The impact of verbal commands on executive functions

Description of impact

Concentration is a key human ability engaged in survival and social achievement; but it is very fragile. Compared to how easily we can lose concentration, there is very little understanding on how to improve it. From experience we know that telling yourself what to do helps focusing on the task. But being talked to while trying to concentrate can also be very distracting. I am currently interested in which aspect of the message aids the task and which aspect makes it worse. We have found strong evidence that task related speech improves concentration beyond what is achieved by silent inner talk. Also, listening to verbal instructions improve performance at a similar level to what is found when talking out loud. Our results reveal why talking to yourself or to others improve congitive control and self regulation, opening the door to its application with specific populations affected by social isolation.

Impact Summary for the General Public

Concentration is a key human ability engaged in survival and social achievement; but it is very fragile. Compared to how easily we can lose concentration, there is very little understanding on how to improve it. From experience we know that telling yourself what to do helps focusing on the task. But being talked to while trying to concentrate can also be very distracting. I am currently interested in which aspect of the message aids the task and which aspect makes it worse. We have found strong evidence that task related speech improves concentration beyond what is achieved by silent inner talk. Also, listening to verbal instructions improve performance at a similar level to what is found when talking out loud. Our results reveal why talking to yourself or to others improve congitive control and self regulation, opening the door to its application with specific populations affected by social isolation.

Description of the underpinning research

It is common to use verbal instructions when performing complex tasks. To evaluate how such instructions contribute to cognitive control, mixing costs (as a measure of sustained concentration on task) were evaluated in two task-switching experiments combining the list and alternating runs paradigms. Participantsresponded to bivalent stimuli according to a characteristic explicitly defined by a visually presented instructional cue. The processing of the cue was conducted under four conditions across the two experiments: Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, Articulatory Suppression, and dual mode (visual and audio) presentation. The type of cue processing produced a substantial impact on the mixing costs, where its magnitude was greatest with articulatory suppression and minimal with reading aloud and dual mode presentations. Interestingly, silently
reading the cue only provided medium levels of mixing cost. The experiments demonstrate that relevant verbal instructions boost sustained concentration on task goals when maintaining multiple tasks.

Beneficiaries and reach of impact

Older adults living in isolation, Anxiety/Depression, Special Needs

Impact status	Potential
Category of impact	Health/Quality of life
Impact level	Benefit