Publications by authors named "Melissa E Moss"
Hierarchical control is often thought to dissect a complex task space into isolated subspaces in order to eliminate interference. Yet, there is also evidence from serial-order control tasks that our cognitive system can make use of abstract relationships between different parts (chunks) of a sequence. Past evidence in this regard was limited to situations with ordered stimuli (e.
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- Most task spaces rely on a hierarchical structure, where decision-making at one level depends on previous decisions at higher levels, but the impact of having multiple levels is uncertain.
- There are two main theories: one suggests that costs are localized and mainly arise when higher-level decisions change, while the other proposes that more levels require greater overall resources, affecting all decisions.
- Experiments indicated that in a serial-order format, decision-making costs align with the need for global integration, while in a cue-based format, costs occur at specific update points related to the immediate relevance of higher levels.
We tested the hypothesis that there is an age-related deficit in the recovery from interruptions. This hypothesis is based on the idea that it is more difficult for old than for young adults to establish a focused state after working memory has been "opened up" through an interruption. Old ( = 95) and young adults ( = 94) performed competing nondominant and dominant primary tasks (selecting either exogenously or endogenously cued targets) in alternating, single-task blocks that were occasionally interrupted through trials with unrelated math tasks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTheoretical considerations and results from individual differences studies suggest that working memory and conflict resolution are interrelated functions. Yet, there is little direct evidence suggesting that they actually share common cognitive resources. To study how overcoming conflict influences the maintenance of working memory representations and vice versa, we conducted 4 experiments using a dual-task paradigm in which both working memory load and level of conflict were independently manipulated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The debate over use of race as a proxy for genetic risk of disease continues, but little is known about how primary care providers (nurse practitioners and general internal medicine physicians) currently use race in their clinical practice. Our study investigates primary care providers' use of race in clinical practice.
Methods: Survey data from three cross-sectional parent studies were used.
Purpose: To examine nurses' self-reported use of race in clinical evaluation.
Design: This cross-sectional study analyzed data collected from three separate studies using the Genetics and Genomics in Nursing Practice Survey, which includes items about use of race and genomic information in nursing practice. The Racial Attributes in Clinical Evaluation (RACE) scale was used to measure explicit clinical use of race among nurses from across the United States.