Suppression on the basis of template for rejection is reactive: Evidence from human electrophysiology.

According to most theories of attention, the selection of task-relevant visual information can be enhanced by holding them in visual working memory (VWM). However, there has been a long-standing debate concerning whether similar optimization can also be achieved for task-irrelevant information, known as a "template for rejection". The present study aimed to explore this issue by examining the consequence of cue distractors before visual search tasks. For this endeavor, we manipulated the display heterogeneity by using two distractor conditions, salient and non-salient, to explore the extent to which holding the distractor color in VWM might affect attentional selection. We measured the reaction times of participants while their EEG activity was recorded. The results showed that WM-matched distractors did not improve reaction times but rather slowed them down in both tasks. Event-related potential (ERP) results showed that the display heterogeneity had no modulatory effect on the degree of distractor suppression. Even in the salient distractor condition, the WM-matched distractor received no greater suppression. Furthermore, the WM-matched distractor but not the neutral distractor elicited an N2pc before the PD in salient distractor conditions. This suggests that the template for rejection operates reactively since suppression occurs after extra attentional processes to the distractor. Moreover, the presence of WM-matched distractors led to a reduction of P3b, indicating a competition between target processing and WM-matched distractor rejection. Our findings provide insights into the mechanisms underlying the optimization of attentional selection, and have implications for future studies aimed at understanding the role of VWM in cognition.

Similarities of SNARC, cognitive Simon, and visuomotor Simon effects in terms of response time distributions, hand-stimulus proximity, and temporal dynamics.

The spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) and Simon effects are attributed to the same type of conflict according to dimensional overlap (DO) theory: the congruency of task-irrelevant spatial information and the selected response (e.g., left or right). However, previous studies have yielded inconsistent results regarding the relationship between the two effects, with some studies reporting an interaction while others did not. This discrepancy may be attributed to the use of different types of Simon effects (visuomotor and cognitive Simon effects) in these studies, as the spatial codes associated with these two types of Simon effects are distinct (exogenous and endogenous, respectively). The aim of this study was to address these inconsistencies and gain a better understanding of the similarities and differences in spatial representations generated by spatial location, semantic information, and numerical information. We attempted to classify the relationships among the SNARC and Simon effects. Specifically, the visuomotor Simon, cognitive Simon, and SNARC effects were compared from three perspectives: the response time (RT) distribution, hand-stimulus proximity, and temporal dynamics (with the drift diffusion model; DDM). Regarding RTs, the results showed that the visuomotor Simon effect decreased with increased values of RT bins, while the cognitive Simon and SNARC effects increased. Additionally, the visuomotor Simon effect was the only effect influenced by hand-stimulus proximity, with a stronger effect observed in the hand-proximal condition than in the hand-distal condition. Regarding the DDM results, only the visuomotor Simon effect exhibited a higher drift rate and longer non-decision time in the incompatible condition than in the compatible condition. Conversely, both the SNARC and cognitive Simon effects exhibited an inverse pattern regarding the drift rate and no significant difference in non-decision time between the two conditions. These findings suggest that the SNARC effect is more similar to the cognitive Simon effect than the visuomotor Simon effect, indicating that the endogenous spatial-numerical representation of the SNARC effect might share an underlying processing mechanism with the endogenous spatial-semantic representation of the cognitive Simon effect but not with the exogenous location representation of the visuomotor Simon effect. Our results further demonstrate that the origin of spatial information could impact the classification of conflicts and supplement DO theory.

Negative Impacts of Sleep-Wake Rhythm Disturbances on Attention in Young Adults.

