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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Individual Differences In Structure Learning, Philip Newlin
Individual Differences In Structure Learning, Philip Newlin
Theses and Dissertations
Humans have a tendency to impute structure spontaneously even in simple learning tasks, however the way they approach structure learning can vary drastically. The present study sought to determine why individuals learn structure differently. One hypothesized explanation for differences in structure learning is individual differences in cognitive control. Cognitive control allows individuals to maintain representations of a task and may interact with reinforcement learning systems. It was expected that individual differences in propensity to apply cognitive control, which shares component processes with hierarchical reinforcement learning, may explain how individuals learn structure differently in a simple structure learning task. Results showed …
Neural Correlates Underlying The Interactions Between Anxiety And Cannabis Use In Predicting Motor Response Inhibition, Richard Ward
Neural Correlates Underlying The Interactions Between Anxiety And Cannabis Use In Predicting Motor Response Inhibition, Richard Ward
Theses and Dissertations
The ability to effectively withhold an inappropriate response is a critical feature of cognitive control. Prior research indicates alterations in neural processes required for motor response inhibition in anxious individuals, including those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and those who engage in regular cannabis use. However, thus far most research has examined how anxiety-related symptoms and cannabis use influence response inhibition in isolation of one another. The current study examined the interactions between anxious symptomology and recent cannabis use in a sample that recently experienced a traumatic event using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the completion of a Stop-Signal …
The Impact Of Task Load On Neural Entrainment To Attended Speech: A Dual-Task Magnetoencephalography (Meg) Paradigm, Michelle Tamar Kassel
The Impact Of Task Load On Neural Entrainment To Attended Speech: A Dual-Task Magnetoencephalography (Meg) Paradigm, Michelle Tamar Kassel
Theses and Dissertations
Speech comprehension in a noisy environment requires active cognitive control mechanisms to select the relevant speech signal while filtering out irrelevant distractions. When processing speech in a multitask scenario, neural resources underlying cognitive control are considerably burdened and interfering information becomes more difficult to ignore. The present study utilized magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the impact of multitasking on selective attention to speech. Twenty healthy adults performed a multitask paradigm with varying levels of both competing auditory distraction and concurrent visual working memory load. While increased visual working memory load was associated with reduced selective attention to speech in both the …
How Does Anxiety Affect Cognitive Control? Proactive And Reactive Control Under State Anxiety, Youcai Yang
How Does Anxiety Affect Cognitive Control? Proactive And Reactive Control Under State Anxiety, Youcai Yang
Theses and Dissertations
Cognitive control is a construct that prioritizes how we process stimuli and information and execute behaviors to flexibly and efficiently adapt to internal goals and external environmental changes. A recent theory, the Dual Mechanism of Control (DMC), distinguishes this phenomenon by two distinct cognitive control operations: proactive control and reactive control (Braver, 2012). Anxiety increases the allocation of attentional and working memory resources to threat-related stimuli, which impairs cognitive performance (Sarason, 1988), but additional work is needed to assess how anxiety impacts these two distinct forms of cognitive control. In this study, I examined how state anxiety affected proactive control, …