• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.15-27
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• 2003

The subjects were individually presented with the Maxi-doll task to examine false belief and with the flower-star (Stroop-like day-night) test to examine inhibitory control skill. In the $1^{st}$ session, the subjects were tested with both the Maxi tesk and the flower-star test. Three days later, subjects were retested with the Maxi task, including an inhibitory cue. Data were analyzed by 3-way ANOVA, age(2) $\times$ inhibitory level(2) $\times$ task type(Maxi-task or Maxi-including cue). All the main effects were significant and the interaction effect between inhibitory level and task type was also significant. Thus, their understanding of the mind and inhibitory control skill both influence children's performance on a typical false belief task.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.573-597
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• 2016

Recent fMRI and EEG research for neural representations of action concepts insist that processing of action concepts evoke the simulation of sensory-motor information. Moreover, there are several behavioral studies showing that understanding of action verbs or sentences describing actions interfere or facilitate current action performance. However, it is unclear that online interaction between processing of action concepts and current action is based on the simulation of sensory-motor information, or other neural mechanisms. The present research aims to explore the underlying neural mechanism that how the perception of action language influence the performance of current action using high-spacial temporal resolution EEG and multiple source analysis techniques. For this, participants were asked to perform a cued-motor reaction task in which button-pressing hand action and pedal-stepping foot action were required according to the color of the cue, and we presented auditorily action verbs describing the responding actions (i.e., /press/, /step/, /stop/) just before the color cue and examined the interaction effect from the semantic congruency between the action verbs and the current action. Behavioral results revealed consistently a facilitatory effect when action verbs and responding actions were semantically congruent in both button-pressing and pedal-stepping actions, and an inhibitory effect when semantically incongruent in the button-pressing action condition. In the results of EEG source waveform analysis, the semantic congruency effects between action verbs and the responding actions were observed in the Wernicke's area during the perception of action verbs, in the anterior cingulate gyrus and the supplementary motor area (SMA) at the time when the motor-cue was presented, and in the SMA and primary motor cortex (M1) during action execution stage. Based on the current findings, we argue that perceived action verbs evoke the facilitation/inhibition effect by influencing the expectation and preparation stage of following actions rather than the directly activating the particular motor cortex. Finally we discussed the implication on the neural representation of action concepts and methodological limitations of the current research.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.39-52
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• 2009

Objectives : Cue reactivity is a key factor that modulates motivational goal-directed behavior associated with compulsive drug-taking and relapse. We investigated whether acupuncture attenuated the skin conductance response and the heart rate response to smoking-related visual cues in smokers. Methods : Twenty-nine smokers were treated with real acupuncture (RA) or sham acupuncture (SA). The stress response inventory was measured on the 5th day after quitting smoking. The skin conductance response and the heart rate were measured to evaluate the autonomic changes to the smoking related visual cues on the same day. Results : The sympathetic alterations in skin conductance and the heart rate induced by the smoking-related visual cues were significantly lower in the RA group, as compared to the SA group. The stress response inventory, such as somatization and frustration, in the RA group was significantly lower than that of the SA group. Conclusions : Acupuncture ameliorated the stress symptoms as well as the sympathetic activation to smoking cues during withdrawal. These findings indicate that acupuncture might be a useful tool in smoking cessation by inhibiting smoking cues-induced autonomic responses.