring memory for both target-distractor (i.e., hyper-binding) and target-target pairs, followed by a series of tasks measuring attentional control. Our results show that on average, young adults do not hyper-bind, but as predicted, those with poor attentional control show a larger hyper-binding effect than those with good attentional control. Exploratory analyses also suggest that individual differences in attentional control relate to susceptibility to interference at retrieval. These results support the hypothesis that hyper-binding in older adults is due to age-related declines in attentional control, and demonstrate that hyper-binding may be an issue for any individual with poor attentional control, regardless of age.

Long-term memory for distractors: Effects of involuntary attention from working memory

In a visual search task, attention to task-irrelevant distractors impedes search performance. However, is it maladaptive to future performance? Here, I showed that attended distractors in a visual search task were better remembered in long-term memory (LTM) in the subsequent surprise recognition task than non-attended distractors. In four experiments, participants performed a visual search task using real-world objects of a single color. They encoded color in working memory (WM) during the task; because each object had a different color, participants directed their attention to the WM-matching colored distractor. Then, in the surprise recognition task, participants were required to indicate whether an object had been shown in the earlier visual search task, regardless of its color. The results showed that attended distractors were remembered better in LTM than non-attended distractors (Experiments 1 and 2). Moreover, the more participants directed their attention to distractors, the better they explicitly remembered them. Participants did not explicitly remember the color of the attended distractors (Experiment 3) but remembered integrated information with object and color (Experiment 4). When the color of the distractors in the recognition task was mismatched with the color in the visual search task, LTM decreased compared to color-matching distractors. These results suggest that attention to distractors impairs search for a target but is helpful in remembering distractors in LTM. When task-irrelevant distractors become task-relevant information in the future, their attention becomes beneficial.

Exploring behavioral adjustments of proportion congruency manipulations in an Eriksen flanker task with visual and auditory distractor modalities

The present study investigated global behavioral adaptation effects to conflict arising from different distractor modalities. Three experiments were conducted using an Eriksen flanker paradigm with constant visual targets, but randomly varying auditory or visual distractors. In Experiment 1, the proportion of congruent to incongruent trials was varied for both distractor modalities, whereas in Experiments 2A and 2B, this proportion congruency (PC) manipulation was applied to trials with one distractor modality (inducer) to test potential behavioral transfer effects to trials with the other distractor modality (diagnostic). In all experiments, mean proportion congruency effects (PCEs) were present in trials with a PC manipulation, but there was no evidence of transfer to diagnostic trials in Experiments 2A and 2B. Distributional analyses (delta plots) provided further evidence for distractor modality-specific global behavioral adaptations by showing differences in the slope of delta plots with visual but not auditory distractors when increasing the ratio of congruent trials. Thus, it is suggested that distractor modalities constrain global behavioral adaptation effects due to the learning of modality-specific memory traces (e.g., distractor-target associations) and/or the modality-specific cognitive control processes (e.g., suppression of modality-specific distractor-based activation). Moreover, additional analyses revealed partial transfer of the congruency sequence effect across trials with different distractor modalities suggesting that distractor modality may differentially affect local and global behavioral adaptations.

Effects of Healthy and Neuropathological Aging on Autobiographical Memory: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using the Autobiographical Interview

OBJECTIVES

A meta-analytic review was conducted to assess the effects of healthy aging, amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer's disease (AD) on naturalistic autobiographical memory using the Autobiographical Interview, a widely used, standardized assessment that derives measures of internal (episodic) and external (nonepisodic) details from freely recalled autobiographical narratives.

METHODS

A comprehensive literature search identified 21 aging, 6 MCI, and 7 AD studies (total N = 1,556 participants). Summary statistics for internal and external details for each comparison (younger vs older or MCI/AD vs age-matched comparison groups) and effect size statistics were extracted and summarized using Hedges' g (random effects model) and adjusted for the presence of publication bias.

RESULTS

The pattern of reduced internal and elevated external details in aging was robust and consistent across nearly all 21 studies. MCI and-to a greater extent-AD were associated with reduced internal details, whereas the external detail elevation faded with MCI and AD. Although there was evidence of publication bias on reporting of internal detail effects, these effects remained robust after correction.

DISCUSSION

The canonical changes to episodic memory observed in aging and neurodegenerative disease are mirrored in the free recall of real-life events. Our findings indicate that the onset of neuropathology overwhelms the capacity of older adults to draw upon distributed neural systems to elaborate on past experiences, including both episodic details specific to identified events and nonepisodic content characteristic of healthy older adults' autobiographical narratives.

The effects of typical ageing on cognitive control: recent advances and future directions

Cognitive control is one of the most fundamental aspects of human life. Its ageing is an important contemporary research area due to the needs of the growing ageing population, such as prolonged independence and quality of life. Traditional ageing research argued for a global decline in cognitive control with age, typically characterised by slowing processing speed and driven by changes in the frontal cortex. However, recent advances questioned this perspective by demonstrating high heterogeneity in the ageing data, domain-specific declines, activity changes in resting state networks, and increased functional connectivity. Moreover, improvements in neuroimaging techniques have enabled researchers to develop compensatory models of neural reorganisation that helps negate the effects of neural losses and promote cognitive control. In this article on typical ageing, we review recent behavioural and neural findings related to the decline in cognitive control among older adults. We begin by reviewing traditional perspectives and continue with how recent work challenged those perspectives. In the discussion section, we propose key areas of focus for future research in the field.

