The action effect: Support for the biased competition hypothesis

The action effect refers to the finding that faster response times are found when a previously responded to stimulus contains a target item than when it serves as a distracting item in a visual search. The action effect has proven robust to a number of perceptual and attentional manipulations, but the mechanisms underlying it remain unclear. In the current study, we present two experiments investigating a possible underlying mechanism of the action effect; that responding to a stimulus increases its attentional weight causing the system to prioritize it in the visual search. In Experiment 1, we presented the search stimulus in isolation and found no evidence of an action effect. Thus, when there was no requirement for prioritization, there was no action effect. In Experiment 2, we tested whether stimulus-based priming (rather than the action) can account for the observed validity effects. We found no evidence of a priming effect when there were never any actions. These findings are consistent with the biased competition hypothesis and provide a framework for explaining the action effect while also ruling out other potential explanations such as event file updating.     

The effect of aging in recollective experience: the processing speed and executive functioning hypothesis

This study was designed to investigate the effects of aging on consciousness in recognition memory, using the Remember/Know/Guess procedure (Gardiner, J. M., & Richarson-Klavehn, A. (2000). Remembering and Knowing. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Oxford University Press.). In recognition memory, older participants report fewer occasions on which recognition is accompanied by recollection of the original encoding context. Two main hypotheses were tested: the speed mediation hypothesis (Salthouse, T. A. (1996). The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. Psychological Review, 3, 403–428) and the executive-aging hypothesis (West, R. L. (1996). An application of prefrontal cortex function theory to cognitive aging. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 272–292). A group of young and a group of older adults took a recognition test in which they classified their responses according to Gardiner, J. M., & Richarson-Klavehn, A. (2000). Remembering and Knowing. In E. Tulving & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Memory. Oxford University Press. remember-know-guess paradigm. Subsequently, participants completed processing speed and executive function tests. The results showed that among the older participants, R responses decreased, but K responses did not. Moreover, a hierarchical regression analysis supported the view that the effect of age in recollection experience is determined by frontal lobe integrity and not by diminution of processing speed.     

When increased confidence yields increased thought: A confidence-matching hypothesis

Traditional theories of confidence and information processing suggest that people engage in greater processing activity when they feel doubtful as opposed to confident. Recent research, however, has hinted at the possibility that this effect might be malleable. The current research tests a confidence-matching hypothesis to determine when increased confidence yields increased processing and when increased confidence yields decreased processing. Based on recent advances in research on matching effects, it is proposed that the classic negative effect of confidence on information processing will reverse when messages are framed in terms of confidence. This hypothesis is tested by presenting participants with a persuasive message containing strong or weak arguments under confidence or doubt conditions. As predicted, when the message is framed in confidence terms, participants engage in greater message processing when they feel confident rather than doubtful, as indicated by greater argument quality effects on attitudes and thought favorability.     

Executive control of thought and action

In addition to processing information about stimuli in the environment, the cognitive system performs executive functions to control and coordinate the processes that deal with environmental stimuli. Several executive functions may be distinguished: (1) Making choices about alternative strategies for processing environmental stimuli; (2) constructing or instantiating a version of the chosen strategy to enable performance on the task; (3) controlling and coordinating execution of the strategy during real-time performance on the task; and (4) disabling or disengaging the strategy in response to changes in goals or changes in the task environment that make the current strategy inappropriate. This paper presents a selective review of research addressing each of these executive functions, focusing on the time and resources used to accomplish each one.     

The teleological origins of mentalistic action explanations: A developmental hypothesis

In this paper we shall argue that mentalistic action explanations, which form an essential component of a mature theory of mind, are conceptually and developmentally derived from an earlier and purely teleological interpretational system present in infancy. First we summarize our evidence demonstrating teleological action explanations in one-year-olds. Then we shall briefly contrast the structure of teleological vs. causal mentalistic action explanations and outline four logical possibilities concerning the nature of the developmental relationship between them. We shall argue for the view that causal mentalistic action explanations are constructed as useful theoretical extensions of the earlier, purely teleological, nonmentalistic interpretational stance.     

