Control of cognition Flashcards
What must control mechanisms do to acomplish a task
• Control mechanisms must select and activate a subset of processing “modules” and organise, link, and tune them to accomplish a task.
What is a task-set
appropriate organisation of perceptual, cognitive and motor resources to carry out a task
What are some features attributed to the executive control
- inhibiting inappropriate actions
- “updating”: selecting information for maintenance (or suppression) in working memory
- managing search of long term memory
- monitoring performance, troubleshooting, adjusting the balance between accuracy and speed of performance
- coordinating aspects of multitasking, e.g. keeping different information streams as segregated as possible, prioritising tasks [Lect 17]
- sequencing, planning, of multistep tasks especially where the actions required are nonhabitual
Why do we have a unitary inner agent
Executive control agent pulls levers in the head to control it. The idea of the inner agent is because we experience ourselves as these agents. It is imbedded in religion and culture. When being responsible for actions, we seem to need a single agent that is responsible.
What behavioural experiments are used to investigate control processes?
» Experiments on response conflict e.g. Stroop effect [Practical 3]
» Experiments on task-switching [Practical 3]
» Stop-signal experiments
» Dual task & multitasking experiments [Lecture 16]
what does systematic analysis of errors come from
diary studies and ancient enquiries
what are some examples of types of control error
- capture errors
- cross-talk errors
- lost intentions
what are capture errors
habitual or recently-exercised action patterns seize control of behaviour
what are cross-talk errors
– failure to keep separate elements of concurrent tasks, e.g.
— picking up banana and holding it to his ear (last weeks video)
— concurrent writing & speaking (phonological code –> speech)
what are lost intentions
failure to initiate intended action when “trigger conditions” set in prospective memory occur
what happened to phineas gage
Only his prefrontal cortex was damaged so he was still able to speak but his personality had changed.
what is the prefrontal cortex important for
high-level “organisation” of behaviour suggested initially by clinical descriptions of patients with pre-frontal damage (notably by Luria)
what are examples of impairments due to PFC damage
- utilisation behaviour
- preservation
- difficulty in evaluative decision making
- disordered planning
what is utilisation behaviour
» Inability to suppress habitual action to familiar object (cf. capture errors in normals) [medial PFC]
• E.g. if given scissors and paper, will cut it. Cant supress the urge
what is preservation
» (e.g. Wisconsin card-sorting test)
» They learn the rule through trial and error