Biology subjects

Bompas, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Bompas, A..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2019

Saccade countermanding reflects automatic inhibition as well as top-down cognitive control

Countermanding behavior has long been seen as a cornerstone of executive control - the human ability to selectively inhibit undesirable responses and change plans. In recent years, however, scattered evidence has emerged that stopping behavior is entangled with simpler automatic stimulus-response mechanisms. Here we give flesh to this idea by merging the latest conceptualization of saccadic countermanding with a versatile neural network model of visuo-oculomotor behavior that integrates bottom-up and top-down drives. This model accounts for all fundamental qualitative and quantitative features of saccadic countermanding, including neuronal activity. Importantly, it does so by using the same architecture and parameters as basic visually guided behavior and automatic stimulus-driven interference. Using simulations and new data, we compare the temporal dynamics of saccade countermanding with that of saccadic inhibition (SI), a hallmark effect thought to reflect automatic competition within saccade planning areas. We demonstrate how SI accounts for a large proportion of the saccade countermanding process when using visual signals. We conclude that top-down inhibition acts later, piggy-backing on the quicker automatic inhibition. This conceptualization fully accounts for the known effects of signal features and response modalities traditionally used across the countermanding literature. Moreover, it casts different light on the concept of top-down inhibition, its timing and neural underpinning, as well as the interpretation of stop-signal reaction time, the main behavioral measure in the countermanding literature.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2019

Inability to improve performance with control shows limited access to inner states

Any repeatedly performed action is characterised by endogenous variability, affecting both speed and accuracy - for a large part presumably caused by fluctuations in underlying brain and body states. The current research questions were: 1) whether such states are accessible to us, and 2) whether we can act upon this information to reduce variability. For example, when playing a game of darts, there is an implicit assumption that people can wait to throw until they are in the right perceptual-attentional state. If this is true, taking away the ability to self-pace the game should worsen performance. We first tested precisely this assumption asking participants to play darts in a self-paced and a fixed-paced condition. There was no benefit of self-pacing, showing that participants were unable to use such control to improve their performance and reduce their variability. Next, we replicated these findings in two computer-based tasks, in which participants performed a rapid action-selection and a visual detection task in one self-paced and three forced-paced conditions. Over four different empirical tests, we show that the self-paced condition did not lead to improved performance or reduced variability, nor to reduced temporal dependencies in the reaction time series. Overall, it seems that, if people have any access to their fluctuating performance-relevant inner states, this access is limited and not relevant for upcoming performance.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Reliability and correlates of intra-individual variability in the oculomotor system

Even if all external circumstances are kept equal, the oculomotor system shows intra-individual variability over time, affecting measures such as microsaccade rate, blink rate, pupil size, and gaze position. Recently, some of these measures have been associated with ADHD on a between-subject level. However, it remains unclear to what extent these measures constitute stable individual traits. In the current study, we investigate the intra-individual reliability of these oculomotor features. Combining results over three experiments (> 100 healthy participants), we find that most measures show good intra-individual reliability over different time points (repeatability) as well as over different conditions (generalisation). However, we find evidence against any correlation with self-assessed ADHD tendencies, mind wandering, and impulsivity. As such, the oculomotor system shows reliable intra-individual reliability, but its benefit for investigating self-assessed individual differences in healthy subjects remains unclear. With our results, we highlight the importance of reliability and statistical power when studying between-subject differences.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

The validity and consistency of continuous joystick response in perceptual decision-making.

A computer joystick is an efficient and cost-effective response device for recording continuous movements in psychological experiments. Movement trajectories and other measures from continuous responses have expanded the insights gained from discrete responses (e.g. button presses) by providing unique information on how cognitive processes unfold over time. However, few studies have evaluated the validity of joystick responses with reference to conventional key presses, and response modality can affect cognitive processes. Here, we systematically compared human participants behavioural performance of perceptual decision-making when they responded with either joystick movements or key presses in a four-alternative motion discrimination task. We found evidence that the response modality did not affect raw behavioural measures including decision accuracy and mean reaction time (RT) at the group level. Furthermore, to compare the underlying decision processes between the two response modalities, we fitted a drift-diffusion model of decision-making to individual participants behavioural data. Bayesian analyses of the model parameters showed no evidence that switching from key presses to continuous joystick movements modulated the decision-making process. These results supported continuous joystick actions as a valid apparatus for continuous movements, although we highlighted the need for caution when conducting experiments with continuous movement responses.

neuroscience↗