Capturing Control Dynamics Via Eye-Movements: General and Age-Comparative Analyse

描述（由申请人提供）：对感知，思想和行动的认知控制使我们能够通过保持不相关的信息来完成任务。控制的成功与否在很大程度上取决于其动态特性。它需要迅速应对即将到来的挑战，如需要灵活的变革，或应对关键的触发事件，如冲突的经历，但它也需要能够从过去的控制事件中获益。动态控制缺陷与普遍的临床障碍有关，包括注意力缺陷/多动症、精神分裂症或抑郁症状。此外，控制动力学在整个成年人的生命周期中发生变化，这种变化还没有得到很好的理解，并且在多任务处理的情况下变得特别相关。为了充分理解完整和缺陷控制，我们需要 跟踪控制的动态是如何随着时间的推移而展开的。本申请的一个中心主张是，结合适当的实验范例和分析技术的眼动跟踪可以提供具有必要精度的动态信息。有了这些分析工具，我们在这里研究的一般假设，局部控制动态深刻影响全球控制设置。具体来说，我们建议，控制操作要么在维护模式，强调稳定的行为模式，或在更新模式，强调灵活的变化。此外，我们假设，老年人的具体困难，在多任务处理的情况下产生的过度使用的更新模式，这反过来又有普遍的“下游”的影响，局部控制现象。使用我们基于眼动追踪的分析工具，我们以三种不同的方式测试这些一般假设。首先，我们看看采用注意设置的精确的短期和长期的时间动态，以及这些动态如何作为控制模式和年龄的函数而变化。第二，我们第一次研究了干扰是如何影响年轻人和老年人的认知活动的。第三，我们使用眼动来直接评估个人何时进行更新，从而使我们能够确定更新操作的前因和后果，以及为什么老年人经常过度参与更新。因此，这项工作解决了关于思想和行动的灵活控制以及其中年龄差异的性质的实质性问题，但也为控制研究带来了一套新的方法论工具。这些工具将大大提高研究人员捕捉控制的动态本质的精度。在我们使用现代数字媒体的方式中，多任务处理和中断是一个无所不在的现实。老年人难以同时处理多项任务，造成了新出现的数字鸿沟，可能限制老年人的社会参与或获得重要的保健工具。本项目所获得的信息将有助于多任务环境或有针对性的培训程序的设计。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cognitive control over perception, thought, and action allows us to stay on task by keeping irrelevant information at bay. Whether control is successful or not largely depends on its dynamic properties. It needs to respond promptly to upcoming challenges, such as the need for flexible change, or to critical triggering events, such as the experience of conflict, but it also needs to be able to profit from past control events. Deficits i dynamic control are linked to prevalent clinical disorders, including attention deficit/hyperactiviy disorder, schizophrenia, or depressive symptoms. Moreover, control dynamics change across the adult life span in ways that are not well understood and that become particularly relevant in multi-tasking situations. In order to fully understand both intact and deficient control we need to track how the dynamics of control actually unfold over time. One central claim of this application is that eye tracking combined with adequate experimental paradigms and analytic techniques can provide dynamic information with the necessary precision. With these analytic tools, we examine here the general hypothesis that local control dynamics are profoundly affected global control settings. Specifically, we propose that control operates either in a maintenance mode, emphasizing stable behavioral patterns, or in an updating mode, emphasizing flexible change. Furthermore, we hypothesize that older adults' specific difficulties in multi-tasking situations arise from on overuse of the updating mode, which in turn has pervasive "down-stream" effects on local control phenomena. Using our eye-tracking based analytic tools; we test these general hypotheses in three different ways. First, we look at the precise short-term and longer-term temporal dynamics of adopting attentional settings and how these dynamics change as a function of control modes and age. Second, we examine for the first time how exactly interruptions affect cognitive activity in young and old adults. Third, we use eye-movements to directly assess when individuals engage in updating, thus allowing us to determine both antecedents and consequences of updating operations, as well as why older adults often dramatically over-engage in updating. Thus, this work addresses substantive questions about flexible control of thought and action and about the nature of age differences therein, but also brings a new set of methodological tools to the study of control. These tools will substantially enhance the precision with which researchers can capture the dynamic nature of control. Multitasking and interruptions are an omnipresent reality in the way we use modern digital media. Difficulties with multitasking in older adults contribute to the emerging digital divide, potentially constraining seniors' societal participation or access to important health-care tools. The information gained in this project will be useful for the design of multi-task environments or targeted training procedures.