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PubMed1976

Effects of social influence in a recognition task of auditory intensity: a temporary shift in criterion.

The effects of responses of another person or a computer occurring prior to the subjects' responses in tasks to recognition model which assumed that subjects shifted their decision criteria temporarily on each trial. A parameter representing the amount of criterion shift reliably estimated sensitivity to social influence. When the social sensitivity parameter was estimated from the data, discriminative ability, defined as d', was unaffected by the presence of social influence. Principal components analyses suggested that social sensitivity and discriminative ability represented essentially orthogonal components of subjects' decision behavior.

Auditory Perception↗
PubMed2004

Development of attentional allocation in the dual task paradigm.

Top-down control over attention was investigated on a dual task in 10-year-olds (N=15) and adults (N=21). The tasks were an auditory digit span (DS) and a simple visual response time (RT) task. In four conditions, participants performed neither (no-task), one (DS or RT only) or both tasks (dual). Dependent variables were DS accuracy, RT and pupillary dilation to digits as an estimate of mental effort. Children's behavioral and psychophysiological responses as a function of sequence length and stimulus position were generally similar to those of adults. Slopes of the functions relating pupillary dilation to memory load were linear and increasing in both groups, shallower in dual than that in DS only and shallower in children than that in adults. Children's behavioral results on the DS task began to diverge from those of adults as task demands shifted from passive retention to active rehearsal, but the children did not appear to try harder to compensate for a lower level of behavioral performance. Taken together, the findings suggest that although children allocated their attention in a similar manner as adults, their top-down control over attention in accordance with task difficulty was not yet fully mature.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2026

Effectiveness and implementation of task-sharing cognitive-behavioral interventions for perinatal mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) delivered by nonspecialist providers (NSPs) on perinatal depressive (PND) and anxiety symptoms, and to narratively synthesize their implementation processes and reported implementation outcomes, including acceptability, feasibility, fidelity, cost, and sustainability. METHODS: We systematically searched eight databases from inception to April 8, 2025. Eligible studies were randomised controlled trials (RCTs) assessing CBIs delivered by NSPs for PND and/or anxiety. Two reviewers independently screened, extracted, and assessed trials. Meta-analyses employed random-effects models, with subgroup, sensitivity, meta-regression, and publication bias analyses conducted in Stata 18.0. Implementation processes and outcomes were reported as frequencies or percentages across trials. RESULTS: A total of 47 trials (11, 357 participants) were included in the systematic review, of which 37 trials (8,709 participants) were included for meta-analyses. CBIs were conducted in 12 countries. Nurses and midwives delivered 45% of CBIs. CBIs were associated with reduced PND post-intervention compared with control conditions (standardized mean difference [SMD] -0.49, 95% CI -0.63 to -0.35; I² = 86.8%). Limited evidence from four trials suggested a small sustained effect at 12 months (SMD -0.14, 95% CI -0.27 to -0.02; I² = 26.4%). Reductions in anxiety symptoms were observed immediately post-intervention (SMD, -0.45, 95% CI -0.65 to -0.25; I²=81%), but evidence for longer-term effects was limited. Subgroup analyses confirmed consistent effects across diverse settings, populations, and intervention characteristics. Reporting of implementation processes (e.g., training, supervision, fidelity) was limited, with only 23.4% of trials assessing fidelity and 10.6% evaluating costs. CONCLUSIONS: NSP-delivered CBIs showed beneficial effects on PND and anxiety, with generally encouraging evidence for acceptability and feasibility. However, evidence for sustained effects beyond the immediate post-intervention period remains limited. Future studies should strengthen long-term follow-up and improve reporting of implementation processes and outcomes, particularly in rural and adolescent perinatal populations, to inform scalable and equitable task-sharing models.

