The developing predictive brain: How implicit temporal expectancy induced by local and global prediction shapes action preparation across development

Predicting time, shaping control: Unveiling age-related effects of temporal predictability on the dynamics of cognitive control in 5- to 14-year-old children

Understanding how individuals learn to synchronize actions with the temporal structure of their environment is crucial for understanding goal-directed behavior. This study investigated the effects of temporal predictability on cognitive control and action regulation in children aged 5 to 14 years. In our temporally cued version of the Simon task, children were explicitly informed that visual cues would either predict (temporal cues) or not predict (neutral cues) the onset of a target. They used this information to respond to lateralized targets when the target position was either compatible or incompatible with the response hand. Temporal cues speeded reaction times (RTs) to compatible targets in the older (11- to 14-year-old) children and induced a greater number of fast impulsive errors to incompatible targets across all age groups. This pattern replicates previous results in adults and demonstrates that knowing when an event is likely to occur induces a fast, although impulsive, response style. Surprisingly, in the youngest age group (5- and 6-year-olds), temporal cues speeded RTs to incompatible, as well as compatible, targets and helped children to inhibit fast impulsive errors to incompatible targets more efficiently. In summary, the youngest children appeared to effectively leverage the information conveyed by temporal cues to mitigate impulsive response tendencies. However, the benefits of temporal cues on impulse control started to diminish from 7 years of age, when children begin to show more mature inhibitory patterns. Nevertheless, by 11 years of age children achieve performance comparable to that of adults, with faster responses to compatible targets and impulsive responses to incompatible targets.

Global to local influences on temporal expectation in marmosets and humans

Marmosets are emerging rapidly as experimental models for studying the neural bases of cognition and, importantly, for modeling disorders of human cognition, but many aspects of their mental attributes remain to be characterized. When judging elapsed time, humans implicitly use prior information to predict upcoming events and reduce perceptual and decision-making uncertainty. An influential model of temporal expectation is the hazard rate model, which posits the likelihood of an event occurring in the future, provided it has not occurred already. Here, we report that marmosets trained on a reaction time task acquire the hazard rate model of expectation, consistent with the global task structure. The model emerges progressively with learning but unexpectedly continues to be modified by local contingencies, as demonstrated by a serial effect of trial duration on responses. The combined effects of global and local task structure are well described by a multiple regression model and computationally by Bayesian updating of the hazard function. Parallel experiments in human subjects similarly demonstrate global followed by local influences on reaction times and temporal expectation. Thus, in both marmosets and humans, task history and local structure continuously update task-specific responses, surprisingly at the expense of optimal responses after the competent acquisition of an internal model.

Adaptive cognitive control in 4 to 7-year-old children and potential effects of school-based yoga-mindfulness interventions: an exploratory study in Italy

Introduction

Recent findings showed that adaptive cognitive control (CC) can be instantiated by bottom-up mechanisms, including statistical contingency of event occurrence. However, the developmental evidence in this domain remains limited.

Methods

To address this gap, our study delves into the exploration of different mechanisms underlying adaptive CC in a substantial cohort of young children (211 participants aged between 4 and 7 years). We utilized the Dynamic Temporal Prediction (DTP) task and a modified version of the Flanker task to assess the effect of context predictability on motor preparation/inhibition and interference control, respectively. Furthermore, as part of an exploratory study designed to evaluate the feasibility of a school-based program in Italy, all children underwent a re-testing session after an 8-week intervention involving yoga-mindfulness.

Results

Results suggested that young children can exploit global probabilistic changes to optimize motor preparation/ inhibition while counterbalancing fatigue effects. Moreover, they successfully modulate interference control as a function of environmental contingencies, displaying more optimal conflict resolution when proactive control is engaged. Finally, we observed a post-intervention increase of the capability to implicitly adapt motor preparation/inhibition and a boosting effect on the interference control functions.

Discussion

Overall, these findings confirmed that adaptive CC is already present in preschool-aged children, extending these results to include 4-years-olds. Additionally, school-based yoga-mindfulness programs are feasible and might improve children's capability to flexibly and proactively adapt to environmental requests promoting cognitive proficiency.

