Katherine D. Arbuthnott

Trail Making Test, Part B as a Measure of Executive Control: Validation Using a Set-Switching Paradigm

Recent controversy surrounds the use of the Trail Making Test as a measure of cognitive flexibility, given that the Trail Making Test, Part B (TMT-B) also differs from Part A (TMT-A) in factors of motor control and perceptual complexity. The present study compared performance in the TMT and a set-switching task in order to test the assumption that cognitive flexibility is captured in TMT-B performance. Set-switching tasks have low motor and perceptual selection demands, and therefore provide a clearer index of executive function. In this study, participants made category judgments for digits, letters, or symbols across a series of trials, and performance for consecutive same-task trials was compared with task-switch trials. Results of the set-switching task indicated significant switch cost, but only for the situation of task alternation (e.g., an ABA series), suggesting that task-set inhibition may play a role in this effect. Alternating-switch cost was significantly correlated with TMT-B performance, especially with the TMT-B to TMT-A ratio (B/A). Cost for alternating switches was especially large for participants with B/A ratio > 3. These results provide direct evidence that the B/A ratio of performance in the TMT provides an index of executive function.

Education for sustainable development beyond attitude change

Purpose – Many education for sustainable development (ESD) programs are designed to change attitudes and values toward the natural environment. However, psychological research indicates that several factors in addition to attitude influence behavior, including contextual support, social norms, action difficulty, and habitual behavior. Thus, if attitude change is to translate into altered behavior, education must extend beyond attitudes to assist people to act in ways consistent with their values. The purpose of this paper is to review the psychological research showing weak correlation between attitudes and behavior, the factors that mediate this relationship, and to describe the implications of these findings for university institutions and ESD programs.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is organized as a review and editorial article, describing relevant research, and outlining implications and suggested actions.Findings – The results of the reviewed research indicate that attitude‐behavior correlat...

Perceptual Learning Style and Learning Proficiency: A Test of the Hypothesis.

Given the potential importance of using modality preference with instruction, the authors tested whether learning style preference correlated with memory performance in each of 3 sensory modalities: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. In Study 1, participants completed objective measures of pictorial, auditory, and tactile learning and learning style self-assessments. The results indicate that objective test performance did not correlate with learning style preference. In Study 2, the authors examined in more detail the information participants used to answer the learning style self-assessment. The findings indicate that participants answered the inventory using general memories and beliefs rather than specific examples of learning in different modalities. These results challenge the hypothesis that individuals learn best with material presented in a particular sensory modality.

The influence of cue type on backward inhibition.

Backward inhibition is proposed as a process of lateral inhibition that operates during response selection in task switching, reducing interference caused by the most recently abandoned task set. The effect has been observed across a wide range of contexts but is eliminated by using spatial location to cue tasks (K. D. Arbuthnott & T. S. Woodward, 2002). The present studies replicated this finding, showing that spatial cues are also associated with greater response congruity than verbal cues, consistent with the lateral inhibition model. Spatial cues may introduce greater discriminability between competing category-response rules, reducing the need for lateral inhibition. However, when participants named the task before target presentation, backward inhibition was observed with spatial cues, suggesting that verbalization increased competition between sets, despite spatial localization.

Asymmetric switch cost and backward inhibition: Carryover activation and inhibition in switching between tasks of unequal difficulty.

Asymmetric switch cost, observed when switching between tasks varying in difficulty, shows that the difference between repeat and switch trials is greater when switching to the easier task. Early explanations of this effect attributed this pattern to both positive priming of the difficult task and negative priming of the easier task, but more recent models have focused only on activation processes. The role of inhibition in asymmetric switch cost was examined using backward inhibition, a more direct measure of task-set inhibition. The results indicated asymmetric backward inhibition, with greater sequential inhibition of the easier task (i.e., easy-difficult-easy sequences). Switch costs, however, showed both typical and reversed asymmetry (greater cost when switching from the easy to the difficult task), depending on the relative difficulty of task pairs. This pattern of results indicates that switch costs are attributable to both activation and inhibition processes.

