Thesis (M.M.) Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Jayne Standley, Florida State University, College of Music. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 6-26-07). Document formatted into pages; contains 26 pages. Includes biographical sketch. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1910. / Reprinted from the American journal of psychology, v. 17, Jan. 1906, and v. 19, Jan. 1908.

L’objet de cette thèse est d’étudier les interactions entre les niveaux sensori-moteur et cognitif du système de contrôle de l’action (Paillard, 1992) en utilisant des rotations visuo-proprioceptives durant une tâche de pointage, révélant ainsi la structure de conversion visuo-motrice employée et les systèmes du modèle de planification-contrôle (Glover, 2004). Ce paradigme permet d’analyser comment les contraintes environnementales et cognitives modifient les interactions entre les deux niveaux de contrôle, et de dissocier les deux dimensions spatiale et dynamique faisant appel au modèle de Glover (Boy et al., 2005). Notre premier objectif était d’étudier l’adaptation de ce modèle lorsque les conditions expérimentales sont modifiées. Les études 1, 2 et 3 proposaient à des adultes de réaliser des pointages dans des conditions de rotation de 0° à 180°, avec (I) ou sans vision (II), ou avec vision et consignes attentionnelles (III). Ces études montrent que (1) seule la structure de conversion bidirectionnelle est employée, (2) la dissociation des dimensions de la performance n’est observée qu’en l’absence de vision et disparaît en faveur du niveau cognitif avec l’augmentation des rotations, (3) les conditions visuelles ont une influence plus importante sur le contrôle de l’action que les consignes attentionnelles données. Notre second objectif était d’étudier l’interaction entre le développement des représentations cognitives (étude 4) et celui du contrôle de l’action à 5 ans (études 5 et 6, reproduisant respectivement les études 1 et 2). Ces études ne présentent pas de distinction entre les dimensions de la performance. En outre, l’étude 6 montre une configuration du niveau sensori-moteur par le niveau cognitif. Cette thèse met ainsi en évidence la plasticité du système de contrôle de l’action de l’adulte en fonction de la situation et suggère que la motricité permet le développement des représentations spatiales de l’enfant. / The purpose of this thesis is to study the interactions between the sensory-motor and cognitive control systems of action (Paillard, 1992). Distortions of visual information in pointing tasks are used to reveal the structure of visuo-motor conversion and the systems of planning-control model (Glover, 2004). This paradigm allows to analyze how environmental and cognitive constraints alter interactions between the two levels of control, and to separate the spatial and dynamic dimensions introduced by Glover's model (Boy et al., 2005). Our first objective was to study the adaptation of this model when experimental conditions were changed. Studies 1, 2 and 3, adults achieved pointing movements in conditions of 0 ° to 180 ° rotations, with (I) or without vision (II), or with vision and attentional instructions (III). These studies show that (1) a bidirectional structure of conversion is always used, (2) the dissociation of performance dimensions is observed in the absence of vision and disappears when rotations increased, indicating a cognitive control of movements (3) the visual conditions have a greater influence on the control of action than attentional instructions. Our second objective was to study the interaction between the development of cognitive representations (Study 4) and the control of action at 5 years of age (studies 5 and 6, respectively replicating studies 1 and 2). These studies do not distinguish dimensions of performance. In addition, the study 6 shows that sensory-motor level configure the cognitive level. This thesis thus highlights that the plasticity of control system in adults depends on situation and suggests that the motor functions allow the development of spatial representations in childhood.

Many children have difficulties learning mathematics, and the consequences of poor mathematical skills are very far reaching. Studies examining the reasons why children struggle to learn mathematics are scarce, particularly in comparison to studies examining reading difficulties. The studies reported in this thesis attempted to provide insights into the cognitive limitations that may lead some children to have difficulties learning mathematics, re-examining some of the cognitive deficits already thought to be associated with mathematical difficulties, as well as providing the starting point for new lines of enquiry. Five main studies are reported. Four of these studies examined a range of cognitive skills and identify a number of fundamental cognitive mechanisms as playing a role in children's mathematical skills, these being a slowness in the speed of processing information, poor control of executive functioning, evidenced through difficulty switching strategies and poor self-regulation of actions, and a delay in the automatization of basic arithmetic facts. The final study aimed to investigate the implications of these recognised cognitive difficulties in the teaching of mathematics, and explored the use of two different teaching strategies, rote learning of basic arithmetic facts and a discussion method to allow alternative methods of solution to be learned, both of which attempted to overcome some of these cognitive limitations. Rote learning was found to be an effective device to improve performance in different areas of mathematical skill. The implications of this research and the foundations for future research are also discussed.

