Modality-specificity of Selective Attention Networks.

Hannah J Stewart,Sygal Amitay

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01826

Hannah J Stewart, Sygal Amitay

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01826

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Abstract

Objective: To establish the modality specificity and generality of selective attention networks.Method: Forty-eight young adults completed a battery of four auditory and visual selective attention tests based upon the Attention Network framework: the visual and auditory Attention Network Tests (vANT, aANT), the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA), and the Test of Attention in Listening (TAiL). These provided independent measures for auditory and visual alerting, orienting, and conflict resolution networks. The measures were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis to assess underlying attention constructs.Results: The analysis yielded a four-component solution. The first component comprised of a range of measures from the TEA and was labeled “general attention.” The third component was labeled “auditory attention,” as it only contained measures from the TAiL using pitch as the attended stimulus feature. The second and fourth components were labeled as “spatial orienting” and “spatial conflict,” respectively—they were comprised of orienting and conflict resolution measures from the vANT, aANT, and TAiL attend-location task—all tasks based upon spatial judgments (e.g., the direction of a target arrow or sound location).Conclusions: These results do not support our a-priori hypothesis that attention networks are either modality specific or supramodal. Auditory attention separated into selectively attending to spatial and non-spatial features, with the auditory spatial attention loading onto the same factor as visual spatial attention, suggesting spatial attention is supramodal. However, since our study did not include a non-spatial measure of visual attention, further research will be required to ascertain whether non-spatial attention is modality-specific.

Highlights

The ability to selectively attend to the constantly changing stream of sensory information is a vital skill due to our limited perceptual resources
Imaging studies support the modality-generality of alerting: the same midbrain activation in the reticular formation and thalamus has been associated with continuous monitoring for both visual and somatosensory stimuli (Kinomura et al, 1996), and righthemisphere lateral frontal cortex, anterior cingulate, inferior temporal, and thalamus were activated when utilizing auditory and visual temporal cues (Sturm and Willmes, 2001; Roberts and Hall, 2008)
Test of Everyday Attention (TEA) Four subtests of TEA were used to extract measures of orienting of attention and conflict resolution involving auditory and visual stimuli (Table 1). These subtests are described in detail in Robertson et al (1996), and we present only a short description below

Summary

Introduction

The ability to selectively attend to the constantly changing stream of sensory information is a vital skill due to our limited perceptual resources (see review in Lee and Choo, 2011). The Attention Network framework proposed by Posner and Petersen (1990; updated in Petersen and Posner, 2012) divides attentional control into three separable networks: alerting, increasing arousal levels to better process new stimuli; orienting, selecting objects, or object features; and executive control, which allows resolution of conflicts to achieve a behavioral aim. Whilst both alerting and executive control are thought to be supramodal (FernandezDuque and Posner, 1997; Roberts and Hall, 2008), orienting has been argued to be modality-specific (Roberts et al, 2006; Spagna et al, 2015). Both Roberts et al (2006) and Spagna et al (2015) argued alerting is modality specific based on lack of correlation between behavioral auditory and visual alerting measures

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Discussion

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