Gareth Roberts

The University of Sydney · School of Psychology

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a psychological condition characterized by inattention and hyperactivity. Cognitive deficits are commonly observed in ADHD patients, including impaired working memory, processing speed, and fluid intelligence, the three of which are theorized to be closely associated with one another. In this study...

Configuring the mind to perform a novel task is an effortful process and one that is related to differences in general intelligence. Previous research has suggested that when participants are given instructions for a future task, representations of the rules contained in the instructions can influence subsequent behavior, even when the rules are no...

The catecholamines-dopamine and noradrenaline-play important roles in directing and guiding behavior. Disorders of these systems, particularly within the dopamine system, are associated with several severe and chronically disabling psychiatric and neurological disorders. We used the recently published group independent components analysis (ICA) pro...

Goal neglect is a failure to enact task requirements despite being able to accurately report them. In this study, we introduce a new child-appropriate experimental paradigm to measure goal neglect in children between 7 and 11 years of age and test the hypothesis that the complexity of an action plan, not real-time trial demands, increases goal negl...

Assessing cognitive development in children is of paramount importance in understanding the development of critical neural pathways of the brain. In particular, recognition of stimuli, task accuracy and response time are key features that can inform on stages of brain cognition with respect to age and within age group differences. In this study we...

Objective: To determine if decreased fluid intelligence was associated with ADHD, and was mediated by deficits in working memory and intra-individual variability in motor responding. Method: The present study tested 142 young adults from the general population on a range of working memory, response time, and fluid intelligence tasks, and an ADHD s...

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuropsychologicalcondition characterised by inattention and hyperactivity. Cognitive deficits are commonly observed in ADHD patients, including impaired working memory, response consistency, and fluid intelligence, which are theorised to be associated with one another. We aimed to determine if d...

This paper reports on a study in which students used agent-based computer models to learn about complex systems ideas of relevance to understanding climate change. The experimental condition used a Productive Failure (PF) learning design in which ninth grade students initially worked with agent-based computer models to solve challenge problems foll...

Understanding the development of the brain's neural networks can reveal critical insights into the cognitive changes that occur from infancy to late childhood. Behavioural metrics including: task accuracy, stimuli recognition, and reaction time show dramatic changes over childhood. In this study we investigated response control using the Erikson Fl...

Assessing cognitive development in children is of paramount importance in understanding the development of critical neural pathways of the brain. In particular, recognition of stimuli, task accuracy and response time are key features that can inform on stages of brain cognition with respect to age and within age group differences. In this study we...

The ability to select the appropriate motor response in a contextually appropriate manner is a cardinal executive function, and development of this ability is thought to be due to changes in frontoparietal cortex. In this study we investigated the electrophysiological processes associated with response inhibition and interference suppression using...

The PhD investigates the hypothesis that individual differences in intelligence (more specifically, fluid g) is intimately related to the construction of mental programs, during problem solving or action planning (Duncan, 2010) – termed the mental program hypothesis. A series of experiments explores the cognitive and electrophysiological mechanisms...