Cognitive psychology

This study aimed to explore relationships between impulsivity scores, cannabis use, and performance on vigilance, attention, and decision making tasks. We also investigated whether cannabis use related to self-reported risk taking behaviours, including risky driving, openness to engage with cryptocurrency markets, or gambling behaviour. The regular recreational cannabis users had significantly higher impulsivity scores and tendency to use other substances than non-users. The regular cannabis users had better performance efficiency than non-users for hit targets on the vigilance task, but not the other two target trial types. The regular cannabis users made significantly fewer errors than non-users on the verbal Stroop task. There were no significant performance differences on the Iowa Gambling Task between the regular recreational cannabis users and non-users. None of our other hypotheses explorations yielded statistically significant results.

Author Keywords: cannabis, cryptocurrency, gambling, impulsivity, Stroop, vigilance

It is widely believed that basic mental processes involved in skilled reading are automatic in the sense that they occur without intention. Evidence that reading occurs without intention comes from the observation that the meaning of a colour word (e.g., "red") affects the time to name the ink-colour of the word in the Stroop task. Evidence also suggests that non-colour words (e.g., house) interfere even though they are irrelevant to the colour naming task. The present study examined which reading processes are triggered without intention in the non-colour word Stroop task. One hundred and twenty skilled English readers completed both a reading aloud task and a colour naming task. In order to identify the reading processes triggered without intention, three psycholinguistic variables were examined, lexicality, word frequency, and neighbourhood density. The findings suggest that processing up to and including the activation of orthographic lexical representations occurs without intention and that intention is required to activate all subsequent reading processes.

Author Keywords: Attention, Reading, Stroop Effect, Visual Word Recognition

This study investigates associations between self-other differentiation (the ability to distinguish and coordinate the self and other perspective during social problem-solving) and specific ego functions (reality testing, judgement, sense of reality, object relations, and synthetic-integrative function) from a cognitive perspective in two groups of adolescents aged 12 to 18 years. One group was referred for mental health problems (clinic-referred, n = 129) and the other was a typically developing comparison group (control, n = 184). Clinic-referred adolescents scored significantly lower in both self-other differentiation and ego functions compared to nonclinic-referred adolescents, suggesting a potential relation with adolescent mental health. While self-other differentiation was generally associated with ego function, no moderating effect of clinic referral was observed. Findings suggest a link between self-other differentiation and different aspects of judgement (the ability to anticipate consequences, understand reactions, and learn from past mistakes).

Author Keywords: adolescence, ego function, interpersonal negotiation strategies, mental health problems, self-other differentiation, social problem solving

Office workers consistently report greater productivity in the workplace when standing compared to sitting (Chambers et al., 2019; MacEwan et al., 2015; Mantzari et al., 2018). In contrast, laboratory studies report inconsistent evidence that posture (sitting vs. standing) affects cognitive performance, usually operationalized as selective attention (Caron et al., 2020; 2022; Rosenbaum et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2019). The present work assessed whether the discrepancy between workplace and laboratory findings is because workplace tasks are more difficult than the tasks used in laboratory research. Three visual search experiments are reported. Search difficulty was increased in Experiments 1 and 2 and posture difficulty was increased in Experiment 3. There was no evidence that posture affected attention in any of the experiments suggesting that the failure to find an effect of posture on attention in previous work was not due to the task difficulty.

Author Keywords: Cognition, Cognitive Resources, Dual Task, Embodied Cognition, Posture, Selective Attention

It is widely believed that basic mental processes involved in skilled reading are automatic in the sense that they occur without intention. Evidence that reading occurs without intention comes from the observation that the meaning of a colour word (e.g., "red") affects the time to name the ink-colour of the word in the Stroop task. Evidence also suggests that non-colour words (e.g., house) interfere even though they are irrelevant to the colour naming task. The present study examined which reading processes are triggered without intention in the non-colour word Stroop task. One hundred and twenty skilled English readers completed both a reading aloud task and a colour naming task. In order to identify the reading processes triggered without intention, three psycholinguistic variables were examined, lexicality, word frequency, and neighbourhood density. The findings suggest that processing up to and including the activation of orthographic lexical representations occurs without intention and that intention is required to activate all subsequent reading processes.

