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Annals of the New York Academy of... Dec 2023The generalization of music training to unrelated nonmusical domains is well established and may reflect musicians' superior ability to regulate attention. We...
The generalization of music training to unrelated nonmusical domains is well established and may reflect musicians' superior ability to regulate attention. We investigated the temporal deployment of attention in musicians and nonmusicians using scalp-recording of event-related potentials in an attentional blink (AB) paradigm. Participants listened to rapid sequences of stimuli and identified target and probe sounds. The AB was defined as a probe identification deficit when the probe closely follows the target. The sequence of stimuli was preceded by a neutral or informative cue about the probe position within the sequence. Musicians outperformed nonmusicians in identifying the target and probe. In both groups, cueing improved target and probe identification and reduced the AB. The informative cue elicited a sustained potential, which was more prominent in musicians than nonmusicians over left temporal areas and yielded a larger N1 amplitude elicited by the target. The N1 was larger in musicians than nonmusicians, and its amplitude over the left frontocentral cortex of musicians correlated with accuracy. Together, these results reveal musicians' superior ability to regulate attention, allowing them to prepare for incoming stimuli, thereby improving sound object identification. This capacity to manage attentional resources to optimize task performance may generalize to nonmusical activities.
Topics: Humans; Attentional Blink; Music; Attention; Cues; Auditory Perception; Acoustic Stimulation
PubMed: 37823710
DOI: 10.1111/nyas.15069 -
Nutritional Neuroscience Nov 2023L-theanine is a non-protein-forming amino acid found in tea. Previous research shows high doses (100-400 mg) of L-theanine enhances attention, mainly by reducing mind... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
BACKGROUND
L-theanine is a non-protein-forming amino acid found in tea. Previous research shows high doses (100-400 mg) of L-theanine enhances attention, mainly by reducing mind wandering and distracter processing. We hypothesized that these indirect mechanisms could significantly improve the performance of low-level attentional tasks, whereas the relative contribution could be less in complex attentional tasks that require active, higher-order processing of target stimuli.
METHODS
To test this hypothesis, we conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled, counterbalanced, four-way crossover study in 32 healthy young adults, where we compared the effects of three doses of L-theanine (100, 200 and 400 mg) with a placebo (distilled water), administered before and 50 min after dosing, on three attentional tasks from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery [viz. Reaction Time (RTI)-visuomotor speed, Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVP)-sustained attention, and Stop Signal Task (SST)-inhibitory control]. Results were analyzed in dose × time repeated measures ANOVA models, with subsequent pairwise comparisons.
RESULTS
Active doses significantly improved reaction times in the RTI (100-200 mg) and RVP (200-400 mg) tasks from baseline ( < 0.05), but once controlled for the change-from-baseline caused by placebo, only the RTI simple reaction times showed significant improvements, following 100 mg (Δ = 16.3 ms, = 0.009) and 200 mg (Δ = 16.9 ms, = 0.009) of L-theanine.
CONCLUSIONS
Consistent with our hypothesis, these findings suggest that L-theanine significantly improves attention in simple visuomotor tasks, but not in more complex sustained attention tasks, or executive control tasks that require top-down inhibition of pre-active responses.
Topics: Humans; Young Adult; Attention; Cognition; Cross-Over Studies; Double-Blind Method; Glutamates; Processing Speed; Reaction Time
PubMed: 36263942
DOI: 10.1080/1028415X.2022.2136884 -
Body Image Sep 2023It has been widely hypothesised that elevated body dissatisfaction is characterised by a biased pattern of attentional selectivity that reflects increased attention to...
It has been widely hypothesised that elevated body dissatisfaction is characterised by a biased pattern of attentional selectivity that reflects increased attention to stimuli portraying the thin-ideal. Empirical evidence in support of this notion, however, has been inconsistent. The current study aimed to examine the potential moderating role of attentional control in the association between body dissatisfaction and selective attentional responding to thin-ideal bodies. Female undergraduate students (N = 232) completed a self-report measure of body dissatisfaction followed by performance-based measures of attentional control and selective attention. Results provided support for the moderating role of attentional control. Specifically, a positive association between body dissatisfaction and biased selective attention towards thin-ideal bodies was evident only amongst individuals with relatively low levels of attentional control. A general association between body dissatisfaction and selective attention was not observed. These findings may explain previous inconsistent findings and highlight the importance of considering the potential role of attentional control in the expression of body dissatisfaction-linked attentional responding to thin-ideal bodies.