Extra-hippocampal contributions to pattern separation

Pattern separation, or the process by which highly similar stimuli or experiences in memory are represented by non-overlapping neural ensembles, has typically been ascribed to processes supported by the hippocampus. Converging evidence from a wide range of studies, however, suggests that pattern separation is a multistage process supported by a network of brain regions. Based on this evidence, considered together with related findings from the interference resolution literature, we propose the 'cortico-hippocampal pattern separation' (CHiPS) framework, which asserts that brain regions involved in cognitive control play a significant role in pattern separation. Particularly, these regions may contribute to pattern separation by (1) resolving interference in sensory regions that project to the hippocampus, thus regulating its cortical input, or (2) directly modulating hippocampal processes in accordance with task demands. Considering recent interest in how hippocampal operations are modulated by goal states likely represented and regulated by extra-hippocampal regions, we argue that pattern separation is similarly supported by neocortical-hippocampal interactions.

The optimal balance of controlled and spontaneous processing in insight problem solving: fMRI evidence from Chinese idiom guessing

Cognitive control is a key factor in insight generation. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the generation of insight for different cognitive control remain poorly understood. This study developed a parametric fMRI design, wherein hints for solving Chinese idiom riddles were gradually provided in a stepwise manner (from the first hint, H1, to the final hint, H4). By classifying the step-specific items solved in different hint-uncovering steps/conditions, we could identify insightful responses for different levels of spontaneous or controlled processing. At the behavioral level, the number of insightful problem solving trials reached the maximum at a intermediate level of the cognitively controlled processing and the spontaneously idea generating in H3, while the bilateral insular cortex and thalamus showed the robust engagement, implying the function of these regions in making the optimal balance between external hint processing and internal generated ideas. In addition, we identified brain areas, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), angular gyrus (AG), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), and precuneus (PreC), whose activities were parametrically increased with the levels of controlled (from H1 to H4) insightful processing which were increasingly produced by the sequentially revealed hints. Further representational similarity analysis (RSA) found that spontaneous processing in insight featured greater within-condition representational variabilities in widely distributed regions in the executive, salience, and default networks. Altogether, the present study provided new evidence for the relationship between the process of cognitive control and that of spontaneous idea generation in insight problem solving and demystified the function of the insula and thalamus as an interactive interface for the optimal balance of these two processes.

Effects of saccadic eye movements on episodic & semantic memory fluency in older and younger participants

Research has demonstrated that performing a sequence of saccadic horizontal eye movements prior to retrieval facilitates performance on tests of episodic memory. This has been observed in both laboratory tasks of retention and autobiographical memory. To date, the work has centred on performance in younger individuals. This paper extends previous investigations by examining the effects of saccadic eye movements in older persons. Autobiographical episodic and semantic memory fluency was assessed in younger (age range 18-35, mean = 22.50), and older (age range 55-87, mean = 70.35) participants following saccadic (vs. fixation control) manipulations. The main effects of eye movements and age were found for episodic autobiographical memory (greater fluency after eye movements and in younger participants). Semantic autobiographical memory showed a main effect of age (greater fluency in younger participants), whereas general semantic memory showed no effect of age or eye movement. These findings indicate that saccadic horizontal eye movements can enhance episodic personal memory in older individuals. This has implications as a technique to improve autobiographical recollection in the elderly and as an adjunct in reminiscence therapy.

Pay attention and you might miss it: Greater learning during attentional lapses

Attentional lapses have been found to impair everything from basic perception to learning and memory. Yet, despite the well-documented costs of lapses on cognition, recent work suggests that lapses might unexpectedly confer some benefits. One potential benefit is that lapses broaden our learning to integrate seemingly irrelevant content that could later prove useful-a benefit that prior research focusing only on goal-relevant memory would miss. Here, we measure how fluctuations in sustained attention influence the learning of seemingly goal-irrelevant content that competes for attention with target content. Participants completed a correlated flanker task in which they categorized central targets (letters or numbers) while ignoring peripheral flanking symbols that shared hidden probabilistic relationships with the targets. We found that across participants, higher rates of attentional lapses correlated with greater learning of the target-flanker relationships. Moreover, within participants, learning was more evident during attentional lapses. These findings address long-standing theoretical debates and reveal a benefit of attentional lapses: they expand the scope of learning and decisions beyond the strictly relevant.

Aging is associated with maladaptive episodic memory-guided social decision-making

Older adults are frequent targets and victims of financial fraud. They may be especially susceptible to revictimization because of age-related changes in both episodic memory and social motivation. Here we examined these factors in a context where adaptive social decision-making requires intact associative memory for previous social interactions. Older adults made more maladaptive episodic memory-guided social decisions but not only because of poorer associative memory. Older adults were biased toward remembering people as being fair, while young adults were biased toward remembering people as being unfair. Holding memory constant, older adults engaged more with people that were familiar (regardless of the nature of the previous interaction), whereas young adults were prone to avoiding others that they remembered as being unfair. Finally, older adults were more influenced by facial appearances, choosing to interact with social partners that looked more generous, even though those perceptions were inconsistent with prior experience.

Readiness to remember: predicting variability in episodic memory

Learning and remembering are fundamental to our lives, so what causes us to forget? Answers often highlight preparatory processes that precede learning, as well as mnemonic processes during the act of encoding or retrieval. Importantly, evidence now indicates that preparatory processes that precede retrieval attempts also have powerful influences on memory success or failure. Here, we review recent work from neuroimaging, electroencephalography, pupillometry, and behavioral science to propose an integrative framework of retrieval-period dynamics that explains variance in remembering in the moment and across individuals as a function of interactions among preparatory attention, goal coding, and mnemonic processes. Extending this approach, we consider how a 'readiness to remember' (R2R) framework explains variance in high-level functions of memory and mnemonic disruptions in aging.

