Defensiveness and attempted thought suppression of negative material

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 521-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazanin Derakshan ◽  
Lynn B. Myers ◽  
Jane Hansen ◽  
Maireed O'Leary
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Thought Suppression ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Cognitive Structures ◽  
Suppression Condition ◽  
Negative Material

High and low defensive individuals engaged in attempted thought suppression and non‐suppression after viewing an emotionally stressful piece of film. As a function of suppression and non‐suppression instructions, high and low defensive individuals differed from each other in the number of reported film‐related thoughts. Suppression instructions had greatest effects on low defensive individuals in reducing the number of reported film‐related thoughts. The effects of suppression instructions were not significant in reducing the number of film‐related thoughts for high defensive individuals. High defensive individuals also reported more neutral thoughts under the suppression condition compared with the non‐suppression condition. Low defensive individuals reported similar numbers of neutral thoughts under the two conditions. Effects of suppression instructions were investigated in a subsequent cognitive task that measured the level of interference produced by attempted suppression. Suppression instructions did not significantly effect the cognitive processing of participants. Theoretical and methodological implications for understanding the possible cognitive structures underlying attempted suppression are discussed in terms of the effects of defensiveness. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

scholarly journals Eye Movements in Response to Pain-Related Feelings in the Presence of Low and High Cognitive Loads

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Ramtin Zargari Marandi ◽  
Camilla Ann Fjelsted ◽  
Iris Hrustanovic ◽  
Rikke Dan Olesen ◽  
Parisa Gazerani
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Pain Perception ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Load Level ◽  
Task Load ◽  
Pupillary Responses ◽  
Movement Characteristics

The affective dimension of pain contributes to pain perception. Cognitive load may influence pain-related feelings. Eye tracking has proven useful for detecting cognitive load effects objectively by using relevant eye movement characteristics. In this study, we investigated whether eye movement characteristics differ in response to pain-related feelings in the presence of low and high cognitive loads. A set of validated, control, and pain-related sounds were applied to provoke pain-related feelings. Twelve healthy young participants (six females) performed a cognitive task at two load levels, once with the control and once with pain-related sounds in a randomized order. During the tasks, eye movements and task performance were recorded. Afterwards, the participants were asked to fill out questionnaires on their pain perception in response to the applied cognitive loads. Our findings indicate that an increased cognitive load was associated with a decreased saccade peak velocity, saccade frequency, and fixation frequency, as well as an increased fixation duration and pupil dilation range. Among the oculometrics, pain-related feelings were reflected only in the pupillary responses to a low cognitive load. The performance and perceived cognitive load decreased and increased, respectively, with the task load level and were not influenced by the pain-related sounds. Pain-related feelings were lower when performing the task compared with when no task was being performed in an independent group of participants. This might be due to the cognitive engagement during the task. This study demonstrated that cognitive processing could moderate the feelings associated with pain perception.

scholarly journals Prefrontal D1 dopamine-receptor neurons and delta resonance in interval timing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young-Cho Kim ◽  
Nandakumar S. Narayanan
Keyword(s):  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Parkinson's Disease ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Interval Timing ◽  
Time Dependent ◽  
Performance Deficits ◽  
Timing Task ◽  
Memory Flexibility ◽  
Receptor Neurons

AbstractConsiderable evidence has shown that prefrontal neurons expressing D1-type dopamine receptors (D1DRs) are critical for working memory, flexibility, and timing. This line of work predicts that frontal neurons expressing D1DRs mediate cognitive processing. During timing tasks, one form this cognitive processing might take is time-dependent ramping activity — monotonic changes in firing rate over time. Thus, we hypothesized the prefrontal D1DR+ neurons would strongly exhibited time-dependent ramping during interval timing. We tested this idea using an interval-timing task in which we used optogenetics to tag D1DR+ neurons in the mouse medial frontal cortex (MFC). While 23% of MFC D1DR+ neurons exhibited ramping, this was significantly less than untagged MFC D1DR+ neurons. By contrast, MFC D1DR+ neurons had strong delta-frequency (1-4 Hz) coherence with other MFC ramping neurons. This coherence was phase-locked to cue onset and was strongest early in the interval. To test the significance of these interactions, we optogenetically stimulated MFC D1DR+ neurons early vs. late in the interval. We found that 2-Hz stimulation early in the interval was particularly effective in rescuing timing-related behavioral performance deficits in dopamine-depleted animals. These findings provide insight into MFC networks and have relevance for disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.Significance StatementPrefrontal D1DRs are involved in cognitive processing and cognitive dysfunction in human diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. We use optogenetics to identify these neurons, as well as neurons that are putatively connected to MFC D1DR+ neurons. We study these neurons in detail during an elementary cognitive task. These data could have relevance for cognitive deficits for Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and other diseases involving frontal dopamine.

