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Attention, Perception & Psychophysics May 2022Over the past 30 years, attentional bias for body shape and weight content has been implicated in the precipitation and maintenance of body dissatisfaction and eating... (Review)
Review
Over the past 30 years, attentional bias for body shape and weight content has been implicated in the precipitation and maintenance of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Although the existence of this bias toward body stimuli is well-established in female populations, it is comparatively understudied in men. This review aimed to examine the nature of this visual attentional bias toward male bodies in male samples across a range of different attentional paradigms, including eye-tracking, dot-probe, and the visual search task. Results were heterogenous, finding some evidence that men with higher body dissatisfaction and eating disorder symptoms demonstrated an attentional bias toward desirable bodies of other men, and undesirable features of their own bodies. These results suggest that schematic cognitive models of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders body may also be applicable to men, however more research is needed.
Topics: Attention; Attentional Bias; Body Image; Feeding and Eating Disorders; Female; Humans; Male
PubMed: 35355232
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-022-02466-7 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Jul 2017Human observers are capable of tracking multiple objects among identical distractors based only on their spatiotemporal information. Since the first report of this... (Review)
Review
Human observers are capable of tracking multiple objects among identical distractors based only on their spatiotemporal information. Since the first report of this ability in the seminal work of Pylyshyn and Storm (1988, Spatial Vision, 3, 179-197), multiple object tracking has attracted many researchers. A reason for this is that it is commonly argued that the attentional processes studied with the multiple object paradigm apparently match the attentional processing during real-world tasks such as driving or team sports. We argue that multiple object tracking provides a good mean to study the broader topic of continuous and dynamic visual attention. Indeed, several (partially contradicting) theories of attentive tracking have been proposed within the almost 30 years since its first report, and a large body of research has been conducted to test these theories. With regard to the richness and diversity of this literature, the aim of this tutorial review is to provide researchers who are new in the field of multiple object tracking with an overview over the multiple object tracking paradigm, its basic manipulations, as well as links to other paradigms investigating visual attention and working memory. Further, we aim at reviewing current theories of tracking as well as their empirical evidence. Finally, we review the state of the art in the most prominent research fields of multiple object tracking and how this research has helped to understand visual attention in dynamic settings.
Topics: Attention; Eye Movements; Humans; Memory, Short-Term; Motion Perception; Spatial Navigation; Visual Perception
PubMed: 28584953
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-017-1338-1 -
Behavioural Pharmacology Oct 2018Studies manipulating neural activity acutely with optogenetic or chemogenetic intervention in behaving rodents have increased considerably in recent years. More often,... (Review)
Review
Studies manipulating neural activity acutely with optogenetic or chemogenetic intervention in behaving rodents have increased considerably in recent years. More often, these circuit-level neural manipulations are tested within an existing framework of behavioural testing that strives to model complex executive functions or symptomologies relevant to multidimensional psychiatric disorders in humans, such as attentional control deficits, impulsivity or behavioural (in)flexibility. This methods perspective argues in favour of carefully implementing these acute circuit-based approaches to better understand and model cognitive symptomologies or their similar isomorphic animal behaviours, which often arise and persist in overlapping brain circuitries. First, we offer some practical considerations for combining long-term, behavioural paradigms with optogenetic or chemogenetic interventions. Next, we examine how cell-type or projection-specific manipulations to the ascending neuromodulatory systems, local brain region or descending cortical glutamatergic projections influence aspects of cognitive control. For this, we primarily focus on the influence exerted on attentional and motor impulsivity performance in the (3-choice or) 5-choice serial reaction time task, and impulsive, risky or inflexible choice biases during alternative preference, reward discounting or reversal learning tasks.