Author Keywords: Attention, Reading, Stroop Effect, Visual Word Recognition

Studies that have investigated the relation between social anxiety and theory of mind or executive function have shown that individuals with deficits in these cognitive processes have high levels of social anxiety. However, methodological problems make past findings questionable and difficult to interpret. The current study investigated whether deficits in theory of mind and executive function predicted symptoms of social anxiety in 99 older adolescents and young adults (18-29). On average, participants had moderate levels of social anxiety. Performance on measures of theory of mind and executive function did not predict symptoms of social anxiety. This lack of associations could be due to characteristics of the current sample, methodological differences in the current study compared to past studies, or the type of social anxiety and theory of mind measure used. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Author Keywords: Early Adulthood, Executive Function, Late Adolescence, Social Anxiety, Theory of Mind

Ego-depletion refers to the observation that using self-control at Time 1 (T1) in the sequential-task paradigm leads to worse self-control at Time 2 (T2; Baumeister et al., 1998). Self-control is often manipulated by varying the difficulty of the task used at T1. Recently, Wolff and colleagues (2020) suggested that failures to replicate the ego-depletion phenomenon may arise because simple tasks may be boring, therefore requiring self-control to maintain attention on the task. Three experiments (Experiment 1, N=60; Experiment 2, N=61; Experiment 3, N=59) are reported that examined whether boredom at T1 predicted self-control at T2. A simple Go/No-Go task was used at T1. The ratio of Go to No-Go trials was changed across experiments to explore how the properties of the boring task impacted the association between boredom and self-control. When responding was frequent, increased boredom at T1 was associated with fewer anagrams correctly solved (Experiment 1 and 3), and more self-reported fatigue at T2 (Experiment 1), consistent with boredom leading to ego-depletion. However, when responding was infrequent (Experiment 2), increased boredom at T1 was associated with more correctly solved anagrams at T2, suggesting that the properties of a boring task change the psychological outcome that task has on self-control.

Author Keywords: attention, boredom, ego-depletion, executive function, self-control

After active tool-use visual stimuli near a tool are processed more quickly and accurately than those farther away from a tool. Can these near-tool effects be modulated by training demands? To investigate this we asked the participants to complete a tool training task followed by a cross-modal interference task. During the training task the participants performed quick and accurate pointing movements to reach a strict or moderate criterion. The results indicated that the strict group made faster movements than the moderate group. During the cross-modal interference task visual distractors were presented along handheld tools in conjunction with vibrotactile stimuli on the hand. No significant compatibility effects were found for visual distractors near the hand or tool tip, and no consistent group differences were found. Our findings demonstrate the importance of using a novel tool during training, and that virtual stimuli may not be effective to elicit near-tool effects.

Author Keywords: bimodal neurons, cross-modal interference, near-tool effects, tool training, training demands

The assessment of visuomotor function can provide important information about neurological status. Several visuomotor tasks exist for testing in the laboratory, although attempts to make these tests portable to allow quick and reliable assessment have been limited. We developed an assessment tool using two laboratory visuomotor tests as a tablet application: the double-step task, and an interception task. Performance was assessed by measuring the participants' ability to reach toward unpredictably moving targets in each task. Response patterns were compared across equipment types to determine if participants were responding similarly to the moving targets in the standard laboratory and the tablet version of the tasks. On the double-step task, participants adjusted to the displaced target adequately in both the lab and tablet versions. On the interception task, participants intercepted non-accelerating targets, and performed worse on accelerating targets in both versions of the task. These findings suggest that the tablet version of these tasks assesses similar visuomotor processing as the respective laboratory version.

Author Keywords: concussion assessment, double-step task, interception task, visuomotor processing, visuomotor system

The digital typesetting of mathematics can present many challenges to users, especially those of novice to intermediate experience levels. Through a series of experiments, we show that two models used to represent mathematical structure in these typesetting applications, the 1-dimensional structure based model and the 2-dimensional freeform model, cause interference with users' working memory during the process of transcribing mathematical content. This is a notable finding as a connection between working memory and mathematical performance has been established in the literature. Furthermore, we find that elements of these models allow them to handle various types of mathematical notation with different degrees of success. Notably, the 2-dimensional freeform model allows users to insert and manipulate exponents with increased efficiency and reduced cognitive load and working memory interference while the 1-dimensional structure based model allows for handling of the fraction structure with greater efficiency and decreased cognitive load.

Author Keywords: mathematical cognition, mathematical software, user experience, working memory