Set Shifting

[edieb]

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For my Neuroanatomy-Neuropsychology Interactions grad school course, we are required to read a lot of journal articles pertaining to IQ tests and neuroanatomy. I came across this article which mentions set shifting. Instead of waiting till class next week, can someone tell me what exactly set shifting is? I have only a vague idea!



Recent imaging studies suggest that dysregulation of the limbic system and subsequent suppression of frontal lobe function, particularly in the right hemisphere, underlie the cognitive and affective impairments characteristic of MDD. These theories have led to the study of discrete cognitive deficits in depression in tasks that are correlates of these anatomical areas, such as SET SHIFTING and selective attention, as well as visuo-spatial processing.

 

[JatPenn]

I think I can best explain this using an example from my research - the affective go-no go task.

In such a task, subjects are presented with a series of emotional stimuli (images, words, faces, etc). Some are positive, some are negative. The subject's job during the task is to respond to one of the two valences, and withhold a response to the other. So, in a "go-positive" block, subjects must respond only to the positive images and not to the negative images.

Now, since you are interested in gauging response speed and accuracy in both conditions (both go-positive and go-negative) you of course will need subjects to perform some blocks that are "go-positive" and others that are "go-negative." The act of changing tasks on consecutive blocks is a form of "set-shifting." -
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So, if I am a subject in the experiment, I first perform a block of "go-positive" where I see a bunch of images and only respond to positive stimuli. Once that block is done, the experimenter comes and and tells me "ok, now only respond to the negative images." I must employ "set-shifting" in order to get myself to quit doing what I just got used to doing (responding to positives) and starting a new task (responding to negatives). This is set-shifting in a nutshell, hope it made a little bit of sense.

 

[Lunabin]

Just to add - you can also have set shifting within one entire test (see Halstead Reitan - Trail Making Test or the Color Trails test). So you'd first ask a pt to 'sequentially connect a series of numbers' like connect the dots: 1-2-3-4-... then add a component of letters - so they have to then simultaneously also go through the alphabet: 1-a-2-b-3-c-4-... That second part is entirely set shifting between numbers and letters.