Slow and steady? Strategic adjustments in response caution are moderately reliable and correlate across tasks

Adult age differences in the integration of values for self and other

Previous research suggests that older adults may display more prosocial behavior than younger adults. However, recent meta-analyses indicate that effects are heterogeneous, may be small, and are influenced by how prosociality is measured. Further, the precise cognitive and computational factors contributing to age-related differences in prosocial behavior remain largely unknown. In this study, we utilized a modified dictator game to combine a value-based decision framework with Bayesian hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling to investigate prosocial decision-making in a sample of younger (n = 63) and older adults (n = 48). We observed differences in how older and younger individuals incorporate information corresponding to potential gains for themselves (self) and another person (other) to reach a (potentially prosocial) decision. Younger adults integrated values for benefits for themselves and others in the decision-making process and demonstrated increased decision-making efficiency by effectively integrating both sources of information. In contrast, older adults showed improved decision-making efficiency when solely considering values for self and others separately. Interestingly, individual differences in the capacity of inhibitory control in older adults moderated the observed age effects: older adults with stronger inhibitory control abilities made decisions based on the integrated information of benefits for themselves and others. Together, these findings offer new insights into the behavioral and computational mechanisms influencing age effects in prosocial decision-making.

Under pressure in the Eriksen flanker task

A classical observation in experimental psychology is a reduction in reaction time and response accuracy under time pressure (TP). This speed-accuracy tradeoff may be understood from the combined perspectives of affordance competition and urgency gating. This view implies that action programs compete with each other from stimulus onset until the final response. Furthermore, responses are thought to be determined not just by the outcome of this competition but also by the urgency to respond. The latter aspect may play an important role in the case of speed stress. An experiment was conducted employing the Eriksen flanker task with different levels of TP. Behavioral, electromyographic (EMG), and electroencephalographic (EEG) data were registered. In the EEG analysis, source-level time-frequency activity was isolated for three sources (occipito-temporal, motor, and medial-frontal cortex). Inter-source phase coherence was computed to assess the neural dynamics underlying the effects of TP and flanker congruency. The EEG and EMG data revealed that TP affects visuo-motor links and motoric processes, while the flanker congruency effect was present from a very early level up to the final response. The present findings fit well within the combined perspectives of affordance competition and urgency gating.

Influence of competition on motor inhibitory control: Evidence from a go/no-go task

The present experiment examined how individuals' motor response execution and inhibition - as measured by a Go/No-Go (GNG) task - is modulated by social influence arising from competition. We found that participants in a competition group responded significantly faster to frequently occurring Go stimuli than those in a control group, while no between-group difference in accuracy was found. This indicates that competition leads participants to favor a response strategy of maximizing the speed of prepotent motor response execution without sacrificing accuracy. In addition, participants in the competition group committed significantly more errors to infrequently occurring No-Go stimuli than those in the control group. Together, these findings suggest that competition speeds up prepotent motor response execution, which comes at the cost of reduced prepotent response inhibition. Furthermore, increased errors in prepotent response inhibition due to competition correlated positively with self-reported trait competitiveness and trait motor impulsivity, identifying the link between personality traits and competition-induced attenuation of inhibition efficiency. Our signal detection analysis revealed that these behavioral effects can be attributed to a combination of a pronounced tendency to respond in general to both Go stimuli and No-Go stimuli, as evidenced by increased response bias (C), and reduced discrimination of No-Go stimuli from Go stimuli, as indexed by decreased sensitivity (d'). Our experiment offers novel insights into how motor control is modulated by engaging in competition.

