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Executive Function consists of self-regulation processes which underlie our ability to plan, coordinate, and complete goal-directed actions in our daily lives. While attention is widely considered to be central to the emergence and development of executive function during early childhood, it is not clear if it is integral or separable from other executive function processes. Previous studies have not addressed this question satisfactorily because executive function and attention are multidimensional constructs, but they are often studied without differentiating the specific processes that are tested. Moreover, some studies consist of only one task per process, making it difficult to ascertain if the pattern of results is attributable to different processes or more simply to task variance. The main aim of this study was to more fully investigate how attention factored into the underlying structure of executive function in preschool children. Preschool children (n = 137) completed a battery of tasks which included executive function (i.e., response inhibition, working memory) and attentional control (i.e., sustained attention, selective attention) processes; there were two tasks per process. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to test which of three models fit the data best: (1) a unitary one-factor model with attention loading onto the same factor as other executive function processes, (2) a two-factor model with attention loading onto a separate factor than other executive function processes, or (3) a three-factor model with attention, response inhibition, and working memory as separate factors. Fit indices and model comparisons indicated that the two-factor model fit the data best, suggesting that attentional control and executive function were related, but separable. Although this study is not the first to advocate for a two-factor model during the preschool years, it is the first to suggest that the two factors are attentional control and executive function, not working memory and response inhibition. One important implication of these findings is that a complete assessment of executive function during the preschool years necessitates measuring not only response inhibition and working memory, but attentional control as well.

Self-regulation is an essential aspect of healthy child development. Even though infants depend on their caregivers for co-regulation during the first years, they begin to gain regulatory abilities through social interactions as well as their own developing agency and inhibitory control. These early regulatory abilities continue to increase with the development of both the prefrontal cortex and the vagal system. Importantly, theoretical accounts have suggested that the prefrontal cortex and the vagal system are linked through forward and backward feedback loops via the limbic system. Decreased coupling within this link is suggested to be associated with psychopathology. The primary goal of this study was to examine whether intrapersonal coupling of prefrontal brain activity and respiratory sinus arrhythmia is evident in infancy. Using the simultaneous assessment of functional near-infrared spectroscopy and electrocardiography, we used Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis to assess the coupling of prefrontal brain activity and respiratory sinus arrhythmia in 69 4- to 6-month-old infants and their mothers during a passive viewing condition. However, we did not find significant coupling between the PFC and RSA in infants and adult caregivers. Future studies could examine social contexts associated with greater emotional reactivity to deepen our understanding of the pathways involved in self-regulation.

Caregiver touch plays a vital role in infants’ growth and development, but its role as a communicative signal in human parent-infant interactions is surprisingly poorly understood. Here, we assessed whether touch and proximity in caregiver-infant dyads are related to neural and physiological synchrony. We simultaneously measured brain activity and respiratory sinus arrhythmia of 4–6-month-old infants and their mothers (N=69 dyads) in distal and proximal joint watching conditions as well as in an interactive face-to-face condition. Neural synchrony was higher during the proximal than during the distal joint watching conditions, and even higher during the face-to-face interaction. Physiological synchrony was highest during the face-to-face interaction and lower in both joint watching conditions, irrespective of proximity. Maternal affectionate touch during the face-to-face interaction was positively related to neural but not physiological synchrony. This is the first evidence that touch mediates mutual attunement of brain activities, but not cardio-respiratory rhythms in caregiver-infant dyads during naturalistic interactions. Our results also suggest that neural synchrony serves as a biological pathway of how social touch plays into infant development and how this pathway could be utilized to support infant learning and social bonding.

Users must regularly distinguish between secure and insecure cyber platforms in order to preserve their privacy and safety. Mouse tracking is an accessible, high-resolution measure that can be leveraged to understand the dynamics of perception, categorization, and decision-making in threat detection. Researchers have begun to utilize measures like mouse tracking in cyber security research, including in the study of risky online behavior. However, it remains an empirical question to what extent real-time information about user behavior is predictive of user outcomes and demonstrates added value compared to traditional self-report questionnaires. Participants navigated through six simulated websites, which resembled either secure “non-spoof” or insecure “spoof” versions of popular websites. Websites also varied in terms of authentication level (i.e., extended validation, standard validation, or partial encryption). Spoof websites had modified Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and authentication level. Participants chose to “login” to or “back” out of each website based on perceived website security. Mouse tracking information was recorded throughout the task, along with task performance. After completing the website identification task, participants completed a questionnaire assessing their security knowledge and degree of familiarity with the websites simulated during the experiment. Despite being primed to the possibility of website phishing attacks, participants generally showed a bias for logging in to websites versus backing out of potentially dangerous sites. Along these lines, participant ability to identify spoof websites was around the level of chance. Hierarchical Bayesian logistic models were used to compare the accuracy of two-factor (i.e., website security and encryption level), survey-based (i.e., security knowledge and website familiarity), and real-time measures (i.e., mouse tracking) in predicting risky online behavior during phishing attacks. Participant accuracy in identifying spoof and non-spoof websites was best captured using a model that included real-time indicators of decision-making behavior, as compared to two-factor and survey-based models. Findings validate three widely applicable measures of user behavior derived from mouse tracking recordings, which can be utilized in cyber security and user intervention research. Survey data alone are not as strong at predicting risky Internet behavior as models that incorporate real-time measures of user behavior, such as mouse tracking.

