任务切换理论争议新证据

任务切换是研究认知控制的主要范式之一。大量研究发现切换试次比重复试次的反应时更长,错误率更高,这种差异称为切换代价。任务切换时所产生切换代价的理论解释主要有惯性论、重构论和联结论。近十年来,这些理论均获得新的实验支持和发展,但其争议依旧,没有哪一理论能成功解释任务切换的所有效应。未来研究可以建立整合模型,以准确描述切换代价产生的认知机制。     

阈上阈下启动刺激在不同锻炼人群中引发自动评价的特点

双加工理论认为锻炼行为形成中自动加工（系统1）和熟虑加工（系统2）是两个相互作用但又截然不同的信息处理系统,其中自动评价通过触发系统1的自动加工过程激活运动记忆自发的心理联想,并对运动进行情感评价,从而影响锻炼行为。本研究的目的是检测锻炼相关刺激在不同锻炼人群中引发的自动评价特点。采用评价启动任务范式,实验1和实验2分别给予阈上和阈下锻炼词或非锻炼词作为启动刺激,之后要求被试对积极或者消极目标词进行按键反应。研究结果显示无论阈上还是阈下呈现锻炼启动词,均表现为锻炼组对积极目标词反应速度更快。结果表明：锻炼人群对于锻炼词具有积极自动评价。     

Effects of school-based interventions on motivation towards physical activity in children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis

IntroductionAssuming that motivation is the key to initiate and sustain beneficial health behaviors, the aim of this systematic review was to analyze the effects of school-based physical activity interventions on a variety of motivational outcomes towards PA in school-aged children and adolescents.MethodsA comprehensive literature search was carried out in six electronic databases to identify randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental trials examining the effects of PA interventions implemented during the regular school day, e.g., during physical education lessons or lunch breaks. Primary outcomes of interest were students' motivation, basic psychological needs, goal orientation, enjoyment, and motivational teaching climate in physical education. Meta-analyses were conducted for these outcomes using Comprehensive Meta-analysis software. Secondarily, intervention effects on students' PA behaviors were examined and the findings summarized narratively. Methodological quality of studies was evaluated using the Cochrane Collaboration's tool for assessing risk of bias for randomized trials; certainty of evidence on outcome level was evaluated using the GRADE approach.ResultsIn total, 57 studies carried out between 2001 and 2018 were included in this review. Sixteen individual meta-analyses were performed and revealed significant pooled effects for the outcomes enjoyment (g = 0.310), perceived autonomy (g = 0.152), identified regulation (g = 0.378), intrinsic motivation (g = 0.419), self-determination index (g = 0.672), task/mastery climate (g = 0.254), ego/performance climate (g = −0.438), autonomy supportive climate (g = 0.262), task goal orientation (g = 1.370), ego goal orientation (g = −0.188). The narrative data synthesis indicated an increase in students' PA behavior. The overall risk of bias was high across all studies and certainty of evidence of meta-analyzed outcomes ranged from very low to moderate. Moderate certainty of evidence was found for ego/performance climate and ego goal orientation. Conclusions: Meta-analyses suggest that school-based PA interventions may be effective in increasing a variety of motivational outcomes. However, the certainty of evidence was limited in the majority of outcomes. Further research is needed to identify effective intervention strategies that increase students’ motivation towards PA.     

Finding an unfamiliar face in a line-up: Viewing multiple images of the target is beneficial on target-present trials but costly on target-absent trials

When viewing unfamiliar faces, photographs of the same person often are perceived as belonging to different people and photographs of different people as belonging to the same person. Identity matching of unfamiliar faces is especially challenging when the photographs are of a person whose ethnicity differs from that of the observer. In contrast, matching is trivial when viewing familiar faces, regardless of race. Viewing multiple images of an own-race target identity improves accuracy on a line-up task when the target is known to be present (Dowsett et al., 2016, Q J Exp Psychol, 69, 1), suggesting that exposure to within-person variability in appearance is key to face learning. Across three experiments, we show that viewing multiple images of a target identity also improves accuracy for other-race faces on target-present trials. However, viewing multiple images decreases accuracy (i.e., increases false alarms) on target-absent trials for both own- and other-race faces. We discuss the implications of our findings for models of face recognition and for forensic settings.     

Online monitoring of the social presence effects in a two‐person‐like driving video game using near‐infrared spectroscopy

We examined how a friend's presence affects a performer's prefrontal activation in daily‐life activities using two wireless portable near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) devices. Participants played a driving video game either solely in the single group or with a friend in the paired group. The two groups (single and paired) were subdivided according to their game proficiency (low and high). The NIRS data demonstrated a significant interaction of group by proficiency. Low‐proficiency players in the paired group showed lower activation than those in the single group, but high‐proficiency players did not. In the paired group, high‐proficiency players showed higher activation than low‐proficiency players, but not in the single group. These results suggest that NIRS detects social presence effects in everyday situations: decreasing prefrontal activation in low‐proficiency performers due to tension reduction and increasing prefrontal activation in high‐proficiency performers due to increased arousal.     

