Working memory for social information: Chunking or domain-specific buffer?

Thornton, Mark Allen; Conway, Andrew R. A.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.12.063

Cited by 47 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The WM dysfunction in schizophrenia may not only be associated with the failure to recruit the frontoparietal system but also due to a conjoint failure to suppress the task-irrelevant DMN system. However, this proposed anti-correlation between the FPC and DMN needs to be further ascertained in social WM, because some recent findings suggest that social WM and classical WM may rely on different neural mechanisms Thornton and Conway, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

Xin

Lei

2015

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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An extensive body of literature has indicated that there is increased activity in the frontoparietal control network (FPC) and decreased activity in the default mode network (DMN) during working memory (WM) tasks. The FPC and DMN operate in a competitive relationship during tasks requiring externally directed attention. However, the association between this FPC-DMN competition and performance in social WM tasks has rarely been reported in previous studies. To investigate this question, we measured FPC-DMN connectivity during resting state and two emotional face recognition WM tasks using the 2-back paradigm. Thirty-four individuals were instructed to perform the tasks based on either the expression [emotion (EMO)] or the identity (ID) of the same set of face stimuli. Consistent with previous studies, an increased anti-correlation between the FPC and DMN was observed during both tasks relative to the resting state. Specifically, this anti-correlation during the EMO task was stronger than during the ID task, as the former has a higher social load. Intriguingly, individual differences in self-reported empathy were significantly correlated with the FPC-DMN anti-correlation in the EMO task. These results indicate that the top-down signals from the FPC suppress the DMN to support social WM and empathy.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

Xin

Lei

2015

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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“…The PTT intervention is innovative in using principles of learning and memory enhancement. More specifically, the PTT intervention uses mnemonic strategies that include an acronym, chunking, and homework reinforcement for teaching and recalling the PTT skills (Thornton & Conway, 2013). An acronym, by definition, is formed by the first letter of words or groups of words to form a new word.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Mediating Effects of Positive Cognitions on Autism Caregivers' Depression and Their Children's Challenging Behaviors

Bekhet

2016

Archives of Psychiatric Nursing

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Section: Introduction and Conceptmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Such top-down attention mechanisms can facilitate visual attention for positive or arousing emotional stimuli [5]. Similar facilitation effects can be observed for the social information a face conveys, and executive functions were recently shown to be burdened less by social cues, pointing to a working memory unit for social information [9].Clearly, gaze is another highly task-relevant cue. Friesen and Kingstone [10] have shown that people respond significantly faster to a target when gaze direction by a schematic face predicted the target location.…”

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confidence: 64%

Using Virtual Agents to Guide Attention in Multi-task Scenarios

Kulms

Kopp

2013

Intelligent Virtual Agents

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Abstract.Humans have the ability to efficiently decode human and human-like cues. We explore whether a virtual agent's facial expressions and gaze can be used to guide attention and elicit amplified processing of task-related cues. We argue that an emphasis on information processing will support future development of assistance systems, for example by reducing task load and creating a sense of reliability for such systems. A pilot study indicates subjects' propensity to respond to the agent's cues, most importantly gaze, but to not yet rely on them completely, possibly leading to a decreased performance.Keywords: Virtual embodied assistant; attention; task-switching; social information; cognitive processes 1 Introduction and ConceptHuman-machine interaction can be very complex, especially when it involves executive functions (attention allocation, priority setting, response scheduling, working memory, etc.) operating on multiple tasks. For example, in car-driving, operating industrial facilities, or air traffic control, humans often have to perform multiple tasks with time-varying demands. While Cognitive Scientists have investigated mechanisms of switching between multiple tasks and, e.g., how task interferences result in costs and errors [1], fields like human factors, software ergonomics, and humancomputer interaction strive to prevent multi-task situations or, since they are often unavoidable, to provide users with support mechanisms [2]. In this paper we study how a virtual agent can provide support in such multi-task scenarios by guiding attention with social signals, and what effects the presence of such an agent has on the user and the respective tasks. Interface agents are far from being a novel idea (see e.g. [3]). However, although positive social effects of virtual agents on processes such as learning have been confirmed [4], only a little research has investigated the detailed cognitive effects of an agent's presence on users that have to fulfill given tasks. We focus on situations where users have to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously (see Fig. 1, A). In most cases, these tasks interfere in some way and automatic performance is hard to establish. This means users have to employ a task-switching strategy that requires to manage attention accordingly: they would focus on one task temporarily, but have to monitor the other to decide whether a switching is necessary (Fig. 1, B). This split attention as well as frequent task switching is likely to hamper performance in both tasks. We explore whether a virtual agent can assist in this task-switching by guiding attention to those tasks that need to be attended to (Fig. 1, C). Fig. 1. Schematic rationale of our virtual assistant. In most situations, performing multiple tasks truly simultaneously is virtually impossible (A). Thus the user has to switch between the tasks, based on interlaced observation of both tasks which may hamper the performed task (B). We envision an agent to socially signal the need to switch tasks in resource-sparing ways (C).Our...

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Working memory for social information: Chunking or domain-specific buffer?

Cited by 47 publications

References 44 publications

Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

Competition between frontoparietal control and default networks supports social working memory and empathy

The Mediating Effects of Positive Cognitions on Autism Caregivers' Depression and Their Children's Challenging Behaviors

Using Virtual Agents to Guide Attention in Multi-task Scenarios

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