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Motor-cognitive dual tasks have been intensely studied and it has been demonstrated that even well practiced movements like walking show signs of interference when performed concurrently with a challenging cognitive task. Typically walking speed is reduced, at least in elderly persons. In contrast to these findings, some authors report an increased movement frequency under dual-task conditions, which they call hastening. A tentative explanation has been proposed, assuming that the respective movements are governed by an automatic control regime. Though, under single-task conditions, these automatic processes are supervised by “higher-order” cognitive control processes. However, when a concurrent cognitive task binds all cognitive resources, the automatic process is freed from the detrimental effect of cognitive surveillance, allowing higher movement frequencies. Fast rhythmic movements (>1 Hz) should more likely be governed by such an automatic process than low frequency discrete repetitive movements. Fifteen subjects performed two repetitive movements under single and dual-task condition, that is, in combination with a mental calculation task. According to the expectations derived from the explanatory concept, we found an increased movement frequency under dual-task conditions only for the fast rhythmic movement (paddleball task) but not for the slower discrete repetitive task (pegboard task). fNIRS measurements of prefrontal cortical load confirmed the idea of an automatic processing in the paddleball task, whereas the pegboard task seems to be more controlled by processes interfering with the calculation related processing.

Reaction time data have long been collected in order to gain insight into the underlying mechanisms involved in language processing. Means analyses often attempt to break down what factors relate to what portion of the total reaction time. From a dynamic systems theory perspective or an interaction dominant view of language processing, it is impossible to isolate discrete factors contributing to language processing, since these continually and interactively play a role. Non-linear analyses offer the tools to investigate the underlying process of language use in time, without having to isolate discrete factors. Patterns of variability in reaction time data may disclose the relative contribution of automatic (grapheme-to-phoneme conversion) processing and attention-demanding (semantic) processing. The presence of a fractal structure in the variability of a reaction time series indicates automaticity in the mental structures contributing to a task. A decorrelated pattern of variability will indicate a higher degree of attention-demanding processing. A focus on variability patterns allows us to examine the relative contribution of automatic and attention-demanding processing when a speaker is using the mother tongue (L1) or a second language (L2). A word naming task conducted in the L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English) shows L1 word processing to rely more on automatic spelling-to-sound conversion than L2 word processing. A word naming task with a semantic categorization subtask showed more reliance on attention-demanding semantic processing when using the L2. A comparison to L1 English data shows this was not only due to the amount of language use or language dominance, but also to the difference in orthographic depth between Dutch and English. An important implication of this finding is that when the same task is used to test and compare different languages, one cannot straightforwardly assume the same cognitive sub processes are involved to an equal degree using the same task in different languages.

Motor-cognitive dual tasks have been intensely studied and it has been demonstrated that even well practiced movements like walking show signs of interference when performed concurrently with a challenging cognitive task. Typically walking speed is reduced, at least in elderly persons. In contrast to these findings, some authors report an increased movement frequency under dual-task conditions, which they call hastening. A tentative explanation has been proposed, assuming that the respective movements are governed by an automatic control regime. Though, under single-task conditions, these automatic processes are supervised by “higher-order” cognitive control processes. However, when a concurrent cognitive task binds all cognitive resources, the automatic process is freed from the detrimental effect of cognitive surveillance, allowing higher movement frequencies. Fast rhythmic movements (>1 Hz) should more likely be governed by such an automatic process than low frequency discrete repetitive movements. Fifteen subjects performed two repetitive movements under single and dual-task condition, that is, in combination with a mental calculation task. According to the expectations derived from the explanatory concept, we found an increased movement frequency under dual-task conditions only for the fast rhythmic movement (paddleball task) but not for the slower discrete repetitive task (pegboard task). fNIRS measurements of prefrontal cortical load confirmed the idea of an automatic processing in the paddleball task, whereas the pegboard task seems to be more controlled by processes interfering with the calculation related processing.

