-
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Nov 2019We live in a dynamic, distracting world. When distracting information captures attention, what are the consequences for perception? Previous literature has focused on...
We live in a dynamic, distracting world. When distracting information captures attention, what are the consequences for perception? Previous literature has focused on effects such as reaction time (RT) slowing, accuracy decrements, and oculomotor capture by distractors. In the current study, we asked whether attentional capture by distractors can also more fundamentally alter target feature representations, and if so, whether participants are aware of such errors. Using a continuous report task and novel confidence range report paradigm, we discovered 2 types of feature-binding errors when a distractor was presented along with the target: First, when attention is strongly captured by the distractor, participants commit swapping errors (misreporting the color at the distractor location instead of the target color), which remarkably seem to occur without awareness. Second, when participants successfully resist capture, they tend to exhibit repulsion (perceptual distortion away from the color at the distractor location). Thus, we found that capture not only induces a spatial shift of attention, it also alters feature perception in striking ways. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Female; Humans; Male; Visual Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 31464467
DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000681 -
PloS One 2022Previous research demonstrated a close bidirectional relationship between spatial attention and the manual motor system. However, it is unclear whether an explicit hand...
Previous research demonstrated a close bidirectional relationship between spatial attention and the manual motor system. However, it is unclear whether an explicit hand movement is necessary for this relationship to appear. A novel method with high temporal resolution-bimanual grip force registration-sheds light on this issue. Participants held two grip force sensors while being presented with lateralized stimuli (exogenous attentional shifts, Experiment 1), left- or right-pointing central arrows (endogenous attentional shifts, Experiment 2), or the words "left" or "right" (endogenous attentional shifts, Experiment 3). There was an early interaction between the presentation side or arrow direction and grip force: lateralized objects and central arrows led to a larger increase of the ipsilateral force and a smaller increase of the contralateral force. Surprisingly, words led to the opposite pattern: larger force increase in the contralateral hand and smaller force increase in the ipsilateral hand. The effect was stronger and appeared earlier for lateralized objects (60 ms after stimulus presentation) than for arrows (100 ms) or words (250 ms). Thus, processing visuospatial information automatically activates the manual motor system, but the timing and direction of this effect vary depending on the type of stimulus.
Topics: Attention; Hand; Hand Strength; Humans; Movement; Reaction Time
PubMed: 35802609
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0262510 -
Applied Neuropsychology. Child 2019The purpose of this study was to determine whether children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) differ in terms of attentional ability. Participants...
The purpose of this study was to determine whether children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) differ in terms of attentional ability. Participants were 40 age- and gender-matched CWS and CWNS (aged between 72 and 120 months). Attentional ability was assessed using the Test of Everyday Attention for Children (TEA-Ch), a clinical assessment battery comprising 13 attentional measures, assessing three areas of attention: selective attention, sustained attention, and attentional switching. A low score on the assessment indicates attentional difficulty. There was an overall tendency for CWS to score lower than CWNS on all 13 TEA-Ch measures and all three attentional abilities. This difference reached statistical significance for the sustained attentional component. The present study provides support for the hypothesis that there are some differences between CWS and CWNS in terms of attentional ability. The findings are interpreted within existing models of attention with regard to previous studies of attention in CWS.
Topics: Attention; Child; Cohort Studies; Executive Function; Female; Humans; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Stuttering
PubMed: 30265574
DOI: 10.1080/21622965.2018.1493996 -
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 -
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 -
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience Aug 2023The functional inhibition account states that alpha-band (8-14 Hz) power implements attentional control by selectively inhibiting task-irrelevant neural representations.... (Review)
Review
The functional inhibition account states that alpha-band (8-14 Hz) power implements attentional control by selectively inhibiting task-irrelevant neural representations. This account has been well supported by decades of correlational research showing attention-related changes in the topography of alpha power in anticipation of task-relevant stimuli and is a viable theory of how attention impacts sensory processing, namely, via alpha power changes in sensory areas before stimulus onset. In addition, attention is known to modulate neural responses to stimuli themselves. Thus, a critical prediction of the functional inhibition account is that preparatory alpha modulations should explain variance in the degree of attention-related modulation of neural responses to stimuli. The present article sought evidence for or against this prediction by scouring the literature on attention and alpha oscillations to review papers that explicitly correlated attention-related changes in prestimulus alpha with attention-related changes in stimulus-evoked neural activity. Surprisingly, out of over 100 papers that were examined, we found only nine that explicitly computed such relationships. The results of these nine papers were mixed, with some in support and some arguing against the functional inhibition account of alpha. Our synthesis draws out common design features that may help explain when effects are observed or not. Even among studies that do find correlations, there is inconsistency as to whether preparatory alpha modulations are predictive of sensory or postsensory components of stimulus responses, highlighting avenues for future research. A clear outcome of this review is that future studies on the role of alpha in attentional processing should analyze correlations between attention effects on alpha and attention effects on stimulus-evoked activity, as more data pertinent to this hypothesized relationship are needed.
Topics: Humans; Electroencephalography; Alpha Rhythm; Attention
PubMed: 37255429
DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02009 -
Current Opinion in Psychology Oct 2019Understanding how spatial attention is distributed over space (i.e. the attentional window) is highly important for theoretical, methodological, as well as applied... (Review)
Review
Understanding how spatial attention is distributed over space (i.e. the attentional window) is highly important for theoretical, methodological, as well as applied reasons. One fundamental challenge to the study of the attentional window is that most of our current knowledge is based on measuring distractors interference, or relying in some other way on properties of the participants' responses (e.g. response time). However, other factors such as distractor visibility may mediate distractor interference, and in general participants' response can be influenced by many other factors including higher-level strategies, experience, response history, response biases, and so on. Recent paradigms, which do not rely on participants' response, such as measuring attentional modulations of the pupillary light response, may help us face this challenge.
Topics: Attention; Eye Movements; Humans; Reaction Time; Visual Perception
PubMed: 30660870
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.12.008 -
Cognitive Research: Principles and... Apr 2023When an audience member becomes immersed, their attention shifts towards the media and story, and they allocate cognitive resources to represent events and characters....
When an audience member becomes immersed, their attention shifts towards the media and story, and they allocate cognitive resources to represent events and characters. Here, we investigate whether it is possible to measure immersion using continuous behavioural and physiological measures. Using television and film clips, we validated dual-task reaction times, heart rate, and skin conductance against self-reported narrative engagement. We find that reaction times to a secondary task were strongly positively correlated with self-reported immersion: slower reaction times were indicative of greater immersion, particularly emotional engagement. Synchrony in heart rate across participants was associated with self-reported attentional and emotional engagement with the story, although we found no such relationship with skin conductance. These results establish both dual-task reaction times and heart rate as candidate measures for the real-time, continuous, assessment of audience immersion.
Topics: Humans; Self Report; Immersion; Attention; Emotions; Reaction Time
PubMed: 37074525
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-023-00475-0