-
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Sep 2009Chronic media multitasking is quickly becoming ubiquitous, although processing multiple incoming streams of information is considered a challenge for human cognition. A...
Chronic media multitasking is quickly becoming ubiquitous, although processing multiple incoming streams of information is considered a challenge for human cognition. A series of experiments addressed whether there are systematic differences in information processing styles between chronically heavy and light media multitaskers. A trait media multitasking index was developed to identify groups of heavy and light media multitaskers. These two groups were then compared along established cognitive control dimensions. Results showed that heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant representations in memory. This led to the surprising result that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set. These results demonstrate that media multitasking, a rapidly growing societal trend, is associated with a distinct approach to fundamental information processing.
Topics: Adolescent; Attention; Cognition; Female; Humans; Male; Memory; Mental Processes; Multimedia; Personality; Surveys and Questionnaires; Task Performance and Analysis; Young Adult
PubMed: 19706386
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0903620106 -
Nature Reviews. Neuroscience Mar 2016When rats come to a decision point, they sometimes pause and look back and forth as if deliberating over the choice; at other times, they proceed as if they have already... (Review)
Review
When rats come to a decision point, they sometimes pause and look back and forth as if deliberating over the choice; at other times, they proceed as if they have already made their decision. In the 1930s, this pause-and-look behaviour was termed 'vicarious trial and error' (VTE), with the implication that the rat was 'thinking about the future'. The discovery in 2007 that the firing of hippocampal place cells gives rise to alternating representations of each of the potential path options in a serial manner during VTE suggested a possible neural mechanism that could underlie the representations of future outcomes. More-recent experiments examining VTE in rats suggest that there are direct parallels to human processes of deliberative decision making, working memory and mental time travel.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Decision Making; Humans; Mental Processes; Models, Biological; Neurons; Rats
PubMed: 26891625
DOI: 10.1038/nrn.2015.30 -
Frontiers in Psychology 2023Research in dance psychology and mental health is rapidly growing. Yet, evidence in the field can seem dispersed due to few existing meta overviews that outline research... (Review)
Review
Research in dance psychology and mental health is rapidly growing. Yet, evidence in the field can seem dispersed due to few existing meta overviews that outline research in dance related to mental health. Therefore, the aim of this scoping review is to strengthen future dance research by gathering and contextualizing existing findings on mental health in dance. Following the PRISMA guidelines and protocols, 115 studies were included in the review. Overall, the data analysis shows a predominant adoption of quantitative research but a lack of applied interventions of preventive and reactive procedures in mental health. Similarly, there is a tendency to study pre-professional dancers, whereas research into professional dancers, especially aged 30-60 is underrepresented. Dance genres have been unevenly investigated, with classical ballet being the most researched, whereas different dance styles and freelance employment are in dire need of in-depth investigation. Conceptualizing mental health as a dynamic state, the thematic analysis identified three main categories: and These factors appear to be in a complex interaction. Overall, the existing literature gives indications of components essential to understanding dancers' mental health but has several blind spots and shortcomings. Therefore, a lot of in-depth understanding and research is still needed to fully grasp the dynamic complexity of mental health in dance.
PubMed: 36968742
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1090645 -
Current Biology : CB May 2004
Topics: Career Choice; Humans; Mental Processes; Neurosciences; Research
PubMed: 15186755
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2004.05.004 -
Endocrinology Mar 2020
Topics: Creativity; Forecasting; Humans; Mental Processes
PubMed: 32087084
DOI: 10.1210/endocr/bqaa021 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Oct 2020Unlike behaviorism, cognitive psychology relies on mental concepts to explain behavior. Yet mental processes are not directly observable and multiple explanations are...
Unlike behaviorism, cognitive psychology relies on mental concepts to explain behavior. Yet mental processes are not directly observable and multiple explanations are possible, which poses a challenge for finding a useful framework. In this article, I distinguish three new frameworks for explanations that emerged after the cognitive revolution. The first is called tools-to-theories: Psychologists' new tools for data analysis, such as computers and statistics, are turned into theories of mind. The second proposes as-if theories: Expected utility theory and Bayesian statistics are turned into theories of mind, describing an optimal solution of a problem but not its psychological process. The third studies the adaptive toolbox (formal models of heuristics) that describes mental processes in situations of uncertainty where an optimal solution is unknown. Depending on which framework researchers choose, they will model behavior in either situations of risk or of uncertainty, and construct models of cognitive processes or not. The frameworks also determine what questions are asked and what kind of data are generated. What all three frameworks have in common, however, is a clear preference for formal models rather than explanations by general dichotomies or mere verbal concepts. The frameworks have considerable potential to inform each other and to generate points of integration.
