Modal and amodal cognition: an overarching principle in various domains of psychology.

Accounting for how the human mind represents the internal and external world is a crucial feature of many theories of human cognition. Central to this question is the distinction between modal as opposed to amodal representational formats. It has often been assumed that one but not both of these two types of representations underlie processing in specific domains of cognition (e.g., perception, mental imagery, and language). However, in this paper, we suggest that both formats play a major role in most cognitive domains. We believe that a comprehensive theory of cognition requires a solid understanding of these representational formats and their functional roles within and across different domains of cognition, the developmental trajectory of these representational formats, and their role in dysfunctional behavior. Here we sketch such an overarching perspective that brings together research from diverse subdisciplines of psychology on modal and amodal representational formats so as to unravel their functional principles and their interactions.

How flexible is cognitive control? (Mouse) tracking conflict adaptation across context similarities.

Exerting cognitive control to remain on-task and reach our goals is a crucial skill, as is the ability to flexibly adapt our responding in rapidly changing environments. The dynamics of cognitive control are typically studied by examining how participants process stimuli that contain competing relevant and irrelevant information in so-called conflict tasks. Adjustments in performance following the experience of conflict, also termed conflict adaptation, suggests a certain degree of flexibility in the deployment of cognitive control. The present study investigated to what extent conflict adaptation effects transfer across trials of the same and different tasks in three online mouse-tracking experiments. Adaptations of the Simon and Stroop tasks were combined to create different levels of context similarity between the paired tasks. Based on a previous review (Braem et al., Frontiers in Psychology 5:1-13, 2014), across-task conflict adaptation was expected only in the most and least similar contexts. In contrast to our hypothesis, conflict adaptation effects were observed in at least one measure in all three experiments. To our surprise, task order also seemed to impact the size of across-task conflict adaptation effects. The heterogeneity in the current results highlight the importance of using sensitive measurement tools to evaluate conflict adaptation and suggest that the occurrence of across-task conflict adaptation may be conditional on more than just shared relevant and irrelevant dimensions.

Monitoring accuracy suffers when working memory demands increase: Evidence of a dependent relationship.

Knowing what one knows and accurately monitoring one's own capacities and performance on a moment-to-moment basis are important determinants of task success. Individual differences in such metacognitive monitoring are well documented, but what determines an individual's monitoring accuracy in a particular context is yet to be fully understood. One candidate contributor to monitoring accuracy is working memory. In this study, we investigated whether and how working memory contributes to the accuracy of monitoring processes. Most evidence for a positive relationship between working memory and monitoring accuracy has been provided by correlational studies. Here, an experimental approach was applied in which confidence judgments were collected after each memory recall in three working memory experiments, and the effect of increasing the working memory demands on monitoring accuracy was examined. A visuospatial complex span task, a verbal complex span task, and an updating task served as the working memory tasks, to cover the range of methods used in working memory research. Confirmatory analyses conducted using cumulative link mixed models indicated that in two out of three experiments, monitoring accuracy suffered when working memory demands increased. As such, the weight of evidence supports a dependent relationship between working memory and monitoring processes, whereby monitoring accuracy can fluctuate during a task depending on the available cognitive resources. This indicates that the sensitivity of metacognitive monitoring is at least partly determined by the nature of the cognitive processing taking place in the primary task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Subjective estimates of total processing time in dual-tasking: (some) good news for bad introspection.

Previous studies have shown severe distortions of introspection about dual-task interference in the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm. The present study investigated participants' ability to introspect about the total trial time in this paradigm, as this temporal information may arguably be more relevant for strategic task scheduling than subjective estimates of each task within the dual task. To this end, participants provided estimates of their reaction times (IRTs) for the two subtasks in one half of the experiment, and estimates of the total trial time (ITTs) in the other half of the experiment. Although the IRT results showed the typical unawareness of the PRP effect, ITTs reflected the effects of SOA and Task 2 difficulty on objective total trial time. Additional analyses showed that IRTs were influenced by the introspective task order; that is, the ITT pattern carried over to IRTs when IRTs were assessed in the second half of the experiment. Overall, the present results show that people are able to accurately introspect about total trial time in the PRP paradigm and thus provide some good news for bad introspection in the PRP paradigm.

