The Role of Cue - Target Translation in the Inhibitory Mechanism - Research Proposal Example

? The role of cue-target translation in the inhibitory mechanism Inserts His/her Inserts Grade Inserts Name Date Abstract This paper aims to discuss the role of cue-target translation with a main focus on the inhibition process. Its aim is to understand how the cognitive abilities of human beings act when they are exposed to certain cues and if their behaviour changes when they are triggered by a certain stimulus. It seeks to explain how the mind of a human being works and therefore looks deeper into the task-switching, the mechanism of backward inhibition and the general process of translation. Evidence from other researches is identified and the critique of the authors with opposing views analysed. This topic is focused due to its interest in psychology. Literature review Overview There exist various cues in the world that attract and also control our cognitive abilities. The cues may be classified to be symbolic that is, they are iconic and they may also be verbal. According to the process that occurs in the translation of the cues, they can further be classified to be transparent and non-transparent. According to Engle (2005), transparent cues are those that have a direct relevance to the task that is supposed to be performed while non-transparent ones don’t have the relationship between a cue and the target. This therefore makes it a necessity for the person involved in translation to discern the relationship that exists between the two. This study aims to identify how a certain object is identified, the attention that is given to it and how responses can be switched depending on the stimulus that is available. The behaviour of human beings has also been found to be flexible to the changing demands of the environment. For one to be flexible and translate the cues there is need for cognitive control process that is responsible for one behaving proactively in order to achieve certain goals and perform various tasks. The hypothesis is that there higher switch costs in terms of the reaction time and error rates when there is no control. This has raised an area of concern of understanding backward inhibition. I Purpose of the study The aim of the study is to understand the cognitive psychology of human beings while focusing on the mechanism of backward inhibition that is used as a control measure when one is engaged in switching between two or three main tasks. This is done in order to determine what task is to be given attention and what are to be left for a while. The study seeks to answer the questions as to what aspects of a task are to be inhibited and when the process takes place. The research aims to understand the process of cue-target translation with focus on inhibition. This study comes about due to the identification that human beings are exposed to various tasks and cues which dictate to them what should be done. In order to meet all the tasks, individuals switch from one task to another but do not understand the effect that these type of switches have on them. More occasionally, one ends up performing an irrelevant task and when one discovers this and tries to go back to the relevant task, more time is taken. This makes them solve problems when it is late for them to be implemented. This is why the inhibitory mechanism is explained to enhance understanding. Review of literature Cue-target translation plays a major role in understanding the world around us. It is essential in analysing the relationship that exists between a cue and a target in order to come up with a translation. I the cue-target translation, there needs to be first the process of cue-encoding. This is a process where a cue activates representation in the working memory that is enough to allow performance of a correct task. It requires that there is retrieval of the rules of the task from the long-term memory and their installations to the working memory. Switch costs come about because new cues require use of different paths in order to obtain the task rules. Repetition of cues where there is no switch leads to efficient cue-encoding because the path is easily found. However, translation cannot occur without the cognitive process which makes it essential therefore to look at these processes that aid translation and their role. Inhibition is a mechanism that allows flexible switching of behaviours because it inhibits the performance of the recently performed task. The inhibitory mechanism enables one to change from one mechanism to another. It is important in understanding the cognitive processes because it is considered to be a necessary process in task switching. Various researchers have presented evidence to show that the way in which a task is cued can lead to modulation of backward inhibition. Findings are that the lesser a task is transparent to the cue-target relationship, the higher the level of backward inhibition. Backward inhibition can occur at different stages i.e. when one is getting prepared for the task with the existence of a cue or before responding. It is a cost based on performance that occurs when an individual goes back to a previous task that had been abandoned. It relates to translation of cue in that it asserts that there are slow responses when subjects go back to a task they had switched away from. It is caused by the persistence of a previous mental set to allow switching to a new task. Inhibition comes about in order for individuals to exercise cognitive control. This is a way