Topics: Humans; Female; Body Dissatisfaction; Body Image; Attentional Bias; Students
PubMed: 37582317
DOI: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2023.08.001 -
The Journal of Neuroscience : the... Dec 2023Many objects in the real world have features that vary over time, creating uncertainty in how they will look in the future. This uncertainty makes statistical knowledge...
Many objects in the real world have features that vary over time, creating uncertainty in how they will look in the future. This uncertainty makes statistical knowledge about the likelihood of features critical to attention demanding processes such as visual search. However, little is known about how the uncertainty of visual features is integrated into predictions about search targets in the brain. In the current study, we test the idea that regions prefrontal cortex code statistical knowledge about search targets before the onset of search. Across 20 human participants (13 female; 7 male), we observe target identity in the multivariate pattern and uncertainty in the overall activation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior frontal junction (IFJ) in advance of the search display. This indicates that the target identity (mean) and uncertainty (variance) of the target distribution are coded independently within the same regions. Furthermore, once the search display appears the univariate IFJ signal scaled with the distance of the actual target from the expected mean, but more so when expected variability was low. These results inform neural theories of attention by showing how the prefrontal cortex represents both the identity and expected variability of features in service of top-down attentional control. Theories of attention and working memory posit that when we engage in complex cognitive tasks our performance is determined by how precisely we remember task-relevant information. However, in the real world the properties of objects change over time, creating uncertainty about many aspects of the task. There is currently a gap in our understanding of how neural systems represent this uncertainty and combine it with target identity information in anticipation of attention demanding cognitive tasks. In this study, we show that the prefrontal cortex represents identity and uncertainty as unique codes before task onset. These results advance theories of attention by showing that the prefrontal cortex codes both target identity and uncertainty to implement top-down attentional control.
Topics: Humans; Male; Female; Uncertainty; Photic Stimulation; Prefrontal Cortex; Attention; Memory, Short-Term
PubMed: 37875376
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1117-23.2023 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Oct 2023Attentional control balances the competing drives of performance maximization and effort minimization. One way the attention system minimizes effort is through a bias to...
Attentional control balances the competing drives of performance maximization and effort minimization. One way the attention system minimizes effort is through a bias to persist in the use of attentional control strategies that have been useful in the past. In the present study, we asked whether such selection history can result in the persistence of an attentional control strategy that is counterproductive, effectively competing with a more optimal strategy. Participants first completed a training in which one color target was encountered more frequently than another, and then completed a test phase in which they could search for one of two targets on any given trial, one of which would be more optimal to search for given the distribution of color stimuli. An attentional bias for the more frequent target color was observed in the training phase and the choice of which target to report was robustly optimal in the test phase, reflecting performance maximization. Importantly, participants also exhibited a tendency to report the target rendered in the previously more frequent target color in the test phase, even when the distribution of non-target colors made it suboptimal to do so. Our findings shed light on the fundamental question of why attentional control is sometimes suboptimal, demonstrating a role for selection history in the perseveration of previously employed attentional strategies even when such strategies produce suboptimal performance.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Attentional Bias; Reaction Time; Color Perception
PubMed: 37038029
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-023-02285-3 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics May 2024To investigate whether attentional suppression is merely a byproduct of target facilitation or a result of independent mechanisms for distractor suppression, the present...
To investigate whether attentional suppression is merely a byproduct of target facilitation or a result of independent mechanisms for distractor suppression, the present study examined whether attentional suppression takes place when target facilitation hardly occurs using a spatial cueing paradigm. Participants searched for target letters that were not red, i.e., a negative color. On each trial, a target color was randomly chosen among 12 colors to prevent establishing attentional control for target colors and to reduce intertrial priming for target colors. Immediately before a target display, a noninformative spatial cue was presented at one of the possible target locations. The cue was rendered in a negative color, which was to be ignored, to detect targets or the reference color, which was never presented for target and non-target letters. Experiment 1 showed that negative color cues captured attention less than reference color cues, suggesting feature-based attentional suppression. The suppression effect was replicated when the temporal interval between the onsets of the cue and target displays was reduced in Experiments 2 and 3, suggesting proactive suppression. Experiment 3 directly confirmed no attentional control settings for target colors and intertrial priming. These findings suggest that distractor features can guide attention at the pre-attentive stage when target features are not used to attend to targets.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Cues; Color Perception; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Female; Male; Young Adult; Reaction Time; Orientation; Adult; Proactive Inhibition; Discrimination, Psychological; Repetition Priming
PubMed: 38418806
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-024-02858-x -
Quarterly Journal of Experimental... Sep 2023In many decision-making contexts, people often persist with their previous selections. This predisposition to choose to maintain a current (or previous) choice is...