Sleep-wake rhythm disturbances have a negative impact on attention. However, how it affects attention and whether the restoration of regular rhythms can restore attention are unclear. This study aims to explore the effects of sleep-wake rhythm disturbances on three subfunctions of attention (alertness, orientation, and executive control) and the restoration of regular rhythms on these functions. Twenty-one participants in the experimental group (who experienced sleep-wake rhythm disturbances for at least one month; aged 18-26) were required to sleep regularly following a sleep schedule, whereas 20 participants in the control group (who maintained regular sleep for at least three months; aged 19-22) received no manipulation of their sleep. All participants were assessed using the attention network test three times in six days. All of them wore spectrum activity monitors and kept sleep diaries every day. The results showed that the effects of alertness and executive control in the experimental group were significantly lower than those in the control group. After five days of regular sleep, the difference in the alertness effect between the two groups significantly decreased. These results suggested that under natural conditions, sleep-wake rhythm disturbances could negatively influence alertness and executive control, and a short period of restoring a regular rhythm has a recovery effect on alertness.

Processing stage flexibility of the SNARC effect: Task relevance or magnitude relevance?

Previous studies have shown that the processing stage of the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect is flexible. Two recent studies used the same experimental paradigm to check whether the SNARC effect occurred in the semantic-representation stage but reached contradictory conclusions, showing that the SNARC effect was influenced by a magnitude Stroop effect in a magnitude comparison task but not by a parity Stroop effect in a parity judgment task. Those two studies had two distinct operational factors: the task type (magnitude comparison task or parity judgment task, with the numerical magnitude information task-relevant or task-irrelevant) and the semantic representation stage-related interference information (magnitude or parity Stroop effect, with the interference information magnitude-relevant or magnitude-irrelevant). To determine which factor influenced the SNARC effect, in the present study, the Stroop effect was switched in the two tasks based on the previous studies. The findings of four experiments consistently showed that the SNARC effect was not influenced by the parity Stroop effect in the magnitude comparison task but was influenced by the magnitude Stroop effect in the parity judgment task. Combined with the results of those two contradictory studies, the findings indicated that regardless of the task type or the task relevance of numerical magnitude information, magnitude-relevant interference information was the primary factor to affect the SNARC effect. Furthermore, a two-stage processing model that explained the observed flexibility of the SNARC effect was proposed and discussed.

The spatiotemporal characteristics of N170s for faces and words: A meta-analysis study.

N170 is a negative event-related potential (ERP) component in response to visual stimuli, such as faces. It remains controversial whether N170 reflects the specific processing of faces or can also be elicited by objects of expertise (e.g., words). In this research, we conducted a meta-analysis for the spatiotemporal characteristics of N170 of face and word stimuli from 24 studies in which both stimuli were presented for each subject. We observed that (1) both face and word stimuli can elicit conspicuous N170s and that there was no difference between the amplitude of face-N170 and word-N170; (2) there is no difference in the latencies between the two N170s; and (3) both N170s are distributed in the occipitotemporal regions but with a reversed hemispheric distribution pattern-face-N170 is more negative in the right than left occipitotemporal regions, while word-N170 is the opposite. These results showed that the face- and word-N170s are qualitatively the same but have different hemispheric lateralization advantages-N170 might be a general neural index of the expertise-dependent object-recognition process in occipitotemporal regions.

Two processing stages of the SNARC effect.

The spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect showed that small/large numbers represented in the left/right space facilitated left/right responses, respectively. However, the processing stage (semantic representation or response selection) of the SNARC effect is still controversial. To investigate this issue, we adopted a modified magnitude comparison task in which the effects of SNARC, Stroop (semantic-representation stage), and Simon (response-selection stage) could be simultaneously induced. The processing stages of the SNARC effect were investigated by examining the interactions among these effects. According to the additive factor logic, if two effects are interactive, then they occur in the same stage; if two effects are additive, then they occur in different stages. Across two experiments, the SNARC effect interacted with the Stroop effect and with the Simon effect. These results suggested that the SNARC effect occurred in both the semantic-representation and response-selection stages and provided insight into that the SNARC effect might have two originating sources.

Distinct Brain Mechanisms for Conflict Adaptation within and across Conflict Types.