Topics: Animals; Attention; Behavior, Animal; Designer Drugs; Humans; Impulsive Behavior; Optogenetics; Receptors, G-Protein-Coupled; Rodentia
PubMed: 30169376
DOI: 10.1097/FBP.0000000000000425 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Feb 2020The ability to visually search, quickly and accurately, for designated items in cluttered environments is crucial for many species to ensure survival. Feature... (Review)
Review
The ability to visually search, quickly and accurately, for designated items in cluttered environments is crucial for many species to ensure survival. Feature integration theory, one of the most influential theories of attention, suggests that certain visual features that facilitate this search are extracted pre-attentively in a parallel fashion across the visual field during early visual processing. Hence, if some objects of interest possess such a feature uniquely, it will pop out from the background during the integration stage and draw visual attention immediately and effortlessly. For years, visual search research has explored these ideas by investigating the conditions (and visual features) that characterize efficient versus inefficient visual searches. The bulk of research has focused on human vision, though ecologically there are many reasons to believe that feature integration theory is applicable to other species as well. Here we review the main findings regarding the relevance of feature integration theory to non-human species and expand it to new research on one particular animal model - the archerfish. Specifically, we study both archerfish and humans in an extensive and comparative set of visual-search experiments. The findings indicate that both species exhibit similar behavior in basic feature searches and in conjunction search tasks. In contrast, performance differed in searches defined by shape. These results suggest that evolution pressured many visual features to pop out for both species despite cardinal differences in brain anatomy and living environment, and strengthens the argument that aspects of feature integration theory may be generalizable across the animal kingdom.
Topics: Animals; Attention; Fishes; Humans; Perches; Visual Perception
PubMed: 31898075
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-019-01884-4 -
The Journal of Nervous and Mental... Mar 2021People with schizophrenia often experience attentional impairments that hinder learning during psychological interventions. Attention shaping is a behavioral technique...
People with schizophrenia often experience attentional impairments that hinder learning during psychological interventions. Attention shaping is a behavioral technique that improves attentiveness in this population. Because reinforcement learning (RL) is thought to be the mechanism by which attention shaping operates, we investigated if preshaping RL performance predicted level of response to attention shaping in people with schizophrenia. Contrary to hypotheses, a steeper attentiveness growth curve was predicted by less intact pretreatment RL ability and lower baseline attentiveness, accounting for 59% of the variance. Moreover, baseline attentiveness accounted for over 13 times more variance in response to attention shaping than did RL ability. Results suggest attention shaping is most effective for lower-functioning patients, and those high in RL ability may already be close to ceiling in terms of their response to reinforcers. Attention shaping may not be a primarily RL-driven intervention, and other mechanisms of its effects should be considered.
Topics: Adult; Attention; Cognition; Female; Humans; Intelligence; Male; Reinforcement, Psychology; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenic Psychology
PubMed: 33315800
DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0000000000001286 -
Journal of the International... Jan 2019The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of directed and sustained attention on the allocation of visuospatial attention. Healthy people often have left...
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of directed and sustained attention on the allocation of visuospatial attention. Healthy people often have left lateral and upward vertical spatial attentional biases. However, it is not known whether there will be an increase in bias toward the attended portion of the stimulus when volitional spatial attention is allocated to a portion of a stimulus, whether there are asymmetrical spatial alterations of these biases, and how sustained attention influences these biases.
METHODS
We assessed spatial bias in 36 healthy, right-handed participants using a variant of horizontal and vertical line bisections. Participants were asked to focus on one or the other end of vertical or horizontal lines or entire vertical or horizontal lines, and then to bisect the line either immediately or after a 20 second delay.
RESULTS
We found a significant main effect of attentional focus and an interaction between attentional focus and prolonged viewing with delayed bisection. Focusing on a certain portion of the line resulting in a significant deviation toward the attended portion and prolonged viewing of the line prior to bisection significantly enhanced the degree of deviation toward the attended portion.
CONCLUSIONS
The enhanced bias with directed and sustained attention may be useful modifications of the line bisection test, particularly in clinical populations. Thus, future studies should determine whether prolonged viewing with delayed bisection and spatially focused attention reveals attentional biases in patients with hemispheric lesions who perform normally on the traditional line bisection test. (JINS, 2019, 25, 65-71).
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Female; Humans; Male; Space Perception; Visual Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 30486914
DOI: 10.1017/S1355617718000802 -
Annals of the New York Academy of... Jul 2018Working memory is one of the most important topics of research in cognitive psychology. The cognitive revolution that introduced the computer metaphor to describe human... (Review)
Review
Working memory is one of the most important topics of research in cognitive psychology. The cognitive revolution that introduced the computer metaphor to describe human cognitive functioning called for this system in charge of the temporary storage of incoming or retrieved information to permit its processing. In the past decades, one particular mechanism of maintenance, attentional refreshing, has attracted an increasing amount of interest in the field of working memory. However, this mechanism remains rather mysterious, and its functioning is conceived in very different ways across the literature. This article presents an up-to-date review on attentional refreshing through the joint effort of leading researchers in the domain. It highlights points of agreement and delineates future avenues of research.