Leveraging bifactor modeling to test prospective direct and indirect effects of adolescent alcohol use and externalizing symptoms on the development of task-general executive functioning

Adolescence is a period of substantial maturation in brain regions underlying Executive Functioning (EF). Adolescence is also associated with initiation and escalation of Alcohol Use (AU), and adolescent AU has been proposed to produce physiological and neurobiological events that derail healthy EF development. However, support has been mixed, which may be due to (1) failure to consider co-occurring externalizing symptoms (including other drug use) and poor social adaptation, and (2) heterogeneity and psychometric limitations in EF measures. We aimed to clarify the AU-EF association by: (1) distinguishing general externalizing symptoms from specific symptoms (AU, aggression, drug use) using bifactor modeling, (2) testing prospective associations between general externalizing symptoms and specific symptoms, and task-general EF, as indexed by a well-validated computational modeling framework (diffusion decision model), and (3) examining indirect pathways from externalizing symptoms to deficits in task-general EF through poor social adaptation. A high-risk longitudinal sample (N = 919) from the Michigan Longitudinal Study was assessed at four time-points spanning early adolescence (10-13 years) to young adulthood (22-25). Results suggested a critical role of social adaptation within peer and school contexts in promoting healthy EF. There was no evidence that specific, neurotoxic effects of alcohol or drug use derailed task-general EF development.

The neutral condition in conflict tasks: On the violation of the midpoint assumption in reaction time trends

Although the relation between congruent and incongruent conditions in conflict tasks has been the primary focus of cognitive control studies, the neutral condition is often set as a baseline directly between the two conditions. However, empirical evidence suggests that the average neutral reaction time (RT) is not placed evenly between the two opposing conditions. This article set out to establish two things: First, to reinforce the informative nature of the neutral condition and second, to highlight how it can be useful for modelling. We explored how RT in the neutral condition of conflict tasks (Stroop, Flanker, and Simon Tasks) deviated from the predictions of current diffusion models. Current diffusion models of conflict tasks predict a neutral RT that is the average of the congruent and incongruent RT, called the midpoint assumption. To investigate this, we first conducted a cursory limited search that recorded the average RT's of conflict tasks with neutral conditions. Upon finding evidence of a midpoint assumption violation which showed a larger disparity between average neutral and incongruent RT, we tested the previously mentioned conflict tasks with two different sets of stimuli to establish the robustness of the effect. The midpoint assumption violation is sometimes inconsistent with the prediction of diffusion models of conflict processing (e.g., the Diffusion Model of Conflict), suggesting possible elaborations of such models.

Joint Modelling of Latent Cognitive Mechanisms Shared Across Decision-Making Domains

Decision-making behavior is often understood using the framework of evidence accumulation models (EAMs). Nowadays, EAMs are applied to various domains of decision-making with the underlying assumption that the latent cognitive constructs proposed by EAMs are consistent across these domains. In this study, we investigate both the extent to which the parameters of EAMs are related between four different decision-making domains and across different time points. To that end, we make use of the novel joint modelling approach, that explicitly includes relationships between parameters, such as covariances or underlying factors, in one combined joint model. Consequently, this joint model also accounts for measurement error and uncertainty within the estimation of these relations. We found that EAM parameters were consistent between time points on three of the four decision-making tasks. For our between-task analysis, we constructed a joint model with a factor analysis on the parameters of the different tasks. Our two-factor joint model indicated that information processing ability was related between the different decision-making domains. However, other cognitive constructs such as the degree of response caution and urgency were only comparable on some domains.

A spurious correlation between difference scores in evidence-accumulation model parameters

Evidence-accumulation models are a useful tool for investigating the cognitive processes that give rise to behavioural data patterns in reaction times (RTs) and error rates. In their simplest form, evidence-accumulation models include three parameters: The average rate of evidence accumulation over time (drift rate) and the amount of evidence that needs to be accumulated before a response becomes selected (boundary) both characterise the response-selection process; a third parameter summarises all processes before and after the response-selection process (non-decision time). Researchers often compute experimental effects as simple difference scores between two within-subject conditions and such difference scores can also be computed on model parameters. In the present paper, we report spurious correlations between such model parameter difference scores, both in empirical data and in computer simulations. The most pronounced spurious effect is a negative correlation between boundary difference and non-decision difference, which amounts to r = - .70 or larger. In the simulations, we only observed this spurious negative correlation when either (a) there was no true difference in model parameters between simulated experimental conditions, or (b) only drift rate was manipulated between simulated experimental conditions; when a true difference existed in boundary separation, non-decision time, or all three main parameters, the correlation disappeared. We suggest that care should be taken when using evidence-accumulation model difference scores for correlational approaches because the parameter difference scores can correlate in the absence of any true inter-individual differences at the population level.