Timing of internal processes: Investigating introspection about the costs of task switching and memory search.

During the last two decades, there has been new interest in introspection about multitasking performance. In this field, subjective timing of one's own reaction times (introspective RTs) has proven a useful measure to assess introspection. However, whether timing our own cognitive processing makes use of the same timing mechanisms as timing external intervals has been called into question. Here we take a novel approach to this question and build on the previously observed dissociation between the interference of task switching and memory search with a concurrent time production task whereby temporal productions increased with increasing memory set size but were not affected by switch costs. We tested whether a similar dissociation could be observed in this paradigm when participants provide introspective RTs instead of concurrent temporal productions. The results showed no such dissociation as switch costs and the effect of memory set size on RTs were both reflected in introspective RTs. These findings indicate that the underlying timing mechanisms differ between temporal productions and introspective RTs in this multitasking context, and that introspective RTs are still strikingly accurate estimates of objective RTs.

The surprising role of stimulus modality in the dual-task introspective blind spot: a memory account.

Being able to accumulate accurate information about one's own performance is important in everyday contexts, and arguably particularly so in complex multitasking contexts. Thus, the observation of a glaring gap in participants' introspection regarding their own reaction time costs in a concurrent dual-task context is deserving of closer examination. This so-called introspective blind spot has been explained by a 'consciousness bottleneck' which states that while attention is occupied by one task, participants cannot consciously perceive another stimulus presented in that time. In the current study, a series of introspective Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) experiments were conducted to identify the determinants of an introspective blind spot; to our surprise, in half of the experiments participants appeared to be aware of their dual-task costs. A single trial analysis highlighted the sensory modality of the two stimuli within the trial as an important predictor of introspective accuracy, along with temporal gaps in the trial. The current findings call into question the claim that attention is required for conscious awareness. We propose a memory-based account of introspective processes in this context, whereby introspective accuracy is determined by the memory systems involved in encoding and rehearsing memory traces. This model of the conditions required to build up accurate representations of our performance may have far-reaching consequences for monitoring and introspection across a range of tasks.

Attentional control and metacognitive monitoring of the effects of different types of task-irrelevant sound on serial recall.

The presence of task-irrelevant sound disrupts short-term memory for serial information. Recent studies found that enhanced perceptual task-encoding load (static visual noise added to target items) reduces the disruptive effect of an auditory deviant but does not affect the task-specific interference by changing-state sound, indicating that the deviation effect may be more susceptible to attentional control. This study aimed to further specify the role of attentional control in shielding against different types of auditory distraction, examining speech and nonspeech distractors presented in laboratory and Web based experiments. To further elucidate the role of controlled processes, we tested whether the detrimental effects of distractor sounds-and their modulation by attentional control-reach participants' awareness. We found that changing-state sound and auditory deviants in steady-state sound equally affected both objective recall performance and metacognitive confidence judgments but did not affect the accuracy of confidence judgments. Most importantly, across four experiments, an increase of task load (visual degradation of the to-be-remembered items) did not reduce either type of auditory distraction. A close replication of the original modulation of the deviation effect by perceptual task load (in an online environment) even revealed a stronger deviation effect at high task load, suggesting that the manipulation may have influenced cognitive load and the ability to control distractor interference in memory. In line with a unitary account of auditory distraction, the results suggest that although both types of distraction reach metacognitive awareness, they may be equally unrelated to perceptual load and the availability of attentional resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Introspection is not always blind to the costs of multitasking: The case of task switching.

Previous studies have provided evidence that introspection about dual-task performance in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm is severely limited. The present study investigated introspection at the other pole of the multitasking continuum, namely task switching. In 2 experiments, participants provided estimates of their response times (i.e., introspective RTs) after each trial in modified versions of the alternating-runs and the task-cuing paradigm, which included only 2 tasks in a trial. In contrast to the previously observed unawareness of dual-task costs in the PRP paradigm, participants reported their switch costs in introspective RTs. Thus, introspection about multitasking performance appears to not always be as limited as in the PRP paradigm. Nevertheless, introspection is not without limits also in task switching. Participants only partly reported the beneficial impact of longer preparation time on their performance. The present results suggest that introspective RTs depend on multiple cues, of which some are valid and some are invalid. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Are participants' reports of their own reaction times reliable? Re-examining introspective limitations in active and passive dual-task paradigms.

