Cognitive control and inhibition Flashcards
Inhibition
We inhibit responses because they may not be appropriate. e.g., opening a bag of crips in the shop when you are hungry
Flexibility
Can perform a wide range of tasks and select them flexibly to suit different contexts
Multitasking
Doing two tasks at the same time- if they don’t collide
What is cognition?
Basis for our intelligent behaviour.
Overrides habitual responses in favour of complex, long term goals- we apply thought.
Cognitive control controls our sensory, memory and motor systems.
Prefrontal cortex is responsible for our cognitive functions
Cognitive control vs Executive functions
Executive functions is often used for specific components- like working memory
Cognitive control- less clear separation of distinct subcomponents
Top-down mental processes
Top-down- prior knowledge influences our interpretation of sensory info. The brain sends down stored information to the sensory system.
Requires effort or attention to run them, not autopilot
Core/Basic
Working memory
Inhibitory control
Flexibility
Higher order/insight related
Object permenence
Theory of mind
Mental time travel
Tool use
Cognitive flexibility
Changing perspectives or approaches to a problem, flexibly adjusting to new demands, rules, or priorities.
Requires or builds on other executive functions, for example:
changing a perspective or viewpoint involves INHIBITION of previous perspective and loading new perspective into WORKING MEMORY
Wisconsin card sorting task
There are 4 cards laid out and participants are given another card and asked to match it to one of the 4 cards. It can either match the shape, colour, or number.
You get told if you are correct or wrong
IF you are correct you should keep following this rule
The correct category will randomly change without you knowing, the participant has to change behaviour in order to find the correct match again.
What this tells us
A key measure in this task are perseverative errors- the number of trials in which the participant kept choosing the old category.
Used to examine cognitive impairments in patients with neurological damage or psychological disorders e.g.,
Frontal lobe
Schizophrenia
Stroke
OCD
There are challenges because:
Neural damage is often unique in each patient
Solving the task does not only involve cognitive flexibility but also other aspects of executive function
Inhibitory control
Controlling one’s attention, behaviour, thoughts and/or emotions to override a strong internal predisposition or external lure
How to select what behaviours are appropriate in certain situations
We strengthen the right response and inhibit the others
Impulsivity related to deficient inhibitory processes
Impulsive/incorrect/prepotent responses take shorter time to reach action threshold
Correct responses take longer
Successful inhibition involves supressing the prepotent response allowing the correct response to reach the threshold
Inhibitory control 2
key function of the frontal lobe is to inhibit automatic responses
Types of behavioural inhibition
Response inhibition- action postponing, action cancellation. Not answering the phone while driving
Deferred gratification- wait until the best outcome. wait till home to eat crisps
Reversal learning- card sorting task, updating understanding of rules
Stop-signal task
clap hands when there is only a green square, don’t clap hands when it is followed by a red square
The long er the delay between the red square appearing, the more likely people are going to incorrectly clap
