Search

BackgroundA lack of ability to inhibit prepotent responses, or more generally a lack of impulse control, is associated with several disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and schizophrenia as well as general damage to the prefrontal cortex. A stop-signal task (SST) is a reliable and established measure of response inhibition. However, using the SST as an objective assessment in diagnostic or research-focused settings places significant stress on participants as the task itself requires concentration and cognitive effort and is not particularly engaging. This can lead to decreased motivation to follow task instructions and poor data quality, which can affect assessment efficacy and might increase drop-out rates. Gamification—the application of game-based elements in nongame settings—has shown to improve engaged attention to a cognitive task, thus increasing participant motivation and data quality. ObjectiveThis study aims to design a gamified SST that improves participants’ engagement and validate this gamified SST against a standard SST. MethodsWe described the design of our gamified SST and reported on 2 separate studies that aim to validate the gamified SST relative to a standard SST. In study 1, a within-subject design was used to compare the performance of the SST and a stop-signal game (SSG). In study 2, we added eye tracking to the procedure to determine if overt attention was affected and aimed to replicate the findings from study 1 in a between-subjects design. Furthermore, in both studies, flow and motivational experiences were measured. ResultsIn contrast, the behavioral performance was comparable between the tasks (P

It is assumed that stimuli and their responses are integrated into an event file and that re-encounter with one or more integrated features leads to the retrieval of the event file. The Binding and Retrieval in Action Control framework (Frings et al., 2020) suggests that these integration and retrieval processes are independent and can be separately modulated by top-down and bottom-up factors. One suggested bottom-up factor is salience. Recent studies found evidence for the impact of salience on target-integration processes. In the present study, we merged two established paradigms, the additional singleton paradigm from visual search and the distractor-response binding paradigm, to investigate salient effects on distractors in action control. In two experiments, we observed standard distractor-response binding effects that, however, were not modulated by salience. We discuss these findings against recent theoriing from visual search arguing that salience becomes most effective with relevant features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

False memories during testimony are an enormous challenge for criminal trials. Exposure to post-event misinformation can lead to inadvertent creation of false memories, known as the misinformation effect. We investigated anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) during recall testing to enhance accurate recall while addressing the misinformation effect. Participants (N = 60) watched a television series depicting a fictional terrorist attack, then received an audio recording with misinformation, consistent information, and control information. During cued recall testing, participants received anodal or sham tDCS. Results revealed a robust misinformation effect in both groups, with participants falsely recalling on average 26.6% of the misinformed items. Bayesian statistics indicated substantial evidence in favour of the null hypothesis that there was no difference between groups in the misinformation effect. Regarding correct recall however, the anodal group exhibited significantly improved recall for items from the original video. Together, these results demonstrate that anodal tDCS of the left IPL enhances correct recall of the episodes from the original event without affecting false recall of misinformation. The findings support the IPL's role in recollection and source attribution of episodic memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perception and action rely on integrating or binding different features of stimuli and responses. Such bindings are short-lived, but they can be retrieved for a limited amount of time if any of their features is reactivated. This is particularly true for stimulus–response bindings, allowing for flexible recycling of previous action plans. A relation to learning of stimulus–response associations suggests itself, and previous accounts have proposed binding as an initial step of forging associations in long-term memory. The evidence for this claim is surprisingly mixed, however. Here we propose a framework that explains previous failures to detect meaningful relations of binding and learning by highlighting the joint contribution of three variables: (a) decay, (b) the number of repetitions, and (c) the time elapsing between repetitions. Accounting for the interplay of these variables provides a promising blueprint for innovative experimental designs that bridge the gap between immediate bindings on the one hand and lasting associations in memory on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If a target stimulus is presented together with a response-irrelevant distractor stimulus, both stimuli can be encoded together with the response in an event file (see Hommel, 2004). The repetition of any feature of such an event-file can then retrieve the previously encoded response. This kind of feature-based retrieval is an important mechanism in action control. Typically, a direct link between perception and action is assumed, whereas the possible role of semantics is unspecified so far. Only a couple of previous studies analyzed whether the repetition of semantic features can elicit event-file retrieval. Yet, in these studies, semantic repetition often included perceptual repetition as well; even more problematic is trying to analyze perceptual repetitions while excluding semantic repetitions. Thus, here we used a different approach by repeating perceptual features but contrasted semantic and perceptual repetitions. In particular, in 2 experiments we found evidence that perceptual features of a distractor (the letters of an irrelevant word) are integrated with the response and can later retrieve the response, even if only some of these features are repeated thus forming a semantically different concept (i.e., presenting Buch [book] retrieves the response made to Bach [brook]). Our result shed new light on the relation between perception, action, and semantics in action control.