An aptitude–treatment interaction approach to transfer within training.

The issues of skill specificity and transfer of training were examined from an aptitude–treatment interaction approach. The current investigations extended A. M. Sullivan's (1964) approach by using a procedural transfer task and training conditions that differed in amount of training task practice and the degree of training task similarity to the transfer task. Two experiments were conducted with 232 college students. Experiment 1 examined the effects of a length-of-training manipulation on reasoning ability and transfer task performance relationships, and on the amount of transfer. Experiment 2 evaluated the effects of 2 training tasks that differed in terms of similarity to the transfer task on ability-performance relationships and the amount of transfer. Results suggest that Sullivan's approach partially generalizes to the acquisition of procedural knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Specificity of practice: Interaction between concurrent sensory information and terminal feedback.

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated a potential interaction involving the processing of concurrent feedback using design features from the specificity of practice literature and the processing of terminal feedback using a manipulation from the guidance hypothesis literature. In Experiment 1, participants produced (198 trials) flexion-extension movements to reproduce a specific pattern of displacement over time with or without vision of the limb position and with 100% or 33% knowledge of results (KR) frequency. The transfer test was performed without vision and KR. In Experiment 2, the authors assessed whether sensory information processing was modulated by the amount of practice. Participants performed 54 or 396 trials under a 100% or a 33% KR frequency with vision before being transferred to a no-vision condition without KR. Results of both experiments indicated that the Vision-33% condition suffered a larger detrimental effect of withdrawing visual information than the Vision-100% condition. Experiment 2 indicated that this detrimental effect increased with practice. These results indicated the reduction in terminal feedback prompted participants to more deeply process the concurrent visual information thus reinforcing their dependency on the visual information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensional analysis of motion: IX. Comparison of visual and nonvisual control of component movements.

Twelve Ss practiced a knob-turning control panel task while blindfolded, and another 12 without blindfolds. A final set of trials was run in which the visual conditions were reversed for the Ss. Time of travel (hand movement) to reach the knobs, and time of manipulation, were recorded electronically. For both components, the non-blindfold group did better; practice did not compensate for loss of vision. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of cue changes and task changes on task-set selection costs.

A task-switching paradigm with a 2:1 mapping between cues and tasks was used to separate cue-switching processes (indexed through pure cue-switch costs) from actual task-switching processes (indexed through additional costs in case of cue and task changes). A large portion of total switch costs was due to cue changes (Experiments 1 and 2), and cue-switch costs but not task-switch costs were sensitive to effects of practice (Experiment 1) and preparation (Experiment 2). In contrast, task-switch costs were particularly sensitive to response-priming effects (Experiments 1 and 2) and task-set inhibition (Experiment 3). Results suggest two processing stages relevant during task-set selection: cue-driven retrieval of task rules from long-term memory and the automatic application of rules to a particular stimulus situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forward and backward repetition blindness in speed and accuracy.

Repetition blindness (RB) was investigated in a new paradigm in which effects could stem from items preceding or following a target. Speeded-response tasks were used in which 3 critical items (C1, C2, and C3) were sequentially presented on each trial. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to judge whether C2 (the target) was present on each trial. Forward RB was examined in Experiment 1 via manipulation of whether C1 and C2 were repeated and backward RB was probed in Experiment 2 via manipulation of whether C2 and C3 were repeated. RB was successfully demonstrated in both experiments: Target presence judgments were slower and less accurate with repeated conditions than with unrepeated conditions. Experiment 3 involved a semantic categorization task in which participants had to judge whether C2 was a letter or a digit. Manipulating forward and backward repetition produced reliable effects on both reaction times and accuracy. The results are consistent with the idea that RB is due to failure in token individualization rather than type refractory problems or failure in memory retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociable onset of cognitive and motivational dysfunctions following neonatal lesions of the ventral hippocampus in rats.

