Accuracy and speed feedback: global and local effects on strategy use

The Effect of Corrective Feedback in Basic Cognitive Tasks: A Study in Early Childhood

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of trial-by-trial corrective feedback in a go-no-go task for children. A sample of 40 preschool students, divided into 4- and 5-year-olds, participated in the study, as well as a group of 20 university students. All the groups performed the task in a counterbalanced design of blocks with and without corrective feedback. Reaction time and accuracy rate were measured as dependent variables. Moreover, reaction time was also analyzed through an ex-Gaussian fit. Children were slightly more accurate and slower under the presence of corrective feedback, suggesting a more conservative pattern. University students were faster, but corrective feedback did not reach the statistical level. Regarding reaction time components, a reduction of the distribution tails, depicted by the τ parameter, was found for both groups under the corrective feedback condition. This suggests that parameterization of reaction time can be considered as a strategy for a more detailed analysis to examine the effect of corrective feedback, even at early ages. In this way, corrective feedback depicted beneficial effects in the τ parameter at early ages, suggesting its use in basic cognitive tasks based on go-no-go but not for older groups.

Cognitive training with modern board and card games in healthy older adults: two randomized controlled trials

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of a cognitive intervention based on modern board and card games.

METHODS

We conducted two two-arm parallel-group, randomized controlled trials. The first one (pilot study) was nonblind. The second one (main study) was a double-blind design. Participants (14 in a pilot study and 35 in the main study) were healthy older adults over 65 years old who were assisting to adult care institutions. In the pilot study, participants in the experimental group (n = 6) played modern board and card games which activated cognitive processes; whereas the control group (n = 6) was in the wait-list condition. In the main study, participants in the experimental group (n = 12) also played modern board and card games; whereas the control group (n = 15) performed standardized paper-and-pencil cognitive tasks. Psychologists specialized in older-people conducted all the interventions. In both studies, intervention sessions were bi-weekly for 5 weeks. The outcomes of both studies were cognitive status and executive functioning, depressive symptomatology, and quality of life measures. All assessment and intervention sessions took place in their habitual centers.

RESULTS

In the pilot study, participants in the games intervention showed a significant improvement in semantic verbal fluency. In the main study, both interventions showed significant improvements in phonemic verbal fluency. Whilst board and card games maintained motor impulsivity control, paper-and-pencil tasks improved speed in an inhibition task.

CONCLUSIONS

Modern board and card games could be an effective cognitive intervention to maintain some cognitive functions.

Pushing to the Limits: What Processes during Cognitive Control are Enhanced by Reaction-Time Feedback?

To respond as quickly as possible in a given task is a widely used instruction in cognitive neuroscience; however, the neural processes modulated by this common experimental procedure remain largely elusive. We investigated the underlying neurophysiological processes combining electroencephalography (EEG) signal decomposition (residue iteration decomposition, RIDE) and source localization. We show that trial-based response speed instructions enhance behavioral performance in conflicting trials, but slightly impair performance in nonconflicting trials. The modulation seen in conflicting trials was found at several coding levels in EEG data using RIDE. In the S-cluster N2 time window, this modulation was associated with modulated activation in the posterior cingulate cortex and the superior frontal gyrus. Furthermore, in the C-cluster P3 time window, this modulation was associated with modulated activation in the middle frontal gyrus. Interestingly, in the R-cluster P3 time window, this modulation was strongest according to statistical effect sizes, associated with modulated activity in the primary motor cortex. Reaction-time feedback mainly modulates response motor execution processes, whereas attentional and response selection processes are less affected. The study underlines the importance of being aware of how experimental instructions influence the behavior and neurophysiological processes.

Problem Solvers Adjust Cognitive Offloading Based on Performance Goals

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.¹ Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal-related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being in a hurry and aiming for a "quick and dirty" solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals-maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively-and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: Participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal-related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal-unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding's generalizability, for example, to settings without feedback or with high mental workload.