Cognitive conflict, like other cognitive processes, shows the characteristic of adaptation, that is, conflict effects are attenuated when immediately following a conflicting event, a phenomenon known as the conflict adaptation effect (CAE). One important aspect of CAE is its sensitivity to the intertrial coherence of conflict type, that is, behavioral CAE occurs only if consecutive trials are of the same conflict type. Although reliably observed behaviorally, the neural mechanisms underlying such a phenomenon remains elusive. With a paradigm combining the classic Simon task and Stroop task, this fMRI study examined neural correlates of conflict adaptation both within and across conflict types. The results revealed that when the conflict type repeated (but not when it alternated), the CAE-like neural activations were observed in dorsal ACC, inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), superior parietal lobe, and so forth (i.e., regions within typical task-positive networks). In contrast, when the conflict type alternated (but not when it repeated), we found CAE-like neural deactivations in the left superior frontal gyri (i.e., a region within the typical task-negative network). Network analyses suggested that the regions of ACC, IFG, superior parietal lobe, and superior frontal gyrus can be clustered into two antagonistic networks, and the ACC-IFG connection was associated with the within-type CAE. This evidence suggests that our adaptation to cognitive conflicts within a conflict type and across different types may rely on these two distinct neural mechanisms.

The congruency sequence effect is modulated by the similarity of conflicts.

The congruence effect can be modulated by adjacent conflict conditions, producing the congruency sequence effect (CSE). However, many boundary conditions prevent the transfer of the cross-conflict CSE. A consensus has been achieved that the CSE reflects both top-down control and bottom-up associative learning, but neither perspective could perfectly interpret the various boundary conditions. Their imperfections recently inspired an integrative learning account of cognitive control, which predicts that conflict similarity affects the magnitude of the cross-conflict CSE. We examined this hypothesis with the spatial Stroop-Simon paradigm by introducing a compound condition containing both the Stroop and Simon components (Experiment 1). The conflict similarity was defined by the degree of component overlap, as manipulated by the polar angle of the target arrow in Experiments 2a and 2b and by the Euclidean distance of the target arrow in Experiments 3a and 3b. Mixed-effect modeling analyses indicated that, in all experiments, the cross-conflict CSEs were positively correlated with the similarity among conflict conditions. Specifically, the compound condition with equal Stroop and Simon components generated comparable CSEs with both the Stroop and Simon conditions (Experiment 1). When the compound condition was more similar to the Stroop than the Simon condition, a trend of a larger CSE was observed between the compound conflict and the Stroop condition than between the compound conflict and the Simon condition, and vice versa (Experiments 2 and 3). Our study revealed that the continuum of the cross-conflict CSE was modulated by conflict similarity, hence supporting the integrative learning account of cognitive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Attention can operate on object representations in visual sensory memory.

Numerous studies have shown that attention can be allocated to various types of objects, such as low-level objects developed by perceptual organization and high-level objects developed by semantic associations. However, little is known about whether attention can also be affected solely by object representations in the brain, after the disappearance of physical objects. Here, we used a modified double-rectangle paradigm to investigate how attention is affected by object representation in visual sensory memory when the physical objects disappear for a short period of time before the target onset. By manipulating the interstimulus interval (ISI) between the offset of the objects and the onset of the target, an object-based attention effect, with shorter reaction times (RTs) for within-object relative to between-object conditions, was observed in the short-ISI (within 500 ms in Experiments 1a, 1b, 2, and 3) conditions while disappearing in the long-ISI (800 ms in Experiment 4) conditions. This result demonstrated that the mere presence of object representation in visual sensory memory, or the sensory memory-maintained object, can serve as an object unit that attention can operate on. This provides evidence for the relationship between object-based attention and visual sensory memory: object representation in visual sensory memory could affect attentional allocation, or attention can operate on a sensory memory-maintained object.

The SNARC effect occurs in the response-selection stage.

