Biomedical subjects

Dima Amso

Publications and source records attributed to Dima Amso.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years: evidence from manipulations of memory, inhibition, and task switching.

Predictions concerning development, interrelations, and possible independence of working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility were tested in 325 participants (roughly 30 per age from 4 to 13 years and young adults; 50% female). All were tested on the same computerized battery, designed to manipulate memory and inhibition independently and together, in steady state (single-task blocks) and during task-switching, and to be appropriate over the lifespan and for neuroimaging (fMRI). This is one of the first studies, in children or adults, to explore: (a) how memory requirements interact with spatial compatibility and (b) spatial incompatibility effects both with stimulus-specific rules (Simon task) and with higher-level, conceptual rules. Even the youngest children could hold information in mind, inhibit a dominant response, and combine those as long as the inhibition required was steady-state and the rules remained constant. Cognitive flexibility (switching between rules), even with memory demands minimized, showed a longer developmental progression, with 13-year-olds still not at adult levels. Effects elicited only in Mixed blocks with adults were found in young children even in single-task blocks; while young children could exercise inhibition in steady state it exacted a cost not seen in adults, who (unlike young children) seemed to re-set their default response when inhibition of the same tendency was required throughout a block. The costs associated with manipulations of inhibition were greater in young children while the costs associated with increasing memory demands were greater in adults. Effects seen only in RT in adults were seen primarily in accuracy in young children. Adults slowed down on difficult trials to preserve accuracy; but the youngest children were impulsive; their RT remained more constant but at an accuracy cost on difficult trials. Contrary to our predictions of independence between memory and inhibition, when matched for difficulty RT correlations between these were as high as 0.8, although accuracy correlations were less than half that. Spatial incompatibility effects and global and local switch costs were evident in children and adults, differing only in size. Other effects (e.g., asymmetric switch costs and the interaction of switching rules and switching response-sites) differed fundamentally over age.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Learning by selection: visual search and object perception in young infants.

The authors examined how visual selection mechanisms may relate to developing cognitive functions in infancy. Twenty-two 3-month-old infants were tested in 2 tasks on the same day: perceptual completion and visual search. In the perceptual completion task, infants were habituated to a partly occluded moving rod and subsequently presented with unoccluded broken and complete rod test stimuli. In the visual search task, infants viewed displays in which single targets of varying levels of salience were cast among homogeneous static vertical distractors. Infants whose posthabituation preference indicated unity perception in the completion task provided evidence of a functional visual selective attention mechanism in the search task. The authors discuss the implications of the efficiency of attentional mechanisms for information processing and learning.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2005

Contributions of the hippocampus and the striatum to simple association and frequency-based learning.

Using fMRI and a learning paradigm, this study examined the independent contributions of the hippocampus and striatum to simple association and frequency-based learning. We scanned 10 right-handed young adult subjects using a spiral in/out sequence on a GE 3.0 T scanner during performance of the learning paradigm. The paradigm consisted of 2 cues that predicted each of 3 targets with varying probabilities. Simultaneously, we varied the frequency with which each target was presented throughout the task, independent of cue associations. Subjects had shorter response latencies to frequently occurring and highly associated target stimuli and longer response latencies to infrequent target stimuli, indicating learning. Imaging results showed increased caudate activity to infrequent relative to frequent targets and increased hippocampal activity to infrequent relative to frequent cue-target associations. This work provides evidence of different neural mechanisms underlying learning based on simple frequencies versus associations within a single paradigm.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Selection and inhibition in infancy: evidence from the spatial negative priming paradigm.

We used a spatial negative priming (SNP) paradigm to examine visual selective attention in infants and adults using eye movements as the motor selection measure. In SNP, when a previously ignored location becomes the target to be selected, responses to it are impaired, providing a measure of inhibitory selection. Each trial consisted of a prime and a probe, separated by 67, 200, or 550 ms interstimulus intervals (ISIs). In the prime, a target was accompanied by a distractor. In the probe, the target appeared either in the location formerly occupied by the distractor (ignored repetition) or in another location (control). Adults exhibited the SNP effect in all three ISI conditions, producing slower saccade latencies on ignored repetition versus control trials. The SNP effect obtained for infants only under 550 and 200 ms ISI conditions. These results suggest that important developments in visual selection are rooted in emerging inhibitory mechanisms.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Development of object concepts in infancy: Evidence for early learning in an eye-tracking paradigm.

Concepts of objects as enduring and complete across space and time have been documented in infants within several months after birth, but little is known about how such concepts arise during development. Current theories that stress innate knowledge may neglect the potential contributions of experience to guide acquisition of object concepts. To examine whether learning plays an important role in early development of object representations, we used an eye-tracking paradigm with 4- and 6-month-old infants who were provided with an initial period of experience viewing an unoccluded trajectory, or no experience with this particular stimulus. After exposure to the unoccluded trajectory for only 2 min, there was a reliable increase in 4-month-old infants' anticipatory eye movement when the infants subsequently viewed occluded-trajectory displays, relative to 4-month-old infants who did not receive this experience. This effect of training in 4-month-old infants was found to generalize to another category of trajectory orientation. Older infants received no additional benefit from training, most likely because they enter the task capable of forming robust object representations under these conditions. This finding provides compelling evidence that very brief training facilitated formation of object representations, and suggests more generally that infants learn such representations from real-world experience viewing objects undergoing occlusion and disocclusion.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2002

Conditions under which young children can hold two rules in mind and inhibit a prepotent response.

The day-night task requires saying "night" to a picture of the sun and "day" to a picture of the moon. In this investigation of why young children fail at this task, systematic variations of the task were administered to 96 children, half 4 years old and half 4 1/2 years old. Training children on the strategy of chunking the 2 rules into I ("say the opposite"), thus reducing memory load, did not help their performance. What helped was reducing the inhibitory demand by instructing them to say "dog" and "pig" (not "night" and "day") even though memory of 2 rules and inhibiting saying what the pictures represented were still required. Here the response to be activated and the response to be inhibited were unrelated. When the correct response was semantically related to, and the direct opposite of, the to-be-inhibited response, children performed poorly. Inserting a delay between stimulus and response helped even though that delay was filled with distraction. Young children apparently need several seconds to compute the answer on this task. Often they do not take the needed time; when forced to do so, they do well.

Age Factors↗