The Role of Automaticity in the Cognitive Control of Human Action - A Magnetoencephalographic Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Prominent theories on human action control propose two parallel brain processes: one fast and automatic, the other slow and deliberative. The slow, conscious processes are thought to be mediated by frontal theta (4-8 Hz) oscillations. One theory suggests that theta acts as an alarm signaling the need for control, and that frontal areas simply maintain action goals, without sensitivity to behavioural differences for achieving those goals. In order to test these hypotheses of frontal theta and executive function, three experiments were conducted. First, to examine the sensitivity of theta to behavioural differences in goal-directed actions, we compared magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings of theta activity in twelve healthy adults during two similar tasks: Go/No-Go and Go/Switch, requiring global and selective inhibition, respectively. We observed no differences between these two types of inhibitory control, but did observe differences during error responses. We hypothesized that error-related theta differences may have reflected covert differences in cognitive requirements between the two types of inhibition. Based on these results, a second study was designed to modulate cognitive requirements using the well-defined measure of cognitive effort, pupil diameter (PD), in twelve healthy adults. We developed a novel task combining implicit stimulus pattern learning with a Go/Switch task. The results demonstrated that subjects quickly learned the pattern without conscious awareness. Furthermore, a distinction between PD and behaviour was observed, highlighting the limitations of behavioural measures alone in capturing cognitive processes during task performance. Finally, in order to quantify theta during modulations in cognitive control, the third experiment was conducted on sixteen healthy adults performing the implicit Go/Switch task during MEG and PD recordings. Theta modulations were strongly correlated (r = 0.91) with PD, and therefore inferred to reflect cognitive effort. Furthermore, theta demonstrated a relationship with signals in the sensorimotor cortex. These results suggest a functional role for frontal theta oscillations in cognitive processes, including sensitivity to cognitive load but not behavioural differences while coordinating responses within the sensorimotor cortex. Furthermore, increased theta during implicitly learned unconscious responding demonstrated that conscious awareness was not required for cognitive effort. These results are discussed with respect to theories of action control.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".