The test lasted for about 45 minutes including the presentation of instructions.
Before starting any exercises in this study, people of this group had also received the PowerPoint presentation of drilling instruction.
Each task started with the presentation of an instruction that indicated whether what followed was a reasoning or a memory task.
Because the vector modeling the transient activation of the presentation of the instruction and the vector modeling the sustained activation are correlated, we cannot completely rule out the possibility that there is sustained activation in the paracingulate area.
For each of 4 trial types (Instr Sem, Instr Phon, Self Sem, and Self Phon), sustained activation was modeled as epochs with onsets time locked to the presentation of the instruction and with a duration matched to the length of the delay.
Following the presentation of these instructions, participants had to complete a tutorial and correctly answer a series of questions to check that they understood the directions regarding how to use this different test format and how it would be scored before they were allowed to continue.
The presentation of the instructions, data acquisition, and data storage were computer-controlled.
For example, lateral PFC activity has been linked with cue specification and elaboration processes occurring prior to the instigation of a reality-monitoring retrieval search (Dobbins et al., 2002; Simons, Gilbert, et al., 2005), associated with the presentation of retrieval instructions rather than target stimuli (Simons et al., 2008).
Interface, icons vs language of instruction, presentation video, progress check Participants declared that they would prefer a user interface based on a combination of icons and language of instruction, with priority to images.
Each block began with the presentation of a single character instruction cue, which indicated the upcoming condition, in the middle of the screen for 200 ms. Following the cue, there was a 3800-ms pause before the onset of the first trial.
