COGNITIVE SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM Spring 2017

Self-control depletion theory claims to account for between-task performance changes in terms of the consumption of a limited cognitive resource. Dual-task designs have been used to demonstrate that increased self-control on an initial effortful task predicted decreased self-control on a later categorically distinct effortful task, supporting a non-rational (i.e., not based upon explicit value calculation) resource-like effect. These accounts struggle to identify specific mechanisms linking them to rational theories of effort, and the reported effect size has recently come into question. Subject engagement during the depleting task is often assumed, but systematic disengagement may account for inconsistencies in the observed effect. We recreated a common dual-task depletion paradigm using a computer-automated design allowing for measurement of individual task performance as well as pupil size. We found evidence that task engagement measures do indeed account for some individual variation in the depletion effect, offering a possible explanation for inconsistent group-level effects. April 21 Aneta Kielar, Assistant Professor, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Arizona TITLE: Language Related and Spontaneous Oscillatory Responses in Acquired Language Disorders ABSTRACT: Mapping oscillatory neural activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a powerful method for revealing the functional organization of different aspect of language, and the changes associated with stroke. Considerable changes in the cortical representation of language processing can follow stroke. However, the neural mechanisms mediating recovery and relative contributions of each hemisphere are not well understood. In the present set of studies I used MEG to understand the roles of perilesional and contralesional activity in recovery of semantic and syntactic processing in patients with post-stroke aphasia, and to explore the role of right hemisphere in language recovery. The resting state MEG and fMRI, as well as blood flow measures were used to identify dysfunctional cortex. In healthy controls, a left-lateralized temporo-frontal “ventral network” responded to semantic anomalies during sentence comprehension, and a bilateral fronto-parietal “dorsal network” responded to syntactic anomalies. For participants with aphasia, I observed compensatory recruitment in the right hemisphere. Interestingly, the distribution of this effect was depended on the type of linguistic information that was processed. Better recovery of semantic processing was associated with a shift to the right hemisphere components of the ventral network. In contrast, recovery of syntax was mediated by dorsal brain regions, bilaterally. The analysis of resting state activity indicated that reduced BOLD variability was associated with aging, whereas spontaneous MEG measures were more sensitive to the cortical abnormalities associated with stroke. Furthermore, reduced MEG complexity in perilesional tissue was correlated with hypoperfusion as assessed with arterial spin labeling, while no such relationship was apparent with BOLD variability. These findings suggest that MEG signal complexity offers a sensitive index of neural dysfunction in perilesional tissue in chronic stroke, and that these effects are distinguishable from those associated with healthy aging. The resting state measures may be useful indicators of cortical dysfunction that is potentially reversible with treatment, and may be used to assess the effectiveness of interventions. April 14 Ying-hui Chou, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona TITLE: Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Functional Connectivity Mapping in Clinical and Psychological Research ABSTRACT: Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a noninvasive neuromodulation technique that has been closely examined as a possible treatment for a number of diseases. Although accumulating evidence Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a noninvasive neuromodulation technique that has been closely examined as a possible treatment for a number of diseases. Although accumulating evidence suggests that rTMS can be utilized to enhance motor or cognitive function in clinical populations, little is known about how the rTMS modulates brain activities and how these changes correlate with improvement of function. Functional connectivity measured by resting-state fMRI has played an essential role in understanding brain functional networks in healthy individuals and clinical populations. Resting-state functional connectivity is defined as the temporal co-activation level of spontaneous fMRI signals between spatially distinct brain regions when participants are not required to perform a perceptual or behavioral task. In this talk, Dr. Ying-hui Chou will first present an overview of rTMS and resting-state connectivity separately. Then she will talk about her research that combines both rTMS and resting-state connectivity to investigate the therapeutic rTMS effects on brain connectivity. The long-term goal of Dr. Chou’s lab is to adopt a multi-modal approach that combines rTMS and resting-state functional connectivity in conjunction with other brain imaging