Activity inhibition: A valid linguistic marker of executive functions?

这个项目测试了活动抑制(AI)--说话者或作家使用否定词的频率--是否是一个有效的语言标记，表明(A)对意外或威胁性事件的优先行动、思想和情绪的抑制，以及(B)对此类事件的注意力重新定向。人工智能对行为和健康结果的预测有效性自20世纪60年代以来就在研究中得到了证明，它被假设为抑制动机冲动，但也被证明与对左侧视野中呈现的刺激的注意定向有关，这表明右脑参与其中。这项拟议的研究认为，这两种说法都是正确的，这一说法得到了一篇认知神经科学文献的支持，该文献表明，抑制行动、思想和情绪，以及将注意力重新定向到意想不到或充满情感的刺激，可能会以一种功能整合的方式接触到正确的前额叶皮质。这也是因为有研究表明，在阅读或写作句子时，通过使用否定来重复使用大脑的抑制网络。在7项研究中，该项目将检验人工智能反映抑制和注意力重定向功能的反应性的想法。更具体地说，它的目的是(1)表明随着人工智能的实验增加或减少，抑制和注意重新定向也是如此，(2)复制和扩展早期研究中观察到的人工智能与注意定向的关联，(3)确定对行为、思想和情绪的抑制与人工智能的关联有多强，(4)通过文本分析和实验验证进一步扩展(换句话说)并指定(对于相关句子语境)人工智能的测量，(5)考察源文本(演讲、图片故事、散文)对人工智能有效性的作用，(6)探讨人工智能与其他执行功能测量、人际视角采择和自我报告的自我控制和抑制测量的收敛和区分效度。

This project tests whether activity inhibition (AI) -- the frequency with which speakers or writers use the negation not -- is a valid linguistic marker of (a) the inhibition of prepotent actions, thoughts and emotions in response to unexpected or threatening events and (b) the reorienting of attention to such events. AI, whose predictive validity for behavioral and health outcomes has been documented in research since the 1960s, has been hypothesized to inhibit motivational impulses, but also shown to be linked to attentional orienting to stimuli presented in the left visual field, suggesting a right-hemisphere involvement. The proposed research argues that both accounts are right, informed by a cognitive-neuroscience literature that shows that inhibition of actions, thoughts, and emotions as well as attentional reorienting to unexpected or emotionally charged stimuli engage the right prefrontal cortex, possibly in a functionally integrated manner. It is also informed by research that suggests the reuse of the brain’s inhibition network by the use of negation in reading or writing sentences. In 7 studies, this project will test the idea that AI reflects the responsiveness of the inhibition and attentional reorienting functions. More specifically, it aims at (1) showing that as AI is increased or decreased experimentally, so are inhibition and attentional reorienting, (2) replicating and extending the association of AI and attentional orienting observed in earlier studies, (3) determining how strongly the inhibition of actions, thoughts, and emotions is associated with AI, (4) further expanding (to other words) and specifying (for relevant sentential contexts) the measurement of AI through text analysis and experimental validation, (5) examining the role of the source text (speeches, picture stories, essays) on AI’s validity, and (6) exploring the convergent and discriminant validity of AI vis-à-vis measures of other executive functions and of interpersonal perspective-taking and self-report measures of self-control and inhibition.