There is a known introspective limitation in the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm - people underestimate the dual-task costs on their second reaction time. The prevailing explanation for this is that conscious awareness of the second stimulus is delayed in time until the first task has been centrally processed. Here, we examined this effect in more detail, by comparing reaction time estimates after processing a PRP task, and after passively experiencing 'replays' of PRP trials. Even when participants had no dual-task processing demands, they did not accurately report the reaction time intervals using a visual analogue scale (the original reporting method of most introspective PRP experiments), but they did when placing markers that represent each event on a timeline. Thus, the timeline seems to better represent participants' introspective representation of the trial. Importantly, introspection limitations still existed when participants processed the PRP task and then recreated it on a timeline.

The Maturation of Interference Suppression and Response Inhibition: ERP Analysis of a Cued Go/Nogo Task.

Inhibitory control is a core function that allows us to resist interference from our surroundings and to stop an ongoing action. To date, it is not clear whether inhibitory control is a single process or whether it is composed of different processes. Further, whether these processes are separate or clustered in childhood is under debate. In this study, we investigated the existence and development of two hypothesized component processes of inhibitory control-interference suppression and response inhibition-using a single task and event related potential components. Twenty 8-year-old children and seventeen adults performed a spatially cued Go/Nogo task while their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography. Mean N2 amplitudes confirmed the expected pattern for response inhibition with both the children and the adults showing more negative N2 for Nogo vs. Go trials. The interference suppression N2 effect was only present in adults and appeared as a more negative N2 in response to Go trials with a congruent cue than Go trials with an incongruent cue. Contrary to previous findings, there was no evidence that the interference suppression N2 effect was later occurring than the response inhibition N2 effect. Overall, response inhibition was present in both the children and the adults whereas interference suppression was only present in the adults. These results provide evidence of distinct maturational processes for both component processes of inhibitory control, with interference suppression probably continuing to develop into late childhood.

Temporal discrimination of one's own reaction times in dual-task performance: Context effects and methodological constraints.

In this study we used the method of constant stimuli to investigate introspective reaction times in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm under different temporal contexts. Previous introspective PRP studies have mostly used visual analogue scales to assess introspective reaction times and found that participants were largely unaware of the typical dual-task costs that arise in this paradigm (PRP effect). This apparent limitation of introspection has been taken as evidence for a serial processing bottleneck that encompasses response selection as well as conscious perception. In our study, in each trial participants first performed the PRP task and were then presented with a comparison interval that they had to compare with their reaction time to the second task (RT2). Across three experiments, we observed that the subjective estimates of RT2 (i.e., the points of subjective equality) did not reflect the objective pattern but were almost completely biased toward the center of the comparison intervals (asymmetry effect). In a control experiment in which participants discriminated RT2s of other participants without performing the PRP task, this bias was largely reduced. We interpret these results as indicating that in dual-task performance participants acquire only poor temporal representations of their own reaction times, and the apparent unawareness of the PRP effect may reflect disturbed timing abilities rather than a conscious perception bottleneck.

Psychosocial Intervention Is Associated with Altered Emotion Processing: An Event-Related Potential Study in At-Risk Adolescents.

Emotion processing is vital for healthy adolescent development, and impaired emotional responses are associated with a number of psychiatric disorders. However, it is unclear whether observed differences between psychiatric populations and healthy controls reflect modifiable variations in functioning (and thus could be sensitive to changes resulting from intervention) or stable, non-modifiable, individual differences. The current study therefore investigated whether the Late Positive Potential (LPP; a neural index of emotion processing) can be used as a marker of therapeutic change following psycho-social intervention. At-risk male adolescents who had received less than four months intervention (minimal-intervention, N = 32) or more than nine months intervention (extended-intervention, N = 32) passively viewed emotional images whilst neural activity was recorded using electroencephalography. Significant differences in emotion processing, indicated by the LPP, were found between the two groups: the LPP did not differ according to valence in the minimal-intervention group, whereas the extended-intervention participants showed emotion processing in line with low risk populations (enhanced LPP for unpleasant images versus other images). Further, an inverse relationship between emotional reactivity (measured via the LPP) and antisocial behaviour was observed in minimal-intervention participants only. The data therefore provide preliminary cross-sectional evidence that abnormal neural responses to emotional information may be normalised following psychosocial intervention. Importantly, this study uniquely suggests that, in future randomised control trials, the LPP may be a useful biomarker to measure development and therapeutic change.

