Extensive performance on the antisaccade task does not lead to negative transfer

Executive-control processes regulate thoughts, emotions, actions, and behaviors that are critical for everyday functioning. Recently, researchers have suggested that these processes can be flexibly modified by tasks that require executive control. Specifically, it has been argued that executive-control tasks can deplete these executive-control processes, which can in turn lead to negative transfer on subsequent task performance. Importantly, the degrees of malleability in executive-control processes and transfer to different tasks are of ongoing debate. The present study critically examined the hypothesis that executive-control processes can be exerted and whether or not this exertion would negatively transfer to performance on various subsequent tasks. Across a series of experiments, negative transfer effects from extensive performance on the antisaccade task were not found. Traditional hypothesis testing and Bayes factor computations were used to validate these findings. Collectively, the present results put in question the use of the antisaccade task to observe both near and far negative transfer from using executive-control processes.     

The effect of attentional demands on the antisaccade cost

In the present study, we examined the effect of attentional demands on the antisaccade cost (the latency difference between antisaccades and prosaccades). Participants performed a visual search for a target digit and were required to execute a saccade toward (prosaccade) or away from (antisaccade) the target. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the antisaccade cost was greater when the target was premasked (i.e., presented through the removal of line segments) than when it appeared as an onset. Furthermore, in premasked target conditions, the antisaccade cost was increased by the presentation of onset distractors. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that the antisaccade cost was greater in a difficult search task (a numeral 2 among 5s) than in an easy one (a 2 among 7s). The findings provide evidence that attentional demands increase the antisaccade cost. We propose that the attentional demands of the search task interfere with the attentional control required to select the antisaccade goal.     

Revisiting the suitability of antisaccade performance as an endophenotype in schizophrenia

Poor performance on the antisaccade task has been proposed as a candidate endophenotype in schizophrenia. Caveats to this proposal, however, include inconsistent findings in first-degree relatives of individuals with schizophrenia, and substantial heterogeneity in individuals with the disorder. In this study, we examined antisaccade performance in patients and relatives, and sought to establish whether antisaccade measures could differentiate between two patients clusters identified in the Western Australian Family Study of Schizophrenia with either pervasive cognitive deficits (CD) or cognitively spared (CS). Ninety-three patients (CD = 47, CS = 46), 99 relatives and 62 healthy controls carried out a standard antisaccade task. Results showed: (i) significantly greater error rate, and prolonged latencies to correct responses and self-correction saccades in patients compared with controls; (ii) high error rates in relatives of poorly performing patients; (iii) longer latencies of self-correction saccades in relatives compared to controls; and (iv) higher error rate and longer latencies of self-correction saccades in the CD subgroup compared with CS. Unaffected relatives as a group were unimpaired in error rate as compared to healthy controls. These findings suggest that the antisaccade error rate and latency of self-correction saccades are useful measures in specific applications of genetic research in schizophrenia, without fully meeting endophenotype co-familiality requirements.     

Timing of pubertal maturation in girls: an integrated life history approach

Life history theory provides a metatheoretical framework for the study of pubertal timing from an evolutionary-developmental perspective. The current article reviews 5 middle-level theories--energetics theory, stress-suppression theory, psychosocial acceleration theory, paternal investment theory, and child development theory--each of which applies the basic assumptions of life history theory to the question of environmental influences on timing of puberty in girls. These theories converge in their conceptualization of pubertal timing as responsive to ecological conditions but diverge in their conceptualization of (a) the nature, extent, and direction of environmental influences and (b) the effects of pubertal timing on other reproductive variables. Competing hypotheses derived from the 5 perspectives are evaluated. An extension of W. T. Boyce and B. J. Ellis's (in press) theory of stress reactivity is proposed to account for both inhibiting and accelerating effects of psychosocial stress on timing of pubertal development. This review highlights the multiplicity of (often unrecognized) perspectives guiding research, raises challenges to virtually all of these, and presents an alternative framework in an effort to move research forward in this arena of multidisciplinary inquiry.     

Does performance on the standard antisaccade task meet the co-familiality criterion for an endophenotype?

