Papers by Claire Naughtin
npj Science of Learning
The ability to perform multiple tasks concurrently is an ever-increasing requirement in our infor... more The ability to perform multiple tasks concurrently is an ever-increasing requirement in our information-rich world. Despite this, multitasking typically compromises performance due to the processing limitations associated with cognitive control and decisionmaking. While intensive dual-task training is known to improve multitasking performance, only limited evidence suggests that training-related performance benefits can transfer to untrained tasks that share overlapping processes. In the real world, however, coordinating and selecting several responses within close temporal proximity will often occur in high-interference environments. Over the last decade, there have been notable reports that training on video action games that require dynamic multitasking in a demanding environment can lead to transfer effects on aspects of cognition such as attention and working memory. Here, we asked whether continuous and dynamic multitasking training extends benefits to tasks that are theoretically related to the trained tasks. To examine this issue, we asked a group of participants to train on a combined continuous visuomotor tracking task and a perceptual discrimination task for six sessions, while an active control group practiced the component tasks in isolation. A battery of tests measuring response selection, response inhibition, and spatial attention was administered before and immediately after training to investigate transfer. Multitasking training resulted in substantial, task-specific gains in dual-task ability, but there was no evidence that these benefits generalized to other action control tasks. The findings suggest that training on a combined visuomotor tracking and discrimination task results in task-specific benefits but provides no additional value for untrained action selection tasks.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
It is now well established that relative to their younger counterparts, older adults experience d... more It is now well established that relative to their younger counterparts, older adults experience difficulties on tasks that require the conscious and explicit processing of others' mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions; theory of mind [ToM]). Despite the importance of relatively automatic and unconscious mental state attribution processes in everyday life, no study to date has tested whether tasks that require the implicit processing of others' belief states also show age-related changes. In this study, younger and older adults completed an implicit false belief task, in which their eye movement patterns were monitored while they passively viewed true and false belief movies. In addition, they were assessed on measures of explicit ToM processing. While older adults showed impairments in explicit ToM processing relative to younger adults, both age groups demonstrated a similar capacity for implicit false belief processing. These findings suggest that implicit components of ToM are preserved in late adulthood and are consistent with dual process models of ageing that emphasise age-related stability in automatic processing and declines in more controlled and effortful cognitive operations. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for social interactions in old age.
Distributed and opposing effects of incidental learning in the human brain
NeuroImage
Decoding early and late cortical contributions to individuation of attended and unattended objects
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 2018
To isolate a visual stimulus as a unique object with a specific spatial location and time of occu... more To isolate a visual stimulus as a unique object with a specific spatial location and time of occurrence, it is necessary to first register (individuate) the stimulus as a distinct perceptual entity. Recent investigations into the neural substrates of object individuation have suggested it is subserved by a distributed neural network, but previous manipulations of individuation load have introduced extraneous visual confounds, which might have yielded ambiguous findings, particularly in early cortical areas. Furthermore, while it has been assumed that selective attention is required for object individuation, there is no definitive evidence on the brain regions recruited for attended and ignored objects. Here we addressed these issues by combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with a novel object-enumeration paradigm in which to-be-individuated objects were defined by illusory contours, such that the physical elements of the display remained constant across individuatio...
Human brain mapping, 2017
Humans rely on their ability to infer another person's mental state to understand and predict... more Humans rely on their ability to infer another person's mental state to understand and predict others' behavior ("theory of mind," ToM). Multiple lines of research suggest that not only are humans able to consciously process another person's belief state, but also are able to do so implicitly. Here we explored how general implicit belief states are represented in the brain, compared to those substrates involved in explicit ToM processes. Previous work on this topic has yielded conflicting results, and thus, the extent to which the implicit and explicit ToM systems draw on common neural bases is unclear. Participants were presented with "Sally-Anne" type movies in which a protagonist was falsely led to believe a ball was in one location, only for a puppet to later move it to another location in their absence (false-belief condition). In other movies, the protagonist had their back turned the entire time the puppet moved the ball between the two location...