in which people select and organize their mental states in a chronological manner in order to achieve a certain goal. Selection is of necessity because there are various objects in an environment that could trigger responses which may be irrelevant to the task that one is performing. Failure of selection would lead to slipping of various actions. When one is tied to task goals, then it forms part of the task set of the participants. Sequencing involves selecting problems in time for them to be solved. A new task set is formed that requires attention and it is protected from the previous sets. This study is raised from various findings that switching tasks incurred performance costs which are referred to as switch costs. Inhibition plays a greater role in cognitive psychology especially in memory and what is given attention. It has been found to give explanation of various phenomena of attention and perception. Other studies have found out that when a task is performed after switching, it was usually slower and exposed to errors than when the same task is repeated. The studies found out that during deselecting, a task is inhibited. The state may continue for a while and prevent immediate reaction after an immediate trial. From various researches, increased preparation time would not overcome backward inhibition. There has been lack of clarity however on what gets inhibited when one breaks from one task to another. Inhibition has proved to be more targeted and demand-driven. Evidence has shown that there is no reduction in backward inhibition even when the participants are given longer time to prepare. It is normally measured by the interval that one takes in responding to cues. The way a certain task is cued has proved to have modulation effects in backward inhibition. In various studies that were carried out, the type of cue that was used in carrying out the study was found to have a significant impact on backward inhibition. The cue had a major effect in that participants were found to react faster to iconic cues than verbal cues. This is based on the knowledge that the more transparent a task is the low the level of inhibition. This shows that the verbal cues produced a backward inhibition effect that was absent from iconic cues that were actually transparent to individuals. This was a clear suggestion that the manner in which the target was activated in the working memory affected the inhibition process. This led to the assumption that iconic cues gave direct information while verbal ones had to be translated in a way to come up with useable representation of the target. In studies that involved research, participants who translated verbal cues were found to react slower compared to those who used the iconic cues. The difficulty that one encountered on translation and increased time that one spent on performing a task increased the likelihood that inhibition was to be used. When colour is added to verbal cues in order to speed up the process, backward inhibition still remained to be significant. Various studies also support the act that a visual cue and a visual target could possibly give rise to backward inhibition if the cue did not resemble the target. This was the case because the cue needed to be translated using the available information in order to determine the target that was being described. The study of visual cues to visual targets has proved to give differing results whereby visual cues gave higher backward inhibition than verbal cues. When the target was identical to the cue, no backward inhibition was observed but if the cue and the target had no relation, then backward inhibition became visible. The inhibition can also be brought forth by cue-target processing which also comprises of installing of attention set that is relevant to the working memory. There is clarity that task difficulty is not related to the generation of greater backward inhibition. This is because increased difficulty does not bring about the need of translating the cue. it has been found to occur even where there is modality change in the cue and the target. When an iconic cue is abstract, it requires additional translation which increases the level of the inhibition than a condition where there is a word cue Gardener and (Moore, 2007) .When icon targets are cued using very different visual cues, there is the production of highest level of inhibition. If the cue is difficult to interpret, then there is higher level of inhibition because it brings the need for more translation. Response stages have been found to be more critical than the preparatory stages. From the model of Mayr (2002) it is of the view that the cue helps in recovering the relevant task set from a memory that is long-term. During the retrieval of information, the translation of a current task gets competition from a recently performed translation in the working memory which brings conflict to the cognitive system. This conflict I turn triggers the control mechanism this is a process that takes place when a cue is presented which means it occurs even before a target is presented or response induced. Various hypotheses have been established in relation to cue translation and conflict. Many researchers have pointed out that when a stimulus is applied, the process of cue translation generates a greater conflict and higher backward inhibition. What has not been clear is the reaction of people when they encounter a no-go signal cue. The production of the usual type of signal is clear but there exists a possibility of cognitive