1,720,973 research outputs found
Cognitive efficiency and circadian typologies: A diurnal study
No full textThe aim was to investigate differences between morning and evening types in the performance variations during the day of four different tasks: visual search, logic reasoning, spatial reasoning, mathematical reasoning. Twelve morning-, 24 intermediate-, and 12 evening-types took part in six consecutive experimental sessions from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. at intervals of 3 h, during which they had to carry out the four types of tasks, give an evaluation of their own cognitive efficiency and subjective alertness, and record body temperature. Significantly different circadian trends between morning and evening types emerged only in the visual search task. In the reasoning tasks no significant differences were observed in the whole day, as if tasks requiring a high operational load involved a cognitive and motivational engagement which can compensate, in normal day-night conditions, the efficiency decrease due to alertness changes. The results obtained on self-evaluation efficiency suggest an efficacy intervention of metacognitive processes of performance monitoring for complex tasks only. Different diurnal activation of the left-hemisphere between morning and evening types was posited
The effects of ongoing activity in time estimation in prospective remembering
No full textTwo experiments examined whether time-based prospective memory performance is influenced by
the continuous or discontinuous nature of an ongoing activity. The first experiment demonstrated that
prospective memory performance was not influenced by the engagement in continuous or discontinuous
ongoing activity. The second experiment demonstrated that a discontinuous ongoing activity
negatively affected prospective memory performance when participants had to execute two timebased
tasks for which the retention intervals partially overlapped. The results suggest that when
individuals are engaged in multiple time-based tasks, a general timing disruption occurs, with a
proactive interference effect resulting in costs that are detrimental to prospective timing
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