This research examined cognitive and motivational processes at different developmental stages in rats with neonatal ventral hippocampus (VH) lesions, an approach used to model schizophrenia. In Experiment 1, performance in a T-maze alternation task was assessed on postnatal days (PNDs) 22 and 23. VH-lesioned rats displayed a severe deficit relative to controls. In Experiment 2, behaviorally naive rats were tested for spontaneous alternation at PND 29. Alternation was intact in VH-lesioned rats only when successive alternations were separated by >5 s. In Experiment 3, motivation was tested in a cost-benefit T-maze task and in a saccharine-water preference test. Between PNDs 22-37, behaviorally naive rats with neonatal VH lesions displayed weaker saccharine preference than controls, but the 2 groups did not differ on the cost-benefit task. At adulthood, between PNDs 56-72, the difference on saccharine preference persisted and an impairment on the cost-benefit task emerged. Overall, these results suggest that working memory deficits observed at the weaning stage were not secondary to spontaneous alternation or motivation dysfunctions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence that the slowing caused by acute hypoxia is modality dependent

BACKGROUND: AFM (Additive Factors Method) experiments conducted with visual stimuli suggest that the slowing produced by acute hypoxia is located at the earliest preprocessing stage of information processing and that later stages are unaffected (the bottleneck hypothesis). METHODS: To determine the contribution of degraded visual functioning to slowing, we bypassed this modality and measured reaction time in an AFM paradigm to auditory (Experiment 1) and kinesthetic (Experiment 2) stimuli. In both experiments hypoxia was induced with low oxygen mixtures and arterial blood oxygen saturation (SaO2) was controlled at 65%. Task difficulty was manipulated in Experiment 1 with tones that differed in intensity and in Experiment 2 with lifted cylinders that differed in weight. RESULTS: The results for Experiment 1 showed an interaction between task difficulty and hypoxia, indicating slowing of the preprocessing stage. Slowing was not found in Experiment 2. The absence of slowing in Experiment 2 is surprising and indicates that slowing may be confined to vision and audition and may not involve later, more central, stages. We discuss the need to measure cerebral oxygenation in order to understand the sharp differences between the the bottleneck hypothesis, developed by controlling SaO2, and the more traditional behavioral model which postulates multiple cognitive deficits.     

Random number generation as an index of controlled processing.

Random number generation (RNG) is a functionally complex process that is highly controlled and therefore dependent on Baddeley's central executive. This study addresses this issue by investigating whether key predictions from this framework are compatible with empirical data. In Experiment 1, the effect of increasing task demands by increasing the rate of the paced generation was comprehensively examined. As expected, faster rates affected performance negatively because central resources were increasingly depleted. Next, the effects of participants' exposure were manipulated in Experiment 2 by providing increasing amounts of practice on the task. There was no improvement over 10 practice trials, suggesting that the high level of strategic control required by the task was constant and not amenable to any automatization gain with repeated exposure. Together, the results demonstrate that RNG performance is a highly controlled and demanding process sensitive to additional demands on central resources (Experiment 1) and is unaffected by repeated performance or practice (Experiment 2). These features render the easily administered RNG task an ideal and robust index of executive function that is highly suitable for repeated clinical use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Habituation to auditory distractors in a cross-modal, color–word interference task.

The speed of naming the color of a colored square was examined with acoustic distraction to study the effects of the formation of a mental representation (neural model) of distractors. In Experiment 1, practice with the distractors (color words, noncolor words, and tones) was examined, and in Experiments 2 and 3 each color-naming trial was preceded by preexposures to sounds that could be dissimilar, similar, or identical to the upcoming auditory distractor. Consistency in the identity of ignored sounds, whether during color-naming practice or between preexposures and test, reduced interference with color naming. Consistency in voice played no role, and attended preexposures were ineffective in reducing interference. Given these results, the authors propose that mental representations of distractors include information about their task relevance, which modulates disruption of the primary task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Object representation in the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): integration of visual and echoic information

A dolphin performed a 3-alternative matching-to-sample task in different modality conditions (visual/echoic, both vision and echolocation: visual, vision only; echoic, echolocation only). In Experiment 1, training occurred in the dual-modality (visual/echoic) condition. Choice accuracy in tests of all conditions was above chance without further training. In Experiment 2, unfamiliar objects with complementary similarity relations in vision and echolocation were presented in single-modality conditions until accuracy was about 70%. When tested in the visual/echoic condition, accuracy immediately rose (95%), suggesting integration across modalities. In Experiment 3, conditions varied between presentation of sample and alternatives. The dolphin successfully matched familiar objects in the cross-modal conditions. These data suggest that the dolphin has an object-based representational system.     