Phenomenal characteristics of guided imagery, natural imagery, and autobiographical memories

Research indicates that guided imagery experiences can be mistaken for actual experiences under some circumstances. One explanation for such effects is that memory representations of guided imagery and actual events contain similar phenomenal characteristics such as sensory and contextual details, making the source of the events less distinguishable. This study examined this prediction, comparing memory characteristic ratings for guided imagery experiences with those for memories of perceived and natural imagery events (e.g., fantasies). Results replicated previous findings for the difference between perceived and natural imagery memories. Guided imagery ratings were also lower than those for perceived memories for most sensory details (sound, smell, and taste) and temporal details. However, guided imagery ratings for reflective details were lower than both perceived and natural imagery memory ratings. Thus, guided imagery was similar to natural imagery with respect to sensory details, but similar to perceived memories with respect to reflective details.

The effect of task location and task type on backward inhibition

Alternating tasks in a sequence of task switches results in impaired performance, relative to switches across three different tasks, an effect known as backward inhibition. Despite the robustness of this effect across task and response variations, backward inhibition is not observed when tasks are uniquely located at different points in space (Arbuthnott, 2005). Three hypotheses about the source of this anomaly were tested. Experiment 1 indicated that perceptually distinct task features other than location did not eliminate backward inhibition. Experiment 2 indicated that when switches across task and location were manipulated independently (i.e., all tasks appeared at all locations), backward inhibition was observed for task switches even when consecutive trials appeared at different spatial locations, ruling out eye movement as the source of the difference. The third experiment indicated that when component tasks involved judgments of spatial location, backward inhibition was observed across unique task—location switches. These results indicate that sequential inhibition is a very flexible mechanism that is sensitive to the amount of interference from previous tasks.

Cognitive inhibition in selection and sequential retrieval.

Inhibitory models of working memory efficiency (Engle, 1996; Zacks & Hasher, 1994) assert that individual differences in working memory reflect the efficiency of inhibitory processes that exclude irrelevant information and suppress no-longer-relevant information. The present study examined the implication that these two inhibitory processes operate at consistent levels of efficiency within individuals by examining the correlation between two cognitive inhibition effects, negative priming and negative error priming. Negative priming involves slower response to a probe-trial target that was used as a to-be-ignored distractor on the immediately preceding prime trial. Negative error priming is the phenomenon that errors in a sequence of simple arithmetic trials are unlikely to involve the correct answer to the preceding problem. Participants received distractor—target pairs of simple addition problems and were required to produce the target problem sum. Negative priming was observed for prime distractors, whereas negative error priming was observed in connection with previous targets but not distractors. Consistent with the assumptions of these working memory models, the magnitudes of the two effects were significantly correlated.

Natural history museums, parks, and connection with nature

Experiences in natural settings, and indirect nature experiences such as films, increase both well-being and environmentally protective behavior. Thus, public facilities such as natural history museums may facilitate pro-environmental behavior changes. In three studies, we examined nature connection, well-being, and spontaneous well-being goals as a function of exposure to museum exhibits or parks. Participants recruited in parks reported higher nature connection than those in indoor public locations. Among museum visitors, touring the exhibits did not influence nature connection, but did increase the number of pro-environmental well-being goals. When participants were randomly assigned to view a museum or a control presentation, those who viewed the museum presentation reported both higher nature connection and more pro-environmental goals. These results suggest that natural history museums and parks provide public settings in which people are more likely to be receptive to environmental information and to reflect on options for personal action.

A Rough Sets Approach for Personalized Support of Face Recognition

The activity of facial recognition is routine for most people; yet describing the process of recognition, or describing a face to be recognized reveals a great deal of complexity inherent in the activity. Eyewitness identification remains an important element in judicial proceedings. It is very convincing, yet it is not very accurate. We studied how people sorted a collection of facial photographs and found that individuals may have different strategies for similarity recognition. In our analysis of the data, we have identified two possible strategies. We apply rough set based attribute reduction methodology to this data in order to develop a test to identify which of these strategies an individual is likely to prefer. We hypothesize that by providing a personalized search and filter environment, individuals would be more adequately equipped to handle the complexity of the task, thereby increasing the accuracy of identifications. Furthermore, the rough set based analysis may help to more clearly identify the different strategies that individuals use for this task. This paper provides a description of the preliminary study, our computational approach that includes an important pre-processing step, discusses results from our evaluation, and provides a list of opportunities for future work.