Habits in everyday life: thought,emotion, and action

To illustrate the differing thoughts and emotions involved in guiding habitual and nonhabitual behavior, 2 diary studies were conducted in which participants provided hourly reports of their ongoing experiences. When participants were engaged in habitual behavior, defined as behavior that had been performed almost daily in stable contexts, they were likely to think about issues unrelated to their behavior, presumably because they did not have to consciously guide their actions. When engaged in nonhabitual behavior, or actions performed less often or in shifting contexts, participants' thoughts tended to correspond to their behavior, suggesting that thought was necessary to guide action. Furthermore, the self-regulatory benefits of habits were apparent in the lesser feelings of stress associated with habitual than nonhabitual behavior.     

Executive control of thought and action: in search of the wild homunculus

Executive control is studied in many areas of psychological research using a wide variety of procedures. This article focuses on studies of the executive processes involved in switching between tasks. The experiments discussed were designed to isolate and measure the duration of the executive processes required to switch from one task to another. However, the research is open to alternative interpretations that do not hypothesize executive processes, suggesting that task-switching procedures may not measure the duration of executive control. Further research is required to determine whether or not behavioral effects reflect the involvement of executive processes.     

Gesture changes thought by grounding it in action

When people talk, they gesture. We show that gesture introduces action information into speakers' mental representations, which, in turn, affect subsequent performance. In Experiment 1, participants solved the Tower of Hanoi task (TOH1), explained (with gesture) how they solved it, and solved it again (TOH2). For all participants, the smallest disk in TOH1 was the lightest and could be lifted with one hand. For some participants (no-switch group), the disks in TOH2 were identical to those in TOH1. For others (switch group), the disk weights in TOH2 were reversed (so that the smallest disk was the heaviest and could not be lifted with one hand). The more the switch group's gestures depicted moving the smallest disk one-handed, the worse they performed on TOH2. This was not true for the no-switch group, nor for the switch group in Experiment 2, who skipped the explanation step and did not gesture. Gesturing grounds people's mental representations in action. When gestures are no longer compatible with the action constraints of a task, problem solving suffers.     

The fluttering-heart illusion: a new hypothesis

The fluttering-heart illusion is a perceived lagging behind of a colour target on a background of a different colour when the two are oscillated together. It has been proposed that the illusion is caused by a differential in the perceptual latencies of different colours (Helmholtz 1867/1962), a differential in rod-cone latencies (von Kries 1896) and rod-cone interactions (von Grünau 1975, 1976 Vision Research 15 431-436, 437-440; 16 397-401; see list of references there). The purpose of this experiment was to assess the hypothesis that the fluttering-heart illusion is caused by a differential in the perceived velocities of chromatic and achromatic motion. To evaluate this hypothesis, we tested observers possessing normal colour vision and deuteranopes. The perceived delay of a chromatic target relative to an achromatic target was measured as a function of background cone contrast and target colour. For observers with normal colour vision, the perceived delay of the chromatic target is greater in the L-S than the L-M testing conditions. The reverse is observed in deuteranope observers. We suggest that this is caused by the absence of an L-M opponent mechanism contributing to chromatic motion in deuteranopes. Greater background cone contrasts tended to yield smaller perceived delays in both normal and deuteranope observers, indicating that greater chromatic modulation decreases the perceived delay of the colour target. These results support the hypothesis that the fluttering-heart illusion can be explained by a differential in the perceived velocities of chromatic and achromatic motion.     

Clinical and administrative synthesis in adolescent treatment: search for a sane integration of thought and action.

