The planning process is central to goal-directed behaviour in any task that requires the organization of a series of actions aimed at achieving a goal. Although the planning process has been investigated thoroughly, relatively little is known about how this process emerges and evolves during childhood. In this paper we describe three reinforcement learning models of planning, in the Tower of Lo...

An extensive literature suggests a link between executive functions and aggressive behavior in humans, pointing mostly to an inverse relationship, i.e., increased tendencies toward aggression in individuals scoring low on executive function tests. This literature is limited, though, in terms of the groups studied and the measures of executive functions. In this paper, we present data from two s...

The present study aimed to determine whether individuals with long-term schizophrenia have impaired prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to perform intended actions in the future. Three PM tasks (time-, event-, and activity-based) were administered to 60 schizophrenia patients and 60 matched controls. Patients performed significantly more poorly than controls on all three tasks. The...

Although there are several studies on the effects of mental fatigue on task performance, still much is unknown about the cognitive processes that underlie performance deficits under fatigue. In the current study we test the idea that behavioral manifestations of mental fatigue may be linked to compromised executive control. Executive control refers to the ability to regulate perceptual and moto...

The main goal of this study was to investigate the neural substrates of fluid reasoning and visuospatial working memory in adolescents with precocious mathematical ability. The study population comprised two groups of adolescents: 13 math-gifted adolescents and 14 controls with average mathematical skills. Patterns of activation specific to reasoning tasks in math-gifted subjects were examined ...