Topics: Attention; Cognition; Humans; Memory, Short-Term
PubMed: 29542133
DOI: 10.1111/nyas.13616 -
Neuron Jan 2016The ventro-lateral pulvinar is reciprocally connected with the visual areas of the ventral stream that are important for object recognition. To understand the mechanisms...
The ventro-lateral pulvinar is reciprocally connected with the visual areas of the ventral stream that are important for object recognition. To understand the mechanisms of attentive stimulus processing in this pulvinar-cortex loop, we investigated the interactions between the pulvinar, area V4, and IT cortex in a spatial-attention task. Sensory processing and the influence of attention in the pulvinar appeared to reflect its cortical inputs. However, pulvinar deactivation led to a reduction of attentional effects on firing rates and gamma synchrony in V4, a reduction of sensory-evoked responses and overall gamma coherence within V4, and severe behavioral deficits in the affected portion of the visual field. Conversely, pulvinar deactivation caused an increase in low-frequency cortical oscillations, often associated with inattention or sleep. Thus, cortical interactions with the ventro-lateral pulvinar are necessary for normal attention and sensory processing and for maintaining the cortex in an active state.
Topics: Animals; Attention; Macaca mulatta; Male; Photic Stimulation; Pulvinar; Thalamus; Vision, Ocular; Visual Cortex; Visual Fields; Visual Pathways
PubMed: 26748092
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.11.034 -
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews.... 2024Real-world environments are multisensory, meaningful, and highly complex. To parse these environments in a highly efficient manner, a subset of this information must be... (Review)
Review
Real-world environments are multisensory, meaningful, and highly complex. To parse these environments in a highly efficient manner, a subset of this information must be selected both within and across modalities. However, the bulk of attention research has been conducted within sensory modalities, with a particular focus on vision. Visual attention research has made great strides, with over a century of research methodically identifying the underlying mechanisms that allow us to select critical visual information. Spatial attention, attention to features, and object-based attention have all been studied extensively. More recently, research has established semantics (meaning) as a key component to allocating attention in real-world scenes, with the meaning of an item or environment affecting visual attentional selection. However, a full understanding of how semantic information modulates real-world attention requires studying more than vision in isolation. The world provides semantic information across all senses, but with this extra information comes greater complexity. Here, we summarize visual attention (including semantic-based visual attention), crossmodal attention, and argue for the importance of studying crossmodal semantic guidance of attention. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Attention Psychology > Perception and Psychophysics.
Topics: Attention; Humans; Semantics; Visual Perception
PubMed: 38243393
DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1675 -
Journal of Vision Sep 2022Variability in the detection and discrimination of weak visual stimuli has been linked to oscillatory neural activity. In particular, the amplitude of activity in the...
Variability in the detection and discrimination of weak visual stimuli has been linked to oscillatory neural activity. In particular, the amplitude of activity in the alpha-band (8-12 Hz) has been shown to impact the objective likelihood of stimulus detection, as well as measures of subjective visibility, attention, and decision confidence. Here we investigate how preparatory alpha in a cued pretarget interval influences performance and phenomenology, by recording simultaneous subjective measures of attention and confidence (experiment 1) or attention and visibility (experiment 2) on a trial-by-trial basis in a visual detection task. Across both experiments, alpha amplitude was negatively and linearly correlated with the intensity of subjective attention. In contrast with this linear relationship, we observed a quadratic relationship between the strength of alpha oscillations and subjective ratings of confidence and visibility. We find that this same quadratic relationship links alpha amplitude with the strength of stimulus-evoked responses. Visibility and confidence judgments also corresponded with the strength of evoked responses, but confidence, uniquely, incorporated information about attentional state. As such, our findings reveal distinct psychological and neural correlates of metacognitive judgments of attentional state, stimulus visibility, and decision confidence when these judgments are preceded by a cued target interval.
Topics: Attention; Cues; Electroencephalography; Humans; Photic Stimulation; Visual Perception
PubMed: 36166234
DOI: 10.1167/jov.22.10.20