Humans↗
PubMed1998

Linguistic Relativity: The Case of Place Value in Multi-Digit Numbers

Differences between languages have been implicated recently in explanations of the cross-cultural disparities observed in children's mathematical performance on place value tasks (e.g., Miura, Okamaoto, Kim, Chang, Steere & Fayol, 1994). Children's understanding of place value was investigated here with 93 English-speaking children and 50 Japanese-speaking children (aged 6 and 7 years). Cubes denoting units and tens were made available to children for producing representations of multi-digit numerals. It was found that subtle shifts in task instructions produced a marked influence on children's performance. In particular, differences between English and Japanese participants disappeared when the use of tens cubes was demonstrated in practice trials. More generally, the findings indicate that the influence of language on the cognitive representation of number is less direct than has previously been suggested. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Neural bases of set-shifting deficits in Parkinson's disease.

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit impairments in several cognitive functions similar to those observed in patients with prefrontal cortex (PFC) lesions. The physiological origins of these cognitive deficits are not well documented. Two mechanisms have been proposed: disruptions in corticostriatal circuits or a deficiency in frontal dopamine. We previously used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in young healthy subjects to separate patterns of PFC and striatum activity during distinct phases of performance of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, a set-shifting task that reveals deficits in patients with PD. Here, the same fMRI protocol was used in PD patients and matched controls. Decreased activation was observed in the PD group compared with the matched control group in the ventrolateral PFC when receiving negative feedback and the posterior PFC when matching after negative feedback. In controls, these prefrontal regions specifically coactivated with the striatum during those stages of task performance. In contrast, greater activation was found in the PD group compared with the matched control group in prefrontal regions, such as the posterior and the dorsolateral PFC when receiving positive or negative feedback, that were not coactivated with the striatum in controls. These results suggest that both nigrostriatal dopamine depletion and intracortical dopamine deficiency may play a role in cognitive deficits in PD, depending on the involvement of the striatum in the task at hand.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Toward a taxonomy of attention shifting: individual differences in fMRI during multiple shift types.

Although task switching is often considered one of the fundamental abilities underlying executive functioning and general intelligence, there is little evidence that switching is a unitary construct and little evidence regarding the relationship between brain activity and switching performance. We examined individual differences in multiple types of attention shifting in order to determine whether behavioral performance and fMRI activity are correlated across different types of shifting. The participants (n = 39) switched between objects and attributes both when stimuli were perceptually available (external) and when stimuli were stored in memory (internal). We found that there were more switch-related activations in many regions associated with executive control--including the dorsolateral and medial prefrontal and parietal cortices--when behavioral switch costs were higher (poor performance). Conversely, activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the rostral anterior cingulate was consistently correlated with good performance, suggesting a general role for these areas in efficient attention shifting. We discuss these findings in terms of a model of cognitive-emotional interaction in attention shifting, in which reward-related signals in the VMPFC guide efficient selection of tasks in the lateral prefrontal and parietal cortices.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Learner-centered versus automatic adaptive motor skill training.

Three types of training (fixed-difficulty, automatic-adaptive, and learner-centered) were used to teach 18 male and 18 female students a two-dimensional pursuit-tracking task. A 7-min tracking session, in which task difficulty shifted each minute, was used to measure transfer. Although training type did not result in differences in training time, students trained under learner-centered procedures had less tracking error during transfer. Females required on the average twice as much training as mates. During transfer no sex differences were noted. The differences in training time for males and females may reflect previous experience with similar motor-control tasks.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1976

Sex differences in patterns of EEG asymmetry.

This paper reports three studies showing sex differences in EEG asymmetry during self-generated cognitive and affective tasks. In the first experiment, bilateral EEG, quantified for alpha on-line, was recorded from right-handed subjects while they either whistled, sang or recited lyrics of familiar songs. The results revealed significant asymmetry between the whistle and talk conditions only for subjects with no familial left-handedness and, within this group, only for females and not for males. In the second experiment, bilateral EEG was recorded while right-handed subjects (with no familial left-handedness) self-induced covert affective and non-affective states. Results revealed significantly greater relative right-hemisphere activation during emotion versus non-emotion trials only in females; males showed no significant task-dependent shifts in asymmetry between conditions. The third experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that females show greater percent time asymmetry than males during biofeedback training for symmetrical and asymmetrical EEG patterns. Results confirmed this prediction as well as indicating that females show better control of such asymmetrical cortical patterning. These findings provide new neuropsychological support for the hypothesis of greater bilateral flexibility in females during self-generation tasks.

