No evidence for cross-paradigm transfer of abstract task knowledge in adults and school-aged children.

Cognitive control is a hallmark of human cognition. A large number of studies have focused on the plasticity of cognitive control and examined how repeated task experience leads to the improvement of cognitive control in novel task environments. However, it has been demonstrated that training-induced changes are very selective and that transfer occurs within one task paradigm but not across different task paradigms.

When stimulus variability accelerates the learning of task knowledge in adults and school-aged children.

Experience with instances that vary in their surface features helps individuals to form abstract task knowledge, leading to transfer of that knowledge to novel contexts. The current study sought to examine the role of this variability effect in how adults and school-aged children learn to engage cognitive control. We focused on the engagement of cognitive control in advance (proactive control) and in response to conflicts (reactive control) in a cued task-switching paradigm, and conducted four preregistered online experiments with adults (Experiment 1A: N = 100, Experiment 1B: N = 105) and 9- to 10-year-olds (Experiment 2A: N = 98, Experiment 2B: N = 97).

Evidence for positive and negative transfer of abstract task knowledge in adults and school-aged children.

Engaging cognitive control is essential to flexibly adapt to constantly changing environments. However, relatively little is known about how prior task experience impacts on the engagement of cognitive control in novel task environments. We aimed to clarify how individuals learn and transfer the engagement of cognitive control with a focus on the hierarchical and temporal aspects of task knowledge.

To What Extent is the Contribution of Language to Learning via Instructions Modulated by the Expression of Autism Traits?

Language plays a fundamental role in enabling flexible, goal-directed behaviour. This study investigated whether the contribution of language to instruction encoding is modulated by the expression of autism traits, as measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient (ASQ) questionnaire. Participants (N = 108) completed six choice reaction time tasks, with each task consisting of six stimulus-response mappings.

Articulatory suppression during instruction encoding impedes performance in choice reaction time tasks.

Theories of instruction following assume that language contributes to our ability to understand and implement instructions. The two experiments reported here investigated that assumption. Participants (total N = 96) were required to learn a series of novel tasks, with each task consisting of six arbitrary stimulus-response rules.

How does language support the acquisition of novel cognitive tasks? Investigating the role of task complexity and task instructions.

Recent findings have shown that language plays an important role in the acquisition of novel cognitive tasks (van 't Wout & Jarrold, 2020). The current study sought to elucidate the factors that influence the contribution of language to novel task learning, focusing specifically on the role of task complexity (defined by the number of stimulus-response [S-R] rules per task) and the role of task instructions (by comparing trial-and-error learning to instruction-based learning). In each experiment participants were required to learn the correct response to novel sets of picture stimuli.

Prior task experience increases 5-year-old children's use of proactive control: Behavioral and pupillometric evidence.

Children engage cognitive control reactively when they encounter conflicts; however, they can also resolve conflicts proactively. Recent studies have begun to clarify the mechanisms that support the use of proactive control in children; nonetheless, sufficient knowledge has not been accumulated regarding these mechanisms. Using behavioral and pupillometric measures, we tested the novel possibility that 5-year-old children (N = 58) learn to use proactive control via the acquisition of abstract task knowledge that captures regularities of the task.

The role of language in novel task learning.

The ability to rapidly acquire novel cognitive skills is a hallmark of human cognition. Theories of skill acquisition assume that this process is reliant on language, but to date this assertion has not been conclusively supported by empirical evidence. In two experiments participants (total N = 68) were required to learn, by trial-and-error, the correct response to sets of five object stimuli.

The contribution of stimulus frequency and recency to set-size effects.

Hick's law describes the increase in choice reaction time (RT) with the number of stimulus-response (S-R) mappings. However, in choice RT experiments, set-size is typically confounded with stimulus recency and frequency: With a smaller set-size, each stimulus occurs on average more frequently and more recently than with a larger set-size. To determine to what extent stimulus recency and frequency contribute to the set-size effect, stimulus set-size was manipulated independently of stimulus recency and frequency, by keeping recency and frequency constant for a subset of the stimuli.

Is it harder to switch among a larger set of tasks?

When stimuli afford multiple tasks, switching among them involves promoting one of several task-sets in play into a most-active state. This process, often conceptualized as retrieving task parameters and stimulus-response (S-R) rules into procedural working memory, is a likely source of the reaction time (RT) cost of a task-switch, especially when no time is available for task preparation before the stimulus. We report 2 task-cuing experiments that asked whether the time consumed by task-set retrieval increases with the number of task-sets in play, while unconfounding the number of tasks with their frequency and recency of use.

Are the effects of response inhibition on gambling long-lasting?

A recent study has shown that short-term training in response inhibition can make people more cautious for up to two hours when making decisions. However, the longevity of such training effects is unclear. In this study we tested whether training in the stop-signal paradigm reduces risky gambling when the training and gambling task are separated by 24 hours.

Are stimulus-response rules represented phonologically for task-set preparation and maintenance?

Accounts of task-set control generally assume that the current task's stimulus-response (S-R) rules must be elevated to a privileged state of activation. How are they represented in this state? In 3 task-cuing experiments, we tested the hypothesis that phonological working memory is used to represent S-R rules for task-set control by getting participants to switch between 2 sets of arbitrary S-R rules and manipulating the articulatory duration (Experiment 1) or phonological similarity (Experiments 2 and 3) of the names of the stimulus terms. The task cue specified which of 2 objects (Experiment 1) or consonants (Experiment 2) in a display to identify with a key press.