techniques to leverage the applications of rTMS and resting-state functional connectivity in the study of both normal and pathological conditions. April 7 Eric D. Smith, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Arizona TITLE—Glancing Through the Looking Glass: Perpetual Pretending and Bearable Behavior ABSTRACT: The world of fiction appeals to many of us, through books, movies, and even pretending. The power of fictional content has prompted many research questions. How long in life do we engage in pretending? Do children transfer content from fictional worlds, like storybooks, into reality? In this talk, I address these overarching questions by 1) assessing Piaget’s claim pretending ceases at 7 years of age; 2) demonstrating permeability in the fiction-reality boundary within the storybook realm; and 3) proposing a working model for fiction-reality breakdowns within the storybook domain. March 24 Evan MacLean, Assistant Professor, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona TITLE: The Fundamental Importance of Comparison in the Study of Cognitive Evolution ABSTRACT: Since Darwin, understanding the evolution of cognition has been widely regarded as one of the greatest challenges for evolutionary research. In the last century, comparative psychologists have made great progress toward identifying aspects of cognition that humans share with other species, as well as cognitive processes that may be uniquely derived in our own lineage. Despite this progress, cognitive studies with animals have focused heavily on a few model species, with less effort toward broadly comparative, and explicitly phylogenetic approaches. I will present recent studies emphasizing the role of comparison in ‘comparative cognition’ to illustrate how these approaches can reveal major forces driving cognitive evolution, and inform hypotheses for how and why cognition has evolved across species, including humans. March 3 Melissa C. Duff, Associate Professor, Hearing and Speech Sciences; Director, Communication and Memory Laboratory, Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine TITLE: The role of hippocampus in language use and processing ABSTRACT: Language use requires the rapid and incremental processing of flexible and contextually defined linguistic forms that are formulated in rich, multi-modal environments. How this is accomplished in the brain, however, is an open question. While attempts to link aspects of memory to particular properties of language are longstanding, the hippocampal declarative memory system has not received serious consideration as a neural/cognitive system involved in language use and processing. This is in part due to the long-held assumption that the hippocampal declarative memory system contributes only to long-term memory representations and not those that are available quickly enough to guide on-line information processing. Combining discourse analysis, eye-tracking, and neuropsychological methods I will present evidence for the proposal that the hippocampal declarative memory system is a key contributor to language use and processing. This proposal draws on the relational binding and representational flexibility that are hallmark characteristics of the declarative memory system, along with recent findings stretching the scope of hippocampus-dependent processes to functions that operate in-the-moment and on the narrowest of time-scales. Linking disruptions in language use and processing to the declarative memory system demonstrates how promiscuously the hallmark processing features of the hippocampus are called upon by a variety of cognitive domains, including language, and expands the network of neural and cognitive systems that support language use. February 24 Megha Sundara, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles TITLE—Acquisition of Verbs: A window to the mental representation of morphology and phonology ABSTRACT: Verbs are difficult for infants to learn. Cross-linguistically, children have more nouns in their early vocabulary than verbs. In this talk, I will present perception data from English-learning infants within the first year of life to address when and how infants begin to learn verb forms. Then, I will use infants’ abilities (or lack thereof) in relating multiple forms of verbs, like walk, walks, walked and walking, to answer how verbs are represented in the mental lexicon. Finally, I will discuss the implications of these findings for models of spoken word recognition. February 17 Julia L. Evans, Professor, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas TITLE— Poles, Bowls and Dinosaur Bones: How Atypical Lexical Representations may be Derailing Sentence Comprehension for Children with Specific Language Impairment ABSTRACT: Rumelhart (1979) argued that comprehension, like perception, should be likened to Hebb’s (1949) paleontologist, who uses his or her beliefs and knowledge about dinosaurs in conjunction with the clues provided by the Rumelhart (1979) argued that comprehension, like perception, should be likened to Hebb’s (1949) paleontologist, who uses his or her beliefs and knowledge about dinosaurs in conjunction with the clues provided by the available bone fragments to construct a full-fledged model of the original. In this talk, I explore studies that suggest that, while real world