Target-Response Associations Can Produce Response-Congruency Effects Without Task-Switching Costs.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Li B
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6378947 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The control of emotions is of potentially great clinical relevance. Accordingly, there has been increasing interest in understanding the cognitive mechanisms underlying the ability to switch efficiently between the processing of affective and non-affective information. Reports of asymmetrically increased switch costs when switching toward the more salient emotion task indicate specific demands in the flexible control of emotion. The neural mechanisms underlying affective task switching, however, are so far not fully understood. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (N = 57), we observed that affective task switching was accompanied by increased activity in domain-general fronto-parietal control systems. Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the posterior medial frontal and anterolateral prefrontal cortex was directly related to affective switch costs, indicating that these regions play a particular role in individual differences in (affective) task-switching ability. Asymmetric switch costs were associated with increased activity in the right inferior frontal and dorsal anterior medial prefrontal cortex, two brain regions critical for response inhibition. This suggests that asymmetric switch costs might-to a great extent-reflect higher demands on inhibitory control of the dominant emotion task. These results contribute to a refined understanding of brain systems for the flexible control of emotions and thereby identify valuable target systems for future clinical research.
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Project description:A prominent behavioral marker of inhibition in task switching is the “N-2 repetition cost” that denotes the decrement in performance in task sequences with an N-2 task repetition (ABA), relative to task sequences without an N-2 task repetition (CBA). Recently, it has been critized that N-2 repetition costs at least partially reflect interference between task episodes, rather than persisting inhibition, raising doubts about the interpretation of N-2 repetition costs as a measure of inhibition. Here, we aim to generalize these conclusions in two ways. First, we define episodic effects in task switching with respect to the last episode of the same task, which might have occurred several trials back (e.g., in trial N-2, N-3, etc.). Second, we distinguish between episodic interference caused by task-relevant and task-irrelevant features. We present a re-analysis of previously published data, and a new pre-registered experiment, where we manipulated the degree of interference between task episodes in three levels (episodic match of both task-relevant and task-irrelevant features, episodic match of only task-relevant features, episodic mismatch of both kinds of features). We observed empirical evidence for both cognitive mechansims: Episodic interference was indicated by a main effect of episodic condition; task-level inhibition was indicated by N-2 repetition costs, and by a performance benefit with increasing task lag in an exploratory task-lag analysis. We did not observe any significant modulation of N-2 repetition costs by episodic condition, suggesting that if there was such a modulation, this effect appears to be smaller than the individual contributions of episodic interference and inhibition to task performance.
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Project description:Many studies have shown the beneficial effect of positive emotions on various cognitive processes, such as creativity and cognitive flexibility. Cheerfulness, understood as an affective predisposition to sense of humor, has been associated with positive emotions. So far, however, no studies have shown the relevance of this dimension in cognitive flexibility processes. The aim of this research was to analyze the relationship between cheerfulness and these processes. To this end, we carried out two studies using a task-switching paradigm. Study 1 aimed at analyzing whether high trait cheerfulness was related to better cognitive flexibility (as measured by reduced task-switching costs), whereas Study 2 aimed at replicating the pattern of data observed in Study 1. The total sample was composed of 139 participants (of which 86 were women) selected according to their high versus low scores in trait cheerfulness. In a random way, participants had to judge whether the face presented to them in each trial was that of a man or a woman (gender recognition task) or whether it expressed anger or happiness (expressed emotion recognition task). We expected participants with high versus low trait cheerfulness to show a lower task-switching cost (i.e., higher cognitive flexibility). Results did not confirm this hypothesis. However, in both studies, participants with high versus low trait cheerfulness showed a higher facilitation effect when the stimuli attributes were repeated and also when a cue was presented anticipating the demand to perform. We discuss the relevance of these results for a better understanding of cheerfulness.