Age- and Episodic Memory-related Differences in Task-based Functional Connectivity in Women and Men

Aging is associated with episodic memory decline and changes in functional brain connectivity. Understanding whether and how biological sex influences age- and memory performance-related functional connectivity has important theoretical implications for the cognitive neuroscience of memory and aging. Here, we scanned 161 healthy adults between 19 and 76 years of age in an event-related fMRI study of face-location spatial context memory. Adults were scanned while performing easy and difficult versions of the task at both encoding and retrieval. We used multivariate whole-brain partial least squares connectivity to test the hypothesis that there are sex differences in age- and episodic memory performance-related functional connectivity. We examined how individual differences in age and retrieval accuracy correlated with task-related connectivity. We then repeated this analysis after disaggregating the data by self-reported sex. We found that increased encoding and retrieval-related connectivity within the dorsal attention network (DAN), and between DAN and frontoparietal network and visual networks, were positively correlated to retrieval accuracy and negatively correlated with age in both sexes. We also observed sex differences in age- and performance-related functional connectivity: (a) Greater between-networks integration was apparent at both levels of task difficulty in women only, and (b) increased DAN-default mode network connectivity with age was observed in men and was correlated with poorer memory performance. Therefore, the neural correlates of age-related episodic memory decline differ in women and men and have important theoretical and clinical implications for the cognitive neuroscience of memory, aging, and dementia prevention.

Influence of target-distractor neural similarity on working memory performance in older and younger adults

According to the inhibitory deficit hypothesis, older adults often fail to selectively inhibit distractors and attend to relevant information in working memory, leading to poorer memory of target items but better recall of irrelevant distractors compared to younger adults. Here, we explored how neural similarity of activity patterns between relevant and irrelevant stimulus categories impacts memory performance. We found evidence that older adults may benefit from failing to inhibit distractors that are similar to targets, perhaps because sustained neural activation of distractors partially supports maintenance of targets when they share neural resources, allowing for better subsequent recognition of studied target items. We also found increased category-specific multivoxel pattern activity in medial temporal regions in younger compared to older adults as category similarity increased. We propose that this reduced category-specific activation in medial temporal regions in older adults may reflect more blended representations of all the information available in working memory.

Experimental Manipulation of Guided Attention to the Shoulder Movement Task in Clinical Dohsa-hou Induces Shifts in the Reactive Mode and Indicates Flexible Cognitive Control Performance

The empirical basis for self-control in Dohsa-hou as it relates to effects on cognitive processes has been explored in a few studies of the Japanese psychotherapy, but not under standardized conditions with a strong predictive theory of control. This study reports on a series of experiments with the Dual Mechanisms of Control framework to clarify the possible regulatory mechanism of Dohsa-hou by focusing on shoulder movement, a key body movement task used by practitioners across applied settings. Cognitive control was operationalized with the AX version of Continuous Performance Test (AX-CPT) paradigm for proactive control and a modified Stroop task paradigm for reactive control in a 3-arm parallel group trial study design. Healthy Japanese university students were assigned to a Dohsa-hou group that performed a shoulder movement task for few minutes, an active control group that performed a similar task, or a passive control group comprised of a resting condition. A total of 55 participants performed the AX-CPT and 57 participants performed the modified Stroop task before and after the group manipulation. In the AX-CPT, an increase in the error rate of AY (true cue-false probe) trial from pre- to post-test was observed in the passive control group only, and found to be marginally higher in the passive control group relative to Dohsa-hou group at post-test. This indicated that Dohsa-hou moderated the activation of proactive control by repeated AX-CPT performance. The error rate of the Proactive Behavioral Index did not differ from zero at post-test only in the Dohsa-hou group, indicating flexible cognitive control. In the modified Stroop task, there was no difference between congruent and incongruent trials at post-test for the Dohsa-hou group only, indicating the facilitation of reactive control. The evidence for a balancing effect for the Dohsa-hou-based shoulder movement task indicates that clients experience a form of continuous self-monitoring, which might reduce mind-wandering from their focus on movement execution combined with iterative verbal feedback from the therapist. Overall, the results of the present study suggest that the self-regulatory mechanism promoted in clinical Dohsa-hou emphasizes guided shifts in attention to the reactive mode toward a balance of cognitive control.

Network oscillations imply the highest cognitive workload and lowest cognitive control during idea generation in open-ended creation tasks

Design is a ubiquitous, complex, and open-ended creation behaviour that triggers creativity. The brain dynamics underlying design is unclear, since a design process consists of many basic cognitive behaviours, such as problem understanding, idea generation, idea analysis, idea evaluation, and idea evolution. In this present study, we simulated the design process in a loosely controlled setting, aiming to quantify the design-related cognitive workload and control, identify EEG-defined large-scale brain networks, and uncover their temporal dynamics. The effectiveness of this loosely controlled setting was tested through comparing the results with validated findings available in the literature. Task-related power (TRP) analysis of delta, theta, alpha and beta frequency bands revealed that idea generation was associated with the highest cognitive workload and lowest cognitive control, compared to other design activities in the experiment, including problem understanding, idea evaluation, and self-rating. EEG microstate analysis supported this finding as microstate class C, being negatively associated with the cognitive control network, was the most prevalent in idea generation. Furthermore, EEG microstate sequence analysis demonstrated that idea generation was consistently associated with the shortest temporal correlation times concerning finite entropy rate, autoinformation function, and Hurst exponent. This finding suggests that during idea generation the interplay of functional brain networks is less restricted and the brain has more degrees of freedom in choosing the next network configuration than during other design activities. Taken together, the TRP and EEG microstate results lead to the conclusion that idea generation is associated with the highest cognitive workload and lowest cognitive control during open-ended creation task.