Research has shown that tests can alter the very memories that they aim to evaluate (e.g. Carpenter & DeLosh, 2005; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a). Such mnemonic enhancement in long-term retention as a result of testing is referred to as the testing effect (see Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b for an extensive review; also Delaney, Verkoeijen, & Spirgel, 2010; Pashler, Rohrer, Cepeda, & Carpenter, 2007). Although various hypotheses have been proposed to explain this effect, the exact mechanisms by which testing confers an advantage on memorability remain uncertain (see Delaney et al., 2010; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b, for reviews). Two experiments were carried out to examine whether the mnemonic benefits of testing are due to greater attention being directed to tested items in comparison to restudied items. In Experiment 1 participants in both the restudy and testing conditions studied word pairs either under full attention or while performing a concurrent auditory discrimination task. A final free-recall test was administered under full attention 5 min after the restudy or testing phase. It was predicted that the mnemonic impairment induced by dividing attention would be larger for the testing group than the restudy group. The results showed the interaction of learning condition (restudy vs. testing) and attention (full attention vs. divided attention) was not significant. Experiment 2 adopted the opposite approach: to enhance rather than diminish attention to the to-be-remembered items during the restudy and testing. By manipulating the priority of the concurrent task and memory task, it was assumed that more emphasis on the memory task would draw and boost participants' attention and consequently that the restudy group would benefit more from this attention enhancement than the testing group. The results showed that different emphases did not affect final memory in both restudy and testing groups. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 together suggest that attention may not play a role in the testing effect.

People with aphasia (PWA) frequently present with nonlinguistic deficits, in addition to their compromised language abilities, which may contribute to their problems with reading comprehension. Treatment of attention, working memory and executive control may elicit reading comprehension improvements in PWA, particularly those with mild reading problems. This study evaluated the efficacy of Attention Process Training-3 (APT-3), an intervention combining direct attention training and metacognitive facilitation, for improving reading comprehension in individuals with mild aphasia and concomitant reading comprehension difficulties. A multiple-baseline design across six participants was used to evaluate treatment effects. The primary outcome measure was a maze reading task. Pre- and post-treatment evaluation included cognitive and reading measures. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to evaluate participant-perceived changes in cognition and reading. Visual inspection of graphed maze reading performance data indicated a basic effect between APT-3 and improved maze reading for three of the six participants. Quantitative analyses, using Tau-U, corroborated findings identified through visual analysis. The results suggest that the use of APT-3 has the potential to improve reading in PWA but that it may be more efficacious under certain conditions. Treatment and participant variables, including intensity of treatment and metacognitive strategy usage, are discussed as potential influences on participants' responsiveness to APT-3.

A series of experiments investigated the relationship between locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) function and striatal dopamine (DA) tone and the flexibility of stability of cognitive control. Across 4 experiments, participants completed an attention shifting task, in which they had to periodically switch the focus of their attention while avoiding distraction. In 3 of the 4 experiments, participants’ eyes were tracked to collect eye blink rate and pupil size, indices of striatal dopamine and LC-NE function respectively. A second aim of this project was to determine whether DA- and NE-linked variability in cognitive control was predictive of more ecologically valid real-world behaviors. To this end, participants in Experiment 4 also completed an additional lab session, in which they performed an internet search task, designed to be similar to what a student might experience in their everyday life. Participants then completed 2 weeks of follow-up questionnaires to provide a self-report of their daily experience of distractibility and flexibility. We hypothesized that observable indices of flexibility and distractibility during the internet search task would mediate the relationship between attention task performance and real-world experiences. Results indicated that EBR is related to attentional flexibility; however the specific shape of the effect was inconsistent across studies, with one showing a linear effect on the ability to update the attentional set, and the other showing a quadratic effect. There were large, consistent main effects of both tonic and phasic pupil measures on attention task performance, with longer latencies, larger phasic responses, and larger baseline pupil sizes all tending to predict slower responding and a higher error rate. There was no clear pattern of pupil effects across conditions, however, and so it is not clear whether pupil-linked changes in task performance are related to specific effects on cognitive control processes, or rather a more general arousing effect on performance. Finally, there were also no clear links suggesting that observable behaviors on our internet search task could be used to bridge between attention task performance and real-world behavior.

Orienting processing resources towards a peripheral region of a display, by means of an exogenous cue, produces a biphasic effect on subsequent target detection. Intially response latency is facilitated, but increasing the SOA to 300 ms or greater results in slower detection, and this is known as the inhibition of return (IOR) effect. Initially this inhibitory effect was thought to bias attention against returning to a previously attended location but subsequent work demonstrated that it can also be associated with an object when motion is utilised to dissociate the two effects. This thesis reexamined the generality and utility of the object-based IOR effect. Chapter 3 demonstrated that presenting an (apparent) object at the cuetarget location is sufficient to trigger the object-based IOR effect. The observation that inhibition can spread across the surface of an object (Chapter 4) confirmed that pure object-based IOR is observed in static displays. Together these chapters provided a complete dissociation of the two independent IOR effects and suggests that they operate additively in the typical IOR procedure. Chapter 5 demonstrated that the separate inhibitory mechanisms have characteristic boundary conditions. Orienting attention within-objects abolishes the location-based IOR effect, but does not effect the object-based effect. In sharp contrast, increasing object salience modulates the object-based effect, but has no effect on location-based inhibition. Finally, there was no evidence of a retinotectal pathway involvement in the location-based IOR effect under monocular conditions. Rather, both effects appear to be generated by cortical regions, with an exclusively left visual field bias for the object-based IOR effect. It was concluded that object-based IOR effects generalise to static procedures, which seriously questions the interpretation that IOR effects observed in static displays are mediated purely by a spatial frame of reference. This conclusion may generalise to all static precueing procedures. The boundary conditions of the object-based IOR effect are consistent with a mechanism that serves to guide efficient visual processing.

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M. Tech.