-
Anxiety, Stress, and Coping Jul 2022According to the Attentional Control Theory, individuals with high levels of anxiety often shift their attention inefficiently due to increased effort to meet task... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
According to the Attentional Control Theory, individuals with high levels of anxiety often shift their attention inefficiently due to increased effort to meet task demands. However, literature on the effects of anxiety on shifting performance is discrepant. This study examined the impacts of trait and state anxiety on attentional shifting and whether worry or depression explained variance in shifting.
DESIGN AND METHODS
One-hundred thirty-eight undergraduate psychology students were randomized to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or control TSST. Subjects completed measures of state/trait anxiety, worry, and depression and a computerized attention task. Statistical analyses included linear mixed modelling (LMM), -tests, and ANOVAs.
RESULTS
Results revealed significant effects of state and trait anxiety and worry, but not depression. Type (location/direction) and presentation (switch/repeat) of trials also affected response times. Trait anxiety significantly related to trial presentation but did not interact with trial type. State anxiety did not significantly relate to either trial index. State and trait anxiety significantly impacted overall response time. Results revealed variations in cognitive flexibility, but no interactions between state and trait anxiety in predicting task switching.
CONCLUSION
These findings are discussed in the context of Attentional Control Theory and relevant empirical research.
Topics: Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Attention; Humans; Reaction Time; Students
PubMed: 34632875
DOI: 10.1080/10615806.2021.1983801 -
Journal of Anxiety Disorders Jan 2022Cognitive models have highlighted the role of attentional and memory biases towards negatively-valenced emotional stimuli in the maintenance of post-traumatic stress...
Cognitive models have highlighted the role of attentional and memory biases towards negatively-valenced emotional stimuli in the maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, previous research has focused mainly on attentional biases towards distracting (task-irrelevant) negative stimuli. Furthermore, attentional and memory biases have been examined in isolation and the links between them remain underexplored. We manipulated attention during encoding of trauma-unrelated negative and neutral words and examined the differential relationship of their encoding and recall with PTSD symptoms. Responders to the World Trade Center disaster (N = 392) performed tasks in which they read negative and neutral words and reported the color of another set of such words. Subsequently, participants used word stems to aid retrieval of words shown earlier. PTSD symptoms were associated with slower response times for negative versus neutral words in the word-reading task (r = 0.170) but not color-naming task. Furthermore, greater PTSD symptom severity was associated with more accurate recall of negative versus neutral words, irrespective of whether words were encoded during word-reading or color-naming tasks (F = 4.11, p = 0.044, η = 0.018). Our results show that PTSD symptoms in a trauma-exposed population are related to encoding of trauma-unrelated negative versus neutral stimuli only when attention was voluntarily directed towards the emotional aspects of the stimuli and to subsequent recall of negative stimuli, irrespective of attention during encoding.
Topics: Attention; Attentional Bias; Bias; Emotions; Humans; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
PubMed: 34891061
DOI: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2021.102509 -
Behaviour Research and Therapy Aug 2024Evidence supports a causal role of insomnia in the development and maintenance of depression, yet mechanisms underlying this association in young people are not well...
Evidence supports a causal role of insomnia in the development and maintenance of depression, yet mechanisms underlying this association in young people are not well established. Attention biases have been implicated separately in the sleep and depression fields and represents an important candidate mechanism. Poor sleep may lead to a negative attention bias (characteristic of depression) by impacting attentional control. This study assessed the hypothesis that attentional control and negative attention bias would sequentially mediate the relationship between insomnia and depressive symptoms in an unselected sample of young people (17-24 years). Concerns have been raised regarding the psychometric properties of tasks used to measure attention bias, and a Dual-Probe Task is emerging as a more reliable measure. Participants (N = 275, Male = 59, M = 19.40) completed the Dual-Probe Task, a behavioural measure of attentional control, and self-report measures of insomnia and depression. Participants completed a one-week sleep diary. Results were consistent with negative attention bias, but not attentional control, as a mechanism which partially accounts for the relationship between sleep (i.e., insomnia severity, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, sleep latency) and depression. This study highlights sleep and negative attention bias as potentially modifiable risk factors to reduce depressive symptoms in young people.
Topics: Humans; Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders; Male; Female; Adolescent; Depression; Young Adult; Attentional Bias; Attention; Self Report
PubMed: 38761556
DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2024.104569 -
Psychological Science Sep 2023A growing body of research has shown that simple choices involve the construction and comparison of values at the time of decision. These processes are modulated by...
