Keeping an Eye on Effort: A Pupillometric Investigation of Effort and Effortlessness in Visual Word Recognition

Pupil Size and Eye Movements Differently Index Effort in Both Younger and Older Adults

The assessment of mental effort is increasingly relevant in neurocognitive and life span domains. Pupillometry, the measure of the pupil size, is often used to assess effort but has disadvantages. Analysis of eye movements may provide an alternative, but research has been limited to easy and difficult task demands in younger adults. An effort measure must be sensitive to the whole effort profile, including "giving up" effort investment, and capture effort in different age groups. The current study comprised three experiments in which younger (n = 66) and older (n = 44) adults listened to speech masked by background babble at different signal-to-noise ratios associated with easy, difficult, and impossible speech comprehension. We expected individuals to invest little effort for easy and impossible speech (giving up) but to exert effort for difficult speech. Indeed, pupil size was largest for difficult but lower for easy and impossible speech. In contrast, gaze dispersion decreased with increasing speech masking in both age groups. Critically, gaze dispersion during difficult speech returned to levels similar to easy speech after sentence offset, when acoustic stimulation was similar across conditions, whereas gaze dispersion during impossible speech continued to be reduced. These findings show that a reduction in eye movements is not a byproduct of acoustic factors, but instead suggest that neurocognitive processes, different from arousal-related systems regulating the pupil size, drive reduced eye movements during high task demands. The current data thus show that effort in one sensory domain (audition) differentially impacts distinct functional properties in another sensory domain (vision).

Applicability and usefulness of pupillometry in the study of lexical access. A scoping review of primary research

Pupil dilation has been associated with the effort required to perform various cognitive tasks. At the lexical level, some studies suggest that this neurophysiological measure would provide objective, real-time information during word processing and lexical access. However, due to the scarcity and incipient advancement of this line of research, its applicability, use, and sensitivity are not entirely clear. This scoping review aims to determine the applicability and usefulness of pupillometry in the study of lexical access by providing an up-to-date overview of research in this area. Following the PRISMA protocol, 16 articles were included in this review. The results show that pupillometry is a highly applicable, useful, and sensitive method for assessing lexical skills of word recognition, word retrieval, and semantic activation. Moreover, it easily fits into traditional research paradigms and methods in the field. Because it is a non-invasive, objective, and automated procedure, it can be applied to any population or age group. However, the emerging development of this specific area of research and the methodological diversity observed in the included studies do not yet allow for definitive conclusions in this area, which in turn does not allow for meta-analyses or fully conclusive statements about what the pupil response actually reflects when processing words. Standardized pupillary recording and analysis methods need to be defined to generate more accurate, replicable research designs with more reliable results to strengthen this line of research.

Word or pseudoword? The lexicality effect in naming and lexical decision tasks during advanced aging

Although there is evidence that recognizing pseudowords is more difficult than recognizing words during childhood, adulthood, and early old age (60-75 years), it is not yet clear what happens during advanced aging or the fourth age, a stage when the decline of fluid intelligence strongly affects processing speed, but a good performance of crystallized intelligence is described through an increase in vocabulary and knowledge. The objective of this study was to determine the lexicality effect in advanced aging, specifically exploring how the ability to recognize words and pseudowords (ortho-phonologically plausible for Spanish) is affected during the third and fourth-ages. The lexicality effect was measured using naming and lexical decision tasks. Response time and accuracy were compared between a fourth-age group (80+ years) and two third-age groups (60-69 and 70-79 years) through linear regression models. The results showed that, in general, the fourth-age group had longer response times and reduced accuracy when recognizing words and pseudowords. Moreover, they showed a significant lexicality effect (which increases from the third- age onwards), reflected in higher costs during pseudoword recognition, especially when the task required more cognitive effort (lexical decision task). These results were consistent with the impact of the deterioration of fluid intelligence on the speed of lexical recognition and with the better performance that crystallized intelligence can generate on accuracy, especially in the early stages of old age. Additionally, this study supports the fact that pseudoword recognition resists cognitive decline, as accentuated deterioration is visualized only after 80 years.

Insights from Eye Blinks into the Cognitive Processes Involved in Visual Word Recognition

Behavioral differences in speed and accuracy between reading familiar and unfamiliar words are well-established in the empirical literature. However, these standard measures of skill proficiency are limited in their ability to capture the moment-to-moment processing involved in visual word recognition. In the present study, the effect of word familiarity was initially investigated using an eye blink rate among adults and children. The probability of eye blinking was higher for familiar (real) words than for unfamiliar (pseudo)words. This counterintuitive pattern of results suggests that the processing of unfamiliar (pseudo)words is more demanding and perhaps less rewarding than the processing of familiar (real) words, as previously observed in both behavioral and pupillometry data. Our findings suggest that the measurement of eye blinks might shed new light on the cognitive processes involved in visual word recognition and other domains of human cognition.