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Project description:This report presents data from two versions of the task switching procedure in which the separate influence of stimulus repetitions, response key repetitions, conceptual response repetitions, cue repetitions, task repetitions, and congruency are considered. Experiment 1 used a simple alternating runs procedure with parity judgments of digits and consonant/vowel decisions of letters as the two tasks. Results revealed sizable effects of stimulus and response repetitions, and controlling for these effects reduced the switch cost. Experiment 2 was a cued version of the task switch paradigm with parity and magnitude judgments of digits as the two tasks. Results again revealed large effects of stimulus and response repetitions, in addition to cue repetition effects. Controlling for these effects again reduced the switch cost. Congruency did not interact with our novel "unbiased" measure of switch costs. We discuss how the task switch paradigm might be thought of as a more complex version of the feature integration paradigm and propose an episodic learning account of the effect. We further consider to what extent appeals to higher-order control processes might be unnecessary and propose that controls for feature integration biases should be standard practice in task switching experiments.
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Project description:The congruency effect in distracter interference (e.g., Stroop) tasks is often reduced after incongruent trials, relative to congruent trials. It has been proposed that this congruency sequence effect (CSE) results from trial-by-trial adjustments of attention, which are triggered by changes in response conflict, expectancy, or negative affect. Hence, a large literature has developed to investigate the source(s) of attention adaptation in distracter interference tasks. Recent work, however, suggests that CSEs may stem from feature integration and/or contingency learning processes that are confounded with congruency sequence in the vast majority of distracter interference tasks. By combining an established method for measuring CSEs in the absence of these learning and memory confounds with a prime-probe task, we observed robust CSEs in two experiments. These findings provide strong evidence of CSEs independent of learning and memory confounds, which might be explainable by trial-by-trial adjustments of attention. They also reveal a highly effective approach for observing CSEs independent of the typical confounds, which will facilitate future studies of how people adapt to distraction.
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Project description:There is a growing interest in assessing how cognitive processes fluidly adjust across trials within a task. Dynamic adjustments of control are typically measured using the congruency sequence effect (CSE), which refers to the reduction in interference following an incongruent trial, relative to a congruent trial. However, it is unclear if this effect stems from a general control mechanism or a distinct process tied to cross-trial reengagement of the task set. We examine the relationship of the CSE with another measure of control referred to as the item-specific proportion congruency effect (ISPC), the finding that frequently occurring congruent items exhibit greater interference than items that are often incongruent. If the two effects reflect the same control mechanism, one should find interactive effects of CSE and ISPC. We report results from three experiments utilizing a vocal Stroop task that manipulated these two effects while controlling for variables that are often confounded in the literature. Across three experiments, we observed large CSE and ISPC effects. Importantly, these effects were robustly additive with one another (Bayes Factor for the null approaching 9). This finding indicates that the CSE and ISPC arise from independent mechanisms and suggests the CSE in Stroop may reflect a more general response adjustment process that is not directly tied to trial-by-trial changes in attentional control.
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Project description:BACKGROUND:Task-switching deficits are common in older adults and in those with insomnia. Such deficits may be driven by difficulties with sleep continuity and dampened homeostatic sleep drive. OBJECTIVE:To identify the aspects of task switching affected by insomnia and its treatment, and to determine whether such effects are associated with sleep continuity and homeostatic sleep drive. METHODS:Polysomnographic sleep and task switching were tested in healthy older adults aged 60-93 years with insomnia (n = 48) and normal sleeping controls (n = 51). Assessments were repeated in the insomnia group after eight weeks of cognitive behavioral treatment for insomnia. Sleep measures included wake after sleep onset (WASO) and quantitative indices of homeostatic sleep drive (delta power during nonrapid eye movement [NREM] sleep and the ratio of delta power during the first and second NREM periods). A cued task-switching paradigm instructed participants to perform one of two tasks with varying preparatory cue-target intervals, manipulating task alternation, task repetition, and task preparation. RESULTS:The effect of preparatory cues on accuracy was diminished in the insomnia group compared with that in controls. Across the two groups, a stronger effect of preparatory cues was associated with a higher delta sleep ratio. Following insomnia treatment, task-repetition accuracy significantly improved. This improvement was associated with improvements in WASO. There were no group or treatment effects on response time or task alternation accuracy. CONCLUSIONS:Effects of insomnia diagnosis and treatment apply to conditions that depend on the maintenance of a task set, rather than a domain general effect across task switching. Such effects are associated with homeostatic sleep drive and sleep continuity.