Does older adults' cognition particularly suffer from stress? A systematic review of acute stress effects on cognition in older age

This literature review provides the first comprehensive qualitative and quantitative systematic synthesis of acute laboratory stress effects on older adults' cognition by specifying the direction and magnitude of those effects both overall and for different cognitive processes separately. A systematic literature search was performed, and effect sizes estimated whenever possible. We found meta-analytical evidence that stress has negative effects on older adults' verbal fluency (g_adj = -0.53, 95 % CI [-2.70, 1.63]), null-to-negative effects on episodic memory (g_adj = -0.26, 95 % CI [-0.44, -0.08]), null effects on executive functions (g_adj = 0.07, 95 % CI [-0.31, 0.46]), and enhancing effects on working memory (g_adj = 0.16, 95 % CI [-0.01, 0.33]). Relating these findings to those in young adults, notable differences emerged for some cognitive functions, such as opposing effects on working memory between age groups. Our review further reveals that stress effects on older adults' memory retention, associative memory, prospective memory, interference control or cognitive flexibility are heavily understudied. We provide a conceptual and methodological framework for future studies in older adults.

Dissociation of Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Control in Individuals with Schizotypy: An Event-Related Potential Study

OBJECTIVE

Patients with schizophrenia and individuals with schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, have been found to have impairments in cognitive control. The Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control (DMC) framework hypothesises that cognitive control can be divided into proactive and reactive control. However, it is unclear whether individuals with schizotypy have differential behavioural impairments and neural correlates underlying these two types of cognitive control.

METHOD

Twenty-five individuals with schizotypy and 26 matched healthy controls (HCs) completed both reactive and proactive control tasks with electroencephalographic data recorded. The proportion of congruent and incongruent trials was manipulated in a classic colour-word Stroop task to induce proactive or reactive control. Proactive control was induced in a context with mostly incongruent (MI) trials and reactive control in a context with mostly congruent (MC) trials. Two event-related potential (ERP) components, medial frontal negativity (MFN, associated with conflict detection) and conflict sustained potential (conflict SP, associated with conflict resolution) were examined.

RESULTS

There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of behavioural results. In terms of ERP results, in the MC context, HC exhibited significantly larger MFN (360-530 ms) and conflict SP (600-1000 ms) amplitudes than individuals with schizotypy. The two groups did not show any significant difference in MFN or conflict SP in the MI context.

CONCLUSIONS

The present findings provide initial evidence for dissociation of neural activation between proactive and reactive cognitive control in individuals with schizotypy. These findings help us understand cognitive control deficits in the schizophrenia spectrum.

Mindfulness and Behavior Change

Initiating and maintaining behavior change is key to the prevention and treatment of most preventable chronic medical and psychiatric illnesses. The cultivation of mindfulness, involving acceptance and nonjudgment of present-moment experience, often results in transformative health behavior change. Neural systems involved in motivation and learning have an important role to play. A theoretical model of mindfulness that integrates these mechanisms with the cognitive, emotional, and self-related processes commonly described, while applying an integrated model to health behavior change, is needed. This integrative review (1) defines mindfulness and describes the mindfulness-based intervention movement, (2) synthesizes the neuroscience of mindfulness and integrates motivation and learning mechanisms within a mindful self-regulation model for understanding the complex effects of mindfulness on behavior change, and (3) synthesizes current clinical research evaluating the effects of mindfulness-based interventions targeting health behaviors relevant to psychiatric care. The review provides insight into the limitations of current research and proposes potential mechanisms to be tested in future research and targeted in clinical practice to enhance the impact of mindfulness on behavior change.

Relations of Creativity to the Interplay Between High-order Cognitive Functions: Behavioral and Neural Evidence

As a high-order cognitive ability, creativity is viewed as the result of complex interplay between a set of mental processes. However, previous studies have mainly tested one-to-one mutual relations between creativity and other cognitive abilities. It lacks studies to examine whether creativity is related to the interaction between cognitive systems. The current study aimed to fill this gap by testing the relations of creativity to the interactions between cognitive control and episodic memory systems using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. The Alternative Uses Task was used to measure the divergent component of creativity. A computer-based behavioral task was used to measure cognitive control, episodic memory, and their interactions. Additionally, the interactions between cognitive systems were characterized by computing the resting-state functional connectivity between hippocampus and prefrontal regions, which are the neural substrates for episodic memory and cognitive control, respectively. By analyzing these behavioral and neuroimaging data, the behavioral results indicated that creativity was significantly related to the effect of cognitive control induced by switching tasks or proactive cues on subsequent memories of items or sources. Additionally, neuroimaging results showed that creativity was significantly related to the connectivity from hippocampus to both left superior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus. Such relations were also differentiated between anterior and posterior hippocampus. Altogether, these findings suggest that creativity is related to interactions between cognitive control and episodic memory, supporting the claim that creativity is the result of complex interplay between high-order cognitive functions.

Context and attention control determine whether attending to competing information helps or hinders learning in school-aged children

Attention control regulates efficient processing of goal-relevant information by suppressing interference from irrelevant competing inputs while also flexibly allocating attention across relevant inputs according to task demands. Research has established that developing attention control skills promote effective learning by minimizing distractions from task-irrelevant competing information. Additional research also suggests that competing contextual information can provide meaningful input for learning and should not always be ignored. Instead, attending to competing information that is relevant to task goals can facilitate and broaden the scope of children's learning. We review this past research examining effects of attending to task-relevant and task-irrelevant competing information on learning outcomes, focusing on relations between visual attention and learning in childhood. We then present a synthesis argument that complex interactions across learning goals, the contexts of learning environments and tasks, and developing attention control mechanisms will determine whether attending to competing information helps or hinders learning. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Psychology > Learning Psychology > Development and Aging.

