A process-specific approach in the study of normal aging deficits in cognitive control: What deteriorates with age?

Bearing in mind that cognitive control is a complex function that includes several processes, it is not clear exactly which ones deteriorate with age. In fact, controversial results have been found. For example, some studies indicate that age-related deficits are observed in proactive and not in reactive control, others show that it is reactive control that is impaired and not proactive control, and some studies find no deficits at all (e.g., Kopp, Lange, Howe, & Wessel, 2014; Xiang et al., 2016). One possible reason is that the contribution of different processes to the deterioration of cognitive control was investigated separately, i.e., without testing all processes within the same paradigm. Therefore, the main goal of the present experiment was to study the impact of normal aging on several processes related to cognitive control within the same task, which included both Simon and Spatial Stroop trials. The study focused on the following processes: generation of conflict measured by automatic response capture (i.e., stronger task-irrelevant information processing compared to task-relevant information processing); conflict detection; and control implementation (which can be reactive control, both within trials and across trials, and proactive control, as a task-set strategy). The results showed larger automatic response capture for older adults when facing a stimulus-response conflict (Simon) but not a stimulus-stimulus conflict (Spatial Stroop). Similarly, older adults also showed larger detection effects for both conflicts. However, regarding control implementation, they only showed difficulties in inhibiting the early automatic response capture (withintrial reactive control) but not reactive control across trials or proactive control. In conclusion, it seems that older adults are more affected by the presence of task-irrelevant information, especially when it comes to resolving stimulus-response conflict. However, they showed no impairments in their ability to implement cognitive control both across trials and as a task-set strategy.Spanish Government AP2008-04006 PSI2008-04223 PSI2011-22416 PSI2012-34158 PID2020-114790GB-I0

Comparing neural substrates of emotional vs. non-emotional conflict modulation by global control context

The efficiency with which the brain resolves conflict in information processing is determined by contextual factors that modulate internal control states, such as the recent (local) and longer-term (global) occurrence of conflict. Local “control context” effects can be observed in trial-by-trial adjustments to conflict (congruency sequence effects: less interference following incongruent trials), whereas global control context effects are reflected in adjustments to the frequency of conflict encountered over longer sequences of trials (“proportion congruent effects”: less interference when incongruent trials are frequent). Previous neuroimaging and lesion studies suggest that the modulation of conflict-control processes by local control context relies on partly dissociable neural circuits for cognitive (non-emotional) vs. emotional conflicts. By contrast, emotional and non-emotional conflict-control processes have not been contrasted with respect to their modulation by global control context. We addressed this aim in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study that varied the proportion of congruent trials in emotional vs. non-emotional conflict tasks across blocks. We observed domain-general conflict-related signals in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and pre-supplementary motor area and, more importantly, task-domain also interacted with global control context effects: specifically, the dorsal striatum and anterior insula tracked control-modulated conflict effects exclusively in the emotional domain. These results suggest that, similar to the neural mechanisms of local control context effects, there are both overlapping as well as distinct neural substrates involved in the modulation of emotional and non-emotional conflict-control by global control context.This work was supported by NIMH grant 5R01MH087610 (Tobias Egner), a research position grant (FPU grant; AP2008-04006) (Maryem Torres-Quesada), and Spain's Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (PSI2008-04223PSIC, PSI2012-34158, and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO2010 CS)

Modulación reactiva y proactiva en el control cognitivo y emocional

Tesis Univ. Granada. Departamento de Psicología Experimenta

Are Dyslexic People more Creative? Myth or Reality: A Meta-analysis

The claim that people with dyslexia are more creative than people without this learning disorder is widespread. But the complexity of creativity and the way it is measured means that this statement is sometimes inconsistent. The aim of this review is, on the one hand, to explore the relationship between dyslexia and creativity, as well as to analyze the categories of divergent thinking: fluency, originality, abstractness, elaboration, and flexibility. On the other hand, it also aims to identify moderators that may be influencing this relationship, such as age, country, or the test used. We retrieved 13 empirical studies that provided 39 effect sizes. The results show that there are no significant differences between people with and without dyslexia in terms of creativity when considering the construct as a whole. However, a significant relationship between the two constructs is observed when analyzing the categories of divergent thinking isolated