Little fast, little slow, should I stay or should I go? Adapting cognitive control to local-global temporal prediction across typical development

Adaptive cognitive control (CC), the ability to adjust goal-directed behavior according to changing environmental demand, can be instantiated bottom-up by implicit knowledge, including temporal predictability of task-relevant events. In S1-S2 tasks, either local (trial-by-trial hazard expectation) or global (block-by-block expectation) temporal information can induce prediction, allowing for proactive action control. Recent developmental evidence showed that adaptive CC based on global temporal prediction emerges earlier than when it is based on the local one only. However, very little is known about how children learn to dynamically adjust behavior on the fly according to changing global predictive information. Addressing this issue is nevertheless crucial to unravel the mechanisms underlying adaptive CC flexibility. Here we used a modified version of the Dynamic Temporal Prediction task to investigate how typically developing younger (6-8 years) and older children (9-11 years), adolescents (12-15 years) and adults (21-31 years) use global prediction to shape adaptive CC over time. Specifically, the short-long percentage of S2 preparatory intervals was manipulated list-wide to create a slow-fast-slow-fast fixed block sequence and test how efficiently the response speed adapted accordingly. Overall, results revealed that in all groups behavioral performance is successfully adjusted as a function of global prediction in the late phase of the task (block 3 to 4). Remarkably, only adolescents and adults exhibit an early adaptation of adaptive CC (block 1 to 2), while children younger than 11 show sluggish ability in inferring implicit changes in global predictive rules. This age-related dissociation suggests that, although being present from an early age, adaptive CC based on global predictive information needs more developmental space to become flexible in an efficient way. In the light of a neuroconstructivist approach, we suggest that bottom-up driven implicit flexibility may represent a key prerequisite for the development of efficient explicit cognitive control.

Developmental change in predictive motor abilities

Prediction is critical for successful interactions with a dynamic environment. To test the development of predictive processes over the life span, we designed a suite of interceptive tasks implemented as interactive video games. Four tasks involving interactions with a flying ball with titrated challenge quantified spatiotemporal aspects of prediction. For comparison, reaction time was assessed in a matching task. The experiments were conducted in a museum, where over 400 visitors across all ages participated, and in a laboratory with a focused age group. Results consistently showed that predictive ability improved with age to reach adult level by age 12. In contrast, reaction time continued to decrease into late adolescence. Inter-task correlations revealed that the tasks tested different aspects of predictive processes. This developmental progression complements recent findings on cerebellar and cortical maturation. Additionally, these results can serve as normative data to study predictive processes in individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Be there on time: Spatial-temporal regularities guide young children's attention in dynamic environments

Children's ability to benefit from spatiotemporal regularities to detect goal-relevant targets was tested in a dynamic, extended context. Young adults and children (from a low-deprivation area school in the United Kingdom; N = 80; 5-6 years; 39 female; ethics approval did not permit individual-level race/ethnicity surveying) completed a dynamic visual-search task. Targets and distractors faded in and out of a display over seconds. Half of the targets appeared at predictable times and locations. Search performance in children was poorer overall. Nevertheless, they benefitted equivalently from spatiotemporal regularities, detecting more predictable than unpredictable targets. Children's benefits from predictions correlated positively with their attention. The study brings ecological validity to the study of attentional guidance in children, revealing striking behavioral benefits of dynamic experience-based predictions.

Adaptive Cognitive Control in Prematurely Born Children: An HD-EEG Investigation

Preterm birth is a neurodevelopmental risk condition often associated with cognitive control (CC) impairment. Recent evidence showed that CC can be implicitly adapted through associative learning. In the present study we investigated the ability to flexibly adjust CC as a function of implicit stimulus-response temporal regularities in preterm (PT; N = 21; mean age 8 ± 1.3 years; gestational age 30 ± 18.5 weeks) and full-term (FT; N = 20; mean age 8 ± 1.3 years) school-age children. All children underwent an HD-EEG recording while undergoing the Dynamic Temporal Prediction (DTP) task, a simple S1–S2 detection task purposely designed to generate local-global temporal predictability of imperative stimuli. The Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) was administered to measure explicit CC. The PT group showed more premature and slower (DTP) as well as perseverative (WCST) responses than the FT group. Moreover, pre-terms showed poor adaptive CC as revealed by less efficient global response-speed adjustment. This behavioral pattern was mirrored by a reduced and less sensitive to global manipulation anticipatory Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) and by different cortical source recruitment. These findings suggest that implicit CC may be a reliable endophenotypic marker of atypical cognitive development associated with preterm birth.