The Effect of False Positive Feedback on Learning an Inhibitory-Action Task in Older Adults

Background/Study Context: Older adults show a greater response to feedback whilst learning than younger adults. To date this has only been shown for receiving veridical feedback, but there is evidence that suggests that receiving false positive feedback may further enhance learning. We tested the hypothesis that receiving false positive feedback, being told you are preforming better than expected, would be more advantageous for older than younger adults when learning an inhibitory-action task. Methods: 42 younger and 34 older adults trained to improve their inhibition and response times on the Simon task. They completed 18 training blocks and a retention test two weeks after training. Participants received either false positive feedback or veridical feedback on their performance at the end of each training session and the start of the next session. Those in the false positive feedback group were told they were performing faster than expected. Results: Both older and younger adults improved their inhibition and response times but receiving false positive feedback did not significantly change their rate of learning on these outcomes. However, false positive feedback did impact on accuracy levels with those receiving this type of feedback making fewer errors. Older adults were slower but more accurate than younger adults, but contrary to our hypothesis they did not benefit more from false positive feedback than younger adults. Conclusion: This first direct comparison of the effects of false positive feedback on older and younger adults showed that the positive impact of false positive feedback does not decline with age. We also demonstrated that feedback given about one aspect of a skill (in this case speed) may in fact influence another aspect of the skill (in this case accuracy). This suggests that false positive feedback could be used as a motivational tool to enhance cognitive-motor learning in older adults, but care needs to be taken when using this, as the feedback may not affect the element of the skill at which it is targeted.

The Effect of Corrective Feedback on Performance in Basic Cognitive Tasks: An Analysis of RT Components

The current work examines the effect of trial-by-trial feedback about correct and error responding on performance in two basic cognitive tasks: a classic Stroop task (n = 40) and a color-word matching task (n = 30). Standard measures of both RT and accuracy were examined in addition to measures obtained from fitting the ex-Gaussian distributional model to the correct RTs. For both tasks, RTs were faster in blocks of trials with feedback than in blocks without feedback, but this difference was not significant. On the other hand, with respect to the distributional analyses, providing feedback served to significantly reduce the size of the tails of the RT distributions. Such results suggest that, for conditions in which accuracy is fairly high, the effect of corrective feedback might either be to reduce the tendency to double-check before responding or to decrease the amount of attentional lapsing.

Aging effects in sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects during execution of memory strategies

In this study, we asked young adults and older adults to encode pairs of words. For each item, they were told which strategy to use, interactive imagery or rote repetition. Data revealed poorer-strategy effects in both young adults and older adults: Participants obtained better performance when executing better strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy to encode pairs of concrete words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of abstract words) than with poorer strategies (i.e., interactive-imagery strategy on pairs of abstract words; rote-repetition strategy on pairs of concrete words). Crucially, we showed that sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects (i.e., poorer-strategy effects being larger when previous items were encoded with better relative to poorer strategies), previously demonstrated in arithmetic, generalise to memory strategies. We also found reduced sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects in older adults relative to young adults. Finally, sequential modulations of poorer-strategy effects correlated with measures of cognitive control processes, suggesting that these processes underlie efficient trial-to-trial modulations during strategy execution. Differences in correlations with cognitive control processes were also found between older adults and young adults. These findings have important implications regarding mechanisms underlying memory strategy execution and age differences in memory performance.

Memory avoidance by older adults: When `old dogs' won't perform their `new tricks'

Learning often involves a transition from responding based on an effortful initial strategy to using a faster and easier memory-based strategy. Older adults shift strategy more slowly compared to younger adults. I describe research establishing that age differences in strategy shift are impacted not only by declines in older adults' learning, but also by a volitional avoidance of memory retrieval. I also discuss the factors that influence older adults' memory avoidance, including age differences in understanding the available strategies' relative efficiency, accuracy, and effort, as well as age differences in the preference for a consistent strategic approach. Last, I consider the implications of memory avoidance for older adults' everyday functioning. This research demonstrates that volition and choice must be taken into account when studying cognitive performance and aging.