In this article, we investigate the role of self-efficacy (SE) in intentional habit building. We analyzed event sampling data from a habit building app we created that helps define and track habit data. We used hierarchical growth curve modeling and multilevel mediation to test our hypotheses. In a first study,N= 91 university students built new study habits over a period of 6 weeks in a controlled study. We found that the trait-like (Level 2) general self-efficacy predicted automaticity (i.e., habit strength) but not the experience of motivational interference (MI). In a second study with real user data,N= 265 idiographic habits have been analyzed. The specific SE associated with these habits – habit-specific self-efficacy (Level 1, HSE) – was measured during habit formation. We found that lagged HSE predicted automaticity and that lagged automaticity predicted HSE, indicating a positive feedback mechanism in habit building. Furthermore, we found that lagged HSE predicted less MI during habit performance. A multilevel mediation analysis showed significant effects of lagged HSE (Level 1) and aggregated HSE (Level 2) on MI, which were both partially mediated by automaticity. These results show the importance of defining the specificity of SE beliefs and how they interact with automaticity in the habit building process.

Maylor et al.’s (2011) study combines the Simon effect, a well-investigated manipulation, with the masked-priming technique. This is an original idea, and the study was competently performed. This interesting approach provides new evidence about changes of response control in old age. The impact of this paper might be further improved if alternative accounts of inverse priming (viz. of the “negative compatibility effect,” NCE) were considered. In the following, I will point to some problems in the authors’ conception of this effect and will argue that an alternative account of inverse priming might provide a more coherent view on the highly interesting results reported in this study. According to Maylor et al.’s (2011) Introduction, reflecting the extensive work of this group on the NCE, inverse priming is due to “automatic inhibition” of prime activation, reflecting “low-level” processing in the motor system, independent of “high-level” control. Such high-level control, involving pre-frontal areas, is assumed to be restricted to consciously perceived incongruencies between stimuli and responses. Indeed, therefore, in young adults the Simon effect is independent of the NCE. Casting doubt on this neat distinction, Boy et al. (2010) reported interactions between the NCE and the consciously perceived incongruency of flanking stimuli and the required response. This prompted Maylor et al. (2011) to constrain the assumed independence to cases when the two conflicts do not “come from the same domain” (Footnote in their Introduction): shape information (NCE) may interact with shape information (flankers) but does not interact with location information (Simon). If so, the distinction between low-level and high-level might become unnecessary. Direct evidence against the notion that unconsciously perceived primes are processed without higher-level pre-frontal involvement derives from the phenomena reported by Mattler (2003, 2005, 2007) where masked cue-like primes, like the ones used by the present authors, affected the non-motor decisions induced by a following cue. Indeed, using Mattler's task, Lau and Passingham (2007) found pre-frontal activation induced by inverse priming, different from what the “low-level” account predicts. The major, important result of Maylor et al.’s (2011) paper is that older adults’ NCEs may attain the same magnitude as in young adults, but at much increased latencies (where the NCE even appears to become larger than in the young). This interesting result is actually hard to explain in terms of the “low-level” conception: how can some automatically induced process be delayed by hundreds of ms and then finally appear in full size? Maylor et al. refer to this as “de-automatization.” This might account for disappearance of the process. But why should this process appear in the final end? Maylor et al. argue that the process is then consciously implemented by the elderly. Why should it be: is it of any use? And if it may be consciously implemented by the elderly, why not by the young? Is there a more parsimonious account? It may be noted that, in Maylor et al.’s (2011) “automatic inhibition” account, the mask does not play any role (and is therefore hardly mentioned in the Introduction) except “to reduce prime visibility” (as noted in Methods). The role of the mask is the point of departure of the most interesting alternative account, proposed by Jaś kowski (2007) which is unfortunately only briefly mentioned and immediately dismissed in Maylor et al.’s (2011) Introduction (see also Boy et al., 2008; Jaśkowski, 2008; Jaśkowski et al., 2008): inverse priming is due to the mask. The mask indicates to participants that prime-induced activation was too early. This is why the mask induces inhibition. This proposal was recently integrated by Klauer and Dittrich (2010) with their results from verbal priming to say that the critical factor is participants’ segmentation of events into “evaluation windows”: the mask is used by participants as a temporal marker to terminate the premature window opened by the prime and, by this, to cancel activation induced by the prime. This hypothesis can account for the above-mentioned difficulties: the NCE interacts with the flanker effect because both the flankers and the prime induce premature activation which has to be canceled. Prefrontal activation may arise because perceiving the mask as a stimulus for adjusting temporal orientation may involve behavioral control. Furthermore, the hypothesis may be applied to the present data to say: the closing and opening of evaluation windows is precise in the young and more sluggish in the old adults. Therefore, mask-induced inhibition is too slow in the elderly to become effective when responses are sufficiently fast. Thus, rather than for de-automatization, the present data may be evidence for sluggish temporal structuring in the elderly.

