Arousal, extraversion, and individual differences in resource availability.

Three studies of the effects of extraversion and self-report arousal on attentional task performance were conducted, using sustained attention, visual/memory search, and letter transformation tasks. Differing predictions were derived from the Yerkes-Dodson Law (R. M. Yerkes and J. D. Dodson, 1908) and from M. S. Humphreys and W. Revelle's (see record 1984-16903-001) theory of individual differences in multiple attentional resources. Higher arousal was consistently associated with more efficient performance of demanding versions of the attentional tasks. This finding supports Humphreys and Revelle's hypothesis that arousal is positively associated with the resources required for sustained information transfer. No support for the Yerkes-Dodson Law was found in any study: Relationships between arousal and performance were largely linear. Interactive effects of extraversion and arousal on response criterion were found with self-paced tasks. Extraversion may affect more than 1 type of cognitive process, with the strategic demands of the task influencing the kind of extraversion effect found in any given experiment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence and information processing during an auditory discrimination task with backward masking: An event-related potential analysis.

The relation between mental ability and auditory discrimination ability was examined by recording event-related potentials from 60 women during an auditory oddball task with backward masking. Across conditions that varied in intensity and in the interval between the target and masking stimuli, the higher ability (HA) group exhibited greater response accuracy, shorter response times, larger P3 amplitude, and shorter P3 latency to target stimuli than the lower ability (LA) group. When instructed to ignore the stimuli, the HA group exhibited shorter mismatch negativity latency to deviant tones than the LA group. The greater speed and accuracy of auditory discrimination for the HA group, observed here with multiple measures, is not a consequence of response strategy, test-taking ability, or attention deployment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

An event-related brain potential substrate of disturbed response monitoring in paranoid schizophrenic patients.

Response monitoring in schizophrenic patients and healthy controls was assessed by measuring performance and event-related brain potentials in the flanker priming task. Three visual-context conditions were construed: Flankers and targets pointed either into the same direction or into different directions. Stimuli without any response assignment were used as flankers in the neutral context condition. The schizophrenic patients were further subdivided into paranoid (n?=?19) and nonparanoid (n?=?10) patients and compared with healthy controls (n?=?18). Performance scores revealed that the flankers induced a similar degree of distraction by visual context in all 3 groups. Although the schizophrenic patients showed normal error correction performance, the error negativity (NE) was significantly reduced in paranoid schizophrenic patients. The attenuation of the NE possibly reflects disturbed response monitoring in these patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Imageability effects in word naming: An individual differences analysis.

The present research was designed to extend research by Strain et al (1995) who found that imageability facilitates naming of low-frequency irregular words. The authors hypothesized that the impact of imageability on naming performance will vary with phonological reading ability. For participants who score high in phonological reading ability, the effect of imageability should be seen primarily on naming of low-frequency exception words where the orthography-to-phonology mappings are not strong. For participants who score low in phonological reading ability, the mapping of orthography onto phonology is presumably inefficient for all types of low-frequency words. Accordingly, for these participants, it was predicted that imageability would affect naming of both exception and regular words. 90 college students served as Ss. Exp 1 shows that the impact of imageability on word naming varies with phonological coding skill. In Exp 2, the effect of imageability on naming low-frequency irregular words was shown to occur across an extended set of items. Together, the present findings support the notion that semantics may play a role in phonological coding when the mappings between orthography and phonology are weak. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An individual differences analysis of ability and strategy influences: Age-related differences in associative learning.

The relationships among abilities, strategies, and performance on an associative learning task were investigated for young (aged 17 to 34) and older adults (aged 60 to 82). Participants received extensive practice on a noun-pair task in which they could use a visual-scanning strategy or a memory-retrieval strategy. Older adults were more likely to use the scanning strategy. Age differences were reduced when comparisons were made only for participants using a retrieval strategy. Associative memory was predictive of learning on the task, and semantic memory access speed was predictive of practiced performance. Practiced performance on a memory-search task that also required associative learning was predictive of practiced noun-pair performance. Models of ability-performance relationships for skill acquisition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of visuospatial processing deficits in schizophrenia: An event-related brain potential study.

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a dot enumeration task so as to investigate electrophysiologic correlates of early visuospatial processing in schizophrenia. Twenty-eight patients having a diagnosis of schizophrenia (n?=?19) or schizoaffective disorder (n?=?9) and 28 controls were tested. Patients showed poorer dot enumeration than did controls and also had markedly reduced early negative ERPs, which began about 150 ms after stimulus onset at the peak of the N1 potential and reached its maximum about 275 ms at the N2 peak. The N1 reduction in patients was greatest over left parietal sites for stimuli in the right visual field. The marked N1 and N2 reductions in patients are supportive of models postulating deficits in early visuospatial attention and allocation of conceptual resources in schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neural correlates of individual differences in strategic retrieval processing.