Examining the effects of time of day and sleep on generalization

Extracting shared structure across our experiences allows us to generalize our knowledge to novel contexts. How do different brain states influence this ability to generalize? Using a novel category learning paradigm, we assess the effect of both sleep and time of day on generalization that depends on the flexible integration of recent information. Counter to our expectations, we found no evidence that this form of generalization is better after a night of sleep relative to a day awake. Instead, we observed an effect of time of day, with better generalization in the morning than the evening. This effect also manifested as increased false memory for generalized information. In a nap experiment, we found that generalization did not benefit from having slept recently, suggesting a role for time of day apart from sleep. In follow-up experiments, we were unable to replicate the time of day effect for reasons that may relate to changes in category structure and task engagement. Despite this lack of consistency, we found a morning benefit for generalization when analyzing all the data from experiments with matched protocols (n = 136). We suggest that a state of lowered inhibition in the morning may facilitate spreading activation between otherwise separate memories, promoting this form of generalization.

Electrophysiological signature of suppression of competitors during interference resolution

The electrophysiological evidence for suppression to date primarily draws upon traditional retrieval-induced forgetting and Think/No-Think paradigms, which involve strategic and intentional restriction of thought. Here event-related potential (ERP) signatures of suppression were examined using a novel task, which unlike traditional paradigms, does not include an initial priming step or intentional thought restraint. Participants were instructed to verbally generate semantically related responses to cue words (e.g., "PIZZA"), and unrelated responses to others. According to an inhibitory account of interference resolution, semantic competition from automatically activated target words must be resolved in order to generate an unrelated response, whereas no resolution is required for generating related responses. In a subsequent phase, accessibility for target words (e.g., "PEPPERONI") that required suppression, words that did not require suppression, as well as new control words was measured using a lexical decision task. We observed a sustained late positivity for unrelated responses in the generation task, and early negative amplitudes of suppressed items in the lexical decision task. These findings are consistent with inhibitory mechanisms operating at retrieval to suppress competitors and show that such processes operate on automatically activated items that are not presented in the context of an experiment, representative of retrieval situations that occur in everyday life.

Prefrontal Cortex Activation During Motor Sequence Learning Under Interleaved and Repetitive Practice: A Two-Channel Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Training under high interference conditions through interleaved practice (IP) results in performance suppression during training but enhances long-term performance relative to repetitive practice (RP) involving low interference. Previous neuroimaging work addressing this contextual interference effect of motor learning has relied heavily on the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methodology resulting in mixed reports of prefrontal cortex (PFC) recruitment under IP and RP conditions. We sought to clarify these equivocal findings by imaging bilateral PFC recruitment using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while discrete key pressing sequences were trained under IP and RP schedules and subsequently tested following a 24-h delay. An advantage of fNIRS over the fMRI BOLD response is that the former measures oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin changes independently allowing for assessment of cortical hemodynamics even when there is neurovascular decoupling. Despite slower sequence performance durations under IP, bilateral PFC oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin values did not differ between practice conditions. During test, however, slower performance from those previously trained under RP coincided with hemispheric asymmetry in PFC recruitment. Specifically, following RP, test deoxygenated hemoglobin values were significantly lower in the right PFC. The present findings contrast with previous behavioral demonstrations of increased cognitive demand under IP to illustrate a more complex involvement of the PFC in the contextual interference effect. IP and RP incur similar levels of bilateral PFC recruitment, but the processes underlying the recruitment are dissimilar. PFC recruitment during IP supports action reconstruction and memory elaboration while RP relies on PFC recruitment to maintain task variation information in working memory from trial to trial. While PFC recruitment under RP serves to enhance immediate performance, it does not support long-term performance.

Disruption of the Prefrontal Cortex Improves Implicit Contextual Memory-Guided Attention: Combined Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

Many studies have shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) plays an important role in top-down cognitive control over intentional and deliberate behavior. However, recent studies have reported that DLPFC-mediated top-down control interferes with implicit forms of learning. Here we used continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) combined with electroencephalography to investigate the causal role of DLPFC in implicit contextual memory-guided attention. We aimed to test whether transient disruption of the DLPFC would interfere with implicit learning performance and related electrical brain activity. We applied neuronavigation-guided cTBS to the DLPFC or to the vertex as a control region prior to the performance of an implicit contextual learning task. We found that cTBS applied over the DLPFC significantly improved performance during implicit contextual learning. We also noted that beta-band (13-19 Hz) oscillatory power was reduced at fronto-central channels about 140 to 370 ms after visual stimulus onset in cTBS DLPFC compared with cTBS vertex. Taken together, our results provide evidence that DLPFC-mediated top-down control interferes with contextual memory-guided attention and beta-band oscillatory activity.

Neural Correlates of Enhanced Memory for Meaningful Associations with Age

Evidence suggests that age differences in associative memory are attenuated for associations that are consistent with prior knowledge. Such knowledge structures have traditionally been associated with the default network (DN), which also shows reduced modulation with age. In the present study, we investigated whether DN activity and connectivity patterns could account for this age-related effect. Younger and older adults underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging as they learned realistic and unrealistic prices of common grocery items. Both groups showed greater activity in the DN during the encoding of realistic, relative to unrealistic, prices. Moreover, DN activity at encoding and retrieval and its connectivity with an attention control network at encoding were associated with enhanced memory for realistic prices. Finally, older adults showed overactivation of control regions during retrieval of realistic prices relative to younger adults. Our findings suggest that DN activity and connectivity patterns (traditionally viewed as indicators of cognitive failure with age), and additional recruitment of control regions, might underlie older adults' enhanced memory for meaningful associations.