A growing body of research has shown that simple choices involve the construction and comparison of values at the time of decision. These processes are modulated by attention in a way that leaves decision makers susceptible to attentional biases. Here, we studied the role of peripheral visual information on the choice process and on attentional choice biases. We used an eye-tracking experiment in which participants ( = 50 adults) made binary choices between food items that were displayed in marked screen "shelves" in two conditions: (a) where both items were displayed, and (b) where items were displayed only when participants fixated within their shelves. We found that removing the nonfixated option approximately doubled the size of the attentional biases. The results show that peripheral visual information is crucial in facilitating good decisions and suggest that individuals might be influenceable by settings in which only one item is shown at a time, such as e-commerce.
Topics: Adult; Humans; Attentional Bias; Fixation, Ocular; Attention; Bias; Choice Behavior
PubMed: 37470671
DOI: 10.1177/09567976231184878 -
Sleep Medicine Reviews Feb 2023Cognitive models of insomnia highlight internal and external cognitive-biases for sleep-related "threat" in maintaining the disorder. This systematic review of the... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
Cognitive models of insomnia highlight internal and external cognitive-biases for sleep-related "threat" in maintaining the disorder. This systematic review of the sleep-related attentional and interpretive-bias literature includes meta-analytic calculations of each construct. Searches identified N = 21 attentional-bias and N = 8 interpretive-bias studies meeting the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Seventeen attentional-bias studies compared normal-sleepers and poor-sleepers/insomnia patients. Using a random effects model, meta-analytic data based on standardized mean differences of attentional-bias studies determined the weighted pooled effect size to be moderate at 0.60 (95%CI:0.26-0.93). Likewise, seven of eight interpretive-bias studies involved group comparisons. Meta-analytic data determined the weighted pooled effect size as moderate at .44 (95%CI:0.19-0.69). Considering these outcomes, disorder congruent cognitive-biases appear to be a key feature of insomnia. Despite statistical support, absence of longitudinal data limits causal inference concerning the relative role cognitive-biases in the development and maintenance of insomnia. Methodological factors pertaining to task design, sample and stimuli are discussed in relation to outcome variation. Finally, we discuss the next steps in advancing the understanding of sleep-related biases in insomnia.
Topics: Humans; Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders; Sleep; Attention; Attentional Bias; Bias
PubMed: 36459947
DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2022.101713 -
International Journal of Developmental... May 2021Postural stability requires attentional resources. Dual-task paradigms are used to investigate the attentional demand of the studied tasks. However, no studies have been...
BACKGROUND
Postural stability requires attentional resources. Dual-task paradigms are used to investigate the attentional demand of the studied tasks. However, no studies have been conducted on the subjects' level of attention, analyzing its association with dual-task costs (DTC).
RESEARCH QUESTION
To evaluate the attentional level and DTC on postural sway and cognitive yield in children, adolescents, and young adults, investigating age-related differences, and to analyze if the participants' attention level is associated with DTC.
METHODS
Postural sway and cognitive-yield of 30 children, 24 adolescents, and 32 young adults were assessed in a dual-task paradigm. We calculated DTC on postural sway and cognitive yield. Attention level was tested using Psychological Battery for Attention Assessment. We tested the association between DTC and attention level.
RESULTS
Young adults showed higher DTC on area and velocity of postural sway than children and adolescents. No differences in DTC on cognitive yield were found between the groups. Children showed lower attention levels than adolescents and young adults. Attention level was negatively associated with DTC on cognitive yield in young adults. Focused Attention is responsible for 24.4% of the variance in DTC on cognitive yield.
CONCLUSION
Age impacts DTC on postural stability, but not on cognitive performance. The smaller changes in sway found in children/adolescents when dual-tasking, potentially reflect less developed attentional levels and postural control, which make them performing postural tasks closed to their stability boundaries, and, therefore, make them prioritize stability protection more than adults. Similar DTC on cognition between groups may reflect an equalization of the chosen cognitive task at everyone's difficulty level. The lower attention levels of children may reflect an attentional system in development, with prioritization o postural tasks when dual-tasking to maintain stability. Although attention level increases throughout age, attention only predicted DTC on cognition. Better Focused Attention's levels predicted lower DTC on cognitive yield for young adults.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Child; Cognition; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; Humans; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Postural Balance; Psychomotor Performance; Young Adult
PubMed: 33448019
DOI: 10.1002/jdn.10092 -
PLoS Computational Biology Oct 2019Visual selective attention acts as a filter on perceptual information, facilitating learning and inference about important events in an agent's environment. A role for...
Visual selective attention acts as a filter on perceptual information, facilitating learning and inference about important events in an agent's environment. A role for visual attention in reward-based decisions has previously been demonstrated, but it remains unclear how visual attention is recruited during aversive learning, particularly when learning about multiple stimuli concurrently. This question is of particular importance in psychopathology, where enhanced attention to threat is a putative feature of pathological anxiety. Using an aversive reversal learning task that required subjects to learn, and exploit, predictions about multiple stimuli, we show that the allocation of visual attention is influenced significantly by aversive value but not by uncertainty. Moreover, this relationship is bidirectional in that attention biases value updates for attended stimuli, resulting in heightened value estimates. Our findings have implications for understanding biased attention in psychopathology and support a role for learning in the expression of threat-related attentional biases in anxiety.