Doing Experimental Psychological Research from Remote: How Alerting Differently Impacts Online vs. Lab Setting

Due to pandemic-imposed restrictions on lab-based research, we have recently witnessed a flourishing of online studies in experimental psychology, based on the collection of fine behavioral measures such as reaction times (RTs) and accuracy. However, it remains unclear whether participants’ alerting levels may have a different impact on behavioral performance in the online vs. lab setting. In this work we administered online and in-lab the dynamic temporal prediction (DTP) task, which requires an implicit modulation of participants’ alerting by alternating experimental conditions implying either slower or faster response rates. We then compared data distribution, RTs, accuracy, and time-on-task effects across the adult lifespan between the settings. We replicated online and across the whole age range considered (19–69 y) all the task-specific effects already found in-lab (both in terms of RTs and accuracy) beyond the overall RTs delay typical of the online setting. Moreover, we found an interaction between the setting and task-specific features so that participants showed slower RTs only in experimental conditions implying a less urgent response rate, while no RTs delay and a slight accuracy increase emerged in faster conditions. Thus, the online setting has been shown to be methodologically sound in eliciting comparable effects to those found in-lab. Moreover, behavioral performance seems to be more sensitive to task-induced alerting shifts in the online as compared to the lab setting, leading to either a heightened or reduced efficiency depending on a faster or slower response rate of experimental conditions, respectively.

Grounding Adaptive Cognitive Control in the Intrinsic, Functional Brain Organization: An HD-EEG Resting State Investigation

In a recent study, we used the dynamic temporal prediction (DTP) task to demonstrate that the capability to implicitly adapt motor control as a function of task demand is grounded in at least three dissociable neurofunctional mechanisms: expectancy implementation, expectancy violation and response implementation, which are supported by as many distinct cortical networks. In this study, we further investigated if this ability can be predicted by the individual brain's functional organization at rest. To this purpose, we recorded resting-state, high-density electroencephalography (HD-EEG) in healthy volunteers before performing the DTP task. This allowed us to obtain source-reconstructed cortical activity and compute whole-brain resting state functional connectivity at the source level. We then extracted phase locking values from the parceled cortex based on the Destrieux atlas to estimate individual functional connectivity at rest in the three task-related networks. Furthermore, we applied a machine-learning approach (i.e., support vector regression) and were able to predict both behavioral (response speed and accuracy adaptation) and neural (ERP modulation) task-dependent outcome. Finally, by exploiting graph theory nodal measures (i.e., degree, strength, local efficiency and clustering coefficient), we characterized the contribution of each node to the task-related neural and behavioral effects. These results show that the brain's intrinsic functional organization can be potentially used as a predictor of the system capability to adjust motor control in a flexible and implicit way. Additionally, our findings support the theoretical framework in which cognitive control is conceived as an emergent property rooted in bottom-up associative learning processes.

Implicit learning of non-verbal regularities by deaf children with cochlear implants: An investigation with a dynamic temporal prediction task

Some deaf children continue to show difficulties in spoken language learning after cochlear implantation. Part of this variability has been attributed to poor implicit learning skills. However, the involvement of other processes (e.g. verbal rehearsal) has been underestimated in studies that show implicit learning deficits in the deaf population. In this study, we investigated the relationship between auditory deprivation and implicit learning of temporal regularities with a novel task specifically designed to limit the load on working memory, the amount of information processing, and the visual-motor integration skills required. Seventeen deaf children with cochlear implants and eighteen typically hearing children aged 5 to 11 years participated. Our results revealed comparable implicit learning skills between the two groups, suggesting that implicit learning might be resilient to a lack of early auditory stimulation. No significant correlation was found between implicit learning and language tasks. However, deaf children's performance suggests some weaknesses in inhibitory control.

Implicit cognitive flexibility in self-limited focal epilepsy of childhood: An HD-EEG study

Self-limited focal epilepsy of childhood (SFEC) is often related to mild impairments in several neuropsychological domains, including cognitive flexibility, which is generally considered a process requiring volition and attention. However, recent evidence showed that it can be implicitly adjusted exploiting simple 'stimulus-response' associations as for example, the probability of the stimulus occurrence. Here, we evaluated the capability to implicitly extract environmental patterns of regularities and use them to flexibly adjust proactive control motor control. We tested 21 children with epilepsy (total IQ > 80; 13 with Childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes, 8 with Panayiotopoulos syndrome (PS); 5-13 years old) compared to a healthy age-matched control group (32 participants). We used the Dynamic Temporal Prediction (DTP) task to investigate how behavioral performance is implicitly shaped by the manipulation of the stimulus occurrence probability over time. We recorded EEG to identify neural markers to differentiate the two groups. SFEC group showed a reduction in accuracy (p = .0013) and response speed (p < .001) as well as an absence of response adjustment (p = .65) in relation to the implicit changes in stimulus probability occurrence, in comparison to the control group. The epilepsy group performance in the DTP showed a significant correlation with the phonemic fluency (r = -0.50) and the Perseverations index of the CPT test (r = 0.53). Finally, children with SFEC did not show the modulation of the contingent negative variation (CNV) evoked potential. Overall, children with SFEC showed poor implicit flexibility compared to a control group. This pattern is individually related to high-level executive function, suggesting to extend neuropsychological assessment to the implicit domain.