Spontaneous decay of response-code activation

Summary Two experiments investigated whether theTwo experiments investigated whether the Simon effect (i. e.., faster responses to spatially corresponding than to noncorresponding stimuli, with stimulus location being irrelevant) is affected by the frequency of noncorrespondence trials. Stimulus discriminability (Experiment 1) and immediate or delayed stimulus formation (Experiment 2) was varied in order to manipulate the temporal relationship between coding of the relevant stimulus information and of stimulus location. As was expected, the Simon effect decreased from high to low discriminability and from immediate- to delayed-stimulus formation. This is consistent with the notion of a gradual decay of location-induced response-code activation. Moreover, the Simon effect decreased with increasing frequency of noncorrespondence trials and was even reversed with higher frequency. This demonstrates strategic preparation of stimulus processing and/or response selection based on irrelevant location information. However, frequency did not modify the interaction between S-R correspondence and stimulus discriminability or stimulus formation, this suggesting that code decay is not a result of a strategy, but an automatic process.     

How much attention does an event file need?

Attentional requirements for the spontaneous integration of stimulus and response features were analyzed. In line with previous findings, carrying out a prepared response to the onset of a stimulus created bindings between the response and the features of that stimulus, thereby impairing subsequent performance on mismatching stimulus-response combinations. Findings demonstrate that a stimulus gets bound to a response even if its presence is neither necessary nor useful for the task at hand, it follows rather than precedes the response in time, it competes with a task-relevant stimulus, and if the response is suppressed--but only if the stimulus appears close to the response's eventual execution or abandonment. A multiple-integration model is suggested that assumes that the integration of stimulus features in perception and of response features in action planning are local processes that are independent of stimulus-response integration, which presumably is triggered by the success of the perception-action episode.     

Development of the acquisition and control of action-effect associations

Voluntary action is anticipatory and, hence, must depend on associations between actions and their perceivable effects. We studied the acquisition of action-effect associations in 4-5-vs. 7-year-old children. Children carried out key-pressing actions that were arranged to produce particular auditory effects. In a subsequent test phase, children were to press keys in response to the previous effect sounds, with the sound-key mapping being either consistent or inconsistent with previous key-sound practice. As the processes underlying voluntary action controls are known to significantly improve between 4 and 7 years of age, it was expected that younger children were more prone to automatic effects of acquired sound-key associations. This hypothesis was confirmed, but reaction times and accuracy measures showed different and dissociable patterns. Four-year-olds but not 7-year-olds were more likely to commit an error--i.e., to perform a sound-compatible rather than the correct action--if the sound-key mapping was inconsistent with previous practice. This effect strongly depended on previous practice, suggesting that it reflects long-term learning. In contrast, reaction time effects of mapping consistency did not depend on previous experience but only on the consistency between stimulus and action effect in the present task. Taken altogether, the results suggest that children acquire response-effect associations automatically and that younger children are more likely to suffer from frequent goal neglect; i.e., they tend to forget the current action goal, so that their behavior is dominated by automatic, stimulus-triggered response tendencies.     

Backward-compatibility effects with irrelevant stimulus-response overlap: the case of the SNARC effect

In 3 dual-task experiments, the relationship between primary-task response (R1) and secondary-task response (R2) was varied. In general, R1-left responses were faster when followed by the word one, and right responses were faster when followed by the word two. This backward-compatibility (BWC) effect indicated (a) that activation of R2 was not delayed until R1 selection was completed, and (b) that activation of the vocal responses was accompanied by the automatic activation of magnitude codes, known to be associated with spatial left-right codes (spatial-numerical association of response codes [the SNARC effect]). These findings supported the hypotheses (a) that BWC effects persist even with irrelevant R1-R2 overlap, (b) that the SNARC effect is based on associations between magnitude and spatial representations underlying response processing, and (c) that the production and perception of magnitudes relies on common codes.     

