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Progress in Brain Research 2019Most of the previous research in the area of cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience focused on studying negative emotions and argued that the negative emotional... (Review)
Review
Most of the previous research in the area of cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience focused on studying negative emotions and argued that the negative emotional stimuli capture attention involuntarily as compared to neutral stimuli. However, in the last decades, researchers started paying attention in studying positive emotions also as positive emotions have evolutionary significance and are essential for many aspects of our life. The theme of this chapter is to present an overview of research in the area of positive emotions, and make a case that positively-valenced stimulus is prioritized over others. Primarily, when attentional resources are not constrained, many studies have shown that similar to negative stimuli, positive stimuli also capture attention automatically irrespective of whether they are relevant or irrelevant to the primary task. It suggests a fundamental prioritization of these stimuli by the cognitive/motivational system. However, when attentional resources are constrained, only positive or high rewarding stimuli win the competition for attentional resources compared to negative or stimuli associated with high punishment. Positive or high rewarding stimuli also receive priority in temporal selection, when attention is constrained. Theoretical implications of these results have been discussed. Possible cognitive and neural mechanisms have been proposed underlying these effects.
Topics: Attention; Cognition; Emotions; Humans; Motivation; Photic Stimulation; Reward
PubMed: 31196436
DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2019.02.001 -
Neuron Oct 2019The possibility of leveraging video games for enhancing behavior and brain function has led to an emerging new field situated at the crossroads of cognitive... (Review)
Review
The possibility of leveraging video games for enhancing behavior and brain function has led to an emerging new field situated at the crossroads of cognitive neuroscience, health science, educational interventions, and game design. Here we review the impact of video game play, in particular action video game play, on attentional control. We also examine the underlying neural bases of these effects and the game design features hypothesized to drive the plastic changes. We argue that not all games have the same impact, with both differences in the characteristics of the games themselves as well as individual differences in player style determining the final outcome. These facts, mixed with changes in the game industry, (e.g., greater mixing of genre characteristics; greater freedom of player experience) calls for a paradigm shift relative to the approach taken in the field to-date, including iteratively alternating between targeted game design and efficacy evaluation.
Topics: Attention; Humans; Learning; Neuronal Plasticity; Video Games
PubMed: 31600511
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.09.031 -
Cognitive Research: Principles and... Jun 2022Statistical knowledge of a target's location may benefit visual search, and rapidly understanding the changes in regularity would increase the adaptability in visual...
Statistical knowledge of a target's location may benefit visual search, and rapidly understanding the changes in regularity would increase the adaptability in visual search situations where fast and accurate performance is required. The current study tested the sources of statistical knowledge-explicitly-given instruction or experience-driven learning-and whether they affect the speed and location spatial attention is guided. Participants performed a visual search task with a statistical regularity to bias one quadrant ("old-rich" condition) in the training phase, followed by another quadrant ("new-rich" condition) in the switching phase. The "instruction" group was explicitly instructed on the regularity, whereas the "no-instruction" group was not. It was expected that the instruction group would rely on goal-driven attention (using regularities with explicit top-down knowledge), and the no-instruction group would rely on habit-like attention (learning regularities through repetitive experiences) in visual search. Compared with the no-instruction group, the instruction group readjusted spatial attention following the regularity switch more rapidly. The instruction group showed greater attentional bias toward the new-rich quadrant than the old-rich quadrant; however, the no-instruction group showed a similar extent of attentional bias to two rich quadrants. The current study suggests that the source of statistical knowledge can affect attentional allocation. Moreover, habit-like attention, a different type of attentional source than goal-driven attention, is relatively implicit and inflexible.
Topics: Attention; Attentional Bias; Goals; Habits; Humans; Reaction Time
PubMed: 35713814
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00404-7 -
Emotion (Washington, D.C.) Jun 2024Emotional attention can be explained within a goal-directed theory framework according to which attention is captured by the goal relevance of stimuli, that is, their...
