Cognitive influences on biosecurity measure compliance during a global pandemic.

Introduction: During the first years of the pandemic, COVID-19 forced governments worldwide to take drastic measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Some of these measures included mandatory confinements, constant use of masks, and social distancing. Despite these measures being mandatory in many countries and the abundance of evidence on their effectiveness at slowing the spread of the virus, many people failed to comply with them. Methods: This research explored the role of cognitive factors in predicting compliance with COVID-19 safety measures across two separate studies. Building on earlier work demonstrating the relevance of cognitive processes in health behaviour, this study aimed to identify key predictors of adherence to safety guidelines during the pandemic. Utilising hierarchical regression models, we investigated the influence of age, sex, cognitive control, cognitive flexibility (Study 1), working memory, psychological health, and beliefs about COVID-19 (Study 2) on compliance to biosafety measures. Results: Demographic variables and cognitive control were significant predictors of compliance in both studies. However, cognitive flexibility and working memory did not improve the models' predictive capacities. In Study 2, integrating measures of psychological health and beliefs regarding COVID-19 severity significantly improved the model. Further, interaction effects between age and other variables also enhanced the predictive value. Discussion: The findings emphasise the significant role cognitive control, age, psychological health, and perceptions about COVID-19 play in shaping compliance behaviour, highlighting avenues for targeted interventions to improve public health outcomes during a pandemic.

Fighting fair: community perspectives on the fairness of performance enhancement in esports.

Aims: This study aims to explore community perspectives on enhancer usage in competitive gaming and esports, focusing on the perception of fairness and concerns about various potential performance enhancers. Methods: We conducted both qualitative and quantitative surveys to understand the competitive gaming community's opinions on different types of performance enhancers and their potential impact on esports. A thematic analysis was performed to identify key themes in how players rationalize their opinions. Conclusions: The gaming community differentiates between potential performance enhancers based on how problematic they are for the esports scene, with the most concern surrounding hard drugs, pharmaceuticals, and brain stimulation interventions. Participants who are more invested in competitive gaming tend to be more sceptical of enhancers and express greater concerns. Four themes were identified in the thematic analysis: (1) risk, (2) morality, (3) enhancer effects, and (4) regulation. To increase acceptance and perceived legitimacy in decision-making, it is recommended that regulators engage a variety of stakeholders in transparent decision-making processes when forming tournament rules and regulations. This will help address the fragmented regulatory landscape and prevent potential differences in the perception of tournament winners based on the governing body supervising the competition.

Anodal tDCS of the left inferior parietal cortex enhances memory for correct information without affecting recall of misinformation.

False memories during testimony are an enormous challenge for criminal trials. Exposure to post-event misinformation can lead to inadvertent creation of false memories, known as the misinformation effect. We investigated anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) during recall testing to enhance accurate recall while addressing the misinformation effect. Participants (N = 60) watched a television series depicting a fictional terrorist attack, then received an audio recording with misinformation, consistent information, and control information. During cued recall testing, participants received anodal or sham tDCS. Results revealed a robust misinformation effect in both groups, with participants falsely recalling on average 26.6% of the misinformed items. Bayesian statistics indicated substantial evidence in favour of the null hypothesis that there was no difference between groups in the misinformation effect. Regarding correct recall however, the anodal group exhibited significantly improved recall for items from the original video. Together, these results demonstrate that anodal tDCS of the left IPL enhances correct recall of the episodes from the original event without affecting false recall of misinformation. The findings support the IPL's role in recollection and source attribution of episodic memories.

A touching advantage: cross-modal stop-signals improve reactive response inhibition.

The ability to inhibit an already initiated response is crucial for navigating the environment. However, it is unclear which characteristics make stop-signals more likely to be processed efficiently. In three consecutive studies, we demonstrate that stop-signal modality and location are key factors that influence reactive response inhibition. Study 1 shows that tactile stop-signals lead to better performance compared to visual stop-signals in an otherwise visual choice-reaction task. Results of Study 2 reveal that the location of the stop-signal matters. Specifically, if a visual stop-signal is presented at a different location compared to the visual go-signal, then stopping performance is enhanced. Extending these results, study 3 suggests that tactile stop-signals and location-distinct visual stop-signals retain their performance enhancing effect when visual distractors are presented at the location of the go-signal. In sum, these results confirm that stop-signal modality and location influence reactive response inhibition, even in the face of concurrent distractors. Future research may extend and generalize these findings to other cross-modal setups.

Effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation on reactive response inhibition.

Reactive response inhibition cancels impending actions to enable adaptive behavior in ever-changing environments and has wide neuropsychiatric implications. A canonical paradigm to measure the covert inhibition latency is the stop-signal task (SST). To probe the cortico-subcortical network underlying motor inhibition, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been applied over central nodes to modulate SST performance, especially to the right inferior frontal cortex and the presupplementary motor area. Since the vast parameter spaces of SST and TMS enabled diverse implementations, the insights delivered by emerging TMS-SST studies remain inconclusive. Therefore, a systematic review was conducted to account for variability and synthesize converging evidence. Results indicate certain protocol specificity through the consistent perturbations induced by online TMS, whereas offline protocols show paradoxical effects on different target regions besides numerous null effects. Ancillary neuroimaging findings have verified and dissociated the underpinning network dynamics. Sources of heterogeneity in designs and risk of bias are highlighted. Finally, we outline best-practice recommendations to bridge methodological gaps and subserve the validity as well as replicability of future work.

No effects of 1 Hz offline TMS on performance in the stop-signal game.

Stopping an already initiated action is crucial for human everyday behavior and empirical evidence points toward the prefrontal cortex playing a key role in response inhibition. Two regions that have been consistently implicated in response inhibition are the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the more superior region of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The present study investigated the effect of offline 1 Hz transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the right IFG and DLPFC on performance in a gamified stop-signal task (SSG). We hypothesized that perturbing each area would decrease performance in the SSG, albeit with a quantitative difference in the performance decrease after stimulation. After offline TMS, functional short-term reorganization is possible, and the domain-general area (i.e., the right DLPFC) might be able to compensate for the perturbation of the domain-specific area (i.e., the right IFG). Results showed that 1 Hz offline TMS over the right DLPFC and the right IFG at 110% intensity of the resting motor threshold had no effect on performance in the SSG. In fact, evidence in favor of the null hypothesis was found. One intriguing interpretation of this result is that within-network compensation was triggered, canceling out the potential TMS effects as has been suggested in recent theorizing on TMS effects, although the presented results do not unambiguously identify such compensatory mechanisms. Future studies may result in further support for this hypothesis, which is especially important when studying reactive response in complex environments.

A proof-of-concept study exploring the effects of impulsivity on a gamified version of the stop-signal task in children.

This proof-of-concept study provides an appraisal of a remotely administered gamified Stop-Signal Task (gSST) for future use in studies using child sample. Performance on the standard Stop-Signal (SST) task has been shown previously to differentiate attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder groups from controls. As is the case with the SST, it was envisaged that those with greater impulsivity would perform worse than those with lower levels of impulsivity in the gSST. The potential advantage of the gSST is that it could be perceived as less monotonous than the original SST and has the potential to provide higher data quality in child samples, however future research will need to be conducted to determine this. The gSST was administered remotely via video chat to 30 child participants within a community sample aged 8-12 to investigate the effect of ADHD symptoms and intrinsic motivation on gSST performance. Qualitative data was collected based on feedback from participants to gain insight into how the gSST was received by participants. A positive correlation was observed between impulsive/hyperactivity and gSST performance, however there was insufficient evidence to suggest that impulsivity predicted performance. With regards to accuracy, results suggested that impulsivity level significantly predicted the rate of go-omission errors. No relationships were observed between intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI) subscales and performance or IMI and impulsivity. Nevertheless, mean IMI scores were overarchingly high for each of the IMI subscales, suggesting that regardless of performance and/or level of impulsive behaviour, the child sample obtained in this study demonstrated high levels of intrinsic motivation, which was supported by the predominantly positive subjective feedback provided by the child participants. The present study provides some evidence based on quantitative and qualitative results for the efficacy of gSST for use with children. Future research with a larger sample of children is warranted to examine how performance on the SST and gSST compare/differ.

Time-dependent effects of acute stress on working memory performance: A systematic review and hypothesis.

Laboratory procedures such as the Trier Social Stress Test or the (Socially Evaluated) Cold Pressor Test have been used to investigate working memory performance under stress. Researchers so far have reported a diverse spectrum of stress effects (including the lack thereof) on working memory tasks. We conducted a systematic review of the effect acute stress on working memory performance in standardized laboratory procedures. An overview of the existing literature suggests that acute stress affects working memory in a time-dependent manner, presumably due to the differing time scales of the main stress-reactive hormones involved. Based on the empirical evidence, we hypothesize that the immediate stress-induced release of noradrenaline decreases working memory performance within the first 10 min post stress. In addition, rapid cortisol effects impair working memory at a later time-interval beginning about 25 min post stress. We outline future research directions which could further explore the implications of our insights, as for example combined pharmacological and naturalistic stressor interventions.