Topics: Bayes Theorem; Cognition; Heuristics; Humans
PubMed: 31692281
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12480 -
Drug and Alcohol Dependence Oct 2016The phenotype of addiction includes prominent attentional biases for drug cues, which play a role in motivating drug-seeking behavior and contribute to relapse. In a... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
The phenotype of addiction includes prominent attentional biases for drug cues, which play a role in motivating drug-seeking behavior and contribute to relapse. In a separate line of research, arbitrary stimuli have been shown to automatically capture attention when previously associated with reward in non-clinical samples.
METHODS AND RESULTS
Here, I argue that these two attentional biases reflect the same cognitive process. I outline five characteristics that exemplify attentional biases for drug cues: resistant to conflicting goals, robust to extinction, linked to dorsal striatal dopamine and to biases in approach behavior, and can distinguish between individuals with and without a history of drug dependence. I then go on to describe how attentional biases for arbitrary reward-associated stimuli share all of these features, and conclude by arguing that the attentional components of addiction reflect a normal cognitive process that promotes reward-seeking behavior.
Topics: Attentional Bias; Behavior, Addictive; Cues; Dopamine; Drug-Seeking Behavior; Humans; Male; Mental Processes; Motivation; Reward
PubMed: 27507657
DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2016.08.002 -
Journal of Ayub Medical College,... 2020Sometimes, knowledge or information becomes difficult to understand and/or memorize. Cognitive load theory aids a learner to gain information effectively. It provides a...
Sometimes, knowledge or information becomes difficult to understand and/or memorize. Cognitive load theory aids a learner to gain information effectively. It provides a scientific roadmap to the design of learning materials. Through a complex set of mental processes, information is acquiring, process, retain, and comprehend information. Applying mental effort for remembering is a very crucial phenomenon. The core of memory process is apprehending and saving of information into long term memory. Because of limited capacity of working memory, delivering or acquiring of information should not be overloaded with irrelevant materials. Based on cognitive load theory dozens of strategies can be intervened at different loci of cognitive process and every piece of information is easily remembered. Not only learners, but teachers can also get benefits from them. In this commentary, John Sweller ideology is further discussed and strategies are presented for better comprehension and memorization of difficult information.
Topics: Cognition; Humans; Learning; Mental Recall; Psychological Theory
PubMed: 33225671
DOI: No ID Found -
Journal of Neurophysiology Oct 2022Neurophysiological mechanisms are increasingly understood to constitute the foundations of human conscious experience. These include the capacity for ongoing memory,... (Review)
Review
Neurophysiological mechanisms are increasingly understood to constitute the foundations of human conscious experience. These include the capacity for ongoing memory, achieved through a hierarchy of reentrant cross-laminar connections across limbic, heteromodal, unimodal, and primary cortices. The neurophysiological mechanisms of consciousness also include the capacity for volitional direction of attention to the ongoing cognitive process, through a reentrant fronto-thalamo-cortical network regulation of the inhibitory thalamic reticular nucleus. More elusive is the way that discrete objects of subjective experience, such as the color of deep blue or the sound of middle C, could be generated by neural mechanisms. Explaining such ineffable qualities of subjective experience is what Chalmers has called "the hard problem of consciousness," which has divided modern neuroscientists and philosophers alike. We propose that insight into the appearance of the hard problem can be gained through integrating classical phenomenological studies of experience with recent progress in the differential neurophysiology of consolidating explicit versus implicit memory. Although the achievement of consciousness, once it is reflected upon, becomes explicit, the underlying process of generating consciousness, through neurophysiological mechanisms, is largely implicit. Studying the neurophysiological mechanisms of adaptive implicit memory, including brain stem, limbic, and thalamic regulation of neocortical representations, may lead to a more extended phenomenological understanding of both the neurophysiological process and the subjective experience of consciousness. The process of consciousness, generating the qualia that may appear to be irreducible qualities of experience, can be understood to arise from neurophysiological mechanisms of memory. Implicit memory, organized by the lemnothalamic brain stem projections and dorsal limbic consolidation in REM sleep, supports the unconscious field and the quasi-conscious fringe of current awareness. Explicit memory, organized by the collothalamic midbrain projections and ventral limbic consolidation of NREM sleep, supports the focal objects of consciousness.
Topics: Consciousness; Humans; Memory; Mental Processes; Neurophysiology; Sleep, REM
PubMed: 36044682
DOI: 10.1152/jn.00328.2022 -
Annals of the New York Academy of... Jul 2018We describe three mechanisms—consolidation, refreshing, and removal—as processes that may serve to strengthen new memories. We detail their explicit and implied... (Review)
Review
We describe three mechanisms—consolidation, refreshing, and removal—as processes that may serve to strengthen new memories. We detail their explicit and implied differences and similarities, and highlight points upon which theorists disagree about their supposed characteristics. We consider the challenges remaining in refining definitions of these processes and with situating them within working memory theories, and consider how these process definitions and theories should restrict each other.
Topics: Humans; Memory Consolidation; Memory, Short-Term; Mental Recall
PubMed: 30304919
DOI: 10.1111/nyas.13925