Processes engaged when information is encoded into memory are an important determinant of whether that information will be recovered subsequently. Also influential, however, are processes engaged at the time of retrieval, and these were investigated here by using event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure a specific class of retrieval operations. These operations were revealed by contrasts between ERPs elicited by new (unstudied) test items in distinct tasks, the assumption being that these contrasts index operations that are engaged in service of retrieval and that vary according to the demands of different retrieval tasks. Specific functional accounts of this class of retrieval processing operations assume that they influence the accuracy of memory judgments, and this experiment was designed to test for the first time whether this is in fact the case. Toward this end, participants completed 2 retrieval tasks while ERPs were acquired, and the extent to which processes were engaged differentially across tasks in service of retrieval was operationalized as the magnitude of the differences between the new-item ERPs that were elicited. This measure correlated positively with response accuracy on the tasks, which provides strong evidence that this class of retrieval processing operations benefits the accuracy of memory judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal study of individual differences in cognitive development and scholastic achievement.

Assessed the effectiveness of a battery of commonly used cognitive and psychometric tasks in predicting achievement in reading and arithmetic in Grades 1-3. Tasks were administered to 255 children (mean age, 5.4 yrs) prior to kindergarten. Teachers' ratings were obtained in kindergarten. Combinations of 4 tasks yielded optimal predictions of achievement. More effective prediction could be made from prekindergarten tasks than from teachers' ratings. After Grade 1, the most effective prediction was derived from scores on prior tests of achievement. Relations among various tests of achievement both within and across years and the relation of achievement scores to age, IQ, and parental education were determined. Predictive tasks and teachers' ratings were used to select children who later had difficulty in school. Caution is urged, however, in using prekindergarten tasks to identify children who need extra help. Because prediction is imperfect, such tasks ought not to be used to assign children to special groups. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in the speed and capacity of information processing: II. An electrophysiological approach.

A total of 60 subjects performed different variants of the Sternberg memory search task in an experiment designed to evaluate aging differences in the speed of the human information-processing system. The present study examined the nature of the age-related slowing using convergent methodologies of Sternberg's additive factors logic, the speed-accuracy trade-off, and the P300 component of the event-related brain potential. These methodologies revealed that a substantial component of slowing was manifest in perceptual encoding, response criterion adjustment, and response execution, with a lesser component related to memory search speed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in the speed of processing: A critique.

Questions the assumption that a central processing deficit exists in the speed of performing mental operations by children as compared to adults. Two hypotheses were proposed. First, developmental differences in reaction time need not be due to differences in the speed of elementary mental operations. Data from the Sternberg scanning paradigm are cited as evidence. Second, above and beyond reaction time differences attributable to peripheral processes, further differences can be accounted for by children's use of inefficient processes. Data from qua tification studies are provided as supportive evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contraints on information processing under alcohol in the context of response execution and response suppression.

This study tested the degree that alcohol restricts information processing on tasks requiring response execution and response suppression. A dual task required 12 participants to respond to 2 task stimuli (Tasks 1 and 2) presented in close succession. The task was performed before and after receiving 3 alcohol doses (placebo, 0.45 g/kg, and 0.65 g/kg) administered on separate days in a counterbalanced order. Alcohol increased task interference, as evidenced by increased time to respond to Task 2. Impairment was comparable regardless of whether Task 1 required a response to be executed or suppressed. The evidence supports a resource limitation account that argues that alcohol reduces capacity to process information required for execution and suppression of responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An event-related potential investigation of posthypnotic recognition amnesia.

Forty-two individuals selected for high hypnotizability or for low hypnotizability were taught lists of words during hypnosis and assessed for recognition following hypnosis using event-related potential (ERP) procedures, both before and after the cue to reverse amnesia. A subgroup of low-hypnotizable participants were asked to simulate hypnotic behavior. All participants had larger late positive component (LPC) amplitudes to learned than to unlearned words, regardless of whether amnesia was reported. The highly hypnotizable participants who reported recognition amnesia, however, had significant changes in attention-related (P1 and N1) and recognition-related (N400 and LPC) ERP component amplitudes as a function of whether amnesia was reported. These data suggest that posthypnotic amnesia may involve alterations in the processes of attention, selection, and accessibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improvement predictors in obsessive-compulsive disorder. An event-related potential study

The maturation of HIV-1 virions is accomplished through the proteolytic cleavage of Gag and GagPol precursor polyproteins by the viral-encoded protease (PR). Since virions are assembled from unprocessed polyproteins, the intracellular activation of PR must be limited. An experimental system was established that allows the investigation of the intracellular regulation of PR activity. By expressing Gag in trans with the GagPol precursor, downregulation of the intracellular PR activity associated with GagPol was demonstrated. Inhibition of PR activity was dependent upon the context of PR expression. Sequences capable of mediating this inhibition were localized to capsid. A mechanism through which Gag regulates PR activity is proposed whereby the disproportionate synthesis of Gag inhibits the activation of PR in the cytoplasm. Further elucidation of the mechanism of intracellular inhibition of PR activity may facilitate the development of novel PR inhibitors capable of inhibiting viral replication in vivo.     

Further explorations of perceptual speed abilities in the context of assessment methods, cognitive abilities, and individual differences during skill acquisition.