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Project description:Previous studies have found that inhibiting a task set plays an important role in task switching. However, the impact of stimulus-response (S-R) complexity on this inhibition processing has not been explored. In this study, we applied the backward inhibition paradigm (switching between tasks A, B, and C, presented in sets of three) in order to investigate inhibition performance under different S-R complexities caused by corresponding S-R mappings. The results showed that the difficult condition resulted in a greater switch cost than the moderate and easy conditions. Furthermore, we found a significant n-2 repetition cost under the easy S-R complexity that was reversed under the difficult S-R complexity. To verify stability of the reversed n-2 repetition cost in the difficult condition, we recruited another independent sample to conduct an additional experiment with the difficult condition. These results replicated the reversed n-2 repetition cost. These findings suggest that S-R complexity affects task-set inhibition in task switching because the effect of the task-set inhibition was insignificant when the S-R complexity increased; it was only significant under the easy condition. This result was caused by the different cognitive resource assignments.
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Project description:Cognitive control warrants efficient task performance in dynamic and changing environments through adjustments in executive attention, stimulus and response selection. The well-known P300 component of the human event-related potential (ERP) has long been proposed to index "context-updating"-critical for cognitive control-in simple target detection tasks. However, task switching ERP studies have revealed both target P3 (300-350 ms) and later sustained P3-like potentials (400-1,200 ms) to first targets ensuing transition cues, although it remains unclear whether these target P3-like potentials also reflect context updating operations. To address this question, we applied novel single-trial EEG analyses-residue iteration decomposition (RIDE)-in order to disentangle target P3 sub-components in a sample of 22 young adults while they either repeated or switched (updated) task rules. The rationale was to revise the context updating hypothesis of P300 elicitation in the light of new evidence suggesting that "the context" consists of not only the sensory units of stimulation, but also associated motor units, and intermediate low- and high-order sensorimotor units, all of which may need to be dynamically updated on a trial by trial basis. The results showed functionally distinct target P3-like potentials in stimulus-locked, response-locked, and intermediate RIDE component clusters overlying parietal and frontal regions, implying multiple functionally distinct, though temporarily overlapping context updating operations. These findings support a reformulated version of the context updating hypothesis, and reveal a rich family of distinct target P3-like sub-components during the reactive control of target detection in task-switching, plausibly indexing the complex and dynamic workings of frontoparietal cortical networks subserving cognitive control.
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Project description:Task selection during voluntary task switching involves both top-down (goal-directed) and bottom-up (stimulus-driven) mechanisms. The factors that shift the balance between these two mechanisms are not well characterized. In the present research, we studied the role that task frequency plays in determining the extent of stimulus-driven task selection. In two experiments, we used the basic paradigm adapted from Arrington (Memory & Cognition, 38, 991-997, 2008), in which the effect of stimulus availability serves as a marker of stimulus-driven task selection. A number and letter appeared on each trial with varying stimulus onset asynchronies, and participants performed either a consonant/vowel or an even/odd judgment. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed as to the relative frequency with which each task was to be performed (i.e., 50/50, 60/40, or 75/25) and were further instructed to make their transitions between tasks unpredictable. In Experiment 2, participants were given no instructions about how to select tasks, resulting in naturally occurring variation in task frequency. With both instructed (Exp. 1) and naturally occurring (Exp. 2) relative task frequencies, the less frequently performed task showed a greater effect of stimulus availability on task selection, suggestive of a larger influence of stimulus-driven mechanisms during task performance for the less frequent task. When goal-directed mechanisms of task choice are engaged less frequently, the relative influence of the stimulus environment increases.
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