Affect↗
PubMed2006

Dopamine asymmetry interacts with medication to affect cognition in Parkinson's disease.

Contradictory evidence exists regarding the nature and degree of impaired cognitive flexibility in PD. Dopaminergic medication may be expected to ameliorate such cognitive deficits, yet both medicated and unmedicated patients have been reported to perform more poorly than control subjects on tasks of cognitive flexibility, suggesting that such deficits may also be affected by other disease-related variables. The present study examined whether asymmetric dopamine deficiency (revealed by unilateral symptom onset) is related to the performance of spontaneous and reactive flexibility in PD, and the possible interaction of dopaminergic medication with such asymmetry. Thirty-five PD patients with mild motor symptoms and unilateral onset of PD (left-onset=14; right-onset=21) performed the Alternate Uses (AU) and intradimensional/extradimensional shift (IED) tasks. Interaction between side of onset and medication was observed for the number of errors in the AU task and number of reversal errors in the IED task. Significantly more AU errors were made by medicated patients with left-onset, as compared to all other participants. Conversely, medicated patients with right-onset made the most reversal errors. These results suggest that relatively early in the disease process when dopamine deficit in the less-affected hemisphere is mild, optimal dopaminergic medication (with respect to motor function) may involve over-medication of the less-affected hemisphere. Thus, AU errors may be the consequence of hyperdopaminergic state leading to impaired functioning of the left hemisphere, whereas increased reversal errors in right-onset PD patients receiving dopaminergic medication is related to impaired dopamine function in the right hemisphere.

Aged↗
PubMed1998

A study of performance on tests from the CANTAB battery sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction in a large sample of normal volunteers: implications for theories of executive functioning and cognitive aging. Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery.

Several tests from the CANTAB neuropsychological test battery previously shown to be sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction were administered to a large group of normal volunteers (N = 341) ranging in age from 21 to 79 years. The main tests included a computerized form of the Tower of London test of planning, a self-ordered spatial working memory task, and a test of attentional set formation and shifting. A computerized form of the Corsi spatial span task was also given. Age-related graded declines in performance were seen, sometimes in a discontinuous manner, especially for the attentional set shifting task (at the extradimensional shift stage). Patterns of deficits reminiscent of frontal lobe or basal ganglia damage were observed in the oldest age group (74-79). However, overall the data were only partially consistent with the hypothesis that frontal lobe functions are the most sensitive to effects of aging. Factor analyses showed that performance in the executive tests was not simply related to a measure of fluid intelligence, and their performance had a factor loading structure distinct from that for the CANTAB tests of visual memory and learning previously administered to the same sample. Finally, only limited support was found for the hypothesis that cognitive aging depends on slowed information processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Conditioned emotional cueing of spatial attentional shifts in a go/no-go RT task.

The influence of conditioned emotional arousal on selective attention was evaluated in a go/no-go version of Posner's covert attention spatial orienting task (Posner et al., 1982). Ten males and 10 females participated in the study, which consisted of two phases; an initial conditioning phase and a subsequent attention phase. In the conditioning phase, the Conditioning group received a 90-dB white noise unconditioned stimulus (UCS) contingent with presentations of a frame-lit rectangle, which thus became a conditioned stimulus (CS+), while a completely-lit rectangle was never paired with the noise and became a CS-. The Control group received non-contingent presentations of the noise and the two rectangles. In the attention phase, both groups participated in a go/no-go version of the attention orienting task, where targets were cued by both the CS+ and the CS-. Half of the subjects in both the Conditioning and the Control group were instructed to respond only to targets cued by the CS+ (go cue) and ignore targets cued by the CS- (no-go cue). The other half of the subjects responded to targets cued by the CS- and ignored targets cued by CS+. The Conditioning group identified targets at the opposite location of the CS+ significantly faster than targets at the same location. The emotional salience of the cue thus reversed the typical cost of shifting attention to targets outside the cued location.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

EEG reveals the effect of fMRI scanner noise on noise-sensitive subjects.