Multiple timing of nested intervals: Further evidence for a weighted sum of segments account.

How people perceive temporally overlapping intervals can inform us about the architecture and constraints of the human timing system. In the present study, we examined the time perception of two overlapping intervals in a nested context. In this context, one short interval (1 s) was temporally nested within another long interval (3 s). The data showed that although participants' perception of the short interval was unaffected by its temporal position within the long interval, estimates of the long interval decreased, the later the short interval appeared. These data indicate that participants perceive two overlapping intervals as three segments that must be summed in order to estimate the long interval. Importantly, the temporal relationships between overlapping intervals affect the estimates, because a recency weighting is applied to each segment during the summing process. Within pacemaker-accumulator models, these results could be seen as supporting a timing system composed of a single pacemaker and a single accumulator, but they could also constrain any account of human interval timing.

Children With ADHD Show Impairments in Multiple Stages of Information Processing in a Stroop Task: An ERP Study.

This study investigated the role of impaired inhibitory control as a factor underlying attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Children with ADHD and typically developing children completed an animal Stroop task while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. The lateralized readiness potential and event-related brain potentials associated with perceptual and conflict processing were analyzed. Children with ADHD were slower to give correct responses irrespective of congruency, and slower to prepare correct responses in the incongruent condition. This delay could result from enhanced effort allocation at earlier processing stages, indicated by differences in P1, N1, and conflict sustained potential. Results suggest multiple deficits in information processing rather than a specific response inhibition impairment.

How are overlapping time intervals perceived? Evidence for a weighted sum of segments model.

This study investigated the way in which people time two overlapping intervals. Timing models already proposed in the literature predict different effects of the degree of overlap on each estimate, and empirical findings were compared to these predictions. Two unimodal experiments (in which each to-be-timed interval was a visual stimulus) and one bimodal experiment (in which one to-be-timed interval was auditory and the other visual) were conducted. The estimate of the first interval was either unaffected or decreased, and the estimate of the second interval consistently increased as the intervals were more temporally separated. The only model in the literature that could account for such result patterns is a single pacemaker single accumulator structure with an additional recency weighting (see the weighted sum of segments model). That is, participants appear to segment the two overlapping intervals into three non-overlapping and overlapping segments, time these segments separately, and then combine them to estimate each interval. Importantly, a recency weighting, determined by the time that has passed since the end of that segment, is also applied to each segment in the summation process. Further, in the bimodal experiment the order in which the stimuli of different modalities were presented affected the way in which they were timed, a finding that none of the current models can explain. This highlights that a comprehensive model of interval timing must consider not only the modalities of to-be-timed intervals but also the order in which different modalities must be timed.

The neural correlates of emotion processing in juvenile offenders.

Individuals with severe antisocial behaviour often demonstrate abnormalities or difficulties in emotion processing. Antisocial behaviour typically onsets before adulthood and is reflected in antisocial individuals at the biological level. We therefore conducted a brain-based study of emotion processing in juvenile offenders. Male adolescent offenders and age-matched non-offenders passively viewed emotional images whilst their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography. The early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP) components were used as indices of emotion processing. For both juvenile offenders and non-offenders, the EPN differentiated unpleasant images from other image types, suggesting that early perceptual processing was not impaired in the offender group. In line with normal emotion processing, the LPP was significantly enhanced following unpleasant images for non-offenders. However, for juvenile offenders, the LPP did not differ across image categories, indicative of deficient emotional processing. The findings indicated that this brain-based hypo-reactivity occurred during a late stage of cognitive processing and was not a consequence of atypical early visual attention or perception. This study is the first to show attenuated emotion processing in juvenile offenders at the neural level. Overall, these results have the potential to inform interventions for juvenile offending.

