Resource allocation and fluid intelligence: Insights from pupillometry

Meer, Elke van der; Beyer, Reinhard; Horn, Judith; Foth, Manja; Bornemann, Boris; Ries, Jan; Kramer, Juerg; Warmuth, Elke; Heekeren, Hauke R.; Wartenburger, Isabell

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00884.x

Cited by 157 publications

(144 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Recent work ( Van Der Meer et al, 2010) has indicated that high fluid-intelligence individuals have larger task-evoked pupillary responses when performing difficult tasks. This supports the view that people with high Gf may simply have more cognitive resources that can be recruited during demanding tasks (resource hypothesis; Van Der Meer et al, 2010). Earlier work (Ahern & Beatty, 1979, 1981 showed the opposite pattern in which higher intelligence individuals showed smaller task-evoked pupillary responses than those with average intelligence.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

“…The control hypothesis offers a parsimonious explanation for the conflicting earlier findings on the relationship between intelligence and pupillary response. In tasks that require exploration (such as the geometric analogy task used by Van Der Meer et al, 2010), highGf individuals who shift into higher gain states will have larger task-evoked pupillary responses than low-Gf individuals. On the other hand, overlearned tasks that primarily require exploitation (such as the mental multiplication, digit span used by Ahern & Beatty, 1979, 1981 are easier for high-Gf than low-Gf individuals.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the temporal resolution of the pupillary response is much lower than that of LC neurons. The pupil acts as a low-pass filter of LC activity with a lag of approximately 1 sec after stimulus onset (Hayes & Petrov, submitted;van Steenbergen & Band, 2013;Gagl, Hawelka, & Hutzler, 2011). As the coder and pupillary response latencies were approximately equivalent (each about 1 sec), no additional preprocessing was necessary to synchronize the pupil and code streams before analysis.…”

Section: Synchronizing Pupil and Verbal Protocol Streamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pupil Diameter Tracks the Exploration–Exploitation Trade-off during Analogical Reasoning and Explains Individual Differences in Fluid Intelligence

Hayes¹,

Petrov²

2016

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Abstract■ The ability to adaptively shift between exploration and exploitation control states is critical for optimizing behavioral performance. Converging evidence from primate electrophysiology and computational neural modeling has suggested that this ability may be mediated by the broad norepinephrine projections emanating from the locus coeruleus (LC) [Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. An integrative theory of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine function: Adaptive gain and optimal performance. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 28, 403-450, 2005]. There is also evidence that pupil diameter covaries systematically with LC activity. Although imperfect and indirect, this link makes pupillometry a useful tool for studying the locus coeruleus norepinephrine system in humans and in high-level tasks. Here, we present a novel paradigm that examines how the pupillary response during exploration and exploitation covaries with individual differences in fluid intelligence during analogical reasoning on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices. Pupillometry was used as a noninvasive proxy for LC activity, and concurrent think-aloud verbal protocols were used to identify exploratory and exploitative solution periods. This novel combination of pupillometry and verbal protocols from 40 participants revealed a decrease in pupil diameter during exploitation and an increase during exploration. The temporal dynamics of the pupillary response was characterized by a steep increase during the transition to exploratory periods, sustained dilation for many seconds afterward, and followed by gradual return to baseline. Moreover, the individual differences in the relative magnitude of pupillary dilation accounted for 16% of the variance in Advanced Progressive Matrices scores. Assuming that pupil diameter is a valid index of LC activity, these results establish promising preliminary connections between the literature on locus coeruleus norepinephrine-mediated cognitive control and the literature on analogical reasoning and fluid intelligence. ■

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Synchronizing Pupil and Verbal Protocol Streamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Pupil Diameter Tracks the Exploration–Exploitation Trade-off during Analogical Reasoning and Explains Individual Differences in Fluid Intelligence