Event-based prospective memory and executive control of working memory

In 5 experiments, the character of concurrent cognitive processing was manipulated during an event-based prospective memory task. High- and low-load conditions that differed only in the difficulty of the concurrent task were tested in each experiment. In Experiments 1 and 2, attention-demanding tasks from the literature on executive control produced decrements in prospective memory. In Experiment 3, attention was divided by different loads of articulatory suppression that did not ultimately lead to decrements in prospective memory. A high-load manipulation of a visuospatial task requiring performance monitoring resulted in worse prospective memory in Experiment 4, whereas in Experiment 5 a visuospatial task with little monitoring did not. Results are discussed in terms of executive functions, such as planning and monitoring, that appear to be critical to successful event-based prospective memory.     

The significance of task significance: Job performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions.

Does task significance increase job performance? Correlational designs and confounded manipulations have prevented researchers from assessing the causal impact of task significance on job performance. To address this gap, 3 field experiments examined the performance effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions of task significance. In Experiment 1, fundraising callers who received a task significance intervention increased their levels of job performance relative to callers in 2 other conditions and to their own prior performance. In Experiment 2, task significance increased the job dedication and helping behavior of lifeguards, and these effects were mediated by increases in perceptions of social impact and social worth. In Experiment 3, conscientiousness and prosocial values moderated the effects of task significance on the performance of new fundraising callers. The results provide fresh insights into the effects, relational mechanisms, and boundary conditions of task significance, offering noteworthy implications for theory, research, and practice on job design, social information processing, and work motivation and performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of noise and perceived control on ongoing and subsequent aggressive behavior

Two experiments examined the effects of high-intensity (95 dB [A]) noise on ongoing and postnoise aggressive behavior. In Experiment 1, subjects were angered or treated in a neutral manner and given an opportunity to aggress against another subject while being exposed to high-intensity (95 dB) or low-intensity (55 dB) noise. Results indicated that high-intensity noise facilitated aggression for previously angered individuals. Experiment 2 examined postnoise aggression in which subjects completed a math task under high-intensity noise with or without perceived control over the noise. In comparison to a no-noise control, it was found that angered subjects with no control revealed an increase in aggression, whereas perceived-control subjects were no different from no-noise subjects. Results are discussed in terms of the recent Glass and Singer work on noise and task performance and the effects of perceived control on mediating the effects of stressful conditions.     

Time, capacity, and selection between perceptual attributes

Three experiments were run to determine whether time and central-processing capacity are requried to select between perceptual attributes. A same-different matching task was employed for all experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, three sets of stimulus pairs were used, each of which varied along only one relevant perceptual dimension (color, size, or form). In Experiment 1, reaction time on the matching task was shown to be faster when the stimuli were presented in blocks in which all stimulus pairs came from the same set (blocked presentation) than when stimulus pairs from each of the three sets were randomly intermixed (random presentation). In Experiment 2, reaction time on a secondary probe task was faster during the encoding stage of a sequential mathcing task with blocked presentation than with random presentation. Experiment 3 indicated that this outcome could not be attributed to a difference in the number of possible stimulus alternatives. Thus, the results support the hypothesis that time and central-processing capacity are required to select between perceptual attributes.     

Informational mood impact on effort-related cardiovascular reponse: The diagnostic value of mood counts.

Drawing on the mood-behavior model (G. H. E. Gendolla, 2000), 2 experiments examined moods' informational impact on effort-related cardiovascular response. After being induced into positive versus negative moods, participants performed a memory task (Experiment 1) or a letter-cancellation task (Experiment 2). Half the participants received a cue that their mood could have been manipulated. As expected, both studies found stronger reactivity of systolic blood pressure in a negative mood than in a positive mood when no cue was provided. This effect diminished in the cue conditions. Additionally, achievement corresponded to systolic blood pressure reactivity (Experiment 1), the cue manipulation had no effect on mood, and mood had a congruency effect on subjective task difficulty in the no-cue conditions (Experiment 2). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unitization during category learning.

