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Progress in Brain Research 2017Emotions play a significant role in guiding everyday actions and strongly interact with attention. The processing of emotional information over time and the influence of... (Review)
Review
Emotions play a significant role in guiding everyday actions and strongly interact with attention. The processing of emotional information over time and the influence of attention on such processing has been studied through the phenomenon of attentional blink using rapid serial visual presentations (RSVP) tasks. This chapter discusses the interaction between temporal attention and the type of emotional information (words, scenes, and facial expressions) presented during or before the RSVP stream. The findings show that the affective content and the arousal value of the emotional stimuli presented as first target, second target, or both affects the magnitude and the duration of the blink window. In addition, modulation of emotional context or presentation of emotions in the RSVP stream as task irrelevant distractors also influenced attentional blink. Further, this chapter discusses different models and theories of attentional blink and attempts to explain the emotional effects. The chapter concludes with possible scope for future studies.
Topics: Attention; Attentional Blink; Emotions; Executive Function; Humans
PubMed: 29157417
DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2017.08.014 -
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 -
Psychological Science Jun 2016How do people get attention to operate at peak efficiency in high-pressure situations? We tested the hypothesis that the general mechanism that allows this is the...
How do people get attention to operate at peak efficiency in high-pressure situations? We tested the hypothesis that the general mechanism that allows this is the maintenance of multiple target representations in working and long-term memory. We recorded subjects' event-related potentials (ERPs) indexing the working memory and long-term memory representations used to control attention while performing visual search. We found that subjects used both types of memories to control attention when they performed the visual search task with a large reward at stake, or when they were cued to respond as fast as possible. However, under normal circumstances, one type of target memory was sufficient for slower task performance. The use of multiple types of memory representations appears to provide converging top-down control of attention, allowing people to step on the attentional accelerator in a variety of high-pressure situations.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Evoked Potentials; Female; Humans; Male; Memory, Long-Term; Memory, Short-Term; Psychomotor Performance; Young Adult
PubMed: 27056975
DOI: 10.1177/0956797616636416 -
Progress in Brain Research 2008Research on attention has been closely linked with possible advances in the study of consciousness. Various theories and models have been proposed for attention in the... (Review)
Review
Research on attention has been closely linked with possible advances in the study of consciousness. Various theories and models have been proposed for attention in the past 50 years. Behavioural, computational, and neuroscientific approaches have been successful in improving our understanding of attentional processes. Given the current status of attention research, what can we say about the relationship between attention and consciousness? This paper discusses the possible relationships between attention and consciousness. Findings from cognitive science and neuroscience relevant to the elucidation of this relationship are discussed. Recent findings from phenomena that have a bearing on this relationship such as inattentional amnesia, change blindness, attentional blink, perceptual stabilization, and afterimages are described. The implications of the results of these phenomena for attention and awareness are also discussed. It is proposed that top-down attention is not a unitary phenomena and such a characterization may provide a way to interpret some of the results from these findings.
Topics: Attention; Cognitive Science; Consciousness; Humans; Neurosciences
PubMed: 18166386
DOI: 10.1016/S0079-6123(07)68006-6 -
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 -
Current Opinion in Neurobiology Aug 2007Some fifty years after the first physiological studies of auditory attention, the field is now ripening, with exciting recent insights into the psychophysics,... (Review)
Review
Some fifty years after the first physiological studies of auditory attention, the field is now ripening, with exciting recent insights into the psychophysics, psychology, and neural basis of auditory attention. Current research seeks to unravel the complex interactions of pre-attentive and attentive processing of the acoustic scene, the role of auditory attention in mediating receptive-field plasticity in both auditory spatial and auditory feature processing, the contrasts and parallels between auditory and visual attention pathways and mechanisms, the interplay of bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms, the influential role of attention, goals, and expectations in shaping auditory processing, and the orchestration of diverse attentional effects at multiple levels from the cochlea to the cortex.