Developmental Trajectory of Anticipation: Insights from Sequential Comparative Judgments

Reaction time (RT) is a critical measure of performance, and studying its distribution at the group or individual level provides useful information on the cognitive processes or strategies used to perform a task. In a previous study measuring RT in children and adults asked to compare two successive stimuli (quantities or words), we discovered that the group RT distribution was bimodal, with some subjects responding with a mean RT of around 1100 ms and others with a mean RT of around 500 ms. This bimodal distribution suggested two distinct response strategies, one reactive, the other anticipatory. In the present study, we tested whether subjects' segregation into fast and slow responders (1) extended to other sequential comparative judgments (2) evolved from age 8 to adulthood, (3) could be linked to anticipation as assessed using computer modeling (4) stemmed from individual-specific strategies amenable to instruction. To test the first three predictions, we conducted a distributional and theoretical analysis of the RT of 158 subjects tested earlier using four different sequential comparative judgment tasks (numerosity, phonological, multiplication, subtraction). Group RT distributions were bimodal in all tasks, with the two strategies differing in speed and sometimes accuracy too. The fast strategy, which was rare or absent in 8- to 9-year-olds, steadily increased through childhood. Its frequency in adolescence remained, however, lower than in adulthood. A mixture model confirmed this developmental evolution, while a diffusion model corroborated the idea that the difference between the two strategies concerns anticipatory processes preceding decision processes. To test the fourth prediction, we conducted an online experiment where 236 participants made numerosity comparisons before and after an instruction favoring either reactive or anticipatory responses. The results provide out-of-the-lab evidence of the bimodal RT distribution associated with sequential comparisons and demonstrated that the proportions of fast vs. slow responders can be modulated simply by asking subjects to anticipate or not the future result of the comparison. Although anticipation of the future is as important for cognition as memory of the past, its evolution after the first year of life is much more poorly known. The present study is a step toward meeting this challenge. It also illustrates how analyzing individual RT distributions in addition to group RT distributions and using computational models can improve the assessment of decision making cognitive processes.

Same same but different: Subtle but consequential differences between two measures to linearly integrate speed and accuracy (LISAS vs. BIS)

Condition-specific speed-accuracy trade-offs (SATs) are a pervasive issue in experimental psychology, because they sometimes render impossible an unambiguous interpretation of experimental effects on either mean response times (mean RT) or percentage of correct responses (PC). For between-participants designs, we have recently validated a measure (Balanced Integration Score, BIS) that integrates standardized mean RT and standardized PC and thereby controls for cross-group variation in SAT. Another related measure (Linear Integrated Speed-Accuracy Score, LISAS) did not fulfill this specific purpose in our previous simulation study. Given the widespread and seemingly interchangeable use of the two measures, we here illustrate the crucial differences between LISAS and BIS related to their respective choice of standardization variance. We also disconfirm the recently articulated hypothesis that the differences in the behavior of the two combined performance measures observed in our previous simulation study were due to our choice of a between-participants design and we demonstrate why a previous attempt to validate BIS (and LISAS) for within-participants designs has failed, pointing out several consequential issues in the respective simulations and analyses. In sum, the present study clarifies the differences between LISAS and BIS, demonstrates that the choice of the variance used for standardization is crucial, provides further guidance on the calculation and use of BIS, and refutes the claim that BIS is not useful for attenuating condition-specific SATs in within-participants designs.