Emotional attention can be explained within a goal-directed theory framework according to which attention is captured by the goal relevance of stimuli, that is, their conduciveness nature to a momentarily important goal. However, such an explanation does not consider the attentional impact of intrinsic relevance of stimuli, that is, their general pleasantness. This problem could be resolved by appraisal theories, suggesting that attention is captured by intrinsic relevance and goal relevance of stimuli, whether the relevance overlay is agonistic (e.g., pleasant and goal-conducive) or antagonistic (e.g., unpleasant and goal-conducive). Moreover, appraisal theories suggest that early and late attentional capture would be more impacted by intrinsic relevance and goal relevance, respectively. In the present study, we confronted the predictions of appraisal theories with that of goal-directed theory. To this end, 120 participants performed parallelly an induction task to induce different relevance values to three colored squares, and a dot-probe task with two different stimulus onset asynchrony, to measure early and late attentional captures. This paradigm allowed us to measure attentional capture between a neutral stimulus, a goal-relevant stimulus, and an overlay stimulus. The overlay stimulus was agonistic in one group, while it was antagonistic in the other group. Our results showed evidence in favor of appraisal theories. Namely, the overlay stimulus captured more attention than the goal-relevant and the neutral stimulus, regardless of whether the overlay was agonistic or antagonistic. However, our results were mixed regarding the effects of intrinsic relevance and goal relevance on attentional capture as a function of temporality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Humans; Attention; Goals; Female; Male; Young Adult; Emotions; Adult; Time Factors; Adolescent
PubMed: 37971848
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001315 -
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Aug 2015Attention is the process of focusing mental resources on a specific cognitive/behavioral task. Such brain dynamics involves different partially overlapping brain... (Review)
Review
Attention is the process of focusing mental resources on a specific cognitive/behavioral task. Such brain dynamics involves different partially overlapping brain functional networks whose interconnections change in time according to the performance stage, and can be stimulus-driven or induced by an intrinsically generated goal. The corresponding activity can be described by different families of spatiotemporal discrete patterns or sequential dynamic modes. Since mental resources are finite, attention modalities compete with each other at all levels of the hierarchy, from perception to decision making and behavior. Cognitive activity is a dynamical process and attention possesses some universal dynamical characteristics. Thus, it is time to apply nonlinear dynamical theory for the description and prediction of hierarchical attentional tasks. Such theory has to include the analyses of attentional control stability, the time cost of attention switching, the finite capacity of informational resources in the brain, and the normal and pathological bifurcations of attention sequential dynamics. In this paper we have integrated today's knowledge, models and results in these directions.
Topics: Attention; Brain; Humans; Models, Neurological; Neural Pathways; Nonlinear Dynamics
PubMed: 25869439
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.04.001 -
Psychopharmacology Aug 2021Noradrenaline (NE) is closely related to attentive performance and impulsive control. However, the potential sex differences regarding attention and impulsivity under...
RATIONALE
Noradrenaline (NE) is closely related to attentive performance and impulsive control. However, the potential sex differences regarding attention and impulsivity under the noradrenergic modulation have been largely neglected. Therefore, our study aimed to investigate whether male and female rats exhibit differential responses to NE-related drugs during the five-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRT).
METHODS
Male and female rats were trained in 5CSRT and administered with different NE drugs after obtaining stable baseline performance: atipamezole, a highly selective α2 receptor antagonist; prazosin, an α1 receptor antagonist; and atomoxetine, a selective NE reuptake inhibitor. Later, prazosin was selected to co-administration with atomoxetine.
RESULTS
Male and female rats exhibited equal learning speed, and no significant baseline differences were found as measured by the 5CSRT. Atomoxetine decreased premature responses in both sexes, but the extent of this reduction was different, with the reduction greater in males. Besides, atomoxetine (1.8 mg/kg) increased the error of omissions in females. The high dose of prazosin (0.5 mg/kg) decreased the accuracy only in male rats, but this was ameliorated by the co-administration with atomoxetine.
CONCLUSIONS
Atomoxetine showed significant improvement in impulsivity, but atomoxetine had less beneficial effects on impulsive control in females than in males, and it even impaired attentional performance in female rats. The α1 receptors were mainly responsible for NE drug-related sex differences in attention rather than impulsivity. The results obtained in this study indicate that the sex differences exist in both attention and impulsivity by the modulation of noradrenaline and raise the concern to improve sex-specific treatments.
Topics: Adrenergic Uptake Inhibitors; Animals; Atomoxetine Hydrochloride; Attention; Female; Impulsive Behavior; Male; Norepinephrine; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Reaction Time; Sex Characteristics
PubMed: 33834255
DOI: 10.1007/s00213-021-05841-8 -
Emotion (Washington, D.C.) Jun 2024Emotional expressions are an evolutionarily conserved means of social communication essential for social interactions. It is important to understand how anxious...