The dimensional overlap (DO) theory categorizes various stimulus-response compatible effects (e.g., the manual Stroop, Simon, and SNARC effects) into two main types: stimulus-stimulus (S-S) and stimulus-response (S-R) dimensional overlap effects. The S-S type effect (e.g., the manual Stroop) occurs in the semantic-representation stage, while the S-R type effect (e.g., Simon) occurs in the response-selection stage. However, the processing stage of the SNARC effect, which is also categorized as an S-R type, remains controversial. To investigate this issue, we adopted a modified numeral parity judgment task that could simultaneously induce manual Stroop, Simon, and SNARC effects. According to the additive-factor logic, two effects occur in the same processing stage if they are interactive. In our task, we checked the interaction among the three effects to identify the locus of the SNARC effect. In two experiments with different target numbers (exp1: 1, 2, 7, 8; exp2: 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9), the manual Stroop, Simon, and SNARC effects were all observed, showing longer response times and higher error rates in the incongruent conditions than in the congruent conditions. Most importantly, only the interaction between SNARC and Simon effects was observed in the two experiments. This result suggests that the SNARC effect, as an S-R type effect like the Simon effect, occurs in the response-selection stage. In addition, the noninteraction of the manual Stroop and Simon effects and the manual Stroop and SNARC effects in our study repeatedly verifies the independence of the S-S and S-R effects. Our results further support the classification of the DO theory.

What Can Computational Models Learn From Human Selective Attention? A Review From an Audiovisual Unimodal and Crossmodal Perspective.

Selective attention plays an essential role in information acquisition and utilization from the environment. In the past 50 years, research on selective attention has been a central topic in cognitive science. Compared with unimodal studies, crossmodal studies are more complex but necessary to solve real-world challenges in both human experiments and computational modeling. Although an increasing number of findings on crossmodal selective attention have shed light on humans' behavioral patterns and neural underpinnings, a much better understanding is still necessary to yield the same benefit for intelligent computational agents. This article reviews studies of selective attention in unimodal visual and auditory and crossmodal audiovisual setups from the multidisciplinary perspectives of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and evaluates different ways to simulate analogous mechanisms in computational models and robotics. We discuss the gaps between these fields in this interdisciplinary review and provide insights about how to use psychological findings and theories in artificial intelligence from different perspectives.

Your Performance Is My Concern: A Perspective-Taking Competition Task Affects ERPs to Opponent's Outcomes.

Previous research has shown that people have more empathic responses to in-group members and more schadenfreude to out-group members. As a dimension of cognitive empathy, perspective-taking has been considered to be related to the enhancement of empathy. We tried to combine these effects through manipulation of a competitive task with opponents and an in-group partner and investigated the potential effect of in-group bias or the perspective-taking effect on outcome evaluation. We hypothesized that the neural activities would provide evidence of in-group bias. We tested it with a simple gambling observation task and recorded subjects' electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. Our results showed that the opponent's loss evoked larger feedback-related negativity (FRN) and smaller P300 activity than the partner's loss condition, and there was a win vs. loss differential effect in P300 for the opponent only. The principal component analysis (PCA) replicated the loss vs. win P300 effect to opponent's performance. Moreover, the correlation between the inclusion of the other in the self (IOS) scores and FRN suggests perspective-taking may induce greater monitoring to opponent's performance, which increases the win vs. loss differentiation brain response to the out-group agent. Our results thus provide evidence for the enhanced attention toward out-group individuals after competition manipulation, as well as the motivation significance account of FRN.

Temporal and spectral profiles of conflict processing among multiple frames of reference.

Individuals rely on various frames of reference (FORs), such as an egocentric FOR (EFOR) and intrinsic FOR (IFOR), to represent spatial information. Previous behavioral studies have shown different IFOR-IFOR (II) and EFOR-IFOR (EI) conflict effects and an effect of their interaction. However, the neural mechanism of conflict processing between two FOR-based conflicts is unclear. In the current ERP study, two FOR-based conflicts were manipulated using a two-cannon task to elucidate common and distinct brain mechanisms that underlie FOR-based conflict processing. The behavioral results showed that both conflicts exhibited longer reaction times and larger error rates in the II (180° cannon angle) and EI (target cannon pointed down) incongruent conditions than in the II (0° cannon angle) and EI (target cannon pointed up) congruent conditions and that an interaction existed between the two conflicts. The ERP results indicated that, for both conflicts, more negative N2 amplitudes and less positive P3 amplitudes occurred in the incongruent conditions than in the congruent conditions, and the interactions between the two conflicts during later P3 amplitudes were significant. Time-frequency analysis further indicated that, in the early time window, the II conflict and the EI conflict specifically modulated power in the theta bands and beta bands, respectively. In contrast, in the later time window, both conflicts modulated power in the alpha and beta bands. In summary, our findings provide insights into the potential existence of two specific early conflict monitoring systems and a general late executive control system for FOR-based conflicts.

