Weakley Alyssa, Schmitter-Edgecombe Maureen
Department of Psychology.
Neuropsychology. 2019 Jan;33(1):1-12. doi: 10.1037/neu0000481. Epub 2018 Jul 23.
Interruptions are ubiquitous in everyday life, and recovering from interruptions requires several cognitive processes working in tandem. In this study, we assessed the effects of an interruption on the performance of older individuals with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) completing everyday tasks in a naturalistic apartment setting.
Thirty-two persons with MCI and 64 cognitively healthy older adults (HOA) completed two different sets of everyday activities, of which one received an interruption. Participants also completed tests assessing cognitive constructs thought to be important in interruption recovery including retrospective memory, prospective memory, planning, working memory, and executive function.
As a consequence of an interruption, participants with MCI took longer to complete primary task demands and made more substitution errors, but did not make more omission errors. In contrast, an interruption led HOAs to make more omission errors, but their time on task was not affected. Results from a hierarchical linear regression suggest that the ecologically valid interruption task time was more predictive of everyday functional status than the traditional neuropsychological measures.
Results suggest that a brief task interruption taxed cognitive resources of both MCI and HOA groups, but was more detrimental to MCI in terms of time on task and total errors committed. Participant groups appeared to use a speed-accuracy trade-off to mitigate negative effects, where HOAs emphasized speed and MCI participants focused on accuracy. Amount of cognitive engagement/disengagement was also theorized to have played a role, where MCI may have maintained information online throughout the interruption, and HOAs disengaged and reengaged resulting in worse reactivation of goals. Although MCI held onto task goals, their execution of details was imperfect over the interruption delay resulting in substitution errors likely due to further taxed executive abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
日常生活中干扰无处不在，从干扰中恢复需要多个认知过程协同工作。在本研究中，我们评估了干扰对患有和未患有轻度认知障碍（MCI）的老年人在自然主义公寓环境中完成日常任务表现的影响。
32名MCI患者和64名认知健康的老年人（HOA）完成了两组不同的日常活动，其中一组受到干扰。参与者还完成了评估在干扰恢复中被认为重要的认知结构的测试，包括回顾性记忆、前瞻性记忆、计划、工作记忆和执行功能。
由于受到干扰，MCI患者完成主要任务需求的时间更长，且出现更多替代错误，但遗漏错误并未增多。相比之下，干扰导致HOA出现更多遗漏错误，但他们完成任务的时间未受影响。分层线性回归结果表明，与传统神经心理学测量相比，生态有效干扰任务时间对日常功能状态的预测性更强。
结果表明，短暂的任务干扰消耗了MCI组和HOA组的认知资源，但在完成任务的时间和总错误方面对MCI的损害更大。参与者组似乎采用了速度-准确性权衡来减轻负面影响，其中HOA强调速度，MCI参与者则注重准确性。认知参与/脱离的程度也被认为起到了作用，MCI可能在整个干扰过程中在线维持信息，而HOA则脱离并重新参与，导致目标的重新激活更差。尽管MCI坚持任务目标，但他们在干扰延迟期间对细节的执行并不完美，可能由于执行能力进一步受损而导致替代错误。（PsycINFO数据库记录（c）2019美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