Inferring Cognitive Abilities from Response Times to Web-Administered Survey Items in a Population-Representative Sample

Monitoring of cognitive abilities in large-scale survey research is receiving increasing attention. Conventional cognitive testing, however, is often impractical on a population level highlighting the need for alternative means of cognitive assessment. We evaluated whether response times (RTs) to online survey items could be useful to infer cognitive abilities. We analyzed >5 million survey item RTs from >6000 individuals administered over 6.5 years in an internet panel together with cognitive tests (numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, task switching/inhibitory control). We derived measures of mean RT and intraindividual RT variability from a multilevel location-scale model as well as an expanded version that separated intraindividual RT variability into systematic RT adjustments (variation of RTs with item time intensities) and residual intraindividual RT variability (residual error in RTs). RT measures from the location-scale model showed weak associations with cognitive test scores. However, RT measures from the expanded model explained 22−26% of the variance in cognitive scores and had prospective associations with cognitive assessments over lag-periods of at least 6.5 years (mean RTs), 4.5 years (systematic RT adjustments) and 1 year (residual RT variability). Our findings suggest that RTs in online surveys may be useful for gaining information about cognitive abilities in large-scale survey research.

The Acute Effects of Cognitively Demanding Physical Activity on Inhibitory and Affective Responses in Children: An Online-Based Mixed Methods Approach

This online study investigated the acute effects of a cognitively demanding physical activity (CDPA) vs a simple physical activity (SPA) bout on children’s inhibitory and affective responses. Using a counterbalanced within-subjects’ crossover design, thirty-nine participants aged 9−12 years old (29 boys; Mage = 11 ± 1 years) performed a CDPA and a SPA bout online (via ZOOM) for 15 min. Inhibition (Stroop test) was measured at the baseline, 1 and 30 min following the physical activity (PA) bouts, and self-report measures of affect, mental and physical exertion were taken prior, during and post-PA. Additionally, 31 children took part in semi-structured focus groups to explore the factors affecting their enjoyment. The quantitative results suggest no significant differences on inhibitory responses, affect and physical exertion (all p > 0.05). However, the CDPA induced more mental exertion than the SPA did (p < 0.05). In the focus groups, four themes were identified: physical exertion (e.g., tiredness), social (e.g., teams/groups), environment (e.g., outdoors and competition) and emotional (e.g., fun/enjoyment). Some children (n = 18) reported that the CDPA condition confused them, and to make these activities more interesting and enjoyable, they suggested performing the activities outdoors (n = 15) and including other children as part of a group/team (n = 19). The findings suggest no additional benefit of a cognitively enriched physical activity compared to an SPA bout on the inhibitory responses, affect and enjoyment. Using the instructions provided and given the low cost, the easy administration and the minimal amount of equipment and time involved, either of the approaches may be used in a diversity of contexts (i.e., online, schools or outdoors), and it is worth exploring the effects of these conditions on other aspects of executive function.

Strategy and processing speed eclipse individual differences in control ability in conflict tasks

Response control or inhibition is one of the cornerstones of modern cognitive psychology, featuring prominently in theories of executive functioning and impulsive behavior. However, repeated failures to observe correlations between commonly applied tasks have led some theorists to question whether common response conflict processes even exist. A challenge to answering this question is that behavior is multifaceted, with both conflict and nonconflict processes (e.g., strategy, processing speed) contributing to individual differences. Here, we use a cognitive model to dissociate these processes; the diffusion model for conflict tasks (Ulrich et al., 2015). In a meta-analysis of fits to seven empirical datasets containing combinations of the flanker, Simon, color-word Stroop, and spatial Stroop tasks, we observed weak (r < .05) zero-order correlations between tasks in parameters reflecting conflict processing, seemingly challenging a general control construct. However, our meta-analysis showed consistent positive correlations in parameters representing processing speed and strategy. We then use model simulations to evaluate whether correlations in behavioral costs are diagnostic of the presence or absence of common mechanisms of conflict processing. We use the model to impose known correlations for conflict mechanisms across tasks, and we compare the simulated behavior to simulations when there is no conflict correlation across tasks. We find that correlations in strategy and processing speed can produce behavioral correlations equal to, or larger than, those produced by correlated conflict mechanisms. We conclude that correlations between conflict tasks are only weakly informative about common conflict mechanisms if researchers do not control for strategy and processing speed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring the Acute Effects of the Daily Mile™ vs. Shuttle Runs on Children’s Cognitive and Affective Responses

