How task representations guide attention: Further evidence for the shielding function of task sets.

To pursue goal directed behavior, the cognitive system must be shielded against interference from irrelevant information. Aside from the online adjustment of cognitive control widely discussed in the literature, an additional mechanism of preventive goal shielding is suggested that circumvents irrelevant information from being processed in the first place. Participants had to react to 8 different words depicting clothing items that were presented in front of line drawings that could be either semantically related (clothes) or unrelated (animals with spatial orientation) to the target words. Participants either learned the stimulus–response (S–R) mappings by heart or used 1 task set (TS). In the S–R group, semantically related and unrelated distractors interfered with performance, whereas in the TS group, only semantically related distractors interfered, and unrelated distractors had no effect. It follows that task representations based on a general TS help to focus attention on relevant information, thereby preventing the processing of irrelevant information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic priming in major depressive state

We studied semantic priming in 20 major depressive subjects. The methodology used was a visual lexical decision task. Semantic priming is the facilitation of target word recognition (shortening of response time) by the prior presentation of a semantically related context (a prime word). It relies on semantic processing of words and context, facilitating early cognitive stages of response. Varying the temporal interval between prime and target words onset allows us to distinguish between two priming mechanisms, relying on more automatic (test 1) or more controlled (i.e. attention dependent) (test 2) information processing. We observe a significant retardation for words and pseudo-words in depressives (in relation to controls) in both tests. In spite of a general retardation and increase of response times in depressives, semantic priming is evident in both groups and both tests, and does not differ significantly between depressive and control groups in either automatic or controlled conditions. Theses results confirm that semantic processing is not impaired in depression, and are discussed with regard to the hypothesis of an effortful processing impairment in depression, and to depressive retardation.     

Strategic processing and memory for temporal order in patients with frontal lobe lesions.

This study evaluated whether deficits in memory for temporal order in patients with frontal lobe lesions result from impaired automatic encoding of temporal information or are secondary to deficits in effortful processes, such as the use of organizational strategies and control of interference. Patients with lesions in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and control participants were tested on temporal order reconstruction of semantically related and unrelated word lists learned under intentional or incidental conditions. Memory for temporal order in patients with frontal lobe lesions was sensitive to semantic relatedness but not to intention to learn. Tests of item free recall and recognition using similar encoding manipulations indicated that order performance in these patients was dissociable from item memory. Results indicate that automatic processing of temporal information is intact in patients with frontal lobe lesions but that strategic processing of this information is impaired. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients.

Previous research with schizophrenics suggested that distraction may have its primary effect on controlled information processing. To explore this hypothesis, 8 schizophrenics, 8 manics, 8 depressives, and 8 normal Ss (all Ss were aged 18–45 yrs) were asked to shadow short stories in both the presence and absence of a competing message and to answer questions afterward about the content of the shadowed message. The shadowing performance of all 3 patient groups was equivalent to that of normal Ss and was not affected by distraction. Shadowing errors of commission indicated that schizophrenics did use semantic and syntactic information to anticipate words in the relevant message, but the schizophrenics also inserted more semantically irrelevant words than any of the other 3 groups. Distraction did interfere with the schizophrenics' ability to recall the content of relevant passages, but not with the performance of the other 3 groups. Data indicate that distraction may have a specific rather than general influence on controlled information processing or that distraction may reduce schizophrenics' overall capacity to handle information in short-term memory. The analysis of shadowing errors suggested that performance on such laboratory tasks may be closely related to the verbal communication problems encountered by many schizophrenic patients, but also that these symptoms may not be a simple function of selective attention difficulties. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of grammatical gender on object categorization.

In 3 experiments, we investigated the effect of grammatical gender on object categorization. Participants were asked to judge whether 2 objects, whose names did or did not share grammatical gender, belonged to the same semantic category by pressing a key. Monolingual speakers of English (Experiment 1), Italian (Experiments 1 and 2), and Spanish (Experiments 2 and 3) were tested in their native language. Italian and Spanish participants responded faster to pairs of stimuli sharing the same gender, whereas no difference was observed for English participants. In Experiment 2, the pictures were chosen in such a way that the grammatical gender of the names was opposite in Italian and Spanish. Therefore, the same pair of stimuli gave rise to different patterns depending on the gender congruency of the names in the languages. In Experiment 3, Spanish speakers performed the same task under an articulatory suppression condition, showing no grammatical gender effect. The locus where meaning and gender interact can be located at the level of the lexical representation that specifies syntactic information: Nouns sharing the same grammatical gender activate each other, thus facilitating their processing and speeding up responses, either to semantically related pairs or to semantically unrelated pairs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effortful processing is a requirement for nicotine-induced improvements in memory