Emotional expressions are an evolutionarily conserved means of social communication essential for social interactions. It is important to understand how anxious individuals perceive their social environments, including emotional expressions, especially with the rising prevalence of anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxiety is often associated with an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli, such as angry faces. Yet the mechanisms by which anxiety enhances or impairs two key components of spatial attention-attentional capture and attentional disengagement-to emotional expressions are still unclear. Moreover, positive valence is often ignored in studies of threat-related attention and anxiety, despite the high occurrence of happy faces during everyday social interaction. Here, we investigated the relationship between anxiety, emotional valence, and spatial attention in 574 participants across two preregistered studies (data collected in 2021 and 2022; Experiment 1: = 154, 54.5% male, = 43.5 years; Experiment 2: = 420, 58% male, = 36.46 years). We found that happy faces capture attention more quickly than angry faces during the visual search experiment and found delayed disengagement from both angry and happy faces over neutral faces during the spatial cueing experiment. We also show that anxiety has a distinct impact on both attentional capture and disengagement of emotional faces. Together, our findings highlight the role of positively valenced stimuli in attracting and holding attention and suggest that anxiety is a critical factor in modulating spatial attention to emotional stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Humans; Male; Female; Adult; Anxiety; Facial Expression; Emotions; Attentional Bias; COVID-19; Anger; Attention; Young Adult; Happiness; Middle Aged; Space Perception
PubMed: 38127536
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001322 -
Behavioural Brain Research Jan 2020In cognitive neuroscience, an extensive debate concerns the mechanisms of inhibition and the relationship between inhibitory and behavioural control. Since the proactive... (Review)
Review
In cognitive neuroscience, an extensive debate concerns the mechanisms of inhibition and the relationship between inhibitory and behavioural control. Since the proactive mode of inhibition was first described, several studies have aimed to distinguish this form of inhibitory control from the reactive one. In fact, according to the dualistic models of cognitive control, the two forms of inhibition regulate the action control. However, most of the studies in this field neglected the role of attention in response inhibition, as well as the role of inhibition as an executive function. In the present article, emerging evidence in favour of a unitary mechanism of inhibition is reviewed: recent observations suggest that inhibition represents a default mode of the human brain, and that inhibitory control should not be dissociated from attentional control. Accordingly, the so-called proactive and reactive inhibition might reflect the contribution of the sustained and selective attention in the implementation of the default inhibitory control, which might be more properly termed as attentional inhibitory control (AIC). Evidence of the integrated perspective of the AIC model is reviewed from the neural, cognitive and neuropsychological point of view. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.
Topics: Attention; Executive Function; Humans; Models, Biological; Proactive Inhibition; Reactive Inhibition
PubMed: 31539574
DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112243 -
Psychophysiology Feb 2023Recently, numerous studies have revealed 4-12 Hz fluctuations of behavioral performance in a multitude of tasks. The majority has utilized stimuli near detection...
Recently, numerous studies have revealed 4-12 Hz fluctuations of behavioral performance in a multitude of tasks. The majority has utilized stimuli near detection threshold and observed related fluctuations in hit-rates, attributing these to perceptual or attentional processes. As neural oscillations in the 8-20 Hz range also feature prominently in cortical motor areas, they might cause fluctuations in the ability to induce responses, independent of attentional capabilities. Additionally, different effectors (e.g., the left versus right hand) might be cyclically prioritized in an alternating fashion, similar to the attentional sampling of distinct locations, objects, or memory templates. Here, we investigated these questions via a behavioral dense-sampling approach. Twenty-six participants performed a simple visual discrimination task using highly salient stimuli. We varied the interval between each motor response and the subsequent target from 330 to 1040 ms, and analyzed performance as a function of this interval. Our data show significant fluctuations of both RTs and sensitivity between 12.5 and 25 Hz, but no evidence for an alternating prioritization of left- versus right-hand responses. While our results suggest an impact of motor-related signals on performance oscillations, they might additionally be influenced by perceptual processes earlier in the processing hierarchy. In summary, we demonstrate that behavioral oscillations generalize to situations involving highly salient stimuli, closer to everyday life. Moreover, our work adds to the literature by showing fluctuations at a high speed, which might be a consequence of both low task difficulty and the involvement of sensorimotor rhythms.
Topics: Humans; Visual Perception; Attention; Motor Cortex
PubMed: 36040756
DOI: 10.1111/psyp.14172 -
Behaviour Research and Therapy Feb 2023Worry is a repetitive, negative thought process that is widely experienced as difficult to control. Despite the adverse effects of uncontrollable worry on academic and... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
Worry is a repetitive, negative thought process that is widely experienced as difficult to control. Despite the adverse effects of uncontrollable worry on academic and other role functioning, the mechanisms by which worry becomes uncontrollable remain poorly understood. Previous experimental work has historically emphasized valence (negative versus positive or neutral). However, contemporary cognitive neuroscience also distinguishes between internally-directed attention (e.g., to thoughts) and externally-directed attention (e.g., to perceptual stimuli). To date, no studies have experimentally examined potential dissociable contributions of valence versus attentional direction to impaired disengagement from worry. In a 2 (negative or neutral valence) x 2 (internal or external attention) between-subjects, experimental and prospective design (https://osf.io/vdyfn/), participants (N = 200) completed alternating blocks of a randomly-assigned attention manipulation and validated sustained attention task. Participants also rated trait worry and distress during the experimental session (T1) and a naturalistic stressor (the week before finals; T2). There was a main effect, such that internally-directed attention impaired sustained attention (increased commission errors). Worry (internal x negative) also impaired sustained attention (faster and less accurate responding) in planned group contrasts. Trait worry did not moderate these effects. Sustained attention at T1 did not predict distress or worry during the T2 stressor. These findings augment the literature on the attentional consequences of worry and replicate and extend previous findings of altered speed-accuracy tradeoffs following experimentally-induced worry. We also find evidence for impaired disengagement from internally-directed (versus externally-directed) attention, which may help to explain impaired disengagement from related forms of perseverative thought (e.g., rumination).
Topics: Humans; Anxiety; Attention
PubMed: 36641981
DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2022.104242