Journal article

Cognitive control and attentional functions

Melissa-Ann Mackie, Nicholas T Van Dam, Jin Fan

BRAIN AND COGNITION | ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE | Published : 2013

Abstract

Cognitive control is essential to flexible, goal-directed behavior under uncertainty, yet its underlying mechanisms are not clearly understood. Because attentional functions are known to allocate mental resources and prioritize the information to be processed, we propose that the attentional functions of alerting, orienting, and executive control and the interactions among them contribute to cognitive control in the service of uncertainty reduction. To test this hypothesis, we examined the relationship between cognitive control and attentional functions. We used the Majority Function Task (MFT) to manipulate uncertainty in order to evoke cognitive control along with the Revised Attention Net..

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Grants

Awarded by National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health


Funding Acknowledgements

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01 MH094305. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.