To examine age-related effects on high-level consciously controlled and low-level automatically controlled inhibitory processes, the Simon task was combined with the masked prime task in a hybrid procedure. Young and older adults responded to the identity of targets (left/right key-press to left-/right-pointing arrows) that appeared on the left/right of the screen and were preceded by left-/right-pointing backward-masked arrow primes at fixation. Responses were faster and more accurate when the target was congruent with its location than incongruent (Simon effect), and when the target was incompatible with the prime than compatible (negative compatibility effect; NCE). The Simon effect was disproportionately larger, and the NCE disproportionately delayed, in older adults compared to young adults, indicating both high- and low-level inhibitory control deficits with aging. Moreover, the two effects were additive in young adults, but interactive in older adults, providing support for the dedifferentiation hypothesis of aging. Specifically, older adults’ prime-related inhibitory control appeared improved on incongruent relative to congruent trials, suggesting that impaired automatic control was substituted by high-level, non-automatic processes.

Learning skills (as well as disorders) tend to be associated; however, cognitive models typically focus either on reading, spelling or maths providing no clear basis for interpreting this phenomenon. A recent new model of learning cognitive skills proposes that the association among learning skills (and potentially the comorbidity of learning disorders) depends in part from the individual ability to consolidate instances (taken as a measure of rate of learning). We examined the performance of typically developing fifth graders over the acquisition of a novel paper-and-pencil task that could be solved based on an algorithm or, with practice, with reference to specific instances. Our aim was to establish a measure of individual rate of learning using parameters envisaged by the instance theory of automatization by Logan and correlate it to tasks requiring knowledge of individual items (e.g., spelling words with an ambiguous transcription) or tasks requiring the application of a rule or an algorithm (e.g., spelling non-words). The paper-and-pencil procedure yielded acquisition curves consistent with the predictions of the instance theory of automatization (i.e., they followed a power function fit) both at a group and an individual level. Performance in tasks requiring knowledge of individual items (such as doing tables or the retrieval of lexical representations) but not in tasks requiring the application of rules or algorithms (such as judging numerosity or spelling through sublexical mapping) was significantly predicted by the learning parameters of the individual power fits. The results support the hypothesis that an individual dimension of “ability to consolidate instances” contributes to learning skills such as reading, spelling, and maths, providing an interesting heuristic for understanding the comorbidity across learning disorders.

Knowledge-how is the kind of knowledge implicated in skill employment and acquisition. Intellectualists claim that knowledge-how is a special type of propositional knowledge. Anti-intellectualists claim that knowledge-how is not propositional. We argue that both views face two open challenges. The first challenge pertains to the relationship between informational states and motor variability. The second pertains to the epistemic function of practice that leads to skill (and knowledge-how). The aim of this paper is to suggest a general conceptual framework based on functional information with both intellectualist and anti-intellectualist features. Our proposal, we argue, avoids the above challenges, and can further the debate on knowledge-how and skill.

Given the significant changes that are expected in the nature of work as a consequence of rapid technological advances, it is crucial that society finds ways to maximize benefits while recognizing and mitigating related challenges. This article is intended to fill a current research gap in this context by examining how aware and prepared affected workers are for the challenges predicted by research. This information is crucial since expectation and preparation of the workforce will significantly influence society’s adaptability to the future. As a result of the article various significant relationships among workers’ characteristics and their attitude towards automation could be identified. The interviewed workers’ level of fear appears to have very little influence on preparation for automation-driven changes in the future while perceived opportunity significantly impacts this degree of preparation. Characteristics that additionally most influence the degree of preparatory steps taken by respondents are their level of education as well as work complexity and position. These findings should be used to identify potential ways for relevant stakeholders to adequately prepare for and meet the challenges of the impending increase of automation in the workplace.