scholarly journals Electronic Health Record's Effects on the Outpatient Office Visit and Clinical Education

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie B Sandoval ◽  
Mary Val Palumbo ◽  
Vicki Hart
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Clinical Education ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Office Visit ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Prior Literature ◽  
Electronic Health ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Positive Effect

Background: During an office visit, the provider has the important cognitive task of attending to the patient while actively using the electronic health record (EHR).  Prior literature suggests that EHR may have a positive effect on simple tasks, but a negative effect on tasks that require complex cognitive processes.  No study has examined the provider’s perception of EHR on multiple distinct aspects of the office visit.Methods: We surveyed providers/preceptors regarding their perception of EHR on multiple aspects of the office visit.  We summarized their EHR utilization history and their perceptions of the EHR during the visit using descriptive statistics.  We tested for associations between time spent using the EHR and distinct aspects of the visit using Chi-square tests of association.Results: In total, 83 providers/preceptors reported use of EHR (response rate 52%). Provider/preceptors reported an overall negative effect of EHR on the patient-provider connection, but an overall positive effect on the review of medications/medical records, communication between providers, review of results with patients and review of follow-up to testing results with patients. The effect of EHR on history taking and teaching students was neutral.  We observed no correlation between the provider’s time spent using the EHR and their perception of its effectiveness.Conclusions:  Providers reported a positive perception of EHR on aspects of the office visit that involved a single cognitive task.  However, providers reported a negative perception of EHR on patient-provider connection, which involves a high degree of cognitive processing.

scholarly journals The effects of Processing Instruction on the acquisition of English simple past tense: Age and cognitive task demands

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Benati ◽  
Tanja Angelovska
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Processing Instruction ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Post Test

AbstractThe present study investigates the effects of Processing Instruction on two different age groups and the role that cognitive task demands might play in the results generated by Processing Instruction. This study includes school-age children and adult native speakers of German learning English as a foreign language – a language combination not previously investigated within the Processing Instruction and individual differences research paradigm. The present study investigates directly whether two different age groups will benefit equally from Processing Instruction in altering their reliance on lexical temporal indicators and redirecting their attention to verb forms on Processing Instruction activities with different cognitive demands. The grammatical feature chosen for this study is the English past simple tense marking tested on both interpretation and production measures. The results from this study provide further evidence that the Processing Instruction is an effective instructional treatment in helping school-age children and adult L2 learners to make accurate form-meaning connections. The results from the first sentence-level interpretation task and the production task showed that Processing Instruction has positive and equal effects on both age groups (school-age learners and adults). The positive effects of instruction were maintained over the delayed post-test for both age groups who made similar gains on the immediate post-test. The results from the second (cognitively more complex) sentence-level interpretation task indicated that the adults made greater gains than school-age learners. However, both groups retained the positive effects of instruction over time. The difference in gains between the two age groups on the second sentence-level interpretation task can be explained in terms of cognitive processing load.

Do Not Pay Any Attention to the Umpires: Thought Suppression and Task-Relevant Focusing Strategies

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy R. Dugdale ◽  
Robert C. Eklund
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Thought Suppression ◽  
Football Players ◽  
Mental Control ◽  
Processing Theory ◽  
Negative Thoughts ◽  
Australian Rules Football ◽  
Ironic Effects ◽  
And Task

Two studies grounded in ironic-cognitive-processing theory were conducted to determine (a) whether ironic errors may be associated with efforts to exert mental control that typically occur in sport settings and (b) whether these potential ironic effects could be negated through the use of a task-relevant cue word to refocus one’s thoughts during suppression. Participants were asked to watch a videotape of a series of clips of Australian Rules Football players, coaches, and umpires. Study 1 revealed that participants were more aware of umpires when instructed not to pay attention to them. Contrary to expectations, however, ironic effects were not significantly magnified by the combination of high cognitive load and the instruction not to pay attention to the umpires. Results from Study 2 indicated that potential ironic effects could be negated when individuals were given a task-relevant cue word to focus on when suppressing unwanted or negative thoughts. Overall, support for ironic processing theory was found in Studies 1 and 2 in this investigation.

Cog-C: A Tool for Estimating Cognitive Complexity and the Need for Cognitive Task Analysis

1994 ◽  
Vol 38 (15) ◽  
pp. 943-943
Author(s):  
Michael J. DeVries ◽  
Sallie E. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Task Analysis ◽  
System Development ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Cognitive Task Analysis ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Potential Candidate ◽  
Relative Level

Task analysis is a methodology used during many different phases of system development. However, because many tasks involve complex cognitive processing, there is an increasing need for designers to perform cognitive task analysis. It is generally agreed that cognitive task analysis tends to be costly in terms of time and effort, and many designers ask how they would know when cognitive task analysis should be performed. This demonstration features a computer-based decision aid, Cog-C, to help designers answer this question. The software tool is based on the assumption that cognitive complexity is a major factor in determining when cognitive task analysis must be performed. The tool therefore helps the user determine the relative level of cognitive complexity for a set of tasks. It does this by (1) guiding the user in developing a task/subtask hierarchy, (2) guiding the subject matter expert in estimating the “amount” of various categories of knowledge required for subtask performance (e.g., concepts, rules, patterns, and strategies), and then (3) providing output including the number of steps required for task completion, standardized subscores showing the relative amounts of each knowledge category, an overall cognitive complexity score, and a general recommendation as to whether the task is a potential candidate for cognitive task analysis.

