In three experiments, participants' visual span was measured in a comparative visual search task in which they had to detect a local match or mismatch between two displays presented side by side. Experiment 1 manipulated the difficulty of the comparative visual search task by contrasting a mismatch detection task with a substantially more difficult match detection task. In Experiment 2, partici...

Finding out which lexico-semantic features of cognates are critical in cross-language studies and comparing these features with noncognates helps researchers to decide which features to control in studies with cognates. Normative databases provide necessary information for this purpose. Such resources are lacking in the Persian language. We created a dataset and determined norms for the essenti...

Task-induced deactivations within the brain's default mode network (DMN) are thought to reflect suppression of endogenous thought processes to support exogenous goal-directed task processes. Older adults are known to show reductions in deactivation of the DMN compared to younger adults. However, little is understood about the mechanisms contributing to functional dysregulation of the DMN in agi...

Task switch cost (the deficit of performing a new task vs. a repeated task) has been partly attributed to priming of the repeated task, as well as to inappropriate preparation for the switched task. In the present study, we examined the nature of the priming effect by repeating stimulus-related processes, such as stimulus encoding or stimulus identification. We adopted a partial-overlap task-sw...

Expectancy congruency has been shown to modulate event-related potentials (ERPs) to emotional stimuli, such as facial expressions. However, it is unknown whether the congruency ERP effects to facial expressions can be modulated by cognitive manipulations during stimulus expectation. To this end, electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded while participants viewed (neutral and fearful) facial exp...

BACKGROUND Aspiration pneumonia is a leading cause of death in persons with Parkinson's disease (PD). Despite this, the mechanisms underlying dysphagia in this population are unclear. To date, researchers have not investigated the effects of varying cognitive demand on objective measures of swallowing safety. This study assessed whether swallowing safety could be disrupted by increasing cogniti...

Psychostimulants, such as methylphenidate, are thought to improve information processing in motivation-reward and attention-activation networks by enhancing the effects of more relevant signals and suppressing those of less relevant ones; however the nature of such reciprocal influences remains poorly understood. To explore this question, we tested the effect of methylphenidate on performance a...

Using a dual-serial-arithmetic paradigm, we examined whether a capacity limitation constrains the neural activation that underlies dual-task performance. Six conditions were run in the experiment (the baseline, single-addition, single-subtraction, dual-addition, dual-subtraction, and the dual-operation condition). In the baseline condition, participants were asked to remember the initial pair o...

the main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of metamotivational states on self-efficacy perceptions and motor performance in dart throwing beginners in easy and difficult conditions. for this purpose, the paratelic dominance questionnaire (cook & gerkovich, 1993) was distributed among 140 male students, and 32 participants were randomly divided into two groups (16 in a telic group ...

background: the aims of this study were to evaluate the employees' subjective assessments of different aspects of lighting condition as well as task area illuminance in manufacturing plants. methods: this field study was conducted between march and may 2013 , in three packing plants (saveh, central iran). data were collected by questionnaire and measurement of the task area illuminance levels. ...