An Incidental Learning Method to Improve Face-Name Memory in Older Adults With Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

OBJECTIVE

Forgetting names is a common memory concern for people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and is related to explicit memory deficits and pathological changes in the medial temporal lobes at the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In the current experiment, we tested a unique method to improve memory for face-name associations in people with aMCI involving incidental rehearsal of face-name pairs.

METHOD

Older adults with aMCI and age- and education-matched controls learned 24 face-name pairs and were tested via immediate cued recall with faces as cues for associated names. During a 25- to 30-min retention interval, 10 of the face-name pairs reappeared as a quarter of the items on a seemingly unrelated 1-back task on faces, with the superimposed names irrelevant to the task. After the delay, surprise delayed cued recall and forced-choice associative recognition tests were administered for the face-name pairs.

RESULTS

Both groups showed reduced forgetting of the names that repeated as distraction and enhanced recollection of these pairs.

CONCLUSIONS

The results demonstrate that passive methods to prompt automatic retrieval of associations may hold promise as interventions for people with early signs of AD.

Spontaneous Distractor Reactivation With Age: Evidence for Bound Target-Distractor Representations in Memory

Reduced attentional control with age is associated with the processing and maintenance of task-irrelevant information in memory. Yet the nature of these memory representations remains unclear. We present evidence that, relative to younger adults (n = 48), older adults (n = 48) both (a) store simultaneously presented target and irrelevant information as rich, bound memory representations and (b) spontaneously reactivate irrelevant information when presented with previously associated targets. In a three-stage implicit reactivation paradigm, re-presenting a target picture that was previously paired with a distractor word spontaneously reactivated the previously associated word, making it become more accessible than an unreactivated distractor word in a subsequent implicit memory task. The accessibility of reactivated words, indexed by priming, was also greater than the degree of distractor priming shown by older adults in a control condition (n = 48). Thus, reduced attentional control influences the processing and representation of incoming information.

Are bored minds more likely to be addicted? The relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use

BACKGROUND

Boredom proneness has been demonstrated as a salient vulnerability factor for problematic mobile phone use. However, the mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying this relationship are less investigated. In the current study, we constructed an integrative moderated mediation model to test the mediating role of depression and the moderating role of attentional control in the relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use.

METHOD

A total of 1099 college students (M_age = 20.04; SD = 1.25) were recruited to fill out the questionnaires measuring boredom proneness, depression, problematic mobile phone use, and attentional control.

RESULTS

Depression partially mediated the relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use. Attentional control moderated the indirect relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use through depression, with the indirect relationship being weaker for college students with higher levels of attentional control. Moreover, attentional control moderated the direct relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use, in that this relationship was stronger for college students with higher levels of attentional control.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings illuminate the pathway through which boredom proneness is linked to problematic mobile phone use (i.e., mediation) and the condition on which the relationship between boredom proneness and problematic mobile phone use depends (i.e., moderation). More importantly, this study revealed the potential "double-edged sword" effect of attentional control. These findings have implications for early intervention and prevention of problematic mobile phone use in college students.

Age differences in cross-task bleeding

The present study investigated age-related differences in the ability to constrain attention to the current task, without contamination (bleeding) from an upcoming decision. Each experiment included two blocks of trials. During Block 1, participants initially incidentally encoded a list of high- and low-frequency words, after which they pronounced aloud the studied words intermixed with a new set of words during a test phase. Block 2 was identical to Block 1 with the exception that after pronouncing each word aloud, participants made an additional decision (episodic recognition decision in Experiments 1 and 2 and animacy decision in Experiment 3). In the first two experiments, older adults showed disproportionate slowing in their response times to pronounce the words when they additionally had to make a recognition judgment afterward (Block 2) compared to when they only pronounced the words aloud (Block 1). Importantly, the difference between high-frequency and low-frequency words (the word frequency effect) was disproportionately attenuated for older adults in Block 2 compared to Block 1 and compared to younger adults. These results suggest that older adults experience greater cross-task bleeding than younger adults because word frequency has opposing effects in pronunciation and recognition tasks. As predicted, this age modulation of the word frequency effect in pronunciation performance was not replicated in Experiment 3 when participants made an animacy judgment, wherein word frequency effects act in concert with those of the pronunciation task. Discussion focuses on age-related differences in the ability to constrain attention to a current task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Age differences in vulnerability to distraction under arousal

Aging affects brain circuitry involved in both inhibition and arousal. In this study, we tested whether older adults are more or less prone to distraction from emotionally arousing events than young adults. To do so, we examined how arousing taboo distractor words affected concurrent 1-back task performance and subsequent memory for distractors. Our second goal was to examine how the arousal level of 1 item can modulate processing of preceding neutral distractors (taboo-minus-1 distractors). During the task, participants first made 1-back judgments about target pictures that were superimposed with to-be-ignored neutral or taboo distractors. Relative to young adults, older adults were more distracted by taboo than neutral words on the 1-back task and remembered more of the taboo distractors on a later incidental recognition task. Furthermore, young adults showed better suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors than neutral distractors, whereas in older adults, arousal did not facilitate suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors. This effect appeared to require attentional control as adding an unrelated attentional load during the 1-back task eliminated the beneficial effect of arousal for young adults' suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors. Finally, when top-down attentional guidance was provided by increasing the goal relevance of target pictures, both groups showed enhanced suppression of taboo-minus-1 distractors versus other neutral distractors. Together, these findings imply that the effect of arousal on distractibility in aging may arise from an interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Dual mechanisms of cognitive control in mindful individuals