Much of our everyday, embodied action comes in the form of smooth coping. Smooth coping is skillful action that has become habituated and ingrained, generally placing less stress on cognitive load than considered and deliberative thought and action. When performed with skill and expertise, walking, driving, skiing, musical performances, and short-order cooking are all examples of the phenomenon. Smooth coping is characterized by its rapidity and relative lack of reflection, both being hallmarks of automatization. Deliberative and reflective actions provide the contrast case. In Dreyfus’ classic view, smooth coping is “mindless” absorption into action, being in the flow, and any reflective thought will only interrupt this flow. Building on the pragmatist account of Dewey, others, such as Sutton, Montero, and Gallagher, insist on the intelligent flexibility built into smooth coping, suggesting that it is not equivalent to automatization. We seek to answer two complementary challenges in this article. First, how might we model smooth coping in autonomous agents (natural or artificial) at fine granularity? Second, we use this model of smooth coping to show how we might implement smooth coping in artificial intelligent agents. We develop a conceptual model of smooth coping in LIDA (Learning Intelligent Decision Agent). LIDA is an embodied cognitive architecture implementing the global workspace theory of consciousness, among other psychological theories. LIDA’s implementation of consciousness enables us to account for the phenomenology of smooth coping, something that few cognitive architectures would be able to do. Through the fine granular analysis of LIDA, we argue that smooth coping is a sequence of automatized actions intermittently interspersed with consciously mediated action selection, supplemented by dorsal stream processes. In other words, non-conscious, automatized actions (whether learned or innate) often require occasional bursts of conscious cognition to achieve the skillful and flexible adjustments of smooth coping. In addition, never-conscious dorsal stream information and associated sensorimotor processes provide further online adjustments during smooth coping. To achieve smooth coping in LIDA we introduce a new module to the LIDA cognitive architecture the Automatized Action Selection sub-module. Our complex model of smooth coping borrows notions of “embodied intelligence” from enactivism and augments these by allowing representations and more detailed mechanisms of conscious control. We explore several extended examples of smooth coping, starting from basic activities like walking and scaling up to more complex tasks like driving and short-order cooking.

The Functional Coordination approach describes the processes involved in learning to read as a form of procedural learning in which pre-existing skills, mainly from the visual, and auditory domain, are (1) recruited, (2) modified, and (3) coordinated to create the procedures for reading text, which form the basis of subsequent (4) automatization. In this context, we discuss evidence relating to the emerging prevalence of analytic processing in letter perception. We argue that the process of learning to read does not have to lead to a loss of perceptual skill as consequence of a "cultural recycling"; learning to read just leads to a novel synthesis of functions, which are coordinated for reading and then automatized as a package over several years. Developmental dyslexia is explained within this framework as a Functional Coordination Deficit (Lachmann, 2002), since the coordination level is assumed to be most liable to manifest deficiencies. This is because, at this level, the greatest degree of fine tuning of complex functions is required. Thus, developmental dyslexia is not seen as a consequence of a deficient automatization per se, but of automatization of abnormally developed functional coordination. ispartof: Frontiers in Psychology vol:5 issue:SEP ispartof: location:Switzerland status: published

Extensive training with a musical instrument results in the automatization of the bodily operations needed to manipulate the instrument: the performer no longer has to consciously think about the instrument while playing. The ability of the performer to automate operations on the instrument is due to sensorimotor mechanisms that can predict changes in the state of the body and the instrument in response to motor commands. But how strong are these mechanisms? To what extent can we alter the structure of the instrument before they disappear? We performed an exploratory study to understand whether and how sensorimotor predictions survive instrument modification. We asked seven professional violinists to perform repertoire pieces and sight-reading exercises on four different violins: their own, a cheap violin, a small violin, and a violin whose strings had been put on in reverse order. We performed a series of quantitative investigations on performance intonation and duration, and on bowing gestures and errors. The analysis revealed that participants struggled adapting to the altered instruments, suggesting that prediction mechanisms are a function of instrument configuration. In particular, the analysis of bowing errors, intonation, and of performance duration suggested that the performance with the reverse violin was much less fluent and precise than the performer's own instrument; the performance with the small violin was also sub-standard though to a lesser extent. We also observed that violinists were differently affected by instrument modifications, suggesting that the capability to adapt to a new instrument is highly personal.