We report two studies examining the effects of nicotine on memory in minimally deprived smokers. In experiment 1, semantically related words were recalled significantly better than unrelated words following nicotine, even when volunteers were explicitly instructed to target the unrelated word set for recall. Experiment 2 examined the effect of nicotine on two different types of lexical association: association by joint category membership (semantically related items), and association by derived meaning ("encapsulated" word pairs). Nicotine-induced improvements in recall were observed only for category associates and not for encapsulated word pairs. This implies that explicit, effortful processing of material in the presence of nicotine is necessary for improved recall performance to be observed.     

The relations of effortful control and ego control to children's resiliency and social functioning.

The relations of effortful control and ego control to children's (mean age=137 months) resiliency, social status, and social competence were examined concurrently (Time 3) and over time. Adults reported on the constructs, and a behavioral measure of persistence was obtained. At Time 3, resiliency mediated the unique relations of both effortful and reactive control to social status, and effortful control directly predicted socially appropriate behavior. Negative emotionality moderated the relations of ego and effortful control to socially appropriate behavior. When levels of the variables 2 years prior were accounted for, all relations held at Time 3 except that effortful control did not predict resiliency (even though it was the stronger predictor at Time 3) and ego control directly predicted socially appropriate behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accuracy motivation attenuates covert priming: The systematic reprocessing of social information.

Three studies, with a total of 382 undergraduates, tested the hypothesis that assimilation of impressions to primed constructs is a product of relatively superficial processing and is unlikely to occur when behavioral information about a target person is processed systematically. In Study 1, the impressions of accuracy-motivated Ss did not assimilate to covertly primed trait constructs, although the impressions of unmotivated Ss did. Studies 2 and 3 showed that when Ss become accuracy motivated after exposure to target information, both retrieval of that information and opportunity for effortful processing of it were necessary to eliminate assimilation effects. In addition, accuracy-motivated Ss showed no special attention to primes or awareness of their influence on judgment. Even when one is unaware of the potential biasing influence of primed constructs, they often may not bias impression formation, so long as available target information is processed systematically. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hindsight bias doesn't always come easy: Causal models, cognitive effort, and creeping determinism.

Creeping determinism, a form of hindsight bias, refers to people's hindsight perceptions of events as being determined or inevitable. This article proposes, on the basis of a causal-model theory of creeping determinism, that the underlying processes are effortful, and hence creeping determinism should disappear when individuals lack the cognitive resources to make sense of an outcome. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked to read a scenario while they were under either low or high processing load. Participants who had the cognitive resources to make sense of the outcome perceived it as more probable and necessary than did participants under high processing load or participants who did not receive outcome information. Experiment 3 was designed to separate 2 postulated subprocesses and showed that the attenuating effect of processing load on hindsight bias is not due to a disruption of the retrieval of potential causal antecedents but to a disruption of their evaluation. Together the 3 experiments show that the processes underlying creeping determinism are effortful, and they highlight the crucial role of causal reasoning in the perception of past events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The selective effects of alcohol on automatic and effortful memory processes.

Automatic and effortful memory processes were evaluated in a 2-session, within-subjects design involving an alcohol challenge and a no-alcohol condition. Free recall of a 90-word list measured effortful processing. Estimation of word frequency from the same list measured automatic processing. Acute intoxication was hypothesized to diminish effortful but not automatic memory processes. Healthy, male volunteers (n?=?36) completed the 2 conditions 1 week apart. Presentation frequency influenced both free recall and frequency estimation, with both measures increasing as presentation frequency increased. Free recall was significantly lower in the alcohol than in the no-alcohol condition, but frequency estimation was not differentially affected. The data showed that an alcohol challenge dissociated automatic and effortful memory processes in volunteers. The authors discuss potential neurobiological substrates that may account for alcohol's selective disruption of effortful, verbal, episodic memory processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of reportable and unreportable hints on anagram solution and the aha! experience

