Alertness and cognitive control: Is there a spatial attention constraint?

Abstract

Congruency effects in arrow flanker tasks are often larger when subjects are more alert, suggesting an unusual connection between alertness and cognitive control. Theoretical accounts of the alerting-congruency interaction differ with respect to whether and how spatial attention is involved. In the present study, the author conducted eight experiments to determine whether there is a spatial attention constraint linking alertness to cognitive control. Alertness was manipulated in color-word Stroop tasks involving stimuli that were spatially integrated (Experiments 1-3) or separated (Experiments 4 and 5), as well as in Stroop-like tasks involving spatially separated stimuli for which the irrelevant stimulus features were spatial words (Experiments 6 and 7) or arrows (Experiment 8). All experiments yielded effects of alerting and congruency, but none produced the alerting-congruency interaction typically found with arrow flanker tasks. The results suggest that there is a spatial attention constraint on the relationship between alertness and cognitive control, part of which might involve having a task goal associated with spatial information processing.

Potential and efficiency of statistical learning closely intertwined with individuals’ executive functions: a mathematical modeling study

“…Previous studies showed that error rates resort to individuals’ inhibitory control 79 – 81 . For instance, people deficient in inhibitory control had difficulty waiting to press a button, being inclined to make more errors 82 . In the Go/No-go test, participants with poor inhibition had difficulty in suppressing an impulse to respond to a ‘No-go’ signal, whereupon they made substantial errors and as a result had trouble with learning 79 .…”

“…Set-shifting, also known as cognitive flexibility or mental flexibility, designates changing perspectives by virtue of accommodating new requirements or rules and overcoming inertial behavior 82 . Specifically in the motor domain, it is important to be flexible for learners to shift stimulus–response mappings correctly for a given trial during the course of learning 26 , 89 .…”

“…The WCST is known to measure the function of set-shifting 90 , 91 . Learners who make fewer perseverative errors in WCST are competent in set-shifting due to high mental flexibility and less perseveration 25 , 82 , 92 , 93 . Thus, they are proficient at correcting errors, which is beneficial to learning.…”

“…Participants were tested in two sessions over two separate days. In Session 1, they took seven neuropsychological tests [the word fluency tests (category and letter) 106 – 108 , counting span tests (forwards and backwards) 109 , Corsi block-tapping tests (forwards and backwards) 110 , Wisconsin card sorting test 25 , 82 , 92 , 93 , Stroop test 82 , 111 , 112 , attention network test 82 , and Go/No-go test 79 ], which are known to assess several executive functions (see Supplementary method). In Session 2, participants performed an alternating serial reaction time (ASRT) task 13 – 16 .…”

Alertness and cognitive control: Interactions in the spatial Stroop task

“…Curiously, this overarching benefit of 1 Auditory signals (e.g., tones) have also been used as alerting cues in variants of the ANT and in related paradigms (e.g., Callejas, Lupiáñez, & Tudela, 2004;Fischer, Plessow, & Kiesel, 2010Seibold, 2018;Weinbach & Henik, 2012). However, as noted by Schneider (2019a), the combination of auditory alerting cues and visual stimuli confounds the alerting manipulation with modality switching (i.e., attention switches between auditory and visual modalities during alert trials, but not during no-alert trials). Modality switching is known to affect task performance (e.g., Lukas, Philipp, & Koch, 2010;Quinlan & Hill, 1999), suggesting that the modality of the alerting cues might be important to consider in decisions about experiment design.…”