Are introspective reaction times affected by the method of time estimation? A comparison of visual analogue scales and reproduction.

In this study, we investigated whether the method of time estimation plays a role in the apparent limits of introspection in dual-task processing. Previous studies showed that when participants reported introspective reaction times after each trial of a dual task by clicking on a visual analogue scale, they appeared to be unaware of the dual-task costs in their performance. However, visual analogue scales have seldom been used in interval estimation, and they may be inappropriate. In the present study, after each dual-task trial, participants reported their introspective reaction times either via a visual analogue scale or via the method of reproduction. The results replicated the previous findings, irrespective of method. That is, even though responses to the second task slowed down with increasing task overlap, this slowing was only very weakly reflected in the introspective reaction times. Thus, the participants' failure to report the objective dual-task costs in their reaction times is a rather robust finding that cannot be attributed to the method employed. However, introspective reaction times reported via visual analogue scales were more closely related to the objective reaction times, suggesting that visual analogue scales are preferable to reproduction. We conclude that introspective reaction times represent the same information regardless of method, but whether that information is temporal in nature is as yet unsettled.

Distorted subjective reports of stimulus onsets under dual-task conditions: Delayed conscious perception or estimation bias?

We investigated whether selecting a response for one task delays the conscious perception of another stimulus (delayed conscious perception hypothesis). In two experiments, participants watched a revolving clock hand while performing two tasks in close succession (i.e. a dual-task). Two stimuli were presented with varying stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). After each trial, participants separately estimated the onsets of the two stimuli on the clock face. Across two experiments and four conditions, we manipulated response requirements and assessed their impact on perceived stimulus onsets. Results showed that (a) providing speeded responses to the stimuli did lead to greater SOA-dependent misperceptions of both stimulus onsets as compared to a solely perceptual condition, and (b) that response grouping reduced these misperceptions. Overall, the results provide equivocal evidence for the delayed conscious perception hypothesis. They rather suggest that participants' estimates of the two stimulus onsets are biased by the interval between their responses.

Introspective reports of reaction times in dual-tasks reflect experienced difficulty rather than timing of cognitive processes.

Reports of introspective reaction times (iRTs) have been used to investigate conscious awareness during dual-task situations. Previous studies showed that dual-task costs in RTs (the psychological refractory period, PRP, effect) are not reflected in participants' introspective reports. This finding has been attributed to conscious awareness of Task 2 being delayed while Task 1 is centrally processed. Here, we test this Temporal model and compare it to an alternative that assumes participants base their iRTs on experienced difficulty. We collected iRTs and difficulty estimates after each trial of a PRP paradigm in which the perceptual difficulty of either Task 2 (Experiment 1) or Task 1 (Experiment 2) was manipulated. Our results largely support the difficulty-based account, suggesting that in a dual-task situation, iRTs do not reflect timing of cognitive processes but are strongly influenced by the experience of difficulty.

The development of inhibitory control: an averaged and single-trial Lateralized Readiness Potential study.

Inhibitory control (IC) is an important contributor to educational performance, and undergoes rapid development in childhood. Age-related changes in IC were assessed using an in-depth analysis of reaction time, the Lateralized Readiness Potential (LRP), and other event-related potential (ERP) measures to control for speed of processing. Five-year-olds, 8-year-olds and adults completed an adapted Stroop task. Both reaction time and ERP results suggest that IC does develop in this age range, over and above changes in speed of processing. The LRP identified two processes that contribute to IC. These processes develop at different rates--an early process, involving how the conflict is initially responded to is mature by age 5, while a later process, involving how the conflict is overcome is still developing after 8 years of age. We propose that these early and late processes reflect interference suppression and response inhibition, respectively. Further, a single-trial analysis of the LRP in the incongruent condition provides evidence that the LRP is consistent across trials and functionally similar in each age group. These results corroborate previous findings regarding the development of IC, and present a new and useful tool for assessing IC across development.