Symbolic control of visual attention: The role of working memory and attentional control settings

This study examined how 1 symbol is selected to control the allocation of attention when several symbols appear in the visual field. In Experiments 1-3, the critical target feature was color, and it was found that uninformative central arrows that matched the color of the target were selected and produced unintentional shifts of attention (i.e., involuntary, initiated slowly, producing long-lasting facilitatory effects). Experiment 4 tested whether such selection is the result of an attentional filter or of a competition bias due to a match of incoming information against integrated object representations stored in working memory. Here, the critical feature was shape and color was irrelevant, but matching color arrows were still selected. Thus, features of objects in working memory will bias the selection of symbols in the visual field, and such selected symbols are capable of producing unintentional shifts of attention. ((c) 2003 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional control of the creation and retrieval of stimulus–response bindings

Two experiments studied the degree to which the creation and retrieval of episodic feature bindings is modulated by attentional control. Experiment 1 showed that the impact of bindings between stimulus and response features varies as a function of the current attentional set: only bindings involving stimulus features that match the current set affect behavior. Experiment 2 varied the time point at which new attentional sets were implemented—either before or after the processing of the to-be-integrated stimuli and responses. The time point did not matter, suggesting that the attentional set has no impact on feature integration proper but controls which features get access to and can thus trigger the retrieval of bindings.     

Intentional weighting: a basic principle in cognitive control

Human perception and action are tailored to the situation at hand, and thus reflect the current intentions of the perceiver/actor. We suggest that this is achieved by an “intentional-weighting” mechanism. It operates on the cognitive representations of the features of perceived events and produced event—perceptions and actions that is. Intention- or goal-related feature dimensions are weighted more strongly, so that feature values defined on the respective dimension have a stronger impact on information processing, and stimulus and response selection in particular. This article discusses what intentional weighting is, how such a mechanism may work, and how it relates to available research on attention, action planning, and executive control.     

Happy but still focused: failures to find evidence for a mood-induced widening of visual attention

In models of affect and cognition, it is held that positive affect broadens the scope of attention. Consistent with this claim, previous research has indeed suggested that positive affect is associated with impaired selective attention as evidenced by increased interference of spatially distant distractors. However, several recent findings cast doubt on the reliability of this observation. In the present study, we examined whether selective attention in a visual flanker task is influenced by positive mood induction. Across three experiments, positive affect consistently failed to exert any impact on selective attention. The implications of this null-finding for theoretical models of affect and cognition are discussed.     

An Exploration of Family Problem-Solving and Affective Involvement as Moderators Between Disease Severity and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Little is known about how family functioning relates to psychosocial functioning of youth with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The study aim was to examine family problem solving and affective involvement as moderators between adolescent disease severity and depressive symptoms. Participants were 122 adolescents with IBD and their parents. Measures included self-reported and parent-reported adolescent depressive symptoms, parent-reported family functioning, and physician-completed measures of disease severity. Disease severity was a significant predictor of adolescent-reported depressive symptoms, but not parent-reported adolescent depressive symptoms. Family affective involvement significantly predicted parent-reported adolescent depressive symptoms, while family problem-solving significantly predicted adolescent self-report of depressive symptoms. Neither affective involvement nor problem-solving served as moderators. Family affective involvement may play an important role in adolescent emotional functioning but may not moderate the effect of disease severity on depressive symptoms. Research should continue to examine effects of family functioning on youth emotional functioning and include a sample with a wider range of disease severity to determine if interventions aimed to enhance family functioning are warranted.     

Increasing self–other integration through divergent thinking

Increasing evidence suggests that people may cognitively represent themselves and others just like any other, nonsocial event. Here, we provide evidence that the degree of self–other integration (as reflected by the joint Simon effect; JSE) is systematically affected by the control characteristics of temporally overlapping but unrelated and nonsocial creativity tasks. In particular, the JSE was found to be larger in the context of a divergent-thinking task (alternate uses task) than in the context of a convergent-thinking task (remote association task). This suggests that self–other integration and action corepresentation are controlled by domain-general cognitive-control parameters that regulate the integrativeness (strong vs. weak top-down control and a resulting narrow vs. broad attentional focus) of information processing irrespective of its social implications.