Human multitasking suffers from a central attentional bottleneck preventing parallel performance of central mental operations, leading to profound deferments in task performance. While previous research assumed that the deferment is caused by a mere waiting time, we show that the bottleneck requires executive functions accounting for a profound part of the deferment. Three participant groups with EF impairments showed worse multitasking performance than respective control groups. Three further groups with EF improvements showed improved multitasking. Finally, three groups performed a dual-task (...) and different measures of EF and showed significant correlations between multitasking performance and working memory capacity. Demands on EF during multitasking may cause more errors, mental fatigue and stress, with parts of the population being considerably more prone to this. (shrink)

Abstract.Religions commonly are taken to provide general orientation in leading one's life. We develop here the idea that religions also may have a much more concrete guidance function in providing systematic decision biases in the face of cognitive‐control dilemmas. In particular, we assume that the selective reward that religious belief systems provide for rule‐conforming behavior induces systematic biases in cognitive‐control parameters that are functional in producing the wanted behavior. These biases serve as default values under uncertainty and affect performance in (...) any task that shares cognitive‐control operations with the religiously motivated rule‐conforming behavior the biases were originally developed for. Such biases therefore can be unraveled and objectified by means of rather simple tasks that are relatively well understood with regard to the cognitive mechanisms they draw on. (shrink)

When a person decides to do something in the future, she forms an intention and her intention persists. Philosophers have thought about the rational requirement that an agent’s intention persists until its execution. But philosophers have neglected to think about the causal memory mechanisms that could enable this kind of persistence and its role in rational long-term agency. Our aim of this paper is to fill this gap by arguing that memory for intention is a specific kind of memory. We (...) do this by evaluating and rejecting standard declarative accounts of memory for intention and arguing for the plausibility of an alternative model of memory for intention. We argue for the alternative by spelling out a number of computational principles that could enable retaining and retrieving intentions from long-term memory. These principles could explain a number of core features of intentions. (shrink)

The past 25 years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive control in the regulation of complex behavior. It now sits alongside attention, memory, language, and thinking as a distinct domain within cognitive psychology. At the same time it permeates each of these sibling domains. This introduction reviews recent work on cognitive control in an attempt to provide a context for the fundamental question addressed within this topic: Is cognitive control to be understood as resulting from the (...) interaction of multiple distinct control processes, or are the phenomena of cognitive control emergent? (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a new mathematical model of retrieval of intentions from long-term memory. We model retrieval as a stochastic race between a plurality of potentially relevant intentions stored in long-term memory. Psychological theories are dominated by two opposing conceptions of the role of memory in temporally extended agency – as when a person has to remember to make a phone call in the afternoon because, in the morning, she promised she would do so. According to the Working (...) Memory conception, remembering to make the phone call is explained in terms of the construction and maintenance of intentions in working-memory. According to the Long-Term Memory conception, we should explain the episode in terms of an ability to store intentions in long-term memory. The two conceptions predict different processing profiles. The aim of this paper is to present a new mathematical model of the type of memory mechanism that could realise the long-term memory representations of intentions necessary for the Long-Term Memory conception. We present and illustrate the formal model and propose a new type of experimental paradigm that could allow us to test which of the two conceptions provides the best explanation of the role of memory in temporally extended agency. (shrink)

First, we discuss issues raised with respect to the Theory of Event Coding (TEC)'s scope, that is, its limitations and possible extensions. Then, we address the issue of specificity, that is, the widespread concern that TEC is too unspecified and, therefore, too vague in a number of important respects. Finally, we elaborate on our views about TEC's relations to other important frameworks and approaches in the field like stages models, ecological approaches, and the two-visual-pathways model. Footnotes1 We acknowledge the precedence (...) of both Freud¹s Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) and Neisser¹s Stimulus Information and Its Vicissitudes (a term Neisser borrowed from Freud for his monograph “Cognitive psychology,” 1967). (shrink)

