LPC-CNRS, Aix-Marseille Universite, 3 Place Victor Hugo, Bâtiment 9, Case D, 13331, Marseille, France.
Exp Brain Res. 2013 May;227(1):1-8. doi: 10.1007/s00221-012-3397-9. Epub 2013 Apr 19.
Uittenhove and Lemaire (Exp Psychol 59(5):295-301, 2012) found that we are slower when executing a strategy following a difficult strategy than when executing the same strategy following an easier strategy (i.e., strategy sequential difficulty effects). Uittenhove and Lemaire suggested that difficult strategies temporarily reduce available executive capacities, interfering with the next strategy execution. In this study, we used ERP to determine the time course of these effects. In a computational estimation task, we found greater cerebral activities during strategy execution following a more difficult compared to an easier strategy. Interestingly, greater cerebral activities were most apparent immediately after the encoding of the problem and not during encoding or in later stages of processing. This suggests that strategy sequential difficulty effects interfere most with the retrieval of procedures in contrast to execution of these procedures. We discuss implications of these findings for further understanding of execution of cognitive strategies.
乌滕豪维和莱梅尔（Exp Psychol 59(5):295-301, 2012）发现，在执行困难策略之后执行相同的策略比在执行简单策略之后执行相同的策略要慢（即策略顺序难度效应）。乌滕豪维和莱梅尔认为，困难的策略会暂时降低可用的执行能力，从而干扰下一个策略的执行。在这项研究中，我们使用 ERP 来确定这些影响的时间进程。在计算估计任务中，我们发现，在执行更困难的策略后，大脑活动比执行简单策略时更大。有趣的是，更大的大脑活动在问题编码后立即出现，而不是在编码过程中或在处理的后期阶段出现。这表明，与执行这些程序相比，策略顺序难度效应最容易干扰程序的检索。我们讨论了这些发现对进一步理解认知策略执行的意义。
