Learned Irrelevance Revisited: Pathology-Based Individual Differences, Normal Variation and Neural Correlates

摘要: The function of the human executive system can broadly be described as seeking out and processing those signals memories that are greatest relevance when guiding deliberate adaptive behaviours. This task is not easy, however, since it requires almost constant shifting attention in response to irregular alterations contingencies relating stimuli, responses, environmental feedback. An individual’s current belief regarding these guides within a given context, representation this its consequent behaviour often referred an “attentional set”. Consequently, attentional set-shifting important responsible for altering behavioural reaction changing (Cools, Barker, Sahakian, & Robbins, 2001; Gotham, Brown, Marsden, 1986). Such flexibility underlies wide range behaviours: better capacity, more flexible person at adapting change. At other end continuum many psychiatric groups, neurodegenerative groups even healthy elderly young subjects have been shown repeatedly impaired performance. One specific form impairments lies inability attend to, or learn about, information which has previously irrelevant. phenomenon called learned irrelevance (LI) (Mackintosh, 1973) very mysterious, because unlike aspects set-shifting, appears neither dependent on frontal lobe (e.g. Owen et al., 1993) nor affected by dopamine (Owen 1993; Slabosz 2006), and, therefore, may coded parts brain typically considered “executive” all.