7/31/2023 0 Comments Memory clean 3 1.0.7![]() 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 noradrenergic projections emanating from the locus coeruleus (LC). 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 noradrenergic 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 noradrenergic-mediated cognitive control and the literature on analogical reasoning and fluid intelligence. Pupillary response is associated with perceptual and cognitive loads in visual and cognitive tasks, but no quantitative link between pupil response and the task workload in visual-motor tasks has been confirmed. The objective of this study is to investigate how the changes of task requirement of a visual-motor task are reflected by the changes of pupil size. In the present study, a simple continuous aiming task is performed and the task requirement is manipulated and measured by Fitts’ Index of Difficulty (ID), calculated for different combinations of the target size and movement distance. Pupil response is recorded using a remote eye-tracker. ![]() The results show that event-triggered pupil dilations in continuous aiming movements respect Fitts’ Law, such that higher task difficulty evokes higher peak pupil dilation and longer peak duration. These findings suggest that pupil diameter can be employed as a physiological indicator to task workload evoked by the task requirement in visual-motor tasks. The goal-free effect was the first instructional effect investigated within a cognitive load theory framework. Goal-free problems occur when a conventional problem with a specific goal is replaced by a problem with a non-specific goal. For example, in high school geometry, a typical problem will ask students to calculate a specific angle, such as angle ABC. In contrast, goal-free problems will not require students to specifically calculate this angle, but use a more general wording such as ‘calculate the value of as many angles as you can’.
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