week 3

Question 1

Explain the correlation between top-down control and compensation success (low, medium and high top-down control)

Answer 1

Low top-down control requires little compensation meaning there no need for a lot of activation

medium top down control: the task requires more compensation but not too much meaning that activation occurs

high top down: task requires too much activation and older people cannot do this leading to lower compensation achieved

Question 2

Related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis (crunch model)

Answer 2

Level of task difficulty impacts performance and brain activation

Increased in brain activation until demands exceed the ability to compensate (crunch point) and then we see a decline

Question 3

What is the effect of external factors such as brain injury?

Answer 3

brain injury can worsen some cognitive diseases like dementia

Question 4

What are the two aspects of attention?

Answer 4

excitation and inhibition

Question 5

explain excitation

Answer 5

automatic function whereby any familiar object, scene, word, leads to automatic mental representation

Question 6

explain inhibition

Answer 6

since we cannot process all information in the environment at one time, humans pay attention to some stimuli and tune out others

Question 7

3 inhibitory mechanisms that help with the selection

Answer 7

access, deletion and restraint

Question 8

Explain access

Answer 8

Access: limiting access to the irrelevant info

Question 9

Explain deletion

Answer 9

Deleting Infor that is not relevant

Question 10

explain restraint

Answer 10

restraining function control competing responses

Question 11

Evidence for the access function comes from two areas of study. Which are?

Answer 11

Semantic priming literature and distractability literature

Question 12

What is semantic priming literature

Answer 12

broader semantic activation in older than younger adults

Question 13

what is distractability literature

Answer 13

Older adults show great distractibility because they allow more info to become active in their mental representation (leaky filter)

Question 14

What does it mean that older people have broader semantic activation than older people?

Answer 14

Imagine a web of connected objects. For instance fire is tied to orange, hot, smoke, firefighters etc. Since older people have more life experience they also have more semantic connections than younger people

Question 15

Explain the study that identified older people have more semantic connections

Answer 15

condition one: multiple pairs of words were shown that have obvious connections (cat vs. dog)

contion two: pairs of words were shown that have no connection

Results indicated that older people responded more quickly and accurately to connected word pairs

Question 16

Distractability: older adults show decline in performance in tasks with

Answer 16

additional visual distractors

Question 17

Example of distractability study

Answer 17

computerized digit substitution: the one in class where numbers represented a symbol.

Question 18

What were the results of this study?

Answer 18

Older people were far better at the computerized digit substitution, focusing on one item at a time. In the distraction condition, they performed far worse

Question 19

Explain the N-back test

Answer 19

Is the current picture the same as the last picture

Each picture is superimposed with an irrelevant word

After delay, participants are tested for their knowledge of the irrelevant words

Question 20

What did the N back test reveal in older people?

Answer 20

Older adults have better knowledge of irrelevant words than younger adults because they attend to the irrelevant information.

Question 21

What was found with deletion performance in older vs younger people?

Answer 21

older adults have more difficulty than younger adults ignoring/deleting the no longer relevant information

Question 22

Reading comprehension in older adults. What happened when new information was introduced correcting old info in a story?

Answer 22

Older adults were more likely to keep the original interpretation

Question 23

What is a span task?

Answer 23

remembering different sets of words

Question 24

What is the standard span task?

Answer 24

Few words starting and every set increases in size requiring participant to try and remember more and more

Question 25

opposite direction span task

Answer 25

Start with huge list and each set decreases in size with each line.

Question 26

In what span task did older people do better at

Answer 26

opposite directions: decreasing set size

Question 27

Neuro imaging evidence shows that older people cannot tune out irrelevant info.

Answer 27

older adults showed activation in their Para-hippocampal place area when told to attend scenes but they did not decrease activation when told to ignore scenes

Question 28

What are examples of restraints to strong responses?

Answer 28

Restraint of both motor responses and thoughts

Older adults have a difficult time restraining strong but inappropriate response in the stop-signal task

Question 29

Popular paradigms: Explain Wisconsin card sorting task

flanker task

go no go trails

Answer 29

Wisconsin: sort cards based on numbers, colours, shapes

flnaker task: respond to the direction of arrows

go no go task: only respond to go trails

Question 30

What is one unanticipated finding of these tasks?

Answer 30

Older adults had better memory for words that were distracting in picture task meaning that older adults can use distraction to memorize better.

Question 31

What does it mean that old people use hyper binding

Answer 31

Older adults inability to ignore irrelevant information means they bind more information together

Question 32

Cognitive control is the ability to

Answer 32

Limit attention to goal-relevant information and inhibit/suppress irrelevant distractions.

Question 33

How is Cognitive control is a double-edged sword:

Answer 33

Good cognitive control can help or hinder performance depending on the tasks.

Question 34

Cognitive control benefit?

Answer 34

better at attending to only relevant information and inhibiting irrelevant information

Question 35

Cognitive control benefits with memory

Answer 35

More efficient at storing only relevant info, preventing/inhibiting irrelevant info

Better memory retrieval by inhibiting irrelevant information from entering memory

Question 36

cognitive control benefit language

Answer 36

Ignoring distractors during reading, improving reading span and comprehension.

Ignore distractors during listening can also help real-time language processing.

Question 37

Cognitive control costs: memory

Answer 37

reduced cognitive control is good with implicit memory tests where information was encoded in holistic manner

Question 38

cognitive control costs: leaarning

Answer 38

less control allows better detection of statistical pattern

Question 39

cognitive control costs: problem-solving

Answer 39

less control allows for creative and simple solutions to problems

Question 40

Reduced cognitive control and aging: in comparison to younger people, older adults can

Answer 40

Use distractions to boost their memory and learn new info

Learn more about the world around them

Detect statistical patterns and associations between them

Question 41

Factors that influence cognitive control: Time of day

Answer 41

Age related differences in circadian ryhtm: peak time for older adults is morning compared to afternoon-evening for younger adults

Question 42

Factors that reduce cognitive control: Mood

Answer 42

positive mood reduces cognitive control which leads to some of the benefits observed for creative and problem solving tasks