One drawback of fMRI is that subjects must endure intense noise during testing. This may be annoying to some people and acceptable to others. The aim of this study was to examine, by means of event-related potentials (ERPs), the possible influence of this noise on brain activity while performing a mental reasoning task. Subjects carrying out tasks in a silent environment were compared with two groups executing the same tasks in an "fMRI-like" noisy environment, one of which consisted of subjects who were annoyed by the noise and the other of subjects who tolerated it easily. Subjects who were annoyed performed less well (i.e., produced more errors compared to the "no noise" group) and "not annoyed" subjects showed a speed-accuracy trade-off (i.e., reacted faster but made more errors compared to "no noise" subjects). Noise led to more pronounced N1 and P2 peaks but attenuated N2. As early ERP components are influenced by attention, this observation most likely reflects different attentional requirements. The slow cortical negative shift during task processing was significantly attenuated with "annoyed" subjects compared to "not annoyed" subjects. Emotion-related subcortical structures may be responsible for the observed difference. These findings suggest that individual reactions to fMRI scanner noise should be taken into account when designing fMRI studies and interpreting results.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Modulation of LIP activity by predictive auditory and visual cues.

The lateral intraparietal area (area LIP) contains a multimodal representation of extra-personal space. To further examine this representation, we trained rhesus monkeys on the predictive-cueing task. During this task, monkeys shifted their gaze to a visual target whose location was predicted by the location of an auditory or visual cue. We found that, when the sensory cue was at the same location as the visual target, the monkeys' mean saccadic latency was faster than when the sensory cue and the visual target were at different locations. This difference in mean saccadic latency was the same for both auditory cues and visual cues. Despite the fact that the monkeys used auditory and visual cues in a similar fashion, LIP neurons responded more to visual cues than to auditory cues. This modality-dependent activity was also seen during auditory and visual memory-guided saccades but to a significantly greater extent than during the predictive-cueing task. Additionally, we found that the firing rate of LIP neurons was inversely correlated with saccadic latency. This study indicates further that modality-dependent differences in LIP activity do not simply reflect differences in sensory processing but also reflect the cognitive and behavioral requirements of a task.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1988

Social communication patterns of attention-deficit-disordered boys.

This study was designed to compare the social communication patterns of attention-deficit-disordered (ADD) and normal boys. This was accomplished by employing a "TV Talk Show" social role-playing procedure in which the task required different strategies for the roles of "host" and "guest." Groups of ADD and normal elementary-age boys were formed, and each boy was paired with a normal class-mate. Measures of communication competence were coded from videotapes made of subject and partner social interactions while performing both roles. Results indicated that the ADD boys, in contrast to the control group, failed to modulate their social communication behaviors as task demands shifted. Additionally, the behavior of the ADD boys resulted in their normal partners' altering their response patterns in order to maintain the equilibrium in the dyadic interaction. These results suggest that the social behavior of ADD children is relatively independent of environmental requirements and may contribute to the inappropriate responding of others.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗
PubMed2004

[On past practices and future directions of informed consent in (radiation) oncology].

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Informed consent, especially in oncology, is predominantly seen from a legal point of view. Such a limited perspective runs the risk of reducing informed consent to some tiresome formalism. The present article highlights how the relationship between patient and physician might be enriched by a comprehensive historicocultural understanding of informed consent. The authors show in which future directions the practice of informed consent might develop. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Analysis of historical and forensic literature regarding informed consent. RESULTS: With the terms "information" and "consent" the last 2500 years of medical history can schematically be divided in three epochs: the first epoch started around 500 years BC, lasted until the 19th century AC and was dominated by the principle of "salus aegroti suprema lex". The patient's benefit was exclusively defined by the treating physician. Formal consent was not required in those times. The era of enlightment brought new ideas to Europe, especially the principle of individual autonomy. In 1894, the Supreme Court of the German Reich decided that any medical intervention without the patient's consent was regarded as physical injury and was thus illegal. Systematic requirements regarding patient information on planned medical interventions were not known. The beginning of the third epoch is marked by the introduction of the term "informed consent" in modern medicine in 1957. Since then, a comprehensive information of the patient is seen as a prerequisite for consent. The patient's right of self-determination is attributed a higher legal and moral value than the physician's concept of the proposed treatment. Nowadays, the debate regarding informed consent is dominated by the continuing differentiation of modern medicine, the development of medical practice as part of the service sector, and the changing ways how patients see themselves. CONCLUSIONS: Social and legal developments have strongly influenced medical practice in the past. The importance of informed consent will continue to rise in the future, while the emphasis of the physician's task will shift from information to counseling. Informed consent will be increasingly established as independent service.

History, 17th Century↗
PubMed2005

Differential effects of target probability on saccade latencies in gap and warning tasks.

Saccade latencies are significantly reduced by extinguishing a foveal fixation stimulus before the appearance of a saccade target. It has been shown recently that this "fixation offset effect" (FOE) can be modulated by varying target probability. Cortico-collicular top-down effects have been assumed to mediate this strategic FOE modulation. Here, we have investigated strategic FOE modulation in 14 healthy human subjects performing gap and warning tasks. In the former task, the central fixation point was extinguished 200 ms before target onset. In the latter task, the central fixation point changed its colour 200 ms before target onset, but remained illuminated until the target appeared. Target probability was varied block-wise between 25 and 75%. In both tasks, mean latencies decreased with increasing target probability. However, in contrast with what can be expected from preceding studies, we found no differential modulation of mean latencies by target probability between tasks. Instead, we observed differential probability-dependent changes in latency distributions. In the gap task, discrete changes of saccade latencies were found, with a probability-dependent change in frequency of express and regular latencies. By contrast, in the warning task a shift of the entire latency distribution towards longer latencies with low target probability was found. We conclude that strategic modulation of saccade latencies by target probability may be mediated by two distinct neural mechanisms. Selection of either mechanism seems to depend critically on activation of the fixation system.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Changes in cortical negative DC shifts due to different motor task conditions.

The experiments were performed to study the relationship between motor performance and DC potential curves recorded by scalp electrodes. Accordingly, we studied the influence of different movements (e.g., unilateral versus bilateral, simple versus complex, active versus passive, phasic versus tonic muscle activity) on negative DC potentials. Our results confirm that spatial distributions of DC potential maxima can be used as an indicator of the activation of distinct cortical areas. Furthermore, evidence is presented that some motor tasks have a greater influence on the magnitude of surface electronegativity than others. (1) Phasic muscle activity revealed a significantly larger potential size than tonic. (2) Performance of a complex finger movement task elicited an increased surface electronegativity compared with performance of a simple task. (3) No significant differences in potential size were found between left (untrained) and right (skilled) hand use during the performance of the same complex motor task. (4) This was also true for the performance of an active and a passive finger movement task, indicating that, at least in simple motor tasks, somatosensory afferents significantly contribute to the recorded potential curve.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Psychophysical and saccadic information about direction for briefly presented visual targets.

For saccades, the difference between desired and actual eye movement (constant error), as well as the variability in amplitude on repeated trials (variable error), presumably represent a combination of errors in processing target position (sensory error) and errors in execution (motor error). To examine whether the saccadic system uses the same information about target position as visual perception, subjects made saccades to and psychophysical judgments about the location of targets presented for 17-200 msec. Mean saccadic amplitude markedly decreased and inter-trial variability increased when saccadic targets were presented briefly and followed by a spatial mask. Judged target position (from psychophysical vernier and bisection tasks) also shifted to lesser eccentricities and was more variable. Although qualitatively alike, changes with duration in saccadic constant errors were larger than could be accounted for by the psychophysical results, suggesting similar but separate processing of position information for the saccadic and perceptual systems. Differences in the sizes of collicular receptive fields that preferentially respond to targets at short and long durations can account qualitatively for the observed changes in saccadic amplitude as well as the common occurrence of saccadic undershoots.

Adult↗