Musical Training,Bilingualism, and Executive Function: A Closer Look at Task Switching and Dual‐Task Performance

This study investigated whether musical training and bilingualism are associated with enhancements in specific components of executive function, namely, task switching and dual‐task performance. Participants (n = 153) belonging to one of four groups (monolingual musician, bilingual musician, bilingual non‐musician, or monolingual non‐musician) were matched on age and socioeconomic status and administered task switching and dual‐task paradigms. Results demonstrated reduced global and local switch costs in musicians compared with non‐musicians, suggesting that musical training can contribute to increased efficiency in the ability to shift flexibly between mental sets. On dual‐task performance, musicians also outperformed non‐musicians. There was neither a cognitive advantage for bilinguals relative to monolinguals, nor an interaction between music and language to suggest additive effects of both types of experience. These findings demonstrate that long‐term musical training is associated with improvements in task switching and dual‐task performance.     

How does glance behavior influence crash and injury risk? A ‘what-if’ counterfactual simulation using crashes and near-crashes from SHRP2

As naturalistic driving data become increasingly available, new analyses are revealing the significance of drivers’ glance behavior in traffic crashes. Due to the rarity of crashes, even in the largest naturalistic datasets, near-crashes are often included in the analyses and used as surrogates for crashes. However, to date we lack a method to assess the extent to which driver glance behavior influences crash and injury risk across both crashes and near-crashes. This paper presents a novel method for estimating crash and injury risk from off-road glance behavior for crashes and near-crashes alike; this method can also be used to evaluate the safety impact of secondary tasks (such as tuning the radio). We apply a ‘what-if’ (counterfactual) simulation to 37 lead-vehicle crashes and 186 lead-vehicle near-crashes from lead-vehicle scenarios identified in the SHRP2 naturalistic driving data. The simulation combines the kinematics of the two conflicting vehicles with a model of driver glance behavior to estimate two probabilities: (1) that each event becomes a crash, and (2) that each event causes a specific level of injury. The usefulness of the method is demonstrated by comparing the crash and injury risk of normal driving with the risks of driving while performing one of three secondary tasks: the Rockwell radio-tuning task and two hypothetical tasks. Alternative applications of the method and its metrics are also discussed. The method presented in this paper can guide the design of safer driver–vehicle interfaces by showing the best tradeoff between the percent of glances that are on-road, the distribution of off-road glances, and the total task time for different tasks.     

Motor excitability during movement preparation in Tourette syndrome

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by the occurrence of motor and vocal tics. TS has been linked to the impaired operation of cortical‐striatal‐thalamic‐cortical circuits that give rise to hyper‐excitability of cortical motor areas, which may be exacerbated by dysfunctional intra‐cortical inhibitory mechanisms. That said, many individuals gain control over their tics during adolescence and it has been suggested that this increased control arises as a result of the development of mechanisms that operate to suppress corticospinal excitability (CSE) ahead of volitional movements. Here we used single‐pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in conjunction with a manual Go/NoGo task to investigate alterations in CSE ahead of volitional movements in a group of adolescents with TS (N = 10). Our study demonstrated that CSE, as measured by TMS‐induced motor‐evoked potentials (MEPs), was significantly reduced in the TS group in the period immediately preceding a finger movement. More specifically, we show that individuals with TS, unlike their age‐matched controls, do not exhibit the predicted increase in mean MEP amplitude and decrease in MEP variability that immediately precede the execution of volitional movements in typically developing young adults. Finally, we report that the magnitude of the rise in MEP amplitude across the movement preparation period in TS is significantly negatively correlated with clinical measures of motor tic severity, suggesting that individuals with severe motor tics are least able to modulate motor cortical excitability.     

The link between deductive reasoning and mathematics

ABSTRACT

Recent studies have shown that deductive reasoning skills (including transitive and conditional inferences) are related to mathematical abilities. Nevertheless, so far the links between mathematical abilities and these two forms of deductive inference have not been investigated in a single study. It is also unclear whether these inference forms are related to both basic maths skills and mathematical reasoning, and whether these relationships still hold if the effects of fluid intelligence are controlled. We conducted a study with 87 adult participants. The results showed that transitive reasoning skills were related to performance on a number line task, and conditional inferences were related to arithmetic skills. Additionally, both types of deductive inference were related to mathematical reasoning skills, although transitive and conditional reasoning ability were unrelated. Our results also highlighted the important role that ordering abilities play in mathematical reasoning, extending findings regarding the role of ordering abilities in basic maths skills. These results have implications for the theories of mathematical and deductive reasoning, and they could inspire the development of novel educational interventions.