Not much research has adopted a multicomponent approach to examine the relationship between mindfulness and cognitive control. Studies addressing this issue have produced mixed results that may be due to the incorporation of different questionnaires to assess mindfulness and to the assessment of different stages and types of mindfulness itself. In the present study, we aimed to investigate to which extent dispositional mindfulness relates to a dynamic use of control modes as understood from the dual mechanisms of control theory. Further, we aimed to test this hypothesis by including two different frequently used mindfulness questionnaires in order to explore their confluence. Hundred thirty young adults completed two well-established assessment tools of mindfulness (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale and Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire) and two well-validated experimental tasks measuring proactive/reactive control modes (AX-Continuous Performance Task and Cued Task-Switching Paradigm). The data analyses were performed considering the continuous values in multiple regression analyses, as it is thought to better capture individual differences. The results replicate the previous findings suggesting that mindful individuals tend to use proactive and reactive control in a balanced manner in comparison to low mindfulness individuals, who tend to rely more on proactive control. Moreover, mindful individuals showed greater flexibility when the two processing modes were available. Hence, the major effects were found by using the two questionnaires. Altogether our findings indicate that mindful individuals, who have been characterized by an enhanced focus on the present moment without judgment, are less attached to the previous contextual information, which allows them to exhibit a more flexible performance.

Implicit associative memory remains intact with age and extends to target-distractor pairs

In this study, we use a novel, implicit memory paradigm to test forhyper-binding, or older adults' tendency to form non-target associations. Participants viewed pictures of objects superimposed with text and made speeded categorization judgments about the objects across three blocks varying in binding demand. During the no- and some-binding blocks, participants decided if the pictured object alone could fit inside a drawer while ignoring superimposed non-words and words, respectively. During the full-binding block, participants decided if both items could fit inside a drawer together. At test, participants viewed intact and rearranged pairs from encoding and decided if both items could fit in a drawer together. Across two experiments, older adults responded faster to intact than rearranged pairs from both the some- and full-binding blocks, while young adults showed no difference in RTs. These findings suggest that implicit associative memory is preserved with age and extends to non-target information.

Charting the contributions of cognitive flexibility to creativity: Self-guided transitions as a process-based index of creativity-related adaptivity

Creativity is pivotal to solving complex problems of many kinds, yet how cognitive flexibility dynamically supports creative processes is largely unexplored. Despite being a crucial multi-faceted contributor in creative thinking, cognitive flexibility, as typically assessed, does not fully capture how people adaptively shift between varying or persisting in their current problem-solving efforts. To fill this theoretical and methodological gap, we introduce a new operationalization of cognitive flexibility: the process-based Self-Guided Transition (SGT) measures, which assess when participants autonomously choose to continue working on one of two concurrently presented items (dwell length) and how often they choose to switch between the two items (shift count). We examine how these measures correlate with three diverse creativity tasks, and with creative performance on a more complex "garden design" task. Analyses of the relations between these new cognitive flexibility measures in 66 young adults revealed that SGT dwell length positively correlated with creative performance across several tasks. The SGT shift count positively correlated with within-task performance for a two-item choice task tapping divergent thinking (Alternative Uses Task) but not for a two-item choice task calling on convergent thinking (Anagram task). Multiple regression analyses revealed that, taken together, both the shift count and dwell length measures from the Alternative Uses Task explained a significant proportion of variance in measures of fluency, and originality, on a composite measure of the three independently-assessed creative tasks. Relations of SGTs to the Garden Design task were weaker, though shift count on the Alternative Uses Task was predictive of a composite measure of overall Garden Design quality. Taken together, these results highlight the promise of our new process-based measures to better chart the dynamically flexible processes supporting creative thinking and action.

Creativity on tap 2: Investigating dose effects of alcohol on cognitive control and creative cognition

This preregistered study aimed to replicate and extend research on the role of cognitive control in creative cognition by examining dose effects of alcohol in a randomized controlled trial. A sample of 125 participants was randomly assigned to three experimental groups, either drinking alcoholic beer (BAC = 0.03 or 0.06) or drinking non-alcoholic beer (placebo-control group). Before and after the alcohol intervention, participants completed two tests of cognitive control and two established creative thinking tasks. A BAC of 0.06 led to an impairment of verbal fluency, while working memory performance was unaffected at both alcohol levels. Alcohol had no facilitative or detrimental effects on creative thinking performance, neither in terms of RAT performance, divergent thinking fluency or divergent thinking creativity. These results indicate that moderate alcohol levels have dose-dependent, selective effects on cognitive control, and that minor impairments of cognitive control do not generally increase or attenuate creative thinking performance.

When working memory mechanisms compete: Predicting cognitive flexibility versus mental set

Cognitive flexibility is a hallmark of individuals with higher working memory capacity (WMC). Yet, individuals with higher WMC sometimes demonstrate greater rigidity in problem solving. The present research examines a novel account for these contradictory findings-that different WMC mechanisms support versus constrain cognitive flexibility. Across three studies, participants completed the water jug task-a problem-solving task requiring them to first establish and then break mental set. Predictor measures targeted three WMC mechanisms: attention control, primary memory, and secondary memory. In Study 1, primary and secondary memory predicted breaking mental set in opposite directions. Higher primary memory facilitated breaking mental set, whereas higher secondary memory hindered it. Study 2 demonstrated that attention control moderates these effects. Study 3 replicated these results using a less restrictive sampling procedure (i.e., participants were provided the strategy needed to establish mental set). The present research supports the proposed theory of functional opponency in WMC.