Deficits in voluntary pursuit and inhibition of risk taking in sensation seeking.

Sensation seeking has been associated with substance use and other risk-taking behaviors. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated the neural correlates underlying risk taking in sensation seeking. Twenty-eight high sensation seekers (HSS; 14 female and 14 male young adults) and 28 low sensation seekers (LSS; 14 female and 14 male young adults) performed an interactive, sequential gambling task that allowed for voluntary pursuit or inhibition of risk taking. Behaviorally, HSS versus LSS exhibited a stronger tendency toward risk taking. Comparison of the groups revealed that when taking risks, HSS relative to LSS exhibited reduced fMRI responses in brain areas involved in risk processing, such as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the thalamus. Importantly, during the voluntary inhibition of risk taking, HSS relative to LSS showed greater fMRI responses in brain areas implicated in cognitive control (the bilateral anterior cingulate cortex) and negative emotion (the right anterior insula). These findings suggest that risk taking in sensation seeking may be driven by both a hypoactive neural system in the voluntary pursuit of risk taking and a hyperactive neural system in the voluntary inhibition of risk taking, thus providing implications for future prevention programs targeting sensation-seeking behaviors. Hum Brain Mapp 38:6019-6028, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Distinct cognitive control mechanisms as revealed by modality-specific conflict adaptation effects.

Cognitive control is essential to resolve conflict in stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) tasks. The SRC effect in the current trial is reduced after an incongruent trial as compared with a congruent trial, a phenomenon being termed conflict adaptation (CA). The CA effect is found to be domain-specific, such that it occurs when adjacent trials contain the same type of conflict, but disappears when the conflicts are of different types. Similar patterns have been observed when tasks involve different modalities, but the modality-specific effect may have been confounded by task switching. In the current study, we investigated whether or not cognitive control could transfer across auditory and visual conflicts when task-switching was controlled. Participants were asked to respond to a visual or auditory (Experiments 1A/B) stimulus, with conflict coming from either the same or a different modality. CA effects showed modality-specific patterns. To account for potential confounding effects caused by differences in task-irrelevant properties, we specifically examined the influence of task-irrelevant properties on CA effects within the visual modality (Experiments 2A/B). Significant CA effects were observed across different conflicts from distinct task-irrelevant properties, ruling out that the lack of cross-modal CA effects in Experiments 1A/B resulted from differences in task-irrelevant information. Task-irrelevant properties were further matched in Experiments 3A/B to examine the pure effect of modality. Results replicated Experiments 1A/B showing robust modality-specific CA effects. Taken together, we provide supporting evidences that modality affects cognitive control in conflict resolution, which should be taken into account in theories of cognitive control. (PsycINFO Database Record

Conflict processing among multiple frames of reference.

People rely on multiple frames of reference (FORs) to represent and update spatial relationships of different objects in a complex environment. According to the "Frame of Reference-based Map of Salience" theory (FORMS), FORs with high salience are processed in priority, and human performance is determined by the interaction of all relevant FOR-based representations. We conducted a modified two-cannon task manipulating conflicts among FORs (e.g., egocentric [FOR-EFOR], intrinsic [FOR-IFOR]) in order to explore how FORs interact with each other. We found that participants responded slower when two IFORs were incongruent than when they were congruent. There was also an interaction between these two conflicts. Moreover, the effect size of conflict between two IFORs was much larger than that between an IFOR and an EFOR. These results suggest that although the IFOR and EFOR may be coded by different spatial representations, they rely on a common processing mechanism and compete with each other. The findings from the current study provide support for the FORMS theory.