The influence of tDCS on perceived bouncing/streaming.

Processing ambiguous situations is a constant challenge in everyday life and sensory input from different modalities needs to be integrated to form a coherent mental representation on the environment. The bouncing/streaming illusion can be studied to provide insights into the ambiguous perception and processing of multi-modal environments. In short, the likelihood of reporting bouncing rather than streaming impressions increases when a sound coincides with the moment of overlap between two moving disks. Neuroimaging studies revealed that the right posterior parietal cortex is crucial in cross-modal integration and is active during the bouncing/streaming illusion. Consequently, in the present study, we used transcranial direct current stimulation to stimulate this brain area. In the active stimulation conditions, a 9 cm2 electrode was positioned over the P4-EEG position and the 35 cm2 reference positioned over the left upper arm. The stimulation lasted 15 min. Each participant did the bouncing/streaming task three times: before, during and after anodal or sham stimulation. In a sample of N = 60 healthy, young adults, we found no influence of anodal tDCS. Bayesian analysis showed strong evidence against tDCS effects. There are two possible explanations for the finding that anodal tDCS over perceptual areas did not modulate multimodal integration. First, upregulation of multimodal integration is not possible using tDCS over the PPC as the integration process already functions at maximum capacity. Second, prefrontal decision-making areas may have overruled any modulated input from the PPC as it may not have matched their decision-making criterion and compensated for the modulation.

The (Gami)fictional Ego-Center: Projecting the Location of the Self Into an Avatar.

A rich body of research suggests that self-associated stimuli are preferentially processed and therefore responses to such stimuli are typically faster and more accurate. In addition, people have an understanding of what they consider their "Self" and where it is located, namely near the head and upper torso-further boosting the processing of self-related stimuli if they are presented near the felt location of the self. We were interested in whether the same mechanism can be found when people transfer their "Self" into a static avatar. We investigated this in two studies with N = 33 and N = 39 young, healthy adults, respectively. Taken together, the results showed that (i) people indeed show enhanced processing for self-avatar-related stimuli and (ii) that self-associations are stronger if the to-be-associated stimuli are closer to the avatar's upper torso-suggesting some kind of a projected location of the self in the avatar. This implies that attention is not equally distributed across the avatar. Beyond a theoretical level, this also has implications for practical use. For example, digital games opting for a non-traditional user interface where information is displayed on or in the direct vicinity of the character should take this effect into account when choosing which information to present where (i.e., present the most crucial piece of information close to the self-center of the avatar).

More than skin deep: about the influence of self-relevant avatars on inhibitory control.

One important aspect of cognitive control is the ability to stop a response in progress and motivational aspects, such as self-relevance, which may be able to influence this ability. We test the influence of self-relevance on stopping specifically if increased self-relevance enhances reactive response inhibition. We measured stopping capabilities using a gamified version of the stop-signal paradigm. Self-relevance was manipulated by allowing participants to customize their game avatar (Experiment 1) or by introducing a premade, self-referential avatar (Experiment 2). Both methods create a motivational pull that has been shown to increase motivation and identification. Each participant completed one block of trials with enhanced self-relevance and one block without enhanced self-relevance, with block order counterbalanced. In both experiments, the manipulation of self-relevance was effective in a majority of participants as indicated by self-report on the Player-Identification-Scale, and the effect was strongest in participants that completed the self-relevance block first. In those participants, the degree of subjectively experienced that self-relevance was associated with improvement in stopping performance over the course of the experiment. These results indicate that increasing the degree to which people identify with a cognitive task may induce them to exert greater, reactive inhibitory control. Consequently, self-relevant avatars may be used when an increase in commitment is desirable such as in therapeutic or training settings.