Background: This study investigated the acute effects of two physical activity (PA) bouts on children’s cognitive and affective responses. Methods: Twenty-nine participants (16 boys and 13 girls; M_age = 9.34 years, SD = 0.48), using a within-subjects crossover design, performed three 15-min conditions: (a) TDM—The Daily Mile™; (b) 12 repeated 30–45-s shuttle runs at ≥ 85% HR_MAX; and (c) a sedentary control condition. Cognitive performance (i.e., Stroop, Digit Span, and Corsi blocks) was measured before PA and 1 and 30 min post-PA. Felt Arousal and Feeling Scale self-report scales were administered before, during, and after PA. Results: The results show no changes following the TDM condition relative to the sedentary control condition in cognitive responses. However, when comparing the shuttle runs condition to the sedentary control condition, participants showed higher arousal, an improved reaction time, and lower self-reported pleasure at 1 min post-PA. Nevertheless, at 30 min post-PA, participants’ pleasure values were higher in the shuttle runs condition than they were before PA. Conclusions: When comparing PA conditions, shuttle runs enhanced reaction time and might thus be seen as an option to implement or modify PA opportunities in school settings.

The role of attention control in complex real-world tasks

Working memory capacity is an important psychological construct, and many real-world phenomena are strongly associated with individual differences in working memory functioning. Although working memory and attention are intertwined, several studies have recently shown that individual differences in the general ability to control attention is more strongly predictive of human behavior than working memory capacity. In this review, we argue that researchers would therefore generally be better suited to studying the role of attention control rather than memory-based abilities in explaining real-world behavior and performance in humans. The review begins with a discussion of relevant literature on the nature and measurement of both working memory capacity and attention control, including recent developments in the study of individual differences of attention control. We then selectively review existing literature on the role of both working memory and attention in various applied settings and explain, in each case, why a switch in emphasis to attention control is warranted. Topics covered include psychological testing, cognitive training, education, sports, police decision-making, human factors, and disorders within clinical psychology. The review concludes with general recommendations and best practices for researchers interested in conducting studies of individual differences in attention control.

Test-retest reliability for common tasks in vision science

Research in perception and attention has typically sought to evaluate cognitive mechanisms according to the average response to a manipulation. Recently, there has been a shift toward appreciating the value of individual differences and the insight gained by exploring the impacts of between-participant variation on human cognition. However, a recent study suggests that many robust, well-established cognitive control tasks suffer from surprisingly low levels of test-retest reliability (Hedge, Powell, & Sumner, 2018b). We tested a large sample of undergraduate students (n = 160) in two sessions (separated by 1-3 weeks) on four commonly used tasks in vision science. We implemented measures that spanned a range of perceptual and attentional processes, including motion coherence (MoCo), useful field of view (UFOV), multiple-object tracking (MOT), and visual working memory (VWM). Intraclass correlations ranged from good to poor, suggesting that some task measures are more suitable for assessing individual differences than others. VWM capacity (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.77), MoCo threshold (ICC = 0.60), UFOV middle accuracy (ICC = 0.60), and UFOV outer accuracy (ICC = 0.74) showed good-to-excellent reliability. Other measures, namely the maximum number of items tracked in MOT (ICC = 0.41) and UFOV number accuracy (ICC = 0.48), showed moderate reliability; the MOT threshold (ICC = 0.36) and UFOV inner accuracy (ICC = 0.30) showed poor reliability. In this paper, we present these results alongside a summary of reliabilities estimated previously for other vision science tasks. We then offer useful recommendations for evaluating test-retest reliability when considering a task for use in evaluating individual differences.

