c.n. e3: event cognition & executive function and decision making

event cognition

describes the mechanisms behind the way we think about and represent events

describe event representations across individuals

we tend to perceive events with remarkable consistency across individuals

we also tend to have common representations of the way events are structured

event segmentations

process of perceiving that one meaningful chunk of experience has ended an another has begun

coarse unit

largest that are natural and meaningful (major changes in overall situation/goal/context/narrative)

fine unit

smallest that are natural and meaningful (individual specific actions that don’t change (individual specific actions that don’t change overall situation)

what causes event boundaries?

changes in space, time, interactions, activity, goals or emotional states, topic of conversation

what can cause an increase in prediction error of event boundaries?

• previous moment didn’t immediately predict the current moment

• people more likely o segment at moments where it is difficult to predict what comes next

segmentation agreement

the extent to which your perceived even boundaries match those of the rest of the sample/group

what is a result of greater segmentation agreement

better event recall

doorway effects

walking through a doorway causes a change in spatiotemporal context which results in an event boundary

what did they find in the study that discovered doorway effect

when you walk through a doorway, your memory for the object you are carrying becomes worse due to the event model being updated

what regions are activated for everyday events, french cinema, and text?

higher order visual areas and parietal areas

what do parietal areas encode?

new spatiotemporal context

which stimuli provided more widespread activation?

french cinema

what areas have shorter event timescales?

early sensory areas

what areas have longer event timescales?

association areas

sensory areas represent what type of information?

information that changes quickly, like information changing on the screen

give a region that is part of association area

posterior medial cortex

association areas are sensitive to what?

context

association areas represent what type of information?

change slower and are closest to human-made annotations of event boundaries

what areas are responsible for “context” during encoding and retrieval?

posterior medial areas

lPFC

top-down cognitive aspects (strategic planning, problem solving, goal-directed decision making)

medial and orbital PFC

emotional/social/value-related aspects (reaching for a donut)

dlPFC

• working memory

• monitoring and manipulating information

• task setting

• problem solving

“hot” executive processes

emotion, affect, reward

“cold” executive processes

“purely cognitive” and top-down

describe the reversal learning paradigm

• initial learning: trial-and-error learning (one shape rewarded not the other)

• reversal learning: switch in which item is rewarded

  • more “hot”

• set shifting: a different aspect of the stimuli is rewarded (lines instead of shapes)

  • more “cold”

what area is involved in reversal learning?

OFC

what area is involved in set shifting?

lateral PFC

reactive cognitive control

• not actively monitoring top-down goal

• less error prone

what area is more involved in reactive cognitive control?

parietal (attention shifting)

proactive cognitive control

• actively monitoring top-down goal

• more effortful, but better performance

what area is more involved in proactive cognitive control?

throughout PFC (especially lateral)

delay discounting

things feel less valuable the more you have to wait for them

more vs less impulsive in delay discounting

• less impulsive can wait and their perceived value doesn’t drop as quickly

• more impulsive are not willing to wait and perceived value drops steeply

subjective value

people differ in their ability to objectively weigh value, and may have different preferences

what areas are active during subjective value

mPFC, posterior cingulate gyrus, ventral striatum

areas involved in immediate choices

medial areas with bottom-up impulse

areas involved in decision making, regardless of delate

lateral regions with top-down control (able to hold on to value signal)

what area is more active when taking the certain gain & gambling in the loss frame

amygdala

what area is more active when overriding usual tendencies

dorsomedial PFC

in those that were less susceptible to framing what area had more activity?

vmPFC