Hayes¹,

Petrov²

2016

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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“…In the VC test, the lights lit up 12 times at different parts of the panel at random intervals. This test requires more processing and is thought to represent the function of the pre-frontal cortex, and this could be considered part of the executive function of the brain [33]. We used the mean values of reaction time on the RT test as an assessment of global cognition and the mean values of reaction time on the VC test as an assessment of executive function.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insulin resistance is associated with poorer verbal fluency performance in women

et al. 2015

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Aims/hypothesis Type 2 diabetes is an independent risk factor for cognitive decline. Insulin resistance occurring during midlife may increase the risk of cognitive decline later in life. We hypothesised that insulin resistance is associated with poorer cognitive performance and that sex and APOE*E4 might modulate this association. Methods The association of insulin resistance and APOE*E4 genotype on cognitive function was evaluated in a nationwide Finnish population-based study (n = 5,935, mean age 52.5 years, range 30-97 years). HOMA-IR was used to measure insulin resistance. Cognitive function was tested by word-list learning, word-list delayed-recall, categorical verbal fluency and simple and visual-choice reaction-time tests. Linear regression analysis was used to determine the association between HOMA-IR and the results of the cognitive tests. Results Higher HOMA-IR was associated with poorer verbal fluency in women (p<0.0001) but not in men (p=0.56).Higher HOMA-IR was also associated with poorer verbal fluency in APOE*E4 -negative individuals (p=0.0003), but not in APOE*E4 carriers (p = 0.28). Furthermore, higher HOMA-IR was associated with a slower simple reaction time in the whole study group (p=0.02). Conclusions/interpretation To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive, population-based study, including both young and middle-aged adults, to report that female sex impacts the association of HOMA-IR with verbal fluency. Our study was cross-sectional, so causal effects of HOMA-IR on cognition could not be evaluated. However, our results suggest that HOMA-IR could be an early marker for an increased risk of cognitive decline in women.

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“…Using the method of pupillometry (see below), they found individuals of higher cognitive abilities (measured by Scholastic Aptitude Scores) to allocate less resources to three out of the four applied cognitive (i.e., arithmetic and verbal reasoning) tasks. Since then, quite a few studies have been conducted investigating the relationship between general cognitive abilities and the allocation of cognitive resources (e.g., Heitz, Schrock, Payne and Engle 2008;Rypma, Berger, Prabhakaran, Bly, Kimberg et al 2006;van der Meer, Beyer, Horn, Foth, Bornemann et al 2010), but they produced conflicting results. We argue here that some of these results can be reconciled when the characteristics of the tasks are carefully observed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Mathematical cognition: individual differences in resource allocation

Bornemann

Foth

Horn

et al. 2010

ZDM Mathematics Education

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Individuals scoring higher in tests of general cognitive abilities tend to perform better on novel and familiar mathematical tasks. It has been scarcely investigated how this superior mathematical performance relates to the amount of cognitive resources that is invested to solve a given task. In this study we propose that, on novel tasks, individuals with high cognitive abilities outperform less able individuals, because they allocate a higher amount of resources. On familiar tasks, however, individuals with higher abilities profit from more efficient processes compared to individuals of lower cognitive abilities. We tested this hypothesis by administering to 11th graders a geometric analogy task not practiced at school and an algebraic transformation task comprising operations that are routinely required during mathematical courses. General cognitive abilities were measured with Ravens Advanced Progressive matrices (fluid intelligence), the d2 (focused attention) and KAI-N (working memory capacity). Resource allocation was measured by assessing pupil diameter during the problem-solving process. Performance on both the analogy and the algebra task was correlated with general cognitive abilities, especially fluid intelligence. In line with our assumptions, a positive correlation between fluid intelligence and resource allocation was observed in the novel geometric analogy task, whereas the correlation was not significant in the more familiar algebra task.

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Resource allocation and fluid intelligence: Insights from pupillometry

Cited by 157 publications

References 69 publications

Pupil Diameter Tracks the Exploration–Exploitation Trade-off during Analogical Reasoning and Explains Individual Differences in Fluid Intelligence

Pupil Diameter Tracks the Exploration–Exploitation Trade-off during Analogical Reasoning and Explains Individual Differences in Fluid Intelligence

Insulin resistance is associated with poorer verbal fluency performance in women

Mathematical cognition: individual differences in resource allocation

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