Implicit task sets in task switching?

In 2 experiments, the authors compare stimulus-based versus task-rule-based task performance. Participants practiced 8 stimulus-response mappings either with or without knowledge about 2 underlying task sets. After practice, 2 transfer blocks with 8 new stimuli were presented. Results show that rule knowledge leads to significant switch and transfer costs, whereas without rule knowledge neither switch nor transfer costs occur. However, significant Task Type x Response Type interactions occurred in both conditions. In a second experiment including only the no rule condition, half of the stimulus-response mappings in the transfer blocks were incongruent to the underlying task rule. Slower response times for these incongruent stimuli as compared with congruent stimuli and the absence of switch costs suggest that participants acquired (presumably implicit) knowledge about 4 different stimulus-response categories.     

Family sculpting: II. Some practical examples

This paper reviews a number of practical examples of family sculpting to illustrate possibilities for its use described in a general way in an earlier companion article (Journal of Family Therapy (1981) 3: 341–352). Examples are considered first in relation to generic practical possibilities for sculpting: structural analysis and diagnosis, the inescapability of the concrete, the portrayal of ambiguity. A second set of examples is considered in relation to major practical contexts of sculpting: with children, with students, with workers. The paper concludes with a discussion of the complexity of family sculpting and a comparison of the structural interpretation of sculpting offered here with Papp et al. 's notion of choreography.     

Family Sculpting: I. Some doubts and some possibilities

Family sculpting is reviewed within the context of general doubts that confront family therapy, in particular the need for a certain act of faith in therapy, and the search for some sort of underlying theory. Family sculpting is most often used in reference to the psychoanalytic tradition of family therapy, but here the case is made for more serious attention to structural approaches. The potential of family sculpting is further explored in a number of other respects: its concreteness, its portrayal of ambiguity and its use with students, workers and other groups.     

Crisis, taboos and careers guidance

The relevance of the idea of 'crisis' for careers and careers guidance is examined, together with some of the critical responses that have been made to recent crises. It is argued that careers guidance generally responds to such challenges by seeing them as external problems rather than as changes which may alter its very assumptions and methods. Two particular taboos are noted in this context concerning the value of work and of working for an organisation. The questioning of these taboos leads to four models of alternative careers: the Uncareer, the Guerilla Career, the Cop-Out Career, and the Non-Career. These forms of career raise the broader issues of order and disorder within careers, with their associated implications for careers guidance.     

Context-sensitive adjustments of cognitive control: conflict-adaptation effects are modulated by processing demands of the ongoing task

Dynamic adjustments of cognitive control in response to interference from irrelevant stimulus attributes have repeatedly been shown. The purpose of the current research was to investigate how these control adjustments are modulated by the processing demands of a primary task. To this end, the authors combined a primary task (a number comparison task: classifying digits as smaller or larger than 5) with a Simon task. Control adjustments were observed in the form of typical sequential modulations of the Simon effect. In addition, the authors found sequential modulations of the numerical distance effect and an interaction of both effects. Results suggest that not only response conflict due to interference from task-irrelevant features but also processing demands of task-relevant features determine the level of control adjustment in the subsequent trial.     

That’s what task sets are for: shielding against irrelevant information

Goal-directed behavior requires the cognitive system to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information. The authors show that task sets help to shield the system from irrelevant information. Participants had to respond to eight different colored word stimuli under different instruction conditions. They either had to learn the stimulus-response mappings (SR condition), to use one task set (1 TS condition) or to use two different task sets (2 TS condition). In the 2 TS and the SR conditions, participants showed response repetition effects (interaction of color repetition x response repetition), indicating that participants processed the color of the words. Importantly, the 1 TS condition did not show such an interaction. Overall, the results provide evidence for the shielding function of task sets. This benefit turns into costs in classical task switching paradigms. From this perspective, switch costs can be interpreted as the consequence of successful shielding on the previous task.     

Conflict-triggered goal shielding: response conflicts attenuate background monitoring for prospective memory cues

Action control in a changing environment requires that one shield current goals from distracting information (goal shielding) and at the same time monitor the environment for potentially significant stimuli that may afford a goal switch (background monitoring). Response conflicts modulate the balance between goal shielding and background monitoring, as indicated by reduced susceptibility to interference after response conflicts. Such conflict-adaptation effects have been attributed to enhanced recruitment of cognitive control on trials following conflicts. Here we show that conflict triggers increased goal shielding on the conflict trial itself. Subjects performed a spatial compatibility task during which they had to notice rare prospective memory cues. Such cues were overlooked more often on conflict trials than on nonconflict trials, a result indicating that shielding of the current goal and inhibition of distractors were increased on the current trial when it involved a response conflict. Thus, evidence for enhanced recruitment of control following conflict may partly reflect aftereffects of goal shielding on the conflict trial itself.     

Multi-level mental representations of written,auditory, and audiovisual text in children and adults

We examined whether the comprehension of narrative texts differed between auditory, audiovisual, and written text presentations in a sample of 8- and 10-year-olds and adults. Based on multi-level theories of text comprehension that assume text comprehension to involve at least three levels of mental representation, we applied a sentence recognition task that enabled the separate assessment of the memory of the text surface, text base, and the situation model. Results indicate that 8-year-olds benefit from audiovisual and auditory text presentations in comparison with written text presentations in terms of their memory of situation model information. For 10-year-olds and adults, their text comprehension did not differ between audiovisual, auditory, and written text presentations. Additionally, the mode of text presentation had no effect on the memory of text surface and text base information.     

Conflicts as aversive signals: Conflict priming increases negative judgments for neutral stimuli

Botvinick, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 7:356–366 (2007) recently suggested that competing theories of the monitoring function of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for cognitive control might converge on the detection of aversive signals in general, implying that response conflicts, a known trigger of ACC activation, are aversive, too. Recent evidence showing conflict priming (i.e., faster responses to negative targets after conflict primes) directly supports this notion but remains inconclusive with regard to possible confounds with processing fluency. To this end, two experiments were conducted to offer more compelling evidence for the negative valence of conflicts. Participants were primed by (conflict and nonconflict) Stroop stimuli and subsequently had to judge the valence of neutral German words (Experiment 1a) or Chinese pictographs (Experiment 1b). Results showed that conflict, as compared with nonconflict, primes led to more negative judgments of subsequently presented neutral target stimuli. The findings will be discussed in the light of existing theories of action control highlighting the role of aversive signals for sequential processing adjustments.