The “co-familiality” criterion for an endophenotype has two requirements: (1) clinically unaffected relatives as a group should show both a shift in mean performance and an increase in variance compared with controls; (2) performance scores should be heritable. Performance on the antisaccade task is one of several candidate endophenotypes for schizophrenia. In this paper we examine whether the various measures of performance on the standard version of the antisaccade task meet the co-familiality criterion for an endophenotype. The three measures of performance—reflexive saccade errors, latency of correct antisaccades, and gain—show a wide range of effect sizes and variance ratios as well as evidence of significant or near significant heterogeneity. The estimated mean effect sizes [Cohen’s d: error rate: 0.34 (SD: 0.29); latency: 0.33 (SD: 0.30); gain: 0.54 (SD: 0.38)] are significantly greater than 0, but the magnitude of the departures from 0 is relatively small, corresponding to modest effect sizes. The width of the 95% confidence intervals for the estimated effect sizes (error rate: 0.2–0.49; latency: 0.17–0.50; gain: 0.23–0.85) and the coefficients of variation in effect sizes (error rate: 85.3%; latency: 90.9%; gain: 68.4%) reflect heterogeneity in effect sizes. The effect sizes for error rate showed statistically significant heterogeneity and those for latency (P = .07) and gain (P = .09) showed a trend toward heterogeneity. These results indicate that the effect sizes are not consistent with a single mean and that the average effect size may be a biased estimate of the magnitude of differences in performance between relatives of schizophrenics and controls. Relatives of schizophrenics show a small but significant increase in variance in error rate, but the confidence interval is broad, perhaps reflecting the heterogeneity in effect size. The variance ratios for latency and gain did not differ in relatives of schizophrenics and controls. Performance, as measured by error rate, is moderately heritable. The data do not provide compelling support for a consistent shift in mean or variance in relatives of schizophrenia patients compared with nonpsychiatric controls, both of which are required for a major gene involved in co-familial transmission. This set of findings suggests that although intra-familial resemblance in antisaccade performance is due in part to genetic factors, it may not be related to a schizophrenia genotype. Based on the current literature, it would be premature to conclude that any of the measures of antisaccade performance unambiguously meets the co-familiality criterion for an endophenotype.     

The influence of shyness on children's test performance

Background: Research has shown that shy children differ from their peers not only in their use of language in routine social encounters but also in formal assessments of their language development, including psychometric tests of vocabulary. There has been little examination of factors contributing to these individual differences. Aims: To investigate cognitive‐competence and social anxiety interpretations of differences in children's performance on tests of vocabulary. To examine the performance of shy and less shy children under different conditions of test administration, individually with an examiner or among their peers within the familiar classroom setting. Sample: The sample consisted of 240 Year 5 pupils (122 male, 118 female) from 24 primary schools. Method: Shy and less shy children, identified by teacher nomination and checklist ratings, completed vocabulary and mental arithmetic tests in one of three conditions, in a between‐subjects design. The conditions varied individual and group administration, and oral and written responses. Results: The conditions of test administration influenced the vocabulary test performance of shy children. They performed significantly more poorly than their peers in the two face‐to‐face conditions but not in the group test condition. A comparable trend for the arithmetic test was not statistically significant. Across the sample as a whole, shyness correlated significantly with test scores. Conclusions: Shyness does influence children's cognitive test performance and its impact is larger when children are tested face‐to‐face rather than in a more anonymous group setting. The results are of significance for theories of shyness and have implications for the assessment of schoolchildren.     

The influence of cognitive load on spatial search performance

During search, executive function enables individuals to direct attention to potential targets, remember locations visited, and inhibit distracting information. In the present study, we investigated these executive processes in large-scale search. In our tasks, participants searched a room containing an array of illuminated locations embedded in the floor. The participants’ task was to press the switches at the illuminated locations on the floor so as to locate a target that changed color when pressed. The perceptual salience of the search locations was manipulated by having some locations flashing and some static. Participants were more likely to search at flashing locations, even when they were explicitly informed that the target was equally likely to be at any location. In large-scale search, attention was captured by the perceptual salience of the flashing lights, leading to a bias to explore these targets. Despite this failure of inhibition, participants were able to restrict returns to previously visited locations, a measure of spatial memory performance. Participants were more able to inhibit exploration to flashing locations when they were not required to remember which locations had previously been visited. A concurrent digit-span memory task further disrupted inhibition during search, as did a concurrent auditory attention task. These experiments extend a load theory of attention to large-scale search, which relies on egocentric representations of space. High cognitive load on working memory leads to increased distractor interference, providing evidence for distinct roles for the executive subprocesses of memory and inhibition during large-scale search.     