In many decision-making contexts, people often persist with their previous selections. This predisposition to choose to maintain a current (or previous) choice is referred to as the status quo bias (SQB). In this work, we propose that increased attention towards the status quo option-enabled by its visual salience-is a previously underappreciated driver of SQB. We base this hypothesis on three propositions: (1) the status quo bias option is often more visually salient relative to the non-status quo options on offer, (2) greater visual salience of an option biases attention towards that option, and (3) increased attention towards an option leads to that option being selected at greater rates. We examined the attention hypothesis among 6,854 participants in four studies. Studies 1 and 2 showed that increasing the visual salience of a non-status quo option (i.e., the type of visual salience often garnered by the status quo option) increased the selection rate of that option. Study 3 directly tested the hypothesis by lessening the visual salience of the status quo option. Doing so eliminated SQB. Study 4 replicated and extended the findings of Study 3 in a real-world decision context. Collectively, these studies suggest that the selection of the status quo may often be related to its salience relative to other available options.
Topics: Humans; Decision Making; Bias; Attentional Bias
PubMed: 36301176
DOI: 10.1177/17470218221136827 -
Child Neuropsychology : a Journal on... Aug 2023Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) is a neuropsychiatric construct including lethargy, behavioral sluggishness, and confusion. A growing number of studies in the literature...
Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) is a neuropsychiatric construct including lethargy, behavioral sluggishness, and confusion. A growing number of studies in the literature suggest that this set of symptoms refers to neuropsychological constructs such as sustained attention. However, studies focusing on SCT and its neuropsychological correlates in developmental age are scarce. The present study aims to fill this gap. The Child and Adolescent Behavior Inventory (CABI - Teacher and Parent versions, also including the school functioning scale, and the Child Concentration Inventory (CCI-2) were administered to a sample of 128 Italian primary-school children (57.6% F, mean age 8.81, 1.07); the neuropsychological constructs involved in the study were sustained attention and reaction times to two computerized tasks. Bivariate non-parametric correlation analyses yielded significant negative associations between teacher-referred SCT and measures of sustained attention (e.g., the Attentional Network Test and the Hearts and Flowers task) as well as CABI-T school-functioning scale; a small-to-moderate positive correlation was found between CABI-T SCT scores and mean reaction times, as a measure of the slowness of behavioral responses on the Attentional Network Test: this result would appear to represent a fine operationalization of the SCT-characteristic of behavioral sluggishness. Implications of these results for operationalizing the SCT construct in developmental age are discussed.
Topics: Adolescent; Humans; Child; Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity; Attention; Reaction Time; Parents; Cognition
PubMed: 36281960
DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2022.2138302 -
Current Opinion in Psychology Apr 2024Human attention biases toward moral and emotional information are as prevalent online as they are offline. When these biases interact with content algorithms that curate... (Review)
Review
Human attention biases toward moral and emotional information are as prevalent online as they are offline. When these biases interact with content algorithms that curate social media users' news feeds to maximize attentional capture, moral and emotional information are privileged in the online information ecosystem. We review evidence for these human-algorithm interactions and argue that misinformation exploits this process to spread online. This framework suggests that interventions aimed at combating misinformation require a dual-pronged approach that combines person-centered and design-centered interventions to be most effective. We suggest several avenues for research in the psychological study of misinformation sharing under a framework of human-algorithm interaction.
Topics: Humans; Algorithms; Attentional Bias; Emotions; Morals
PubMed: 38128169
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101770 -
Cognitive Research: Principles and... Oct 2023Previous work on indices of error-monitoring strongly supports that errors are distracting and can deplete attentional resources. In this study, we use an ecologically...
Previous work on indices of error-monitoring strongly supports that errors are distracting and can deplete attentional resources. In this study, we use an ecologically valid multitasking paradigm to test post-error behavior. It was predicted that after failing an initial task, a subject re-presented with that task in conflict with another competing simultaneous task, would more likely miss their response opportunity for the competing task and stay 'tunneled' on the initially errored task. Additionally, we predicted that an error's effect on attention would dissipate after several seconds, making error cascades less likely when subsequent conflict tasks are delayed. A multi-attribute task battery was used to present tasks and collect measures of both post-error and post-correct performance. Results supported both predictions: post-error accuracy on the competing task was lower compared to post-correct accuracy, and error-proportions were higher at shorter delays, dissipating over time. An exploratory analysis also demonstrated that following errors (as opposed to post-correct trials), participants clicked more on the task panel of the initial error regardless of delay; this continued task-engagement provides preliminary support for errors leading to a cognitive tunneling effect.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Multitasking Behavior
PubMed: 37864085
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-023-00512-y