Control of cognition Flashcards

1
Q

What must control mechanisms do to acomplish a task

A

• Control mechanisms must select and activate a subset of processing “modules” and organise, link, and tune them to accomplish a task.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

What is a task-set

A

appropriate organisation of perceptual, cognitive and motor resources to carry out a task

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

What are some features attributed to the executive control

A
  • 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
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

Why do we have a unitary inner agent

A

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.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

What behavioural experiments are used to investigate control processes?

A

» 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]

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

what does systematic analysis of errors come from

A

diary studies and ancient enquiries

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

what are some examples of types of control error

A
  • capture errors
  • cross-talk errors
  • lost intentions
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

what are capture errors

A

habitual or recently-exercised action patterns seize control of behaviour

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

what are cross-talk errors

A

– 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)

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

what are lost intentions

A

failure to initiate intended action when “trigger conditions” set in prospective memory occur

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

what happened to phineas gage

A

Only his prefrontal cortex was damaged so he was still able to speak but his personality had changed.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

what is the prefrontal cortex important for

A

high-level “organisation” of behaviour suggested initially by clinical descriptions of patients with pre-frontal damage (notably by Luria)

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

what are examples of impairments due to PFC damage

A
  • utilisation behaviour
  • preservation
  • difficulty in evaluative decision making
  • disordered planning
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

what is utilisation behaviour

A

» 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

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

what is preservation

A

» (e.g. Wisconsin card-sorting test)

» They learn the rule through trial and error

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

what is difficulty in evaluative decision making

A

» e.g. Damasio’s (1999) patient J,

[orbito-frontal PFC]

17
Q

what is disordered planning

A

» e.g. “strategy application disorder”…..

18
Q

what is strategy applicaiton disorder (shallice and Burgess)

A

» subtasks not completed, ignored, repeated, done in inefficient order
» rules broken (crossing the dotted line, entering irrelevant shops)
» violations of social convention

19
Q

what did shallice and burgess investigate

A

A normal participant’s path through the mall

Participant is given money + instruction sheet: list of items to buy, information to find out, rendezvous + time, and some rules (don’t go beyond dotted line, enter shop only to buy something).

Performance of a patient with frontal lobe damage
(whose performance was normal on Wisconsin test):
• Disorganised performance:
» subtasks not completed, ignored, repeated, done in inefficient order
» rules broken (crossing the dotted line, entering irrelevant shops)
» violations of social convention
(e.g. not paying, other inappropriate behaviour)
but not through lack of motivation: work-rate is high.

20
Q

how are central executives limited

A

Observed dissociations among impairments of executive control after brain damage argue against a unitary “central executive”

  • Instead, we have a distributed network of control mechanisms (in different parts of PFC, basal ganglia and parietal cortex)
  • [Warning re Baddeley’s model: Maintaining and controlling temporary storage buffers is only a small part of what executive control mechanisms do!]
21
Q

how do stroop tests work

A

We already have (in our brains)
» a task-set for colour-naming
» a task-set for reading (much more practiced, habitual, “automatic”)
We try to selectively attend to colour and apply the naming task-set.
but cannot (completely) suppress the reading task-set.
The difference in response time between the two conditions measures response conflict – which indexes the incompleteness of control.

22
Q

what is the order of a stroop test

A

RT (congruent) < RT (neutral) < RT (incongruent)

23
Q

what is the flanker effect?

A

response conflict triggered by application of instructed task set to irrelevant objects

24
Q

how was Comparing task switches and repeats in a task-cueing experiment investigated

(Monsell, Sumner and Waters)

A

On each trial a coloured shape (the task cue) appeared, then a digit in its centre, participant responds with left or right hand.

task changed predictibaily every four trials

25
Q

What did MacDonald find about neuro-imaging response conflict and task-set preparation?

A

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activated more after incongruent than congruent stimuli: “conflict detector”

Left lateral dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (L.DLPFC) activated by preparation for (harder) colour-naming more than by preparation for word-naming: task-set maintenance/
suppression of stronger task set

26
Q

how is Imaging “task-set inertia” with fMRI (Yeung et al, 2006, J of Neuroscience) measured

A

• Stimulus: word on face
• Classification tasks in runs of 4
» word by number of syllables
» face by gender
• RT switch cost on first trial of run.
• In separate blocks “localiser” tasks established word- and face- selective regions of activation
(left Inferior Temporal Gyrus and right Fusiform Gyrus, respectively )
• Switch-trial-related activation of face-specific area predicts RT cost of switching to word task, and activation of word-specific area predicts RT cost of switching to face task