Many parents worry over their children’s gaming habits, but to what extent do such worries match any detrimental effects of excessive gaming? We attempted to answer this question by comparing children of highly concerned parents with other adolescents of the same age. A cohort of parents who identified as highly concerned over their children’s video game habits were recruited for a public study in collaboration with a national television network. Using an online experimental platform in conjunction with surveys of parents’ (...) beliefs and attitudes, we compared their children to age-matched peers in an exploratory case-control study. The scores of children with highly concerned parents on tests of cognitive control and psychological wellbeing were statistically similar to controls, suggesting no selective cognitive or psychological detriments from gaming or otherwise in the cases with concerned parents. The case group, however, did spend more time gaming, and scored higher than controls on problem gaming indicators, which also correlated negatively with wellbeing. Within the case group, wellbeing effects seemed mainly to consist in issues of relaxation and sleep, and related to gaming addiction indicators of playing to forget real-world problems, and the feeling of neglecting non-gaming activities. Where most results of research staged for TV never get published, making it difficult to interpret both methods and results, this paper describes findings and participant recruitment in detail. The relationship between parental concern and children’s gaming is discussed, as is the merits and challenges of research conducted with media, such as TV programs and their recruited on-screen participants. (shrink)

Religions commonly are taken to provide general orientation in leading one's life. We develop here the idea that religions also may have a much more concrete guidance function in providing systematic decision biases in the face of cognitive-control dilemmas. In particular, we assume that the selective reward that religious belief systems provide for rule-conforming behavior induces systematic biases in cognitive-control parameters that are functional in producing the wanted behavior. These biases serve as default values under uncertainty and affect performance in (...) any task that shares cognitive-control operations with the religiously motivated rule-conforming behavior the biases were originally developed for. Such biases therefore can be unraveled and objectified by means of rather simple tasks that are relatively well understood with regard to the cognitive mechanisms they draw on. (shrink)

To process information selectively and to continuously fine-tune selectivity of information processing are important abilities for successful goal-directed behavior. One phenomenon thought to represent this fine-tuning are conflict adaptation effects in interference tasks, i.e. reduction of interference after an incompatible trial and when incompatible trials are frequent. The neurocognitive mechanisms of these effects are currently only partly understood and results from brainimaging studies so far are mixed. In our study we validate and extend recent findings by examining adaption to recent (...) conflict in the classical Stroop task using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Consistent with previous research we found increased activity in a fronto-parietal network comprising the medial prefrontal cortex, ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex, and posterior parietal cortex when contrasting incompatible with compatible trials. These areas have been associated with attentional processes and might reflect increased cognitive conflict and resolution thereof during incompatible trials. While carefully controlling for non-attentional sequential effects we found smaller Stroop interference after an incompatible trial (conflict adaptation effect). These behavioral conflict adaptation effects were accompanied by changes in activity in visual color-selective areas (V4, V4α), while there was no modulation by previous trial compatibility in a visual word-selective area (VWFA). Our results provide further evidence for the notion, that adaptation to recent conflict seems to be based mainly on enhancement of processing of the task-relevant information. (shrink)

Starting with Dienes and Perner’s distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge and the traditional philosophical distinction between COS as an object and COS as a subject, we suggest a triple classification of COS experience into three modes, each corresponding to a different state of consciousness. When one acts automatically COS is totally embedded within the representation of the environment. When one monitors or attends to one’s experience, the self is implied by an explicit representation of one’s attitudes, consistent with Descartes’ (...) cogito insight ‘I think therefore I am’ . However, a reflexive thought, e.g., ‘I know fact x,’ requires an explicit representation of the self. This analysis highlights the existence of an intermediate mode of COS as a subject and suggests its possible connection to monitoring one’s behavior. (shrink)

Increasing evidence suggests that cognitive-control processes can be configured to optimize either persistence of information processing (by amplifying competition between decision-making alternatives and top-down biasing of this competition) or flexibility (by dampening competition and biasing). We investigated whether high-frequency binaural beats, an auditory illusion suspected to act as a cognitive enhancer, have an impact on cognitive-control configuration. We hypothesized that binaural beats in the gamma range bias the cognitive-control style toward flexibility, which in turn should increase the crosstalk between tasks (...) in a dual-task paradigm. We replicated earlier findings that the reaction time in the first-performed task is sensitive to the compatibility between the responses in the first and the second task—an indication of crosstalk. As predicted, exposing participants to binaural beats in the gamma range increased this effect as compared to a control condition in which participants were exposed to a continuous tone of 340 Hz. These findings provide converging evidence that the cognitive-control style can be systematically biased by inducing particular internal states; that high-frequency binaural beats bias the control style toward more flexibility; and that different styles are implemented by changing the strength of local competition and top-down bias. (shrink)