Journal of Neurophysiology, 2016
To isolate multiple coherent objects from their surrounds, each object must be represented as a s... more To isolate multiple coherent objects from their surrounds, each object must be represented as a stable perceptual entity across both time and space. Recent theoretical and empirical work has proposed that this process of object individuation is a mid-level operation that emerges around 200–300 ms after stimulus onset. However, this hypothesis is based on paradigms that have potentially obscured earlier effects. Furthermore, no study to date has directly assessed whether object individuation occurs for task-irrelevant objects. In the present study we used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the time course of individuation, for stimuli both within and outside the focus of attention, to assess the information processing stage at which object individuation arises for both types of objects. We developed a novel paradigm involving items defined by illusory contours, which allowed us to vary the number of to-be-individuated objects while holding the physical elements of the display co...
Despite the constant influx of visual information, observers are nonetheless able to segment this... more Despite the constant influx of visual information, observers are nonetheless able to segment this input into discrete objects and events. The perceptual system does so on the basis of spatial and temporal properties, thus allowing one to keep track of visual objects as they move to different locations across time. This process of object individuation is integral for visual awareness; when it is disrupted, stimuli are no longer perceived.
Linking Prior Emotional Behaviour to Face Identities: An fMRI Study
npj Science of Learning
The ability to perform multiple tasks concurrently is an ever-increasing requirement in our infor... more The ability to perform multiple tasks concurrently is an ever-increasing requirement in our information-rich world. Despite this, multitasking typically compromises performance due to the processing limitations associated with cognitive control and decisionmaking. While intensive dual-task training is known to improve multitasking performance, only limited evidence suggests that training-related performance benefits can transfer to untrained tasks that share overlapping processes. In the real world, however, coordinating and selecting several responses within close temporal proximity will often occur in high-interference environments. Over the last decade, there have been notable reports that training on video action games that require dynamic multitasking in a demanding environment can lead to transfer effects on aspects of cognition such as attention and working memory. Here, we asked whether continuous and dynamic multitasking training extends benefits to tasks that are theoretically related to the trained tasks. To examine this issue, we asked a group of participants to train on a combined continuous visuomotor tracking task and a perceptual discrimination task for six sessions, while an active control group practiced the component tasks in isolation. A battery of tests measuring response selection, response inhibition, and spatial attention was administered before and immediately after training to investigate transfer. Multitasking training resulted in substantial, task-specific gains in dual-task ability, but there was no evidence that these benefits generalized to other action control tasks. The findings suggest that training on a combined visuomotor tracking and discrimination task results in task-specific benefits but provides no additional value for untrained action selection tasks.
The abilities to select appropriate responses and suppress unwanted actions are key executive fun... more The abilities to select appropriate responses and suppress unwanted actions are key executive functions that enable flexible and goal-directed behavior. However, to date it has been unclear whether these two cognitive operations tap a common action control resource or reflect two distinct processes. In the present study, we used an individual differences approach to examine the underlying relationships across seven paradigms that varied in their response selection and response inhibition requirements: stop-signal, go–no-go, Stroop, flank-er, single-response selection, psychological refractory period, and attentional blink tasks. A confirmatory factor analysis suggested that response inhibition and response selection are separable, with stop-signal and go–no-go task performance being related to response inhibition, and performance in the psychological refractory period, Stroop, single-response selection , and attentional blink tasks being related to response selection. These findings provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that response selection and response inhibition reflect two distinct cognitive operations.
Early Cortical Contributions to Object Individuation
Journal of vision, 2015
In object individuation, spatiotemporal episodic cues are used to register an object as a distinc... more In object individuation, spatiotemporal episodic cues are used to register an object as a distinct perceptual event, relative to other stimuli. The present study examined the time course of individuation to assess the information processing stage at which it arises and the extent to which it draws on early sensory cortices. Previous research has failed to provide definitive evidence on these issues, as individuation manipulations have co-varied with other low-level physical differences (e.g., hue, luminance). Similarly, no previous study has had both high spatial and temporal resolution, and consequently has been unable to speak directly to both the neural and cognitive substrates of individuation. Here we used a multi-modal EEG/fMRI approach and a novel enumeration paradigm that equated physical stimulus properties across conditions. We could therefore pinpoint the time window and visual sensory regions associated with individuation for items in attended and unattended locations, a...