Two experiments examine the effects of unreportable hints on anagram solving performance and on solvers' subjective experience of insight. In Experiment 1, after seeing a hint (unrelated, semantically related, or the solution) presented too briefly to identify, participants solved anagrams preceded by the solution fastest and solved anagrams preceded by unrelated hints slowest. Participants' "warmth" ratings for solution hints were more insight-like than those for unrelated hints. In Experiment 2 a hint, or no hint, was presented at one of three different exposure durations (undetectable, unreportable, or reportable). Participants benefited from solution-relevant hints that were either unreportable or reportable, but showed a cost only for unrelated hints that were reportable. Participants' ratings of their insight experiences showed that unreportable solution and semantically related hints produced more insight-like experiences than did unrelated hints. The results suggest that unreportable processing of solution-related information is important for the insight experience.     

Attribute information and the feeling-of-knowing.

Demonstrated with 24 undergraduates that feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments about unrecalled items predict subsequent recognition performance with accuracy. The purpose of the experiment was to examine the relation between access to partial attribute information and the tendency to make positive or negative FOK judgments about an unrecalled item from a recent study episode. 52 words with extreme connotations of good or bad were paired with semantically neutral words, and 28 buffer pairs also were included to minimize the target words. Results indicate that when Ss made positive FOK judgments, attribute identification was more accurate than when Ss made negative FOK judgments. However, positive guesses were also made even when Ss did not have access to accurate attribute information. The results suggest that FOK judgments depend on access to an attribute of an unrecalled item, but they do not exclude other variables and referents as sources for the same phenomenon. (French abstract) (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive processes in normal and hyperactive children and their response to amphetamine treatment.

14 normal (mean age 10.1 yrs) and 15 hyperactive (mean age 9.4 yrs) children were compared on cognitive tasks following placebo or amphetamine administration (.5 mg/kg) in a double-blind crossover study. A no-treatment control group of normal children who were matched with the hyperactive Ss on age, IQ, and socioeconomic status were also tested on the cognitive measures. In the undrugged state, normals remembered more information under free-recall retrieval conditions than did hyperactives; cued recall did not differentiate between the 2 groups. Both normals and hyperactives demonstrated similar, amphetamine-related increases in the recall of semantically and acoustically processed words. This enhancement of cognition occurred along with improvements in attention but was independent of such attentional changes. The pattern of amphetamine-induced changes in cognition is generally similar in normal and hyperactive children. Differences in response to amphetamine that do appear involve components of cognition that distinguish these children in the undrugged state (e.g., semantic processing, organization in recall, and free retrieval of information). (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative priming in word fragment completion: a dissociation between explicit and implicit retrieval processes

Three experiments investigated associative priming in word fragment completion. In associative priming, the study word that acts as a prime is semantically related in some way to the response word that the subject must produce or respond to at test. For example, a prime might be semantically related to the solution to its paired word fragment (e.g. study "VANILLA", solve fragment "-H-C--A-E" at test, solution is "CHOCOLATE"). Associative priming therefore differs from both repetition and conceptual priming, in which the studied primes are themselves the words that must be produced or responded to at test. In Experiment 1, associative primes were found to influence word fragment completion performance on an explicit test, but not on an implicit test. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the effects of associative primes on explicitly instructed fragment completion cannot be attributed to the specific information about cue-prime relationships that is included in the explicit instructions. Experiment 3 demonstrated that a manipulation of modality, a variable known to disrupt implicit retrieval processes, disrupts repetition priming on an explicit test, but not associative priming. The results of these three experiments suggest that whereas repetition primes are retrieved from memory by both explicit and implicit retrieval processes, associative primes are retrieved by only explicit processes. These data suggest that implicit retrieval processes are cue-dependent processes which automatically retrieve memory information that provides a good match to retrieval cues. Explicit retrieval processes are cue-independent, functioning as an intentional retrieval set to access particular categories or types of memory information.     

The cascaded nature of lexical selection and integration in auditory sentence processing.