The impact of self-reported pubertal status and pubertal timing on disordered eating in irish adolescents

This paper considers the impact of pubertal status and pubertal timing on disordered eating in Irish adolescents. 1190 boys and 1841 girls completed the Eating Attitudes Test-26, the Eating Disorder Inventory-III and self-report measures of pubertal status and pubertal timing. Regarding pubertal status, greater maturity in girls was associated with increased overall eating concerns, higher drive for thinness and higher levels of body dissatisfaction. In boys, greater maturity was associated with lower drive for thinness and lower body dissatisfaction. Regarding pubertal timing, early-maturing girls showed the most eating concerns, the highest drive for thinness, scored highest on bulimic symptoms and were the most dissatisfied with their bodies. In contrast, late-maturing boys had more bulimic symptoms and more dissatisfaction with their bodies than on-time peers. The findings suggest that puberty itself is a risk factor for disordered eating for girls rather than boys; however, pubertal timing is a risk factor for both. Copyright ? 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.     

The influence of performance on action-effect integration in sense of agency

Sense of agency refers to the subjective feeling of being able to control an outcome through one’s own actions or will. Prior studies have shown that both sensory processing (e.g., comparisons between sensory feedbacks and predictions basing on one’s motor intentions) and high-level cognitive/constructive processes (e.g., inferences based on one’s performance or the consequences of one’s actions) contribute to judgments of sense of agency. However, it remains unclear how these two types of processes interact, which is important for clarifying the mechanisms underlying sense of agency. Thus, we examined whether performance-based inferences influence action-effect integration in sense of agency using a delay detection paradigm in two experiments. In both experiments, participants pressed left and right arrow keys to control the direction in which a moving dot was travelling. The dot’s response delay was manipulated randomly on 7 levels (0–480 ms) between the trials; for each trial, participants were asked to judge whether the dot response was delayed and to rate their level of agency over the dot. In Experiment 1, participants tried to direct the dot to reach a destination on the screen as quickly as possible. Furthermore, the computer assisted participants by ignoring erroneous commands for half of the trials (assisted condition), while in the other half, all of the participants’ commands were executed (self-control condition). In Experiment 2, participants directed the dot as they pleased (without a specific goal), but, in half of the trials, the computer randomly ignored 32% of their commands (disturbed condition) rather than assisted them. The results from the two experiments showed that performance enhanced action-effect integration. Specifically, when task performance was improved through the computer’s assistance in Experiment 1, delay detection was reduced in the 480-ms delay condition, despite the fact that 32% of participants’ commands were ignored. Conversely, when no feedback on task performance was given (as in Experiment 2), the participants reported greater delay when some of their commands were randomly ignored. Furthermore, the results of a logistic regression analysis showed that the threshold of delay detection was greater in the assisted condition than in the self-control condition in Experiment 1, which suggests a wider time window for action-effect integration. A multivariate analysis also revealed that assistance was related to reduced delay detection via task performance, while reduced delay detection was directly correlated with a better sense of agency. These results indicate an association between the implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency.     

The influence of performance feedback on goal-setting and mental effort regulation

Goal-setting and mental effort investment may be influenced by the perception of success or failure. The aim of the current study was to investigate the dynamics of motivational intensity model using false performance feedback. Forty participants performed a demanding cognitive task over five successive (5 min) blocks. Participants received performance feedback of either progressive success or progressive failure. A number of psychophysiological variables were used to index mental effort investment and emotion, including: HRV components, blood pressure, skin conductance level, EEG, and facial EMG. Subjective estimates of mood, workload and motivation were also collected alongside performance measures. The success group experienced positive affect and a less pronounced decline in subjective motivation in response to a perception of successful achievement. In contrast, feedback of failure led to adverse changes in mood/motivation, but did not lead to the absolute withdrawal of effort, although trends in the psychophysiological data suggest that participants in the failure group were on the verge of abandoning the task. The implications of these findings are discussed within the context of goal-setting and effort regulation models.     

