Steinborn Michael B, Langner Robert, Huestegge Lynn
Psychologie III, University of Wuerzburg, Röntgenring 11, 97070, Würzburg, Germany.
Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2017 Nov;81(6):1135-1151. doi: 10.1007/s00426-016-0810-1. Epub 2016 Sep 20.
We examined the effect of motivational readiness on cognitive performance. An important but still not sufficiently elaborated question is whether individuals can voluntarily increase cognitive efficiency for an impending target event, given sufficient preparation time. Within the framework of the constant-foreperiod design (comparing reaction time performance in blocks of short and long foreperiod intervals, FPs), we examined the effect of an instruction to try harder (instructional cue: standard vs. effort) in a choice-reaction task on performance speed and variability. Proceeding from previous theoretical considerations, we expected the instruction to speed-up processing irrespective of FP length, while error rate should be increased in the short-FP but decreased in the long-FP condition. Overall, the results confirmed this prediction. Importantly, the distributional (ex-Gaussian and delta plot) analysis revealed that the instruction to try harder decreased distributional skewness (i.e., longer percentiles were more affected), indicating that mobilization ensured temporal performance stability (persistence).
我们研究了动机准备状态对认知表现的影响。一个重要但仍未得到充分阐述的问题是，在有足够准备时间的情况下，个体是否能够为即将到来的目标事件自愿提高认知效率。在恒定前间隔设计的框架内（比较短前间隔和长前间隔组块中的反应时表现，即前间隔，FPs），我们在一个选择反应任务中考察了“更加努力尝试”的指令（指令线索：标准与努力）对表现速度和变异性的影响。基于先前的理论思考，我们预期该指令会加快处理速度，而与前间隔长度无关，同时错误率在短前间隔条件下应会增加，而在长前间隔条件下应会降低。总体而言，结果证实了这一预测。重要的是，分布分析（前高斯分布和增量图）显示，“更加努力尝试”的指令降低了分布偏度（即较长百分位数受影响更大），表明动员确保了时间上的表现稳定性（持续性）。