Using Reappraisal to Improve Outcomes for STEM Teachers and Students

The many stressors associated with teaching can take a toll, resulting in high levels of burnout among teachers and reduced motivation and academic performance among students. This is especially true in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Despite the efficacy of emotion regulation interventions in pedagogical settings in general and in STEM teaching in particular, there is a lack of suitable interventions. We applied the process model of emotion regulation to STEM teaching and proposed a framework, STEM-Model of EmotioN regulation: Teachers' Opportunities and Responsibilities (STEM-MENTOR), to elucidate how the high demands of STEM teaching and contextual factors (e.g., culture, reforms, teacher-student interactions) may lead to intensified negative emotions and deficits in executive functioning and emotion regulation implementation. Teacher emotions, in turn, shape students' STEM-related achievements and epistemic emotions. Thus, teachers' emotion regulation skills have pervasive effects on teaching outcomes for both teachers and students. We illustrate how at each level of our framework, steps could be taken to improve teachers' emotional trajectory. Our proposed STEM-MENTOR framework has implications for theoretical understanding and may help to shape future interventions that focus on cognitive-emotional processes in STEM education.

A developmental study of eye movements in Hebrew word reading: the effects of word familiarity, word length, and reading proficiency

Previous studies examining the link between visual word recognition and eye movements have shown that eye movements reflect the time-course of cognitive processes involved in reading. Whereas most studies have been undertaken in Western European languages written in the Roman alphabet, the present developmental study investigates a non-European language-Hebrew, which is written in a non-alphabetic (abjadic) script. We compared the eye-movements of children in Grades 4 to 6 (N = 30) and university students (N = 30) reading familiar real words and unfamiliar (pseudo)words of 3 letters and 5 letters in length. Using linear mixed models, we focused on the effects of word familiarity, word length, and age group. Our results highlight both universal aspects of word reading (developmental and familiarity (lexicality) effects) as well as language-specific word length effect which appears to be related to the unique morphological and orthographic features of the Semitic abjad.

Early child maltreatment and reading processes, abilities, and achievement: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

Children with maltreatment histories demonstrate weaker reading abilities compared to their peers. However, the differential processes driving this effect remain unclear. Prior studies focused on social and behavioral factors explaining this effect, yet reading research has shown that one's ability to comprehend written text is driven by a set of underlying dynamic and interactive cognitive abilities.

OBJECTIVE

This systematic review sought to understand what theoretical or conceptual frameworks researchers cited as guiding their studies, what reading processes and abilities were studied as outcomes, how reading processes or abilities were measured, and what constructs were included to help understand the relationship between maltreatment and reading.

METHOD

Three databases were searched for empirical peer-reviewed journal articles. Articles retained using inclusion and exclusion criteria were coded based on their sample characteristics, reference to theoretical or conceptual frameworks, reading processes and abilities measured, and included predictors of reading. Procedures were documented using the reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement (Moher et al., 2009).

RESULTS

Twenty-seven studies were included in the final systematic review. Those that discussed theoretical or conceptual frameworks focused on the social and behavioral predictors of reading. Many studies (51.9 %) examined effects of maltreatment on reading achievement, rather than specific reading processes or abilities. Most studies (92.6 %) used at least one standardized reading measure. However, only four studies included cognitive abilities as potential predictor variables.

CONCLUSIONS

Future research could benefit from investigating specific cognitive and reading-related processes, using measures to examine specific reading processes leading to breakdowns in reading achievement, and incorporation of reading theories to drive research questions and methods.

A pupillometric study of developmental and individual differences in cognitive effort in visual word recognition

Throughout the history of modern psychology, the neural basis of cognitive performance, and particularly its efficiency, has been assumed to be an essential determinant of developmental and individual differences in a wide range of human behaviors. Here, we examine one aspect of cognitive efficiency—cognitive effort, using pupillometry to examine differences in word reading among adults (N = 34) and children (N = 34). The developmental analyses confirmed that children invested more effort in reading than adults, as indicated by larger and sustained pupillary responses. The within-age (individual difference) analyses comparing faster (N = 10) and slower (N = 10) performers revealed that in both age groups, the faster readers demonstrated accelerated pupillary responses compared to slower readers, although both groups invested a similar overall degree of cognitive effort. These findings have the potential to open up new avenues of research in the study of skill growth in word recognition and many other domains of skill learning.

Neural Basis of the Sound-Symbolic Crossmodal Correspondence Between Auditory Pseudowords and Visual Shapes

Sound symbolism refers to the association between the sounds of words and their meanings, often studied using the crossmodal correspondence between auditory pseudowords, e.g., 'takete' or 'maluma', and pointed or rounded visual shapes, respectively. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, participants were presented with pseudoword-shape pairs that were sound-symbolically congruent or incongruent. We found no significant congruency effects in the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal when participants were attending to visual shapes. During attention to auditory pseudowords, however, we observed greater BOLD activity for incongruent compared to congruent audiovisual pairs bilaterally in the intraparietal sulcus and supramarginal gyrus, and in the left middle frontal gyrus. We compared this activity to independent functional contrasts designed to test competing explanations of sound symbolism, but found no evidence for mediation via language, and only limited evidence for accounts based on multisensory integration and a general magnitude system. Instead, we suggest that the observed incongruency effects are likely to reflect phonological processing and/or multisensory attention. These findings advance our understanding of sound-to-meaning mapping in the brain.