COGNITIVE & NEURO PSYCHOLOGY

What is this field?

Cognitive & Neuro Psychology are two very related fields that overlap in many ways but are united by the common goal of understanding the depths of the human mind, the inner workings and processes that drive thinking and understanding.[1]

To put it simply, cognitive psychologists aim to demonstrate how cognition works by designing studies that measure cognitive processes under various tasks in healthy individuals. On the other hand, cognitive neuropsychologists are more interested in specific regions of the brain as they are related to these tasks and often work with people who have disorders in these cognitive areas. Cognitive & Neuro Psychology can be related to many other areas of psychology, including Clinical & Health Psychology.

What do these researchers study?

  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Object Recognition & Spatial Cognition
  • Perception (Auditory & Visual)
  • Planning & Action
  • Thinking
  • Language

In this field, researchers are interested in learning more about how the brain is capable of doing mental processes like recognizing people and objects, storing and recalling memory, producing language, and making decisions.

Cognition is investigated by studying participants as they perform certain tasks. Neuropsychologists also study participants who may have disorders wherein cognition is affected, making a distinction in cognitive processes between acquired (due to brain injury) and developmental disorders.[1]

How can Labvanced match these famous designs?

Cognitive and neuro psychologists are using online psychology experimentation platforms because of the ease and user-friendliness of going digital. Labvanced offers many features for this area of research, including:

  • Reaction Time: Record accurate reaction times as subjects participate in your study.
    • Example: Compare the speed of clicking a button between different ages of participants as a function of a cognitive process such as attention.
  • Longitudinal Studies: Track progression over time. Plan your next study session hours, days, or even months ahead with our online experimental platform. We will remind participants to return for the next session.
    • Example: follow participants as they experience neurological changes, such as habituating to a cognitive task over time across different experimental conditions.
  • Eye-tracking: Because eye movement is so closely related to cognitive processes, researchers in these fields love using eye-tracking as a way of data measurement.
    • Example: Using eye-tracking, researchers were able to show that schizophrenic patients have a greater attentional bias to threatening scenes compared to healthy controls.[2]
  • Visual stimuli presentation: In the editor, visual stimuli can be placed with precision in the canvas frame, allowing you to drag, drop and arrange visual cues like shapes or images with just a few clicks.
    • Example: In an experiment using the Go/No-Go task implemented in Labvanced, researchers instructed participants to prace a space bar when a yellow circle was presented or withhold a response if a blue circle was presented.[3]
  • Audio/video presentation: In your study, you can present audio or video files to participants which can be controlled with any trigger, even eye tracking.
    • Example: The most famous cognitive experiment that uses video as the main element in its study is the change blindness experiment with a gorilla.[4]

Eye tracking Playlist:

What are the advantages of online experimentation?

  • Easy to present stimuli: Since cognitive science has brain processes like perception and attention at its core, presenting stimuli is essential for experiments and with our online platform you can control this with a few clicks.
  • Replication: Experiments need to be tried and validated by others as a part of the scientific process. Online experiments make replication easy because it's possible to import available studies as a template.
  • Convenient: Cognitive and neuropsychology experiments can often take a lot of time and burden the participant with requiring additional time to make it to the lab. Having your study online makes it easier for participants to access the experiment and complete it at their convenience.
  • Longitudinal studies: Some cognitive and neuropsychology studies have a longitudinal design. With our online platform, repeated measures studies are easy and automated.

Labvanced Library Studies

  • Letter Identification Experiment: Participants are quickly shown a string of random letters, then they are prompted to recall a letter positioned in the string.
  • Scene Viewing Experiment: This study uses Labvanced’s eye tracking feature to measure the participant’s attention and cognition of scenes
  • Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: Measures the participant’s ability to adapt to changing tasks by challenging the participant to pick a target card based on changing sorting rules.

Researcher Spotlight

Labvanced Researcher Interview with Maximillian Soares Miehstein:

Investigation of spatial attention among autistic individuals using the gaze-cueing paradigm.

In this interview, a PhD student shares how they used Labvanced while working on their cognitive psychology thesis exploring differences in spatial attention between autistic and healthy individuals.

Additional Use Cases

  • Measuring attention span in children[5]
  • The relationship between poor cognitive function, depression, and diabetes mellitus[6]
  • Effect of exercise or green space on cognitive processes[7]-[8]

References

  1. Coltheart, M. (2001). Assumptions and methods in cognitive neuropsychology. The handbook of cognitive neuropsychology: What deficits reveal about the human mind, 3-21.
  2. Navalón, P., Serrano, E., Almansa, B., Perea, M., Benavent, P., Domínguez, A., ... & García-Blanco, A. (2021). Attentional biases to emotional scenes in schizophrenia: An eye-tracking study. Biological Psychology, 160, 108045.
  3. Montalti, M., Calbi, M., Umiltà, M. A., Gallese, V., & Cuccio, V. (2021). The role of motor inhibition in implicit negation processing: two Go/NoGo behavioral studies.
  4. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. perception, 28(9), 1059-1074.
  5. Mahone, E. M., & Schneider, H. E. (2012). Assessment of attention in preschoolers. Neuropsychology review, 22(4), 361-383.
  6. Chow, Y. Y., Verdonschot, M., McEvoy, C. T., & Peeters, G. (2022). Associations between depression and cognition, mild cognitive impairment and dementia in persons with diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 109227.
  7. Barger, B., Torquati, J., Larson, L. R., Bartz, J. M., Johnson-Gaither, C., Gardner, A., ... & Schram, B. M. (2021). Measuring green space effects on attention and stress in children and youth: A scoping review. Children, Youth and Environments, 31(1), 1-54.
  8. Mahar, M. T. (2011). Impact of short bouts of physical activity on attention-to-task in elementary school children. Preventive medicine, 52, S60-S64.