Seeing the Talker's Face Improves Free Recall of Speech for Young Adults With Normal Hearing but Not Older Adults With Hearing Loss

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Rudner ◽  
Sushmit Mishra ◽  
Stefan Stenfelt ◽  
Thomas Lunner ◽  
Jerker Rönnberg
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Free Recall ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Audiovisual Integration

Purpose Seeing the talker's face improves speech understanding in noise, possibly releasing resources for cognitive processing. We investigated whether it improves free recall of spoken two-digit numbers. Method Twenty younger adults with normal hearing and 24 older adults with hearing loss listened to and subsequently recalled lists of 13 two-digit numbers, with alternating male and female talkers. Lists were presented in quiet as well as in stationary and speech-like noise at a signal-to-noise ratio giving approximately 90% intelligibility. Amplification compensated for loss of audibility. Results Seeing the talker's face improved free recall performance for the younger but not the older group. Poorer performance in background noise was contingent on individual differences in working memory capacity. The effect of seeing the talker's face did not differ in quiet and noise. Conclusions We have argued that the absence of an effect of seeing the talker's face for older adults with hearing loss may be due to modulation of audiovisual integration mechanisms caused by an interaction between task demands and participant characteristics. In particular, we suggest that executive task demands and interindividual executive skills may play a key role in determining the benefit of seeing the talker's face during a speech-based cognitive task.

Verbal Training to Improve Explanations of Conservation with Aphasic Adults

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 818-828 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel Dee Cooper ◽  
Seymour Rigrodsky
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Response Facilitation ◽  
Model Training ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Order Of Presentation ◽  
Verbal Model

Recent research has indicated a need to study the relationship between the language of the adult aphasic and his attempts at cognitive processing. Nine aphasic adults who demonstrated a minimal ability to explain conservation (as defined by Piaget), a cognitive task which they understood, were given verbal model training to improve their explanations of weight and liquid conservation. Each subject was given a pretest, an experimental condition during which explanations for weight conservation only were trained, a control condition during which subjects named pictured common objects, and a posttest. Order of presentation of the experimental and control conditions was varied. As a result of training, a greater number of explanations (quantitative improvement) and a greater number of explanatory concepts (qualitative improvement) were expressed for both the trained and nontrained conservation tasks. It is suggested that the improvement in conservation explanations is the result of “response facilitation effects” as described by Bandura. Furthermore, the improvement in conservation explanations is supportive of Schuell’s concept of impaired linguistic retrieval mechanisms in aphasia.

scholarly journals Problem solvers adjust cognitive offloading based on performance goals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick P. Weis ◽  
Eva Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Mental Workload ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Performance Goals ◽  
External Resource ◽  
Cognitive Offloading ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
Problem Solvers

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university . Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal-related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being in a hurry and aiming for a “quick and dirty” solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals – maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively – and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal-related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal-unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding’s generalizability, e.g. to settings without feedback or with high mental workload.

scholarly journals Centralized and distributed cognitive task processing in the human connectome

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 455-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Amico ◽  
Alex Arenas ◽  
Joaquín Goñi
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Brain Networks ◽  
Structural Connectivity ◽  
Cognitive Changes ◽  
Human Connectome Project ◽  
Functional Brain Networks ◽  
Jensen Shannon Divergence

A key question in modern neuroscience is how cognitive changes in a human brain can be quantified and captured by functional connectivity (FC). A systematic approach to measure pairwise functional distance at different brain states is lacking. This would provide a straightforward way to quantify differences in cognitive processing across tasks; also, it would help in relating these differences in task-based FCs to the underlying structural network. Here we propose a framework, based on the concept of Jensen-Shannon divergence, to map the task-rest connectivity distance between tasks and resting-state FC. We show how this information theoretical measure allows for quantifying connectivity changes in distributed and centralized processing in functional networks. We study resting state and seven tasks from the Human Connectome Project dataset to obtain the most distant links across tasks. We investigate how these changes are associated with different functional brain networks, and use the proposed measure to infer changes in the information-processing regimes. Furthermore, we show how the FC distance from resting state is shaped by structural connectivity, and to what extent this relationship depends on the task. This framework provides a well-grounded mathematical quantification of connectivity changes associated with cognitive processing in large-scale brain networks.

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