Problematic Internet Users Show Impaired Inhibitory Control and Risk Taking with Losses: Evidence from Stop Signal and Mixed Gambles Tasks.

According to the balance model of self-regulation, dysfunction of the inhibitory control and reward processing might be a behavioral marker for addiction and problematic behaviors. Although several studies have separately examined the inhibitory control or reward processing of individuals exhibiting problematic Internet use (PIU), no study has explored these two functions simultaneously to examine the potential imbalance of these functions. This study aimed to investigate whether the self-regulatory failure of PIU individuals results from deficits in both inhibitory control [indexed with the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) in a stop signal task] and risk taking with losses (measured as the acceptance rates of risky gables or the ratio of win/loss in a mixed gambles task). The results revealed that PIU individuals, compared with controls, showed decreased SSRT and increased error rates as well as reduced risk taking with losses. Correlational analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between the SSRT and risk taking with losses. These findings suggest that both the inhibitory control and reward functions are impaired in PIU individuals and reveal an association between these two systems. These results strengthen the balance model of self-regulation theory's argument that deficits in inhibitory control and risk taking with losses may assist in identifying risk markers for early diagnosis, progression, and prediction of PIU.

The time course of attentional modulation on emotional conflict processing.

Cognitive conflict resolution is critical to human survival in a rapidly changing environment. However, emotional conflict processing seems to be particularly important for human interactions. This study examined whether the time course of attentional modulation on emotional conflict processing was different from cognitive conflict processing during a flanker task. Results showed that emotional N200 and P300 effects, similar to colour conflict processing, appeared only during the relevant task. However, the emotional N200 effect preceded the colour N200 effect, indicating that emotional conflict can be identified earlier than cognitive conflict. Additionally, a significant emotional N100 effect revealed that emotional valence differences could be perceived during early processing based on rough aspects of input. The present data suggest that emotional conflict processing is modulated by top-down attention, similar to cognitive conflict processing (reflected by N200 and P300 effects). However, emotional conflict processing seems to have more time advantages during two different processing stages.

Electrophysiological dynamics reveal distinct processing of stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response conflicts.

The present study examined electroencephalogram profiles on a novel stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) task in order to elucidate the distinct brain mechanisms of stimulus-stimulus (S-S) and stimulus-response (S-R) conflict processing. The results showed that the SRC effects on reaction times (RTs) and N2 amplitudes were additive when both S-S and S-R conflicts existed. We also observed that, for both RTs and N2 amplitudes, the conflict adaptation effects-the reduced SRC effect following an incongruent trial versus a congruent trial-were present only when two consecutive trials involved the same type of conflict. Time-frequency analysis revealed that both S-S and S-R conflicts modulated power in the theta band, whereas S-S conflict additionally modulated power in the alpha and beta bands. In summary, our findings provide insight into the domain-specific conflict processing and the modular organization of cognitive control.

Independent processing of stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response conflicts.

The dimensional overlap (DO) model proposes distinct mechanisms for stimulus-stimulus (S-S) and stimulus-response (S-R) conflict effects. Many studies have examined the independence of S-S and S-R conflict effects in the color-word Stroop and Simon tasks. However, confounds exist between the distinction of DO (i.e., S-S dimensional overlap compared with S-R dimensional overlap) and the distinction of stimulus attributes (e.g., color compared with spatial location; semantic compared with nonsemantic information), which may hinder interpretation of the independence of S-S and S-R conflicts. A spatial Stroop (word) task and a spatial Stroop (arrow) task were combined with a Simon task in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively to eliminate these confounds of stimulus attributes. The results showed that S-S and S-R conflicts affected performance additively. There was no significant correlation across participants. These findings lend further support to independent processing of S-S and S-R conflicts as it is outlined in the taxonomy of DO.