knowledge is intact in children with SLI, deficits at the lexical level (the bone fragments) may be profoundly influencing sentence comprehension performance in children with SLI. February 10 Maryia (Masha) Fedzechkina, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona TITLE: Processing and communication shape language learning and structure ABSTRACT: Languages across the world—despite their diversity—also Languages across the world—despite their diversity—also exhibit abstract commonalities. Most theories agree that these commonalities can be traced back to biases and limitations of human cognitive systems. Capturing cross-linguistic generalizations and understanding their causes has been one of the central objectives of linguistics and cognitive science as it can shed light on the nature of constraints underlying language processing and acquisition. My research examines the hypothesis that the cross-linguistic distribution of grammars can be accounted for, at least in part, in terms of their processing or communicative utility (cf. Bates & MacWhinney, 1982; Hawkins, 2004; Christiansen & Chater, 2008). Using a novel type of the miniature language learning paradigm, I identify biases that cause learners to deviate from the input they receive, thus changing the input to subsequent generations of learners and pushing the system towards language change. I present a series of experiments that investigate whether biases towards efficient information processing and efficient information transmission operate during language acquisition. Our findings support this hypothesis: when presented with inefficient input languages, learners produce languages that deviate subtly but systematically from the input towards more efficient linguistic systems. The newly acquired linguistic systems also tend to more closely resemble cross-linguistic patterns in syntax and morphology than the input learners receive. This suggests that at least some cross-linguistic commonalities originate in biases or limitations of human information processing and communication. February 3 Michael Hout, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University TITLE: Becoming an expert at difficult visual search: Experience fine-tunes mental representations of target categories ABSTRACT: In this (still ongoing) project, we investigated effects of expertise on accuracy and oculomotor behavior during difficult visual search. Participants completed up to 23 sessions, searching simultaneously for 20 different categorically-defined targets. Zero to three targets could appeared on each trial, with variable frequency, akin to well-documented “prevalence effects.” Unsurprisingly, searchers got faster over time. Despite increased efficiency, with expertise, they were more likely to directly fixate targets, and to spend proportionately more time examining them, relative to distractors. Prevalence effects (better accuracy to more frequent targets) diminished but did not disappear across sessions, and more frequent targets were consistently located more quickly than infrequent ones. Importantly, despite receiving equal attention (indexed by oculomotor behaviors), lowfrequency targets suffered more recognition failures (failure to perceive targets after direct fixation) than high-frequency targets. Our findings suggest that, with expertise, searchers refine their mental representations for target categories, particularly common ones, and become more effective at restricting attention to the most relevant features. January 27 Michael Grandner, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Arizona TITLE: Neurocognitive Effects of Sleep Loss and Impact on Cardiometabolic Disease Risk ABSTRACT: Sleep is implicated in a large number of physiologic regulatory properties. Sleep loss has been implicated in cardiometabolic health risk factors including weight gain and obesity, hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, and coronary disease. Sleep loss is also implicated in cognitive dysfunction, including decreased attention, impaired working memory and executive function, and problems with decision making. These two domains may overlap. Neurocognitive impairments due to sleep loss may interact with physiologic cardiometabolic risks to increase likelihood of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. This presentation will provide an overview of sleep and cardiometabolic disease risk, sleep and neurocognitive function, and how these may overlap. Sleep is implicated in a large number of physiologic regulatory properties. Sleep loss has been implicated in cardiometabolic health risk factors including weight gain and obesity, hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, and coronary disease. Sleep loss is also implicated in cognitive dysfunction, including decreased attention, impaired working memory and executive function, and problems with decision making. These two domains may overlap. Neurocognitive impairments due to sleep loss may interact with physiologic cardiometabolic risks to increase likelihood of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. This presentation will provide an overview of sleep and cardiometabolic disease risk, sleep and neurocognitive function, and how these may overlap. COGNITIVE SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM