Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Self-efficacy (SE) is a modifiable psychosocial factor related to individuals’ beliefs in their capabilities to successfully complete courses of action and has been shown to be positively associated with task performance. The authors hypothesized that one means through which SE is related with improved performance is through enhanced task-relevant attentional control during task execution. To assess this hypothesis, we examined the relationships between SE and behavioral and neural indices of task performance and task-relevant attentional control for 76 young adults during the completion of a flanker task. Results showed that greater SE was associated with greater response accuracy and P3b …

Exclusionary social events are known to cause alterations in neural activity and attention-related processes. However, the precise nature of these neural adjustments remains unknown as previous research has been limited to examining social interactions and exclusionary events as unitary phenomena. To address this limitation, we assessed neural activity during both inclusionary and exclusionary social interactions by examining event-related brain potentials at multiple points within each social event. Our results show an initial enhancement of anterior cingulate cortex-related activation, indexed by the anterior N2, in response to specific exclusionary events followed by an enhanced attentional orienting response, indexed by the P3a, …