Topics: Adult; Affect; Anxiety; Attention; Attentional Bias; Biobehavioral Sciences; Decision Making; Fear; Female; Humans; Male; Photic Stimulation; Reversal Learning; Reward; Visual Perception
PubMed: 31600187
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007341 -
Behavioural Processes Aug 2017The future actions, behaviors, and outcomes of objects, individuals, and processes can often be anticipated, and some of these anticipations have been hypothesized to... (Review)
Review
The future actions, behaviors, and outcomes of objects, individuals, and processes can often be anticipated, and some of these anticipations have been hypothesized to result from momentum-like effects. Five types of momentum-like effects (representational momentum, operational momentum, attentional momentum, behavioral momentum, psychological momentum) are briefly described. Potential similarities involving properties of momentum-like effects (continuation, coherence, role of chance or guessing, role of sensory processing, imperviousness to practice or error feedback, shifts in memory for position, effects of changes in velocity, rapid occurrence, effects of retention interval, attachment to an object rather than an abstract frame of reference, nonrigid transformation) are described, and potential constraints on a future theory of momentum-like effects (dynamic representation, nature of extrapolation, sensitivity to environmental contingencies, bridging gaps between stimulus and response, increasing adaptiveness to the environment, serving as a heuristic for perception and action, insensitivity to stimulus format, importance of subjective consequences, role of knowledge and belief, automaticity of occurrence, properties of functional architecture) are discussed. The similarity and ubiquity of momentum-like effects suggests such effects might result from a single or small number of mechanisms that operate over different dimensions, modalities, and time-scales and provide a fundamental adaptation for perception and action.
Topics: Attention; Cognition; Humans; Memory
PubMed: 28257789
DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.02.019 -
Journal of Vision Aug 2019The preparation and execution of saccades and goal-directed movements elicits an accompanying shift in attention at the locus of the impending movement. However, some...
The preparation and execution of saccades and goal-directed movements elicits an accompanying shift in attention at the locus of the impending movement. However, some key aspects of the spatiotemporal profile of this attentional shift between eye and hand movements are not resolved. While there is evidence that attention is improved at the target location when making a reach, it is not clear how attention shifts over space and time around the movement target as a saccade and a reach are made to that target. Determining this spread of attention is an important aspect in understanding how attentional resources are used in relation to movement planning and guidance in real world tasks. We compared performance on a perceptual discrimination paradigm during a saccade-alone task, reach-alone task, and a saccade-plus-reach task to map the temporal profile of the premotor attentional shift at the goal of the movement and at three surrounding locations. We measured performance relative to a valid baseline level to determine whether motor planning induces additional attentional facilitation compared to mere covert attention. Sensitivity increased relative to movement onset at the target and at the surrounding locations, for both the saccade-alone and saccade-plus-reach conditions. The results suggest that the temporal profile of the attentional shift is similar for the two tasks involving saccades (saccade-alone and saccade-plus-reach tasks), but is very different when the influence of the saccade is removed. In this case, performance in the saccade-plus-reach task reflects the lower sensitivity observed when a reach-alone task is being conducted. In addition, the spatial profile of this spread of attention is not symmetrical around the target. This suggests that when a saccade and reach are being planned together, the saccade drives the attentional shift, and the reach-alone carries little attentional weight.
Topics: Adult; Attention; Female; Hand; Humans; Male; Movement; Reaction Time; Saccades; Young Adult
PubMed: 31434108
DOI: 10.1167/19.9.12 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Jan 2021Focusing attention is a key cognitive skill, but how the gaze of others affects engaged attention remains relatively unknown. We investigated if participants'...
Focusing attention is a key cognitive skill, but how the gaze of others affects engaged attention remains relatively unknown. We investigated if participants' attentional bias toward a location is modulated by the number of people gazing toward or away from it. We presented participants with a nonpredictive directional cue that biased attention towards a specific location. Then, any number of four stimulus faces turned their gaze toward or away from the attended location. When all the faces looked at the attended location participants increased their commitment to it, and response time to targets at that location were speeded. When most or all of the faces looked away from the attended location, attention was withdrawn, and response times were slowed. This study reveals that the gaze of others can penetrate one's ability to focus attention, which in turn can be both beneficial and costly to one's responses to events in the environment.
Topics: Attention; Attentional Bias; Cues; Fixation, Ocular; Humans; Reaction Time
PubMed: 33230733
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-020-02194-w