Topics: Animals; Attention; Auditory Pathways; Auditory Perception; Humans; Neuronal Plasticity; Sound; Space Perception
PubMed: 17714933
DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2007.07.011 -
Journal of Child Neurology 1991Attention is a distributed process. The activity of neurons in many brain structures can be modulated by the attentional state of the animal. Attention directed toward a... (Review)
Review
Attention is a distributed process. The activity of neurons in many brain structures can be modulated by the attentional state of the animal. Attention directed toward a particular external stimulus is often reflected in an enhancement of the sensory response to that stimulus. Enhancement is spatially selective for neurons in many areas and explicitly eye-movement related in most. Attention directed toward the internal representation of a stimulus may be associated with a prolongation of neural activity. These modulations of neuronal responsiveness underscore the dynamic nature of neural processing. Competition between left- and right-brain structures in the control of attention is common. While attention is perceived as a unitary process, it is subserved by many brain structures. Given the wide distribution of attentional processes, it is not surprising that children diagnosed as having attentional deficits show considerable diversity in symptoms and etiology.
Topics: Animals; Attention; Brain; Haplorhini; Neural Conduction; Synaptic Transmission
PubMed: 1848251
DOI: 10.1177/0883073891006001s11 -
Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy... Sep 2007The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of attention as it has been studied in the field of psychology. Broad themes in terms of theory are highlighted,... (Review)
Review
The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of attention as it has been studied in the field of psychology. Broad themes in terms of theory are highlighted, focusing on concepts of attentional resources and attentional effort. In addition, a functional approach to understanding attention is presented, describing attention in terms of the task contexts in which it may operate: selective attention, divided attention, attention switching, and sustained attention. Factors promoting and impairing good task performance in each of these contexts are introduced. Posner's attentional network and Mesulam's attentional matrix are also briefly reviewed in support of the point that attentional functions appear to be distributed throughout the human brain. Topics covered provide a foundation for understanding attention and its role in everyday behavior, as well as a rubric for thinking about and understanding attentional behavior that would be useful in practice.
Topics: Attention; Brain; Humans; Models, Neurological; Psychological Theory
PubMed: 18025955
DOI: 10.1097/NPT.0b013e31814d7874 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Jan 2023The internal/external framework of attention characterizes attention focused to perceptual stimuli and internal representations as highly similar processes. While much...
The internal/external framework of attention characterizes attention focused to perceptual stimuli and internal representations as highly similar processes. While much research on external attention examines how attention may be broadened or narrowed (attentional zoom lens), it is unclear if internal attention functions in a similar way. In the present study, we manipulate both internal and external attentions to be either broad or narrow. Participants first encoded either a broad or narrow working memory array containing three differently colored items. This array was maintained as they performed an Eriksen flanker task that was either distributed broadly or narrowly, followed by a memory test for a random memory item. We found that regardless of whether the flanker fell inside or outside of the internal breadth of attention, flanker congruency effects did not change. The exception to this was when internal breadth was manipulated with retrocuing, which resulted in greater congruency effects when flankers aligned with the span of internal breadth rather than falling outside of it. Overall, this study shows that internal breadth information is unlikely to alter processing of external distractors until some of the information is cued internally after encoding, suggesting limitations in the internal/external attention framework.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Memory, Short-Term; Cues; Visual Perception
PubMed: 36459275
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-022-02577-1 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Nov 2022Scientists have long been interested in understanding the influence of emotionally salient stimuli on attention and perception. One experimental paradigm that has shown... (Review)
Review
Scientists have long been interested in understanding the influence of emotionally salient stimuli on attention and perception. One experimental paradigm that has shown great promise in demonstrating the effect of such stimuli is emotion-induced blindness. That is, when emotionally salient stimuli are presented in a rapid stream of stimuli, they produce impairments in the perception of task-relevant stimuli, even though they themselves are task irrelevant. This is known as emotion-induced blindness, and it is a profound and robust form of attentional bias. Here, we review the literature on emotion-induced blindness, such as identifying the types of stimuli that elicit it, and its temporal dynamics. We discuss the role of dimensional versus categorical approaches to emotion in relation to emotion-induced blindness. We also synthesize the work examining whether certain individuals, such as those high in anxiety versus psychopathy, succumb to emotion-induced blindness to different extents, and we discuss whether the deficit can be reduced or even abolished. We review the theoretical models that have been proposed to explain the phenomenon. Finally, we identify exciting questions for future research, and elucidate useful frameworks to guide future investigations.
Topics: Humans; Attention; Emotions; Attentional Bias; Blindness; Anxiety
PubMed: 35701659
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-022-02525-z