In working as administrator and clinician (co-director and head psychologist) of a day and residential treatment facility for disturbed adolescents, I have become acutely aware of some of the difficulties of integrating both roles. To keep rooted in the concrete, I have described the program with which I am involved in particular as to crucial client and staff dynamics. By drawing on concepts from systems theory (as system integrity and cross-boundary interactions) and psychoanalytic theory (unconscious testing), I have tried in this paper to sketch a framework for bringing the two separate roles into a single way of thinking and give some examples of how this kind of synthesized approach can be useful and powerful. The two concrete examples focus (1) on the more administrative issue of program design, and (2) on a more clinical case of child abuse.     

Episodic encoding in normal aging: attentional resources hypothesis extended to musical material

The goal of the present study was to examine age-related changes in musical episodic memory for novel tunes. This was conducted by manipulating the encoding condition in a recognition paradigm. After receiving memory instructions (intentional condition), older and younger participants obtained equivalent hits. In contrast, when intentional encoding was accompanied by a dancing judgment (dancing + intentional condition), the recognition performance of the older persons was severely impaired. Impaired recognition was also found when participants only judged the excerpts without being instructed to memorize them (dancing judgment condition). Although older participants demonstrated a preserved ability to perform the dancing judgment on its own, this ability was not optimal and likely precluded the initiation of more elaborate encoding strategies. These results suggest that asking older persons to divide their attention in the study phase reduces the quality of their musical encoding. Given this extension to musical material, we discuss the notion that the age-related attentional resource decline appears to be domain-general rather than specific to verbal material.     

The cerebellum: an overview

E.G. Conklin (1944) (p. 125 in Ref. [1]).     

Inhibition of action, thought, and emotion: A selective neurobiological review

The neural bases of inhibitory function are reviewed, covering data from paradigms assessing inhibition of motor responses (antisaccade, go/nogo, stop-signal), cognitive sets (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sort Test), and emotion (fear extinction). The frontal cortex supports performance on these paradigms, but the specific neural circuitry varies: response inhibition depends upon fronto-basal ganglia networks, inhibition of cognitive sets is supported by orbitofrontal cortex, and retention of fear extinction reflects ventromedial prefrontal cortex–amygdala interactions. Inhibition is thus neurobiologically heterogeneous, although right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex may support a general inhibitory process. Dysfunctions in these circuits may contribute to psychopathological conditions marked by inhibitory deficits.     

The frontal hypothesis of cognitive aging: factor structure and age effects on four frontal tests among healthy individuals

With 101 healthy aging adult participants, the authors investigated whether executive functions are a unitary concept. The authors established the factor structure of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST; E. A. Berg, 1948), the Stroop color and word test (C. J. Golden, 1978), verbal fluency using the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT; Benton, 1967), and the Digits Backwards subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R; D. Wechsler, 1981). The authors also evaluated the extent to which age and other demographic variables predicted common underlying properties of these frontal tests. Results revealed an age-related decline in executive abilities differentially reflected by the selected tasks. These data suggest caution using the COWAT to evaluate executive abilities in older people. The authors interpret findings to support the unitary view of executive abilities and the executive decline proposed by the frontal hypothesis.     

Executive functioning in normal aging: a study of action planning using the Zoo Map Test

A particularly important aspect of executive functioning involves the ability to form and carry out complex plans, that is to say planning. This study aimed to investigate planning in 18 older and 16 younger normal participants using an ecological planning subtask derived from the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome test battery, the "Zoo Map Test." There are two trials. The first trial consists of a "high demand" version of the subtask in which the participants must plan in advance the order in which they will visit designated locations in a zoo (formulation level). In the second, or "low demand" version, the participant is simply required to follow a concrete externally imposed strategy to reach the locations to visit (execution level). The two-way ANOVAs mainly showed more difficulties in elderly adults than in younger adults, more difficulties in formulation level than in execution level, and lastly a greater difference between formulation and execution in older participants than in younger adults. These results suggest that elderly participants have some problems developing logical strategies whereas they are able to execute complex predetermined plans.