Attention is widely considered a core process of Executive Function (EF), but it is not clear if it is a separable or integral component of EF in preschool children. Preschool children (n=137) completed a battery of tasks which included EF (i.e., response inhibition, working memory) and attentional control (AC) processes (i.e., sustained attention, selective attention). Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) indicated that a two-factor model with EF and AC as separate factors fit the data better than a unitary one-factor model. These findings are consistent with the view that EF and AC are developing at different rates during the preschool years, and thus are not yet fully integrated in the processing of information. The implications of how EF and AC should be conceptualized in early childhood are discussed.

Predictive Processing (PP) has been suggested to account for early cognitive development (Köster et al., 2020). In this paper, we extend its application to early social coordination in parent-infant interactions. Interpersonal neural synchrony in parent-child interactions is hypothesized to be a function of the coupling of internal generative models for mutual prediction. By aligning these internal models and reducing prediction errors, social uncertainty is reduced, and interpersonal neural synchrony is enhanced. Support for this hypothesis is provided by assessing neural synchrony during mother-infant interaction.

In a world that relies increasingly on large amounts of dataand on powerful Machine Learning (ML) models, the veracityof decisions made by these systems is essential. Adversarialsamples are inputs that have been perturbed to mislead the in-terpretation of the ML and are a dangerous vulnerability. Ourresearch takes a first step into what can be an important innova-tion in cognitive science: we analyzed human’s judgments anddecisions when confronted with targeted (inputs constructedto make a ML model purposely misclassify an input as some-thing else) and non-targeted (a noisy perturbed input that triesto trick the ML model) adversarial samples. Our findings sug-gest that although ML models that produce non-targeted adver-sarial samples can be more efficient than targeted samples theyresult in more incorrect human classifications than those of tar-geted samples. In other words, non-targeted samples interferedmore with human perception and categorization decisions thantargeted samples.

The n-back task is one of the most popular methods forstudying working memory, and it is tested witheither auditory or visual stimuli. Previous researchcomparing stimulus modalities has demonstrated that auditoryand visual tasks often elicit differential responding and,potentially, different underlying cognitive processes. In thisstudy, performance accuracy and response time weremeasured during an n-back task that varied in termsof stimulus modality and difficulty. Findings demonstrate thatparticipants respond faster but less accurately during a visualas compared to an auditory condition where participants aremore accurate but slower to respond. These results arediscussed in terms of dual coding and feature binding.Implications for the presentation of n-back tasks in studies ofworking memory are discussed.

Social stimuli are a highly salient source of information, andseem to possess unique qualities that set them apart fromother well-known categories. One characteristic is their abilityto elicit spatial orienting, whereby directional stimuli like eye-gaze and pointing gestures act as exogenous cues that triggerautomatic shifts of attention that are difficult to inhibit. Thiseffect has been extended to non-social stimuli, like arrows,leading to some uncertainty regarding whether spatialorienting is specialized for social cues. Using a standardspatial cueing paradigm, we found evidence that both apointing hand and arrow are effective cues, but that the handis encoded more quickly, leading to overall faster responses.We then extended the paradigm to include multiple cues inorder to evaluate congruent vs. incongruent cues. Our resultsindicate that faster encoding of the social cue leads todownstream effects on the allocation of attention resulting infaster orienting.

Social interaction involves cues such as gaze direction, headorientation, and pointing gestures that serve to automaticallyorient attention to a specific referent or spatial location. In thispaper we demonstrate that an observed reaching actionsimilarly results in a reflexive shift in attention as evidencedby faster responses that are congruent with the direction of thereach, than responses that are incongruent. This facilitation isevident quickly after the onset of the reach action and is dueto the rapid prediction of the reach-goal. When the taskinvolves a saccadic response (Experiment 1) this prediction isinhibited and results in a reverse-congruence, faster responsesto incongruent than congruent cues, when the cue occurs afterthe reach is completed. This reverse-congruence is not presentwhen the task involves a key press (Experiment 2) or a mousemovement (Experiment 3). We propose that the inhibition ofthe predictive saccade is overcome when the eye movementstoward the goal are activated to guide the mouse movement.The three experiments together demonstrate that automaticattention distribution and its effects on behavior depend onthe response.