Conflict monitoring and cognitive control

A neglected question regarding cognitive control is how control processes might detect situations calling for their involvement. The authors propose here that the demand for control may be evaluated in part by monitoring for conflicts in information processing. This hypothesis is supported by data concerning the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain area involved in cognitive control, which also appears to respond to the occurrence of conflict. The present article reports two computational modeling studies, serving to articulate the conflict monitoring hypothesis and examine its implications. The first study tests the sufficiency of the hypothesis to account for brain activation data, applying a measure of conflict to existing models of tasks shown to engage the anterior cingulate. The second study implements a feedback loop connecting conflict monitoring to cognitive control, using this to simulate a number of important behavioral phenomena.     

Eating disorder examination questionnaire: norms for young adolescent girls

This paper reports young adolescent female norms for the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q). The standardization sample was comprised of 808 girls aged between 12 and 14 years from three single-sex schools (one private and two state schools). Means, standard deviations and percentile ranks for raw EDE-Q subscale scores are presented. Prevalence figures for key eating disorder behaviors over the previous two weeks were as follows: 4% self-induced vomiting; 1% laxative misuse; 0.4% diuretic misuse; and 8% regular binge eating.     

Sources of comfort and change in this "would-be" science

Responds to comments made by numerous authors (see records 2004-14303-014, 2004-14303-015, and 2004-14303-016) on the current author's original article (see record 2003-05602-002), which presented an account of why psychologists have almost continuously invoked Kuhn since the 1970s to justify a wide array of the discipline's historical developments and epistemological proclivities. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing inhibitory control: a revised approach to the stop signal task

The stop signal task (stop task) is designed to assess inhibitory control and is a frequently used research tool in clinical disorders such as ADHD and schizophrenia. Previous methods of setting stop signal delay and of assessing inhibitory control are problematic. The current study reports two modifications that improve the task as a measure of inhibitory control. The first modification was to set stop signal delays proportional to go mean reaction time (go MRT) to better account for inter-subject variability in go MRT. Twenty-eight normal children were tested, and all standard, stop task dependent measures were obtained when delays were set by this method. The second modification was to calculate a novel dependent measure called the area of inhibition (AOI) which provides a more complete measure of inhibitory control than the slope of the relative finishing time z-scores (ZRFT-slope). Implications for the assessment of inhibitory control in clinical populations are discussed.     

The inability to ignore auditory distractors as a function of visual task perceptual load

Using a response competition paradigm, we investigated the ability to ignore target response-compatible, target response-incompatible, and neutral visual and auditory distractors presented during a visual search task. The perceptual load model of attention (e.g., Lavie & Tsal, 1994) states that task-relevant processing load determines irrelevant distractor processing in such a way that increasing processing load prevents distractor processing. In three experiments, participants searched sets of one (easy search) or six (hard search) similar items. In Experiment 1, visual distractors influenced reaction time (RT) and accuracy only for easy searches, following the perceptual load model. Surprisingly, auditory distractors yielded larger distractor compatibility effects (median RT for incompatible trials minus median RT for compatible trials) for hard searches than for easy searches. In Experiments 2 and 3, during hard searches, consistent RT benefits with response-compatible and RT costs with response-incompatible auditory distractors occurred only for hard searches. We suggest that auditory distractors are processed regardless of visual perceptual load but that the ability to inhibit cross-modal influence from auditory distractors is reduced under high visual load.     

Overactive action monitoring in obsessive-compulsive disorder: evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been found to be hyperactive at rest, during symptom provocation, and after commission of errors in cognitive tasks. This hyperactivity might reflect an abnormality in conflict detection, a hypothesized basic mechanism for the action-monitoring function of the ACC. This hypothesis was tested using functional magnetic resonance imaging, by scanning 11 OCD patients and 13 matched control subjects while they performed a version of the continuous-performance task with four trial types that induced graded levels of response conflict. Although a behavioral index of conflict (i.e., accuracy) was similar for patients and control subjects, the ACC activation was increased in patients during high-conflict trials. The error-related activity in the same brain region was also higher in patients, consistent with previous electrophysiological findings. Both conflict- and error-related activity showed trends for positive correlations with severity of OCD symptoms, but not with anxiety. These findings suggest that as part of an overactive action-monitoring system, the ACC is more directly involved in the pathophysiology of OCD than previously thought.     

What works in prevention. Principles of effective prevention programs

The high prevalence of drug abuse, delinquency, youth violence, and other youth problems creates a need to identify and disseminate effective prevention strategies. General principles gleaned from effective interventions may help prevention practitioners select, modify, or create more effective programs. Using a review-of-reviews approach across 4 areas (substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, school failure, and juvenile delinquency and violence), the authors identified 9 characteristics that were consistently associated with effective prevention programs: Programs were comprehensive, included varied teaching methods, provided sufficient dosage, were theory driven, provided opportunities for positive relationships, were appropriately timed, were socioculturally relevant, included outcome evaluation, and involved well-trained staff. This synthesis can inform the planning and implementation of problem-specific prevention interventions, provide a rationale for multi-problem prevention programs, and serve as a basis for further research.     

Development of an abstract category representation for the spatial relation between in 6- to 10-month-old infants

Nine experiments examined the formation of an abstract category representation for the spatial relation between by 6- to 10-month-old infants. The experiments determined that 9- to 10-month-olds, but not 6- to 7-month-olds, could form an abstract category representation for between when performing in an object-variation version of the between categorization task. The results also demonstrated that 6- to 7-month-olds could form category representations for between in the object-variation version of the between categorization task but that such representations were specific to the particular objects presented. The evidence confirms that representations for different spatial relations emerge at different points during development, and suggests that each representation undergoes its own period of development from concrete to abstract.