Effects of single-session transcranial direct current stimulation on reactive response inhibition.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is widely used to explore the role of various cortical regions for reactive response inhibition. In recent years, tDCS studies reported polarity-, time- and stimulation-site dependent effects on response inhibition. Given the large parameter space in which study designs, tDCS procedures and task procedures can differ, it is crucial to systematically explore the existing tDCS literature to increase the current understanding of potential modulatory effects and limitations of different approaches. We performed a systematic review on the modulatory effects of tDCS on response inhibition as measured by the Stop-Signal Task. The final dataset shows a large variation in methodology and heterogeneous effects of tDCS on performance. The most consistent result across studies is a performance enhancement due to anodal tDCS over the right prefrontal cortex. Partially sub-optimal choices in study design, methodology and lacking consistency in reporting procedures may impede valid conclusions and obscured the effects of tDCS on response inhibition in some previous studies. Finally, we outline future directions and areas to improve research.

Transcranial direct current stimulation over the left anterior temporal lobe during memory retrieval differentially affects true and false recognition in the DRM task.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a form of non-invasive brain stimulation that has been used to modulate human brain activity and cognition. One area which has not yet been extensively explored using tDCS is the generation of false memories. In this study, we combined the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task with stimulation of the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) during retrieval. This area has been shown to be involved in semantic processing in general and retrieval of false memories in the DRM paradigm in particular. During stimulation, 0.7 mA were applied via a 9 cm² electrode over the left ATL, with the 35 cm² return electrode placed over the left deltoid. We contrasted the effects of cathodal, anodal, and sham stimulation, which were applied in the recognition phase of the experiment on a sample of 78 volunteers. Results showed impaired recognition of true memories after both anodal and cathodal stimulation in comparison to sham stimulation, suggesting a reduced signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, the results revealed enhanced false recognition of concept lure items during cathodal stimulation compared to anodal stimulation, indicating a polarity-dependent impact of tDCS on false memories in the DRM task. The pathway by which tDCS modulated false recognition remains unclear: stimulation may have changed the activation of irrelevant lures or affected the weighting and monitoring of lure activations. Nevertheless, these results are a first step towards using brain stimulation to decrease false memories. Practical implications of the findings for real-life settings, for example, in the courtroom, need to be addressed in future work.

Dual-tDCS over the right prefrontal cortex does not modulate stop-signal task performance.

Stopping an already initiated action is crucial for human everyday behavior and empirical evidence points toward the prefrontal cortex playing a key role in response inhibition. Two regions that have been consistently implicated in response inhibition are the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the more superior region of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The present study targets both regions with non-invasive brain stimulation to investigate their role in response inhibition. Thus dual-prefrontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was applied to both IFG and DLPFC in a repeated measures design and compared to sham tDCS. Specifically, 9 cm2 electrodes were positioned over both IFG and DLPFC in all groups. The active stimulation groups received off-line, anodal or cathodal tDCS over the IFG and opposite polarity tDCS of the DLPFC, while the sham stimulation group received short stimulation at the start, middle and end of the supposed 20-min stimulation period. Before and after tDCS, subjects' inhibition capabilities were probed using the stop-signal task (SST). In a final sample of N = 45, participants were randomly split into three groups and received three different stimulation protocols. Results indicated that dual-frontal tDCS did not influence performance as compared to sham stimulation. This null result was confirmed using Bayesian analysis. This result is discussed against the background of the limitations of the present study as well as the potential theoretical implications.

Perturbation of the right prefrontal cortex disrupts interference control.

Resolving cognitive interference is central for successful everyday cognition and behavior. The Stroop task is a classical measure of cognitive interference. In this task, participants have to resolve interference on a trial-by-trial basis and performance is also influenced by the trial history, as reflected in sequence effects. Previous neuroimaging studies have associated the left and right prefrontal cortex with successful performance in the Stroop task. Yet, the causal relevance of both regions for interference processing remains largely unclear. We probed the functional relevance of the left and right prefrontal cortex for interference control. In three sessions, 25 healthy participants received online repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and sham stimulation over the vertex. During each session, participants completed a verbal-response Stroop task. Relative to sham rTMS and rTMS over the left prefrontal cortex, rTMS over the right prefrontal cortex selectively disrupted the Stroop sequence effect (i.e., the congruency sequence effect; CSE). This effect was specific to sequential modulations of interference since rTMS did not affect the Stroop performance in the ongoing trial. Our results demonstrate the functional relevance of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex for the processing of interference control. This finding points towards process-specific lateralization within the prefrontal cortex. The observed process- and site-specific TMS effect provides new insights into the neurophysiological underpinnings of Stroop task performance and more general, the role of the prefrontal cortex in the processing of interference control.