Physical Activity Modulates the Effect of Cognitive Control on Episodic Memory

Physical activity may improve cognitive control and episodic memory. Cognitive control could exert positive or negative influences on episodic memory. This study aimed to test whether physical activity modulated the effect of proactive and reactive control on episodic memory. Participants reported their physical activity in the past week, encoded episodic memory incidentally in proactive and reactive conditions, and subsequently retrieved their memories of items and sources. Subsequent item memory was better when items were encoded in proactive vs. reactive condition. Smaller condition difference in subsequent item memory was related to better cognitive control ability. Cognitive control completely mediated the relation between physical activity and the condition difference in subsequent item memory. Additionally, condition difference in subsequent source memory was negatively related to cognitive control. After controlling for cognitive control, greater physical activity was positively related to the difference in subsequent source memory between proactive and reactive conditions. Altogether, the findings suggested that physical activity modulated the effect of proactive and reactive control on subsequent item memory through improving cognitive control ability, but it was independent of cognitive control for subsequent source memory.

Individual differences in selective attention and scanning dynamics influence children's learning from relevant non-targets in a visual search task

Efficient selective attention is critical for engaging in task-oriented behavior but may also limit our processing of potentially meaningful, task-irrelevant details. Both older adults and younger children demonstrate poor selective attention skills but show increased processing of task-irrelevant information. This broader attention to non-targets can benefit learning among older adults when the non-target information is relevant to a primary learning goal. Although young children show similar patterns of attention to non-targets, it is unknown whether relevant non-targets similarly benefit their learning. This study examined the relationship between 4- to 8-year-old children's selective attention skills and their learning from incidental exposure to relevant non-targets. In Experiment 1, children completed an incidental encoding phase, followed by a visual search task and then a final recognition memory task. During the search task, participants identified a target within arrays containing 0, 5, 10, or 15 non-targets. Half of the images from the encoding phase appeared in the search as "relevant" non-targets, whereas the remainder never appeared during the search task. Participants showed better memory for images presented as relevant non-targets. However, children showed the largest memory benefit when efficient selective attention allowed for increased scanning of the relevant non-targets after target detection. Experiment 2 confirmed that children showed similarly efficient selective attention skills but no longer showed enhanced learning when they could not scan relevant non-targets following target detection. These results suggest that children's incidental learning from relevant non-targets is an active process that depends on how children use selective attention to engage in effective information gathering.

The effect of emotional distraction on hyper-binding in young and older adults

Our cognitive system implicitly binds relevant stimulus features into a coherent episodic event. According to past research, relative to young adults, older adults are more likely to hyper-bind extraneous co-occurrences and tend to prioritise positive over negative information. However, the interaction of these cognitive and emotional processes is unknown. The current study thus examined the influence of emotion on age-related hyper-binding. Participants completed a 1-back task for neutral target pictures paired with positive, negative, or neutral distractor words. After a delay, participants completed a paired-associate learning task for pairs that were either preserved or disrupted from the 1-back task, followed by a cued-recall test for those pairs. Compared to young adults, older adults showed better recall of preserved neutral pairs relative to disrupted neutral pairs, replicating the age-related hyper-binding effect. Interestingly, whereas older adults did not hyper-bind emotional pairs, young adults showed hyper-binding of negative pairs, but not positive or neutral. This implies that young adults may also implicitly bind irrelevant co-occurrences when they include negative information. Consistent with a negativity bias in youth, negative words may have captured young adults' attention, facilitating binding of pairs. These findings highlight the need to consider emotional effects on age differences in cognitive processing.

When Gist and Familiarity Collide: Evidence From False Recognition in Younger and Older Adults

OBJECTIVES

Aging is associated with decreased recollection required to offset misleading effects of familiarity, as well as an increased mnemonic reliance on gist-based over detail-based information. We tested the novel hypothesis that age-related decrements in overriding familiarity can be eliminated under conditions in which gist-based information facilitates retrieval.

METHOD

Twenty-seven younger adults and 27 older adults viewed scenes from two categories in an incidental encoding phase. In a recognition phase, old scenes were intermixed with new scenes from the studied categories and an unstudied category, with each new scene reappearing after 4, 18, or 48 intervening scenes. Participants were to respond "yes" to old scenes, and "no" to new scenes, including their repetitions.

RESULTS

Despite encoding the scenes similarly, older adults made more false endorsements of new and repeated new scenes from studied categories. Both groups, however, were equally unlikely to falsely recognize new and repeated new scenes from the unstudied category.

DISCUSSION

When helpful gist and misleading familiarity collide, gist wins, and eliminates age-related increases in false recognition.

Neural and neuronal discoordination in schizophrenia: From ensembles through networks to symptoms

Despite the substantial knowledge accumulated by past research, the exact mechanisms of the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and causal treatments still remain unclear. Deficits of cognition and information processing in schizophrenia are today often viewed as the primary and core symptoms of this devastating disorder. These deficits likely result from disruptions in the coordination of neuronal and neural activity. The aim of this review is to bring together convergent evidence of discoordinated brain circuits in schizophrenia at multiple levels of resolution, ranging from principal cells and interneurons, neuronal ensembles and local circuits, to large-scale brain networks. We show how these aberrations could underlie deficits in cognitive control and other higher order cognitive-behavioural functions. Converging evidence from both animal models and patients with schizophrenia is presented in an effort to gain insight into common features of deficits in the brain information processing in this disorder, marked by disruption of several neurotransmitter and signalling systems and severe behavioural outcomes.