Cognitive Processing最新文献

Controlling for emotional valence and arousal, this study examined how the motivational direction (approach/withdrawal) and intensity of emotions influence inhibitory and switching functions of attentional control in individuals with depressive symptoms. Experiment 1 used emotion induction and a dual-choice Oddball paradigm to assess the impact of emotional motivation on inhibitory function. Results showed that individuals with depressive symptoms exhibited weaker approach motivation toward food and stronger avoidance motivation toward sadness in the inhibition task. Under approach motivation, high-intensity emotion impaired inhibition, while low-intensity emotion facilitated it. Under withdrawal motivation, both high- and low-intensity emotions impaired inhibition. Experiment 2 used emotion induction and a task-switching paradigm to assess the impact on switching function. Results showed that individuals with depressive symptoms displayed more comprehensive motivational deficits in the switching task. Beyond abnormal motivations toward food and sadness, funny scenes failed to induce approach emotions. Approach emotions had no effect on switching function, whereas both high- and low-avoidance emotions hindered it. The findings indicate that individuals with depressive symptoms exhibit emotional motivational deficits. The influence of emotional motivation on inhibitory and switching functions is inconsistent: inhibitory function may be jointly modulated by the direction and intensity of emotional motivation, while switching function is primarily influenced by the direction of motivation.

The present study adopted a dual-task paradigm manipulating operand presentation sequence (continuous vs. discontinuous) and a no-choice strategy adoption approach to investigate how stimulus presentation and response-related processes modulate strategy execution in dual-task scenarios. Participants completed a series of two-digit addition computational estimation tasks, in which they were required to use either the rounding-down (RD) strategy (e.g., calculating 50 + 80=130 for the problem 54 + 89) or the rounding-up (RU) strategy (e.g., calculating 60 + 90=150 for 54 + 89). These tasks were administered across both single- and dual-task conditions, with operands presented in either a continuous or discontinuous sequence. A critical dissociation emerged between neural and behavioral outcomes: significant interaction effects among presentation sequence, task condition, and strategy type were detected at the neural level, whereas no such interactions were observed in behavioral metrics. Behaviorally, relative to the single-task condition, RD strategy, and continuous presentation sequence (MMC first), the dual-task condition, RU strategy, and discontinuous presentation sequence (CE first) were associated with significantly lower accuracy (ACC), longer reaction times (RTs), and higher Inverse Efficiency Scores (IES). At the neural level, discontinuous operand presentation in the dual-task condition elicited significantly larger N1 and P2 amplitudes over the parietal lobe, reflecting heightened attentional engagement compared to continuous presentation. A striking cross-condition reversal was observed for N2 and P3 amplitudes: in the single-task condition, N2 and P3 amplitudes under the RD strategy were significantly smaller (more negative) than those under the RU strategy; conversely, in the dual-task condition, RD strategy-related N2 and P3 amplitudes were significantly larger (more positive) than those linked to the RU strategy. These findings align closely with the Time-Based Resource-Sharing (TBRS) model and dynamic processing frameworks. Collectively, the results indicate that sequence preparation, dual-task coordination, and strategy execution depend on attention-dependent temporal allocation of limited cognitive resources at central processing bottlenecks, which enables flexible, optimal, and dynamic resource management to support both online task processing and cognitive maintenance. Future investigations into the neural mechanisms of dual-task processing should employ larger sample sizes and multimodal research approaches to further elucidate these resource allocation dynamics.

Task cues are often used to study task preparation. Participants are thought to activate cued task sets in advance to facilitate later task performance. Earlier studies showed that task performance was improved, if the relation of cue and decision categories of the task was more transparent, suggesting a facilitated task preparation process with more transparent cues. However, no previous study directly tested how processing differs between cues with varying transparency in the cue interval itself. To this end, we analyzed cue-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) and oscillatory activity of the electroencephalogram (EEG) for four different cue types with varying cue transparency. An increased cue-locked positivity ERP component indicated the largest preparation demands for arbitrary symbol string cues, which lacked any apparent relation with the cued task. Moreover, visual demands reflected by an early positive deflection and task set reconfiguration demands reflected by theta oscillations were increased for both word cues (decision categories used as cues) and symbol string cues, indicating that cues with a higher visual complexity pose additional demands on visual and cognitive cue processing. In contrast, these electrophysiological correlates of preparation demands were lowest for letter cues. Hence, if one wants to facilitate cue-induced task set activation, simple letter cues appear beneficial. In conclusion, task cue transparency influenced electrophysiological correlates related to the preparatory demands required for task set retrieval and should therefore be taken into account when studying task preparation.

Sketch maps are the external representations of people's cognition of the geographical environment. Previous research on extracting invariant information from sketch maps has proposed various spatial relation methods, encompassing both qualitative and quantitative relations. However, sketch maps can encode varieties of spatial knowledge and distortions. This paper summarizes the frequently occurring distortions in urban sketch maps, such as shape, scale, and position distortions. Building on our previous work, we analyzed the differences caused by various distortions on bidimensional regression and order relations (Point Algebra and coarse Interval Algebra), and summarized the characteristics of these methods. We evaluated the methods on a total of 30 sketch maps derived from landmark knowledge, route knowledge, and survey knowledge, and provided recommendations on the use of methods for different types of sketch maps. Furthermore, the experiment demonstrated that combining bidimensional regression and order relations allows for a better assessment of the sketch map accuracy. We believe that an in-depth analysis of various types of sketch maps and distortions can provide new insights for sketch map alignment.