The time-course of distractor-based activation modulates effects of speed-accuracy tradeoffs in conflict tasks

The cognitive processes underlying the ability of human performers to trade speed for accuracy is often conceptualized within evidence accumulation models, but it is not yet clear whether and how these models can account for decision-making in the presence of various sources of conflicting information. In the present study, we provide evidence that speed-accuracy tradeoffs (SATs) can have opposing effects on performance across two different conflict tasks. Specifically, in a single preregistered experiment, the mean reaction time (RT) congruency effect in the Simon task increased, whereas the mean RT congruency effect in the Eriksen task decreased, when the focus was put on response speed versus accuracy. Critically, distributional RT analyses revealed distinct delta plot patterns across tasks, thus indicating that the unfolding of distractor-based response activation in time is sufficient to explain the opposing pattern of congruency effects. In addition, a recent evidence accumulation model with the notion of time-varying conflicting information was successfully fitted to the experimental data. These fits revealed task-specific time-courses of distractor-based activation and suggested that time pressure substantially decreases decision boundaries in addition to reducing the duration of non-decision processes and the rate of evidence accumulation. Overall, the present results suggest that time pressure can have multiple effects in decision-making under conflict, but that strategic adjustments of decision boundaries in conjunction with different time-courses of distractor-based activation can produce counteracting effects on task performance with different types of distracting sources of information.

Simulated visual hallucinations in virtual reality enhance cognitive flexibility

Historically, psychedelic drugs are known to modulate cognitive flexibility, a central aspect of cognition permitting adaptation to changing environmental demands. Despite proof suggesting phenomenological similarities between artificially-induced and actual psychedelic altered perception, experimental evidence is still lacking about whether the former is also able to modulate cognitive flexibility. To address this, we measure participants' cognitive flexibility through behavioral tasks after the exposure to virtual reality panoramic videos and their hallucinatory-like counterparts generated by the DeepDream algorithm. Results show that the estimated semantic network has a flexible structure when preceded by altered videos. Crucially, following the simulated psychedelic exposure, individuals also show an attenuated contribution of the automatic process and chaotic dynamics underlying the decision process. This suggests that simulated altered perceptual phenomenology enhances cognitive flexibility, presumably due to a reorganization in the cognitive dynamics that facilitates the exploration of uncommon decision strategies and inhibits automated choices.

Reciprocal associations between implicit attitudes and drinking in emerging adulthood

BACKGROUND

Implicit alcohol attitudes are considered important in the etiology of drinking, and theory posits reciprocal associations between them. Research testing reciprocal associations between implicit attitudes (using the Implicit Association Task, IAT) and drinking is limited by a failure to consider multiple processes influencing performance on the IAT and to disaggregate within- and between-person effects. The current study addressed these limitations by using a diffusion model to analyze IAT data and Latent Curve Models with Structured Residuals to test reciprocal associations.

METHODS

The sample included 314 emerging adults from the community (52% female; predominantly non-Hispanic Caucasian (76%) or African American (15%)) assessed annually for three years. Differences between IAT conditions in the drift rate parameter of the EZ-diffusion model (vΔ) were used as an alternative to traditional response-time-based indices from the IAT (d-scores). Differences in drift rate have been found to index implicit attitudes effectively.

RESULTS

Within-person reciprocal associations were supported, but between-person associations were not. Positive implicit alcohol attitudes (vΔ) were prospectively associated with heavy drinking, which was positively associated with subsequent positive implicit alcohol attitudes.

CONCLUSIONS

We found that positive implicit alcohol attitudes and heavy drinking reinforce each other in a negative cascade within individuals. The results highlight the importance of disaggregating within- and between-person prospective effects when testing dual process models and suggest that the diffusion model may be a fruitful approach to enhance the construct validity of IAT assessed implicit attitudes.

Qualitative Individual Differences are Useful, but Reliability Should be Assessed and Not Assumed

Rouder and Haaf (2021) propose that studying qualitative individual differences would be a useful tool for researchers. I agree with their central message. I use this commentary to highlight examples from the literature where similar questions have been asked, and how researchers have addressed them with existing tools. I also observe that while the hierarchical Bayesian framework is a useful tool for studying individual differences, it does not relieve us of the requirement to evaluate the forms of reliability that are critical to our research questions.