An event-related brain potential experiment was carried out to investigate the temporal relationship between lexical selection and the semantic integration in auditory sentence processing. Participants were presented with spoken sentences that ended with a word that was either semantically congruent or anomalous. Information about the moment in which a sentence-final word could uniquely be identified, its isolation point (IP), was compared with the onset of the elicited N400 congruity effect, reflecting semantic integration processing. The results revealed that the onset of the N400 effect occurred prior to the IP of the sentence-final words. Moreover, the factor early or late IP did not affect the onset of the N400. These findings indicate that lexical selection and semantic integration are cascading processes, in that semantic integration processing can start before the acoustic information allows the selection of a unique candidate and seems to be attempted in parallel for multiple candidates that are still compatible with the bottom-up acoustic input. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition.

Need for cognition in contemporary literature refers to an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors. Individual differences in need for cognition have been the focus of investigation in over 100 empirical studies. This literature is reviewed, covering the theory and history of this variable, measures of interindividual variations in it, and empirical relationships between it and personality variables, as well as individuals' tendencies to seek and engage in effortful cognitive activity and enjoy cognitively effortful circumstances. The article concludes with discussions of an elaborated theory of the variable, including antecedent conditions; interindividual variations in it related to the manner information is acquired or processed to guide perceptions, judgments, and behavior; and the relationship between it and the 5-factor model of personality structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in impulsivity: A meta-analysis.

Men are overrepresented in socially problematic behaviors, such as aggression and criminal behavior, which have been linked to impulsivity. Our review of impulsivity is organized around the tripartite theoretical distinction between reward hypersensitivity, punishment hyposensitivity, and inadequate effortful control. Drawing on evolutionary, criminological, developmental, and personality theories, we predicted that sex differences would be most pronounced in risky activities with men demonstrating greater sensation seeking, greater reward sensitivity, and lower punishment sensitivity. We predicted a small female advantage in effortful control. We analyzed 741 effect sizes from 277 studies, including psychometric and behavioral measures. Women were consistently more punishment sensitive (d = ?0.33), but men did not show greater reward sensitivity (d = 0.01). Men showed significantly higher sensation seeking on questionnaire measures (d = 0.41) and on a behavioral risk-taking task (d = 0.36). Questionnaire measures of deficits in effortful control showed a very modest effect size in the male direction (d = 0.08). Sex differences were not found on delay discounting or executive function tasks. The results indicate a stronger sex difference in motivational rather than effortful or executive forms of behavior control. Specifically, they support evolutionary and biological theories of risk taking predicated on sex differences in punishment sensitivity. A clearer understanding of sex differences in impulsivity depends upon recognizing important distinctions between sensation seeking and impulsivity, between executive and effortful forms of control, and between impulsivity as a deficit and as a trait. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping with fear through suppression and avoidance of threatening information.

Fear appeal communications are widely used by social marketers in their efforts to persuade individuals to refrain from engaging in risky behaviors. The present research shows that exposure to a fear appeal can lead to the suppression of concepts semantically related to the threat and bias attentional resources away from threat-relevant information. Participants in the experimental condition viewed a fear appeal advertisement depicting the negative consequences of drinking and driving. The results of a reaction time task showed inhibited responses to words semantically related to drinking (e.g., beer, party) relative to a baseline group that controlled for priming effects (Experiment 1a) and level of fear (Experiment 1b). Furthermore, those in the experimental condition were shown to adopt an attention avoidance processing style, decreasing attention to alcohol-related advertisements appearing in a mock magazine (Experiments 2a and 2b). Because processing of alcohol-related advertising has been linked previously to an increase in drinking and driving, inhibited processing of such advertisements suggests a positive outcome of suppression effects. This contrasts with prior claims suggesting that suppression is counter to prevention-based efforts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why do non-color words interfere with color naming?

In the non-color-word Stroop task, university students' response latencies were longer for low-frequency than for higher frequency target words. Visual identity primes facilitated color naming in groups reading the prime silently or processing it semantically (Experiment 1) but did not when participants generated a rhyme of the prime (Experiment 3). With auditory identity primes, generating an associate or a rhyme of the prime produced interference (Experiments 2 and 3). Color-naming latencies were longer for nonwords than for words (Experiment 4). There was a small long-term repetition benefit in color naming for low-frequency words that had been presented in the lexical decision task (Experiment 5). Facilitation of word recognition speeds color naming except when phonological activation of the base word increases response competition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)