resetting that takes place which causes disruption to all on-going working memory processes. Backward inhibition has been found to be tied to the top-own acts of control. This is because a cue is introduced beforehand and also has stimulus display allowing people to prepare in advance for the cue-target translation. In the context of task switching, individual adopt a switching set which prevents them from repeating the previous response (Blackwell, 2010). This produces the mixing cost and the conditions which they should do so. Changing of stimulus from one trial to another is taken to be a cue for switching responses. The mixing cost is normally higher in a relevant repeat condition. Mixing cost normally comes about from task repetition trials in mixed task blocks. The top-down condition applies the ideology where there is translation of the cue which forms a target representation hence leading to the process of inhibiting the previous target. The inhibitory mechanism is employed during the inter-trial conflict when one is involved in the process of task switching (Shepherd, 2009).People normally employ the mechanism at the appearance of the locus of conflict. Conflict can occur when one is processing the cue to know what it means. It also arises from the need to translate the cue in an efficient manner to enable one to retrieve the relevant set of task from the long-term memory to the working memory. A task set is how cognitive processes are organized which enables an individual to act according to what the task requires (Hudson 1999). In order to understand the cognitive processes, it all starts with task preparation. This is a process that improves performance of an individual when one knows which task should be done even before the target stimulus comes in. Performance of a task depends on the type of applied cues. Various studies have shown that this depends on whether the cues used are transparent or non-transparent. Transparent cues indicate the relevant task directly. In non-transparent cues, one has to learn the relationship between the cue and the task because it is arbitrary. This notion brings in backward inhibition as a measure of control when translating a cue to its relevant studies. Switch costs have been found to be smaller in transparent cues as compared to non-transparent cues. However, non-inhibitory accounts have been observed which are responsible in countering the effects of inhibition. Researchers argue that a mechanism needs to reduce the activation of the current task in order to allow the cognitive system to switch to a different task. In inhibition, the issue of negative priming comes up. This is a situation where there is worse performance when attending to stimuli that had been previously ignored as compared to new stimuli. Switch costs are normally regarded to be a drop in performance. Task switching incorporates inhibitory mechanisms in that when one performs a certain task, inhibition of an irrelevant task continues to persist for a while such that when the task becomes relevant, it becomes more difficult to perform it. Other related researches state that inhibition degree gets adjusted depending on the level of the response conflict that is brought by a stimulus. Assessment of task inhibition can be done by using a method that switches between three tasks. Comparison is then made between when one switches back to a certain task after an intermediate task and switching back after two intermediate tasks. Inhibition can be seen in task sets that differ in their modality of response. A critique to this study argues that inhibition is mainly done to the representation of a task and not that of the cue. However, the authors of the critique fail to note the expected repetition costs that occur under standard conditions in which there is repetition of both the cues and the tasks. Conclusion From the various literature reviews, it is evident that the inhibition process is critical to the cognitive processes. The relationship between the cue and the target plays a greater role in determining if inhibition is to take place or not. As human beings, one situation or another may force a person to switch tasks. This is necessary in order to solve those tasks that are demanding first and inhibit the other that are not urgent to the inactive memory. There needs to be efficient encoding of a cue in order to come up with a strategy that is needed. Since it has been clear that the cost of performing an abandoned task is high, then it is wise to do tasks to completion or repetition. This will make one to be able to do the tasks faster and also do them efficiently. References Blackwell, K. A., & Munakata, Y. (2010). Mechanisms of cognitive control: Contributions from working memory and inhibition to task switching. New York: McGraw-Hill. Engle, R. W. (2005). Cognitive limitations in aging and psychopathology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gardner, F. L., & Moore, Z. E. (2007). The psychology of enhancing human performance the mindfulness-acceptance-commitment (MAC) approach. New York: Springer Pub.. Hudson, L. (1975). Human beings: an introduction to the psychology of human experience. London: Cape. HuI?bner, R. (2008). Multiple response codes play specific roles in response selection and inhibition under task switching. Konstanz: Bibliothek der UniversitaI?t Konstanz. Shepherd, C. (2009). The effect on response complexity on task-switching behavior by Christina Shepherd.. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University. Read More