The effect of social influence on cognitive development and school performance

Three months before school entrance a sample of 29 children and their mothers was tested for degree of decentred child educability and degree of decentred maternal teaching. Mother and child were tested in two different situations, thus preventing interdependency between the measures of mother and child. Four months after school entrance, teacher judgements of school performance were obtained. A strong correspondence between degree of decentred child educability and degree of decentred maternal teaching was demonstrated. Degree of decentred maternal teaching and degree of decentred child educability were found to be good predictors of school performance, accounting for respectively 45 and 33% of the variance in school performance. In contrast a test of school readiness only accounted for 2% of the variance. A test of intelligence given after the teacher judgement accounted for 31% of the variance. The fact that the mother seems to be a better predictor of her child's school performance than the child himself, supports the assumption that parents, particularly mothers, are important mediators between the child and the outer world.     

The influence of competition and performance goals on decoding complex emotions

Motivation and Emotion - The present research examines the processes through which competitive contexts influence performance in an understudied domain: social perception. In two experiments (one...     

自我损耗对运动表现影响的元分析

运用元分析方法考察自我损耗对运动表现影响及其调节变量。通过中英文文献搜索,共纳入31篇文献和37个效应量,总样本量为1613。结果:(1)总体效应量检验发现,运动任务中的自我损耗为中等效应量,d=0.55,95%CI为[0.39,0.71];由于存在发表偏倚性,该中等效应量可能会被高估。(2)调节变量检验发现,自我损耗效应量较少受研究对象来源、研究对象类型和运动任务类型的影响;但受损耗任务类型和技能型任务中压力情境的影响。(3)执行运动任务时,主观体力感、心率和肌电等指标不存在自我损耗效应。这些研究结果支持了自我控制的力量模型具有普遍适用性,自我控制资源的领域普遍性以及自我控制的力量模型与注意控制理论整合的观点。未来研究应严格控制实验条件、拓展运动任务中自我损耗应对和自我控制训练的研究。     

The influence of shared mental models on team process and performance

The influence of teammates' shared mental models on team processes and performance was tested using 56 undergraduate dyads who "flew" a series of missions on a personal-computer-based flight-combat simulation. The authors both conceptually and empirically distinguished between teammates' task- and team-based mental models and indexed their convergence or "sharedness" using individually completed paired-comparisons matrices analyzed using a network-based algorithm. The results illustrated that both shared-team- and task-based mental models related positively to subsequent team process and performance. Furthermore, team processes fully mediated the relationship between mental model convergence and team effectiveness. Results are discussed in terms of the role of shared cognitions in team effectiveness and the applicability of different interventions designed to achieve such convergence.     

The influence of age on consistent and varied semantic-category search performance

Three experiments examined age-related consistent mapping (CM) and varied mapping (VM) practice effects. In separate experiments, young (age, 19-22), middle-aged (37-50), and older (64-88) adults' performance was examined using semantic-category and letter-based search paradigms. After extensive practice, major age differences occurred in CM search. Young and middle-aged subjects showed near-zero comparison slopes, large reductions in mean reaction times, and substantial reductions in response variability. Although older adults' reaction time decreased with CM practice, the reduction in reaction time, comparison slope, and response variability was small compared with the other groups. In VM search, older subjects were slower than the other age groups, but all groups exhibited similar linear set-size functions, search termination, and comparison-load effects. We concluded that age-associated declines in cognitive performance may be due in large part to the degree with which older adults can acquire or use automatic processes to perform tasks.     

The influence of mastery‐avoidance goals on performance improvement

Two experiments focused on examining the influence of mastery‐avoidance goals on performance improvement, and more specifically, on mastery‐avoidance goals grounded in an intrapersonal standard. That is, herein, mastery‐avoidance goals entail striving to avoid doing worse than one has done before. Both experiments demonstrated that in a multiple‐trial context, mastery‐avoidance goals are deleterious for performance improvement relative to mastery‐approach, performance‐approach, and performance‐avoidance goals, and a no goal baseline. The findings were shown to be independent of participants' perceptions of goal difficulty, and were consistent not only across methodology but also across type of participant (undergraduates versus individuals in the workforce), and type and length of achievement task (a verbal skills task versus an ecologically valid managerial competencies exercise). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.