A single trial began with a 1000 ms presentation of instruction in the middle of the screen (Figure 1) that differentiated trials into two visual encoding conditions.
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).
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.
Although the presence of a familiar caregiver is necessary and desirable for assessment of infants < 2 years of age, the parent or other caretaker should be instructed not to interfere with the presentation of stimulus materials, examiner instructions, or the child's behaviors during the test.
These results not only shed light on the mechanism of the genesis of interpretation bias in children, but also highlight the need for future studies to systematically investigate the impact of instructions and presentation mode on the effectiveness of interpretation interventions, for the development of effective treatment packages for childhood anxiety disorders.