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), Jan 12, 2014
Object individuation and identification are 2 key processes involved in representing visual infor... more Object individuation and identification are 2 key processes involved in representing visual information in short-term memory (VSTM). Individuation involves the use of spatial and temporal cues to register an object as a distinct perceptual event relative to other stimuli, whereas object identification involves extraction of featural and related conceptual properties of a stimulus. Together, individuation and identification provide the "what," "where," and "when" of visual perception. In the current study, we asked whether individuation and identification processes are underpinned by distinct neural substrates, and to what extent brain regions that reflect these 2 operations are consistent across encoding, maintenance, and retrieval stages of VSTM. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify brain regions that represent the number of objects (individuation) and/or object features (identification) in an array. Using univariate and multivaria...
Psychophysiology, 2012
We can learn about the affective content of the environment by observing the behavior of others; ... more We can learn about the affective content of the environment by observing the behavior of others; their responses to stimuli tend to be appropriate to the context. To investigate the impact of observing such appropriate, compared with inappropriate, behaviors, we developed a novel behavioral task where participants observed different faces reacting to emotional scenes. We found that affective categorization of a scene was facilitated when it was presented alongside an appropriate facial expression (Experiment 1). Further, we observed that several brain areas in the right hemisphere-the putamen, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-were more activate when viewing faces that were previously observed emoting inappropriately (Experiment 2). We contend that these areas form a network that codes for the retrieval of affective conflict information generated by observing individuals producing inappropriate emotions.
The neural basis of temporal individuation and its capacity limits in the human brain
Journal of Neurophysiology, 2014
Individuation refers to individuals' use of spatial and temporal ... more Individuation refers to individuals' use of spatial and temporal properties to register an object as a distinct perceptual event relative to other stimuli. Although behavioral studies have examined both spatial and temporal individuation, neuroimaging investigations of individuation have been restricted to the spatial domain and at relatively late stages of information processing. In this study we used univariate and multivoxel pattern analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging data to identify brain regions involved in individuating temporally distinct visual items and the neural consequences that arise when this process reaches its capacity limit (repetition blindness, RB). First, we found that regional patterns of blood oxygen level-dependent activity in a large group of brain regions involved in "lower-level" perceptual and "higher-level" attentional/executive processing discriminated between instances where repeated and nonrepeated stimuli were successfully individuated, conditions that placed differential demands on temporal individuation. These results could not be attributed to repetition suppression, stimulus or response factors, task difficulty, regional activation differences, other capacity-limited processes, or artifacts in the data or analyses. Consistent with the global workplace model of consciousness, this finding suggests that temporal individuation is supported by a distributed set of brain regions, rather than a single neural correlate. Second, conditions that reflect the capacity limit of individuation (instances of RB) modulated the amplitude, rather than spatial pattern, of activity in the left hemisphere premotor cortex. This finding could not be attributed to response conflict/ambiguity and likely reflects a candidate brain region underlying the capacity-limited process that gives rise to RB.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2011
How information is exchanged between the cognitive mechanisms responsible for gaze perception and... more How information is exchanged between the cognitive mechanisms responsible for gaze perception and social attention is unclear. These systems could be independent; the "gaze cueing" effect could emerge from the activation of a general-purpose attentional mechanism that is ignorant of the social nature of the gaze cue. Alternatively, orienting to social gaze direction might be directly determined by the operation of cognitive mechanisms specifically dedicated to gaze perception. This second notion is the dominant assumption in the literature, but there is little direct support for this account. Here, we systematically manipulated observers' perception of gaze direction by implementing a gaze adaptation paradigm. Gaze cueing was reduced only in conditions where perception of specific averted gaze stimuli was impaired (Experiment 1). Adaptation to a pointing stimulus failed to impact gaze cueing (Experiment 2). Overall, these data suggest a direct link between the specific operation of gaze perception mechanisms and the consequential orienting of attention.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2013
Recent research in adults has made great use of the gaze cuing paradigm to understand the behavio... more Recent research in adults has made great use of the gaze cuing paradigm to understand the behavior of the follower in joint attention episodes. We implemented a gaze leading task to investigate the initiatorthe other person in these triadic interactions. In a series of gaze-contingent eye-tracking studies, we show that fixation dwell time upon and reorienting toward a face are affected by whether that individual face shifts its eyes in a congruent or an incongruent direction in response to the participant's eye movement. Gaze leading also biased affective responses toward the faces and attended objects. These findings demonstrate that leading the eyes of other individuals alters how we explore and evaluate our social environment.
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Papers by Claire Naughtin