How to measure post-error slowing: The case of pre-error speeding

Post-error slowing is one of the most widely employed measures to study cognitive and behavioral consequences of error commission. Several methods have been proposed to quantify the post-error slowing effect, and we discuss two main methods: The traditional method of comparing response times in correct post-error trials to response times of correct trials that follow another correct trial, and a more recent proposal of comparing response times in correct post-error trials to the corresponding correct pre-error trials. Based on thorough re-analyses of two datasets, we argue that the latter method provides an inflated estimate by also capturing the (partially) independent effect of pre-error speeding. We propose two solutions for improving the assessment of human error processing, both of which highlight the importance of distinguishing between initial pre-error speeding and later post-error slowing.

The acute effects of continuous and intermittent cycling on executive function in children

This study assessed the effect of acute continuous and intermittent physical activity (PA) on children's executive function (EF). Twenty-four participants (14 boys M = 10.32 ± 0.48 years), using a within-subjects design, performed a continuous (70% HRmax) and an intermittent (≥85%HRmax; 12 bouts: 30 s work, 45 s rest) PA bout of cycling, both lasting 15 min. Executive function was assessed using the Stroop task, Digit Span and Corsi Blocks tests and these were administered before and 1 min and 30 min post PA. Comparing both conditions, performance at the Stroop task (i.e., reaction time) improved in the continuous condition after 1 min and after 30 min (congruent stimuli) (mean diff = 126 ms ± 59; p = 0.047 and mean diff = 89 ms ± 38; p = 0.031, respectively). The intermittent condition improved at 30 min post (congruent and incongruent) (mean diff = 116 ms ± 46; p = 0.021 and mean diff = 111 ms ± 49; p = 0.039, respectively) showing a delayed benefit from the PA bout and greater improvements compared to the continuous condition. Verbal memory was improved for the continuous condition 1 min post only and no effects on visual memory were observed for both experimental conditions. The results demonstrated that both acute PA bouts might be a time-efficient approach for enhancing EF, with intermittent PA having a delayed and greater benefit.

Identifying relationships between cognitive processes across tasks, contexts, and time

It is commonly assumed that a specific testing occasion (task, design, procedure, etc.) provides insights that generalize beyond that occasion. This assumption is infrequently carefully tested in data. We develop a statistically principled method to directly estimate the correlation between latent components of cognitive processing across tasks, contexts, and time. This method simultaneously estimates individual-participant parameters of a cognitive model at each testing occasion, group-level parameters representing across-participant parameter averages and variances, and across-task correlations. The approach provides a natural way to "borrow" strength across testing occasions, which can increase the precision of parameter estimates across all testing occasions. Two example applications demonstrate that the method is practical in standard designs. The examples, and a simulation study, also provide evidence about the reliability and validity of parameter estimates from the linear ballistic accumulator model. We conclude by highlighting the potential of the parameter-correlation method to provide an "assumption-light" tool for estimating the relatedness of cognitive processes across tasks, contexts, and time.

Self-reported impulsivity does not predict response caution

The broad construct of impulsivity is one that spans both personality and cognitive ability. Despite a common overarching construct, previous research has found no relationship between self-report measures of impulsivity and people's ability to inhibit pre-potent responses. Here, we use evidence accumulation models of choice reaction time tasks to extract a measure of "response caution" (boundary separation) and examine whether this correlates with self-reported impulsivity as measured by the UPPS-P questionnaire. Response caution reflects whether an individual makes decisions based on more (favouring accuracy) or less (favouring speed) evidence. We reasoned that this strategic dimension of behaviour is conceptually closer to the tendencies that self-report impulsivity measures probe than what is traditional measured by inhibition tasks. In a meta-analysis of five datasets (total N = 296), encompassing 19 correlations per subscale, we observe no evidence that response caution correlates with self-reported impulsivity. Average correlations between response caution and UPPS-P subscales ranged from rho = -0.02 to -0.04. While the construct of response caution has demonstrated value in understanding individual differences in cognition, brain functioning and aging; the factors underlying what has been called "impulsive information processing" appear to be distinct from the concept of impulsivity derived from self-report.