Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Inducing proactive control using a Stroop cueing paradigm(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2014) Olsen, Mariana Rachel; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Keith A. HutchisonCognitive control refers to the relative ability to attend to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in service of a goal. Braver, Gray, and Burgess (2007) have proposed two complementary forms of control: proactive, which is preparatory in nature, and reactive, which is engaged after a stimulus or imperative event. The ability to use proactive control is often tested using the Stroop task; however, what is usually thought of as evidence for proactive control can be confounded with item-specific effects, sequential effects, and speed-accuracy trade-offs. To remedy this issue, the current study utilized a modified version of the Stroop task to examine the use of proactive control on a trial-by-trial basis. Two experiments tested participants' ability to flexibly engage proactive control in which participants were given 80% predictive EASY or HARD cues indicating whether an upcoming stimulus would be congruent or incongruent, respectively. I hypothesized that participants, especially those high in working memory capacity, would use the HARD cues to engage top-down control to suppress word-reading, leading to a) reduced Stroop interference following HARD cues, b) impaired recall and recognition for neutral words following HARD cues, and c) greater pupil dilation following HARD than EASY cues. In Experiment 1, participants showed reduced Stroop interference for stimuli following HARD relative to EASY cues. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2, with reduced Stroop interference in both reaction times and errors following HARD cues. However, neither recall or pupil dilation differed reliably as a function of cue or WMC. Together, these experiments demonstrate the utility of using a cueing procedure when examining proactive control in the Stroop task. Limitations and future directions in cueing research are discussed.Item The effect of predictive cues on the flanker effect and negative priming(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2014) Powell, Suzanna Lee; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Keith A. HutchisonThe present study examined peoples' use of predictive environmental cues to exert cognitive control in preparation for early selection of target information. Braver, Gray, and Burgess (2007) suggested two forms of control: reactive, which is stimulus-driven, and proactive, which is preparatory in nature. We hypothesized that participants would engage in proactive control following "hard" cues in preparation for a difficult task. Additionally we expected increased pupil diameter following "hard cues", a further indicator of increased cognitive control. Participants performed a modified Eriksen flanker task (e.g. ABA) in which they were given the preparatory cues "easy" and "hard," which signaled with 70% validity the probability upcoming flankers would be congruent. In Experiment 1 we found reduced flanker interference following "hard" cues. In addition, we examined negative priming effects (i.e., slower responding when the target on trial N was the distractor on trial N-1, ABA-CAC). As predicted, there was greater negative priming following "hard" cues. These results suggest that the predictive "hard" cue enhances participants' early selection of target information and suppression of distracting information. Experiment 2 included older adults and incorporated eye tracking. Participants showed increased pupil diameter and more gaze variation following "hard" cues, indicating that proactive control was indeed being used. No effects of age were obtained, suggesting that older adults may also be able to utilize cues to increase cognitive control. Finally, Experiment 3 sought to rule out an alternative explanation that the results in Experiment 1 & 2 were due to context specific effects. Experiment 3 found no effects, indicating that previous effects were not the result of automatic associations. Together, these experiments demonstrate that predictive cues can maximize performance on a flanker task.