Repeated measurement of the components of attention using two versions of the Attention Network Test (ANT): Stability, isolability, robustness, and reliability

Abstract

Using orthogonal subtractions of performance in selected conditions the attentional network test (ANT) measures the efficacy of three isolable components of attention: alerting, orienting, and executive control. Ten test sessions, each containing two versions of the ANT (Fan et al., 2002; Callejas et al., 2005), were administered to 10 young adults to examine stability, isolability, robustness, and reliability of the tests. Participants indicated the direction of a target arrow presented either above or below the fixation. The target arrow was accompanied by distracting arrows, either pointing to the same direction (congruent) as or the opposite direction (incongruent) to the target arrow. The arrows were preceded by informative visual cues (central, double, spatial, and no cue) differing in temporal and spatial information (Fan et al.) or by alerting auditory signals (tone and no tone) and uninformative visual cues (valid, invalid, and no cue) (Callejas et al.). All network scores remained highly significant even after nine previous sessions despite some practice effects in the executive and the orienting networks. Some lack of independence among the networks was found. The relatively poor reliability of network scores with one session of data rises to respectable levels as more data is added.