Measures of perceptual speed ability have been shown to be an important part of assessment batteries for predicting performance on tasks and jobs that require a high level of speed and accuracy. However, traditional measures of perceptual speed ability sometimes have limited cost-effectiveness because of the requirements for administration and scoring of paper-and-pencil tests. There have also been concerns about the validity of previous computer approaches to administering perceptual speed tests (e.g., see Mead & Drasgow, 1993). The authors developed two sets of computerized perceptual speed tests, with touch-sensitive monitors, that were designed to parallel several paper-and-pencil tests. The reliability and validity of the tests were explored across three empirical studies (N = 167, 160, and 117, respectively). The final study included two criterion tasks with 4.67 and 10 hours of time-on-task practice, respectively. Results indicated that these new measures provide both high levels of reliability and substantial validity for performance on the two skill-learning tasks. Implications for research and application for computerized perceptual speed tests are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral facilitation: A cognitive model of individual differences in approach motivation.

Approach motivation consists of the active, engaged pursuit of one's goals. The purpose of the present three studies (N = 258) was to examine whether approach motivation could be cognitively modeled, thereby providing process-based insights into personality functioning. Behavioral facilitation was assessed in terms of faster (or facilitated) reaction time with practice. As hypothesized, such tendencies predicted higher levels of approach motivation, higher levels of positive affect, and lower levels of depressive symptoms and did so across cognitive, behavioral, self-reported, and peer-reported outcomes. Tendencies toward behavioral facilitation, on the other hand, did not correlate with self-reported traits (Study 1) and did not predict avoidance motivation or negative affect (all studies). The results indicate a systematic relationship between behavioral facilitation in cognitive tasks and approach motivation in daily life. Results are discussed in terms of the benefits of modeling the cognitive processes hypothesized to underlie individual differences motivation, affect, and depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional complexity: An individual differences measure.

Describes the development of a scale that measures the complexity of attributional schemata for human behavior—the Attributional Complexity Scale (ACS). In Study 1, the ACS was administered to 289 undergraduates. The results show that the ACS had adequate internal reliability and test–retest reliability, and a factor analysis yielded 1 major factor. Study 2 tested the discriminant and convergent validity of the ACS by administering it to 81 undergraduates. As predicted, attributional complexity was not related to social desirability, academic ability, or internal–external locus of control, but it was positively related to the need for cognition. Study 3 confirmed the prediction that psychology majors (n?=?59) would have more complex attributional schemata than natural science majors (n?=?35). Studies 4 and 5, with 174 Ss, provided evidence for the external validity of the scale: Attributionally complex Ss compared with attributionally simple Ss spontaneously produced more causes for personality dispositions and selected more complex causal attributions for simple behavioral events. Implications for various issues in social cognition are discussed. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The separability of working memory resources for spatial thinking and language processing: An individual differences approach.

The current study demonstrates the separability of spatial and verbal working memory resources among college students, In Experiment 1, we developed a spatial span task that taxes both the processing and storage components of spatial working memory. This measure correlated with spatial ability (spatial visualization) measures, but not with verbal ability measures. In contrast, the reading span test, a common test of verbal working memory, correlates with verbal ability measures, but not with spatial ability measures. Experiment 2, which uses an interference paradigm to cross the processing and storage demands of span tasks, replicates this dissociation and further demonstrates that both the processing and storage components of working memory tasks are important for predicting performance on spatial thinking and language processing tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age changes in processing speed as a leading indicator of cognitive aging.

Bivariate dual change score models were applied to longitudinal data from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging to compare the dynamic predictions of 2-component theories of intelligence and the processing speed theory of cognitive aging. Data from up to 5 measurement occasions covering a 16-year period were available from 806 participants ranging in age from 50 to 88 years at the first measurement wave. Factors were generated to tap 4 general cognitive domains: verbal ability, spatial ability, memory, and processing speed. Model fitting indicated no dynamic relationship between verbal and spatial factors, providing no support for the hypothesis that age changes in fluid abilities drive age changes in crystallized abilities. The results suggest that, as predicted by the processing speed theory of cognitive aging, processing speed is a leading indicator of age changes in memory and spatial ability, but not verbal ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response-monitoring dysfunction in schizophrenia: An event-related brain potential study.

Error-monitoring abnormalities may underlie positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Response-synchronized event-related potentials during picture-word matching yielded error- and correct-response-related negativity (ERN, CRN) and positivity (Pe, Pc) and preresponse lateralized readiness potentials (LRP) from 18 schizophrenic patients and 18 controls. Both groups responded faster to matches than nonmatches, although patients were generally slower and made more errors to nonmatches. Compared with controls, patients, particularly with paranoid subtype, had smaller ERNs and larger CRNs, which were indistinguishable. LRPs showed evidence of more response conflict before errors than before correct responses in controls but not patients. Despite ERN/CRN abnormalities, post-error slowing and Pe were normal in patients, suggesting a dissociation of ERN and error awareness. Anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortical dysfunction in schizophrenia are implicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)