Cathodal tDCS increases stop-signal reaction time.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive method of modulating human brain activity and potentially alters performance in cognitive tasks. Often it is assumed that effects of tDCS modulation depend on the polarity-anodal stimulation typically boost cognitive processes whereas cathodal stimulation hampers them. While most tDCS research focusses on the effects of anodal stimulation, cathodal tDCS effects are underexplored. In the present study, cathodal tDCS over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) was used to potentially hamper the response inhibition process as measured by the stop-signal task (SST). A 9 cm2 cathode was always positioned over the rDLPFC while the 35 cm2 anode was placed over the left deltoid. We contrasted a cathodal stimulation condition (that is assumed to reduce neural processing) with sham stimulation and expected a decrease in SST performance after cathodal tDCS, as evidenced by an increase in stop-signal reaction time (SSRT). In a sample of N = 45 healthy adults, a significant Time × tDCS condition interaction emerged, indicating an increase in SSRT after cathodal tDCS. In a recent study by Friehs and Frings (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2018), using a similar study design and stimulation protocol, single-session anodal tDCS over the rDLPFC was used to enhance SST performance as indicated by an acceleration of SSRT. In concert, these results suggest that response inhibition is tied to the neural state of the rDLPFC.

Offline beats online: transcranial direct current stimulation timing influences on working memory.

The n-back task is an established measure of an individual's working memory. In this task, participants have to continuously update their working memory to react to a stimulus correctly. For the verbal n-back task in particular, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) plays a key role in working memory updating and a higher activation of the lDLPFC has been linked to an increase in performance. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been used extensively to investigate its effect on working memory but it remains unclear whether online or offline tDCS produces the largest modulation of task performance. To tackle this question, we used anodal tDCS to stimulate the lDLPFC in a repeated measures design and compared offline, online and sham stimulation. A 9 cm anode was always placed over the lDLPFC while the 35 cm cathode was positioned over the left deltoid. In a sample of N = 63 healthy adults, we found a significantly larger performance improvement, in correct reaction times as well as accuracy rates, after offline tDCS compared to online or sham stimulation. This pattern of results provides evidence that the stimulation timing plays a crucial role in tDCS application and it confirms the role of the lDLPFC in verbal working memory performance.

Pimping inhibition: Anodal tDCS enhances stop-signal reaction time.

The stop-signal task (SST) is assumed to reliably measure response inhibition; specifically, in this task participants sometimes have to withhold a response according to the onset of a sudden cue. The response-stopping process is estimated by a stochastic model that delivers the stop-signal reaction time (SSRT; Verbruggen & Logan, 2009), that is, the latency to inhibit prepotent responses. The right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) plays a key role in goal directed cognitive control in general and particularly an increased activation has been associated with better SST performance (that is with shorter SSRT). We stimulated the rDLPFC in a prepost design via transcranial DC stimulation (tDCS). A 9 cm2 anode was always positioned over the rDLPFC while the 35 cm2 cathode was placed over the left deltoid. We contrasted an anodal stimulation condition (that is assumed to enhance neural processing) with sham stimulation and expected an increase in inhibitory functions after anodal tDCS, as evidenced by a decrease in SSRT. In a sample of N = 56 healthy adults, we found a significant Time × tDCS-Condition interaction in the expected direction. Control analysis confirmed that the statistically significant decrease in SSRT after anodal tDCS was not due to generally faster reaction times. These results confirm the role of the rDLPFC for cognitive inhibition processes and further suggest that inhibition is not a fixed resource but depends on the current state of the PFC. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Single session tDCS over the left DLPFC disrupts interference processing.

Whether single session tDCS can impact upon cognition in healthy subjects is currently a heated debate against the background of inconsistent results. In view of the current methodological discussion concerning tDCS we developed an alternative approach to measure effects of single session tDCS on the Stroop task. The left DLPFC was stimulated in a pre-post design using a new electrode set-up (a 9 cm2 electrode was placed over the left DLPFC while a 35 cm2 was placed over the parieto-occipital cortex) contrasting anodal versus cathodal stimulation. The Stroop task was optimized concerning confounding variables that were not controlled in previous attempts to measure the effects of single-session tDCS on the Stroop task. In our sample of N = 32 healthy students we observed a significant single session tDCS effect on the Stroop effect in the error data as in our study cathodal stimulation as compared to anodal stimulation of the left DLPFC disrupted interference processing. This result confirms previous studies suggesting that neuromodulation of the left DLPFC impacts interference processing. Single-session tDCS can impact upon cognitive processes. A rigorous methodical approach is emphasized as the effects seem to be only of small to medium size.