Regulation of cognitive resources during sustained attention and working memory in 10‐year‐olds and adults

Abstract

We examined differences between 10-year-olds and young adults in resource recruitment and regulation during tasks of sustained attention and spatial working memory. We administered participants spatial 0- and 1-back tasks and used pupillary dilation as a measure of resource recruitment. Repeated administration of 0-back led to smaller pupillary dilations and greater response time (RT) variability, revealing a vigilance decrement. Effects of repeated administration of 0-back and differences between 0- and 1-back in d' and RTs were similar between ages. Results further suggested that the children may not have been as effective as adults in extracting frequency information. Thus, on simple tasks of sustained attention and working memory, children recruit resources in a manner similar to adults. Finally, d' was correlated with RT variability on both tasks at both ages, highlighting the role of attentional fluctuations on both tasks.

Pupillometric and behavioral markers of a developmental shift in the temporal dynamics of cognitive control

“…Moment-by-moment changes in the temporal dynamics of control were assessed with the taskevoked pupillary response, a measure known to correlate with mental effort across ages and tasks (27) due to cortical modulation of the reticular formation (21). Notably, 8-year-olds showed increased delay-period effort, reflecting proactive maintenance of context in preparation for the subsequent response ( Fig.…”

Functional developmental changes underlying response inhibition and error-detection processes

“…The present study confirms previous behavioural studies that found better response inhibition (fewer commission errors) and sustained attention performance 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 15 Sweeney, 2004) (Clark et al, 2006;Lin, Hsiao & Chen, 1999; though also see Karatekin, Marcus & Couperus, 2007). Greater response variability has been previously identified in clinical groups with frontal (Stuss et al, 2003) and fronto-striatal and fronto-parietal brain pathology (e.g.…”

The concurrent use of three implicit measures (eye movements, pupillometry, and event-related potentials) to assess receptive vocabulary knowledge in normal adults

“…Pupillary dilation can be affected by many environmental or participant-internal events (such as changes in lighting, emotional arousal, or the onset of stress; Beatty & Lucero-Wagoner, 2000;Goldwater, 1972;Hess, 1965;Hess, Seltzer, & Shlien, 1965;Loewenfeld, 1993). Importantly, however, changes in pupil size are also observed in relation to the demands elicited by cognitive tasks, and these changes have been shown to occur independently of other influences (Goldwater, 1972;Karatekin, Marcus, & Couperus, 2007). Such changes are generally observed by time-locking changes in pupil diameter to the onset of stimuli that elicit various cognitive processes, and thus are often referred to as task-evoked pupillary reflexes (Beatty, 1982;Kahneman & Beatty, 1966;Kahneman, Beatty, & Pollack, 1967).…”