Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 45, Issue 7, 2007, Pages 1571-1579
Neuropsychologia

Cognitive fatigue of executive processes: Interaction between interference resolution tasks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.12.007Get rights and content

Abstract

A resource depletion framework motivated a novel strategy for investigating whether the central executive is unitary or separable into relatively independent subprocesses. The idea that tasks with overlapping neural representations may involve similar executive components was also critical to our approach. Of particular interest were tasks requiring resolution of interference among competing representations. Within a single experimental session intensive training reduced the ability to resolve interference on a transfer task if the training task placed high demands on interference resolution. Negative transfer was absent when interference resolution was minimally required by the task, or when the training and transfer tasks did not rely on overlapping neural representations. These results suggest a nonunitary central executive composed of separable subcomponents, at least one of which mediates interference resolution. Our results are consistent with an executive control process specialized for the selection of task-relevant representations from competitors. The results also agree with the view that higher cognitive processes are resource limited and can be temporarily depleted.

Section snippets

Participants

Forty-eight young adults (24 male; age range: 18–30 years) recruited from the University of Michigan community through posted advertisements, gave informed consent, were native English speakers and had normal or corrected to normal vision. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one received high interference working memory task training, and the other group received low interference working memory training. This investigation was approved by the University of Michigan

Results

For all analyses, in all experiments, subjects’ medians were used to minimize the effect of extreme values on the distribution. Test-retest performance on the verb generate task is shown in Table 1, where improvement in the speed of performance is generally evident between pre and post sessions. This improvement is presumably due to practice on verb generation, and is commensurate with practice effects we have observed on this task in other studies (Persson et al., 2004). In several prior data

Results

Test-retest performance on the verb generate task is shown in Table 1. The approach to data analysis is similar to Experiment 1, including the calculation of the IR-scores.

First, analysis of the stop-signal data showed that the high inhibition group performed more accurately than the low inhibition group (percentage unsuccessful stop trials [high inhibition = 9 percent, low inhibition = 26 percent]; t(46) = −2.17, P < .05). The high inhibition group also had longer RTs (567 ms) on GO trials than the low

Results

Test-retest performance on the episodic task is shown in Table 1. Data from the working memory task are shown in Table 2. Response time was calculated for correct responses only. The approach to data analysis is similar to Experiments 1 and 2. For the transfer task, the effect of interference was calculated by subtracting the RTs for low interference trials from the RTs for high interference trials (i.e., high PI vs. low PI). Similarly, the interference effect for accuracy (expressed as the

Discussion

In this investigation, we tested the hypothesis that interference resolution is mediated by a separable executive process that is shared by tasks in different cognitive domains. Our goal was to provide converging behavioral evidence to complement the existing neuroimaging data suggesting that these tasks share a common neural substrate. The process-specific fatigue effects demonstrated between pairs of tasks, provides behavioral support for their reliance on a common mechanism. In particular,

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Sharon Thompson-Shill and Deanna Barch for providing us with stimulus material for the verb generation task. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Grant AG18286.

References (39)

  • K. Rubia et al.

    Right inferior prefrontal cortex mediates response inhibition while mesial prefrontal cortex is responsible for error detection

    Neuroimage

    (2003)
  • D. Van der Linden et al.

    Mental fatigue and the control of cognitive processes: Effects on preservation and planning

    Acta Psychologica

    (2003)
  • A.R. Aron et al.

    Stop-signal inhibition disrupted by damage to right inferior frontal gyrus in humans

    Nature Neuoscience

    (2003)
  • A.D. Baddeley et al.

    Verbal reasoning and working memory

    Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

    (1976)
  • D.M. Barch et al.

    Anterior cingulate and the monitoring of response conflict: Evidence from an fMRI study of overt verb generation

    Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

    (2000)
  • N.M. Benwell et al.

    Short-interval cortical inhibition and corticomotor excitability with fatiguing hand exercise: A central adaptation to fatigue?

    Experimental Brain Research

    (2006)
  • J.W. Brown et al.

    Learned predictions of error likelihood in anterior cingulate cortex

    Science

    (2005)
  • M. Carandini

    Visual cortex: Fatigue and adaptation

    Current Biology

    (2000)
  • S.M. Dowsett et al.

    The development of inhibitory control in preschool children: Effects of “executive skills” training

    Developmental Psychobiology

    (2000)
  • Cited by (80)

    • Dissociation among preserved resistance to proactive interference and impaired behavioral inhibition in a patient with bilateral lesions in the inferior frontal gyrus: A single-case study

      2019, Cortex
      Citation Excerpt :

      Performance in this task was previously dissociated from PI (Bissett, Nee, & Jonides, 2009). In contrast, interference in verb generation has been associated with the selection of information among competing alternatives from semantic memory (Thompson-Schill, D'Esposito, Aguirre, & Farah, 1997) and was related to PI resistance in the past (Persson, Welsch, Jonides, & Reuter-Lorenz, 2007). However, performance in this task also partly requires response inhibition, as inappropriate responses have to be suppressed (see Del Missier & Crescentini, 2011).

    • Cognitive task avoidance correlates with fatigue-induced performance decrement but not with subjective fatigue

      2019, Neuropsychologia
      Citation Excerpt :

      Using different tasks has also the advantage of limiting the problem of boredom associated with the performance of the same monotonous task for several hours (Bench and Lench, 2013). Since little is known regarding the transferability of fatigue between different cognitive processes - available evidence point sometimes in the direction of global effect of fatigue, independent of the processes involved in fatigue induction (Arai, 1912; Wright et al., 2007), sometimes in the opposite direction (Persson et al., 2007) -, we decided to use a fatigue-inducing task involving a large range of cognitive processes, among which some should overlap with the ones involved in N-back performance. Along the same line, it could be argued that the N-back task was not demanding enough to lead to measurable effects of fatigue on behavioral effort cost.

    • Academic achievement across the day: Evidence from randomized class schedules

      2018, Economics of Education Review
      Citation Excerpt :

      Teachers, administrators, and policymakers go to great lengths to improve student achievement: searching for the best educators, employing the newest pedagogical practices, and carefully crafting assignments, all in the hope that students will better understand the material they are presented. Recent research has shown, however, that much of an individual’s ability to learn is determined by their mental state (Persson, Welsh, Jonides, & Reuter-Lorenz, 2007) and their daily biological rhythms (Schmidt, Collette, Cajochen, & Peigneux, 2007). Students perform worse when they are mentally taxed or when classes are scheduled at times asynchronous with their internal clocks.

    • Promoting Regulation and Flexibility in Thinking: Development of Executive Function

      2024, Promoting Regulation and Flexibility in Thinking: Development of Executive Function
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text