The present issue focuses on the classic question of early vs. late selection and evaluates the current status of the perceptual load theory that has been offered as an intermediate solution. Several of the papers compare or contrast perceptual load with an alternative explanation- perceptual dilution. The first group of papers report evidence that is inconsistent with the perceptual load theory but is generally consistent with the dilution theory. Roper and Vecera (2013) report that flanker effects can be found under high perceptual load. Extending the duration of the display, and particularly of the relevant target, produces reliable congruency effects even under high perceptual load. The authors therefore argue that factors such as stimulus and encoding demands contribute to the load effect and that visual short term memory serves as an additional bottleneck when stimuli are briefly presented. Yeshurun and Marciano's (2013) findings also challenge the perceptual load theory. The authors found that task difficulty, as manipulated by degradation of visual information, did not affect attentional selection and flanker interference. This is in contrast to the claim that increasing sensory load increases distractor interference. Furthermore, the basic load effect was not replicated in all 4 experiments, and flanker effects were found even under high perceptual load. Mevorach et al. (2014) tested patients with unilateral neglect and found that contralesional neutral elements eliminated the interference presented by a distractor. The authors argue that given the notion that no attentional resources are allocated to the contralesional field, perceptual load should not be affected by presenting items in the contralesional field. Instead they suggest that neutral stimuli dilute the flanker effect and that attentional selection is determined by dilution rather than load. This is in line with Benoni and Tsal (2013) who present a critical review of perceptual load theory. They challenge the theory's assumptions and supporting evidence, and provide supportive arguments for the alternative dilution theory. Chen and Cave (2013) further studied the dilution effect. They present data that is consistent with dilution but not with perceptual load. However, they argue that the current conception of dilution is simplified. In particular the processing of neutral items is not only dependent on the number of stimuli present but also on complex interactions between top-down and bottom-up processes. Thus, both distractor and neutral elements in a multi element display compete for the same limited attentional resources. In their opinion paper Linnell and Caparos (2013) argue that in accord with the perceptual load theory the spatial profile of attention was more focused when perceptual load was high and less focused when it was low. However in contrast to the theory this holds only when cognitive resources were available. Indeed, the authors emphasize the role of cognitive engagement in the task at hand and suggest that variations in perceptual load modulate task difficulty and this in turn alters cognitive engagement and motivation, factors often neglected in the study of attention. More evidence for a strategic component in the seemingly automatic processing of task-irrelevant information comes from Biggs and Gibson (2013). They show that prior experience and situational expectations modulate the degree to which irrelevant information is processed. As they argue, this might render the assumption of a broad versus narrow allocation of visual attention in explaining effects of irrelevant information processing superfluous. The review of Scalf et al. (2013) presents a hybrid neural competition theory that is generally consistent with both perceptual load and dilution theories. This theory reinforces the original view that low perceptual load is associated with a stronger impact of task-irrelevant information. As the authors point out, this might reflect different processing strategies in conditions with high and low perceptual load: While low perceptual load might allow for bottom-up-driven target selection, high perceptual load might call for top-down regulation. The latter leads to stronger filtering, which reduces the impact of task-irrelevant distractors. The remaining papers use perceptual load theory as a direct or indirect context for studying other aspects of attentional selection. The role of working memory in regulating the degree to which distractors can be ignored is the focus of de Fockert's (2013) review. In support of the original assumption, the review provides strong evidence that higher working memory load makes it more difficult to ignore task-irrelevant distractors. This fits with the idea that working memory has an active role in gating irrelevant information. Forster (2013) takes the perceptual load theory a step forward into the realm of mind-wandering and thought distraction. In her review she carefully distinguishes between different types of task relevancy and between external and internal (e.g., task-unrelated thoughts) sources of distraction. She argues that perceptual load theory is a powerful and largely universal framework to study distraction effects. Parks et al. (2013) used SSVEPs together with ERPS to study the effect of attentional load in a go-no task. The findings reveal a center-surround configuration of both facilitation and suppression in the visual field. Swallow and Jiang (2013) bring in a novel perspective by relating findings on the impact of perceptual load to the attentional boost effect—the observation that distractor processing can benefit from temporal synchronicity with target presentation. As they point out, the seemingly automatic processing of distractors with high perceptual load might reflect a kind of “intentional automatization”: the cognitive system might be programmed to take in information automatically whenever being triggered by a target, suggesting that automatic processing might be a byproduct of intentional selection. Folk (2013) makes an interesting conceptual distinction between processing costs produced by response-incompatible distractors on the one hand and search costs on the other. By combining aspects of the original perceptual-load paradigm and the classical singleton-search paradigm, he provides evidence that search costs remain even under conditions where the compatibility of distractors no longer affects processing. Finally, Moher et al. (2013) tested selection processes without the explicit requirement of target identification. They found that detection performance remained high in spite of focal attention manipulations (i.e., target saliency, availability of cognitive resources, and familiarity) that eliminated identity-repetition effects. Thus, the authors conclude simple target detection is not dependent on focal attention. We hope you will find this Research Topic interesting and informative. Enjoy your reading!