Five experiments explored the question of whether new perceptual units can be developed if they are useful for a category learning task, and if so, what the constraints on this unitization process are. During category learning, participants were required to attend either a single component or a conjunction of 5 components. Consistent with unitization, the conjunctive task became much easier with practice; this improvement was not found for the single-component task or for conjunctive tasks in which the components could not be unitized. Influences of component organization (Experiment 1), component contiguity (Experiment 2), component proximity (Experiment 3), and number of components (Experiment 4) on practice effects were found. Deconvolved response times (Experiment 5) showed that prolonged practice yielded faster responses than predicted by an analytic model that integrates evidence from independently perceived components. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpreting instructional cues in task switching procedures: The role of mediator retrieval.

In 3 experiments the role of mediators in task switching with transparent and nontransparent cues was examined. Subjects switched between magnitude (greater or less than 5) and parity (odd or even) judgments of single digits. A cue-target congruency effect indicated mediator use: subjects responded faster to congruent cue-target combinations (e.g., ODD-3) than to incongruent cue-target combinations (e.g., ODD-4). Experiment 1 revealed significant congruency effects with transparent word cues (ODD, EVEN, HIGH, and LOW) and with relatively transparent letter cues (O, E, H, and L) but not with nontransparent letter cues (D, V, G, and W). Experiment 2 revealed significant congruency effects after subjects who were trained with nontransparent letter cues were informed of the relations between cues and word mediators halfway through the experiment. Experiment 3 showed that congruency effects with relatively transparent letter cues diminished over 10 sessions of practice, suggesting that subjects used mediators less as practice progressed. The results are discussed in terms of the role of mediators in interpreting instructional cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heightened conflict in cue-target translation increases backward inhibition in set switching.

Backward inhibition (BI) is a performance cost that occurs when an individual returns to a task after 1 (vs. more than 1) intervening trial, and it may reflect the inhibition of task-set components during switching. In 3 experiments, we support the theory that inhibition can target cue-based preparatory stages of a task. Participants performed a cued target-localization task that had been previously shown to produce BI. In Experiment 1, reassignment of arbitrary cue-target pairings midway through the experiment doubled the size of BI, though cue, target, and response sets remained unchanged. In Experiment 2, we controlled for effects of order of conditions or simple change of cue meaning. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that the effect depends on re-pairing members of the same cue and target sets. The results are attributed to heightened conflict (and hence greater inhibition) during cue-target translation when a previously learned cue-target mapping is remapped. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling drivers' visual attention allocation while interacting with in-vehicle technologies.

In 2 experiments, the authors examined how characteristics of a simulated traffic environment and in-vehicle tasks impact driver performance and visual scanning and the extent to which a computational model of visual attention (SEEV model) could predict scanning behavior. In Experiment 1, the authors manipulated task-relevant information bandwidth and task priority. In Experiment 2, the authors examined task bandwidth and complexity, while introducing infrequent traffic hazards. Overall, task priority had a significant impact on scanning; however, the impact of increasing bandwidth was varied, depending on whether the relevant task was supported by focal (e.g., in-vehicle tasks; increased scanning) or ambient vision (e.g., lane keeping; no increase in scanning). The computational model accounted for approximately 95% of the variance in scanning across both experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context effects in subjective mental workload ratings

The impact of performance context on subjective mental workload ratings was assessed with the Subjective Workload Assessment Technique (SWAT) and the NASA Task Load Index (TLX). In Experiment 1, a strong context effect was demonstrated. A low range of task difficulty produced considerably higher ratings on a common set of difficulty levels than did a high range of task difficulty. In Experiment 2, increasing the participants' range of experiences during practice eliminated the context effect. We recommend that methods for standardizing context, such as providing experience with the complete difficulty range, be developed for subjective mental workload evaluations. Actual or potential applications of this research include providing methodologies for controlling context effects in practical assessments of mental workload to increase the validity of subjective measures.