153 research outputs found

    When Does Stress Help or Harm? The Effects of Stress Controllability and Subjective Stress Response on Stroop Performance

    Get PDF
    The ability to engage in goal-directed behavior despite exposure to stress is critical to resilience. Questions of how stress can impair or improve behavioral functioning are important in diverse settings, from athletic competitions to academic testing. Previous research suggests that controllability is a key factor in the impact of stress on behavior: learning how to control stressors buffers people from the negative effects of stress on subsequent cognitively demanding tasks. In addition, research suggests that the impact of stress on cognitive functioning depends on an individual’s response to stressors: moderate responses to stress can lead to improved performance while extreme (high or low) responses can lead to impaired performance. The present studies tested the hypothesis that (1) learning to behaviorally control stressors leads to improved performance on a test of general executive functioning, the color-word Stroop, and that (2) this improvement emerges specifically for people who report moderate (subjective) responses to stress. Experiment 1: Stroop performance, measured before and after a stress manipulation, was compared across groups of undergraduate participants (n = 109). People who learned to control a noise stressor and received accurate performance feedback demonstrated reduced Stroop interference compared with people exposed to uncontrollable noise stress and feedback indicating an exaggerated rate of failure. In the group who learned behavioral control, those who reported moderate levels of stress showed the greatest reduction in Stroop interference. In contrast, in the group exposed to uncontrollable events, self-reported stress failed to predict performance. Experiment 2: In a second sample (n = 90), we specifically investigated the role of controllability by keeping the rate of failure feedback constant across groups. In the group who learned behavioral control, those who reported moderate levels of stress showed the greatest Stroop improvement. Once again, this pattern was not demonstrated in the group exposed to uncontrollable events. These results suggest that stress controllability and subjective response interact to affect high-level cognitive abilities. Specifically, exposure to moderate, controllable stress benefits performance, but exposure to uncontrollable stress or having a more extreme response to stress tends to harm performance. These findings may provide insights on how to leverage the beneficial effects of stress in a range of settings

    Inhibition versus switching deficits in different forms of rumination

    Get PDF
    ABSTRACT-Individuals who depressively ruminate about their current dysphoria tend to perseverate more than nonruminators. The goal of the current study was to determine whether such perseverative tendencies are associated with an inability to switch attention away from old to new information or with an inability to effectively inhibit the processing of previously relevant information. We used a task-switching paradigm that can distinguish between these two processes. Two experiments showed that depressive rumination is associated with a deficit in inhibiting prior mental sets. The second experiment also demonstrated that, in contrast to depressive rumination, angry and intellectual rumination are associated with difficulties in switching to a new task set, but not with inhibition of a prior task set. This study suggests that different forms of rumination are associated with different cognitive mechanisms and that both deficits may contribute to the perseveration that is associated with ruminative tendencies

    Context-specific activations are a hallmark of the neural basis of individual differences in general executive function

    Get PDF
    Common executive functioning (cEF) is a domain-general factor that captures shared variance in performance across diverse executive function tasks. To investigate the neural mechanisms of individual differences in cEF (e.g., goal maintenance, biasing), we conducted the largest fMRI study of multiple executive tasks to date (N = 546). Group average activation during response inhibition (antisaccade task), working memory updating (keep track task), and mental set shifting (number–letter switch task) overlapped in classic cognitive control regions. However, there were no areas across tasks that were consistently correlated with individual differences in cEF ability. Although similar brain areas are recruited when completing different executive function tasks, activation levels of those areas are not consistently associated with better performance. This pattern is inconsistent with a simple model in which higher cEF is associated with greater or less activation of a set of control regions across different task contexts; however, it is potentially consistent with a model in which individual differences in cEF primarily depend on activation of domain-specific targets of executive function. Brain features that explain commonalities in executive function performance across tasks remain to be discovered

    The Relationship Between Resting State Network Connectivity and Individual Differences in Executive Functions

    Get PDF
    The brain is organized into a number of large networks based on shared function, for example, high-level cognitive functions (frontoparietal network), attentional capabilities (dorsal and ventral attention networks), and internal mentation (default network). The correlations of these networks during resting-state fMRI scans varies across individuals and is an indicator of individual differences in ability. Prior work shows higher cognitive functioning (as measured by working memory and attention tasks) is associated with stronger negative correlations between frontoparietal/attention and default networks, suggesting that increased ability may depend upon the diverging activation of networks with contrasting function. However, these prior studies lack specificity with regard to the higher-level cognitive functions involved, particularly with regards to separable components of executive function (EF). Here we decompose EF into three factors from the unity/diversity model of EFs: Common EF, Shifting-specific EF, and Updating-specific EF, measuring each via factor scores derived from a battery of behavioral tasks completed by 250 adult participants (age 28) at the time of a resting-state scan. We found the hypothesized segregated pattern only for Shifting-specific EF. Specifically, after accounting for one’s general EF ability (Common EF), individuals better able to fluidly switch between task sets have a stronger negative correlation between the ventral attention network and the default network. We also report non-predicted novel findings in that individuals with higher Shifting-specific abilities exhibited more positive connectivity between frontoparietal and visual networks, while those individuals with higher Common EF exhibited increased connectivity between sensory and default networks. Overall, these results reveal a new degree of specificity with regard to connectivity/EF relationships

    The utility of twins in developmental cognitive neuroscience research: How twins strengthen the ABCD research design

    Get PDF
    The ABCD twin study will elucidate the genetic and environmental contributions to a wide range of mental and physical health outcomes in children, including substance use, brain and behavioral development, and their interrelationship. Comparisons within and between monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs, further powered by multiple assessments, provide information about genetic and environmental contributions to developmental associations, and enable stronger tests of causal hypotheses, than do comparisons involving unrelated children. Thus a sub-study of 800 pairs of same-sex twins was embedded within the overall Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) design. The ABCD Twin Hub comprises four leading centers for twin research in Minnesota, Colorado, Virginia, and Missouri. Each site is enrolling 200 twin pairs, as well as singletons. The twins are recruited from registries of all twin births in each State during 2006–2008. Singletons at each site are recruited following the same school-based procedures as the rest of the ABCD study. This paper describes the background and rationale for the ABCD twin study, the ascertainment of twin pairs and implementation strategy at each site, and the details of the proposed analytic strategies to quantify genetic and environmental influences and test hypotheses critical to the aims of the ABCD study. Keywords: Twins, Heritability, Environment, Substance use, Brain structure, Brain functio
    corecore