Hierarchical control of cognitive processes

范德比尔特大学的心理学家戈登·洛根将用看似简单的打字任务来研究“认知控制”，即我们如何计划和执行复杂的行动。 熟练的打字员似乎毫不费力地使用外部脚本（当复制时）或内部生成的计划（当撰写时）以每秒5-6次的按键形式选择适当的运动。 然而，在最近的一次实验中，洛根表明，尽管有如此精湛的技巧，熟练的打字员甚至不知道他们在任何给定的时刻用哪只手按下键。这个演示既聪明又简单：试着只用你的左手打一个句子，只打那些通常用左手打的字母。毫不奇怪，这种指令会减慢人们的速度，但也会使他们的准确性大大降低（产生的错误增加了5-6倍），这表明熟练的打字员根本不知道他们在做什么。 洛根的认知控制理论应用于打字时，假设熟练的打字是两个“嵌套反馈回路”协调的结果。“外部”循环决定了要键入的单词的顺序，而“内部”循环将单词翻译成适当的单词。 这就解释了一个悖论：熟练的打字员并不知道他们用的是哪只手这样基本的东西：内部循环自动地、毫不费力地确定了产生外部循环计划的单词序列所需的按键顺序，但外部循环不知道或不关心内部循环如何执行其单独的任务。 这个项目将研究认知控制的双环模型的三个方面：意识（外环对内环正在做的事情知道多少？），结构（单词或其他层次的组织，如字母或短语，是否作为两个循环之间的接口？），和反馈（外环假设依赖于视觉反馈，而内环假设依赖于动觉反馈）。更好地理解认知控制的机制可能会导致复杂技能的教学和实践方式的改进。 在打字领域，对这一过程的详细理解可能会对键盘和其他文本输入设备的设计产生影响。 随着计算机在现代文化中的普及，打字是工作场所、学校和大学以及休闲活动中的一项基本技能。这个项目也将对认知控制的更广泛的文献产生重要影响，这是卷入了层次处理的争议。外环内环理论为研究自动认知过程和控制认知过程提供了一个新的视角。 该项目将研究重点从过程是否受控转移到过程如何受控。

Psychologist Gordon Logan at Vanderbilt University will use the deceptively simple task of typing to study "cognitive control," that is, how we plan and execute complex actions. Skilled typists appear to effortlessly use an external script (when copying) or an internally generated plan (when composing) to choose the appropriate movement in the form of a key-press 5-6 times per second. However, in a recent experiment, Logan showed that despite such virtuosity, skilled typists do not even know which hand they are using to depress a key at any given moment. The demonstration is clever and simple: try typing a sentence using only your left hand and typing only those letters normally typed with the left hand. Not surprisingly, this instruction slows people down, but it also renders them greatly less accurate (5-6 times more errors are produced), indicating that skilled typists are simply not aware of what they are doing at the most basic level. Logan's theory of cognitive control as applied to typing assumes that proficient typing is the result of the coordination between two "nested feedback loops." The "outer" loop determines the sequence of words to be typed and the "inner" loop translates the words into the appropriate keystrokes. This explains the paradox that skilled typists are not aware of something as basic as which hand they are using: the inner loop automatically and effortlessly determines the sequence of key presses needed to produce the sequence of words planned by the outer loop, but the outer loop does not know or care how the inner loop performs its separate task. This project will examine three aspects of this double-loop model of cognitive control: awareness (how much does the outer loop know about what the inner loop is doing?), structure (do words or some other level of organization, such as letters or phrases, serve as the interface between the two loops?), and feedback (the outer loop is hypothesized to rely on visual feedback while the inner loop is hypothesized to rely on kinesthetic feedback).A better understanding of the mechanisms of cognitive control could lead to improvements in the way complex skills are taught and practiced. In the domain of typing, a detailed understanding of the process could have implications for the design of keyboards and other text-input devices. With the proliferation of computers in modern culture, typewriting is an essential skill in the workplace, in schools and universities, and in leisure activities. This project will also have an important impact on the broader literature on cognitive control, which is embroiled in a controversy over hierarchical processing. The outer-loop inner-loop theory provides a new perspective on research on automatic and controlled cognitive processes, which are often regarded as opposites. This project shifts the research focus from whether processes are controlled to how processes are controlled.