Amount Of Attentional Resources Research Articles

The fronto-central N2 but not parietal P3 reflects response inhibition in the count/no-count task

This study aimed to investigate whether the N2 or P3 component in the count/no-count task reflects response inhibition. The participants were asked to count/withhold counting the number of O/X letters in the count/no-count task, and to calculate the sum of all digits (i.e., 1/0) in the digital accumulation task. Therefore, four conditions were obtained in this study: count, no-count, Add 1, and Add 0. In the count and Add 1 conditions, the counting/calculation number need to be updated. In both no-count and Add 0 conditions, the memory of counting/calculation number need not to be updated; a No-go (withhold) instruction was given in the no-count condition, but a Go instruction was given in the Add 0 condition. Results showed that an enhanced fronto-central N2 was evoked in the no-count than in the Add 0 condition, indicating that a stronger response conflict or stronger inhibition might be triggered in the No-count condition. The frontocentral P3 showed no differences between no-count and Add 0 conditions, however, an enhanced centro-parietal P3 component was observed for the count relative to the no-count condition and for the Add 1 relative to the Add 0 condition, indicating that a greater amount of attentional resources might be consumed during memory updating process. Taken together, in the count/no-count task, the fronto-central N2 might reflect response inhibition or conflict and the parietal P3 might reflect attentional resource allocation but not response inhibition.

Définition théorique d’une mesure expérimentale de l’attention effective

L’allocation de l’attention peut être étudiée à travers deux dimensions complémentaires : 1) la quantité de ressources attentionnelles qu’alloue l’individu lors du processus de décision et 2) le niveau d’attention effective révélé par la qualité du processus de décision. Dans la littérature, les travaux expérimentaux mesurent principalement la première dimension, tandis que les travaux théoriques se concentrent sur la seconde, sans que la correspondance entre ces deux dimensions ne soit évidente. Notre contribution vise à définir théoriquement une mesure et à proposer une méthode expérimentale capable de quantifier l’attention effective et d’étudier le processus d’allocation de l’attention.

SELECTIVE ATTENTION IN AGE-ASSOCIATED MEMORY IMPAIRMENT: AN ERP STUDY IN VISUAL SEARCH

AbstractAge-Associated memory impairment (AAMI) may be related to a decline in selective attention. In this work, the potential attentional capture by task-irrelevant stimuli was examined in older adults with AAMI compared to healthy older adults using event-related potentials (ERPs).A visual search task was employed, in which the participants had to detect the presence of a target stimulus that differed from distractors by orientation. To explore the automatic attentional capture, an irrelevant distractor stimulus defined by color was also presented without previous knowledge of the subjects. The N2pc component of ERPs, an electrophysiological indicator of the allocation of attentional resources, was analysed.The results indicated that in both groups the N2pc component was present for target stimuli but not for task-irrelevant color stimuli. In addition, the latency of N2pc for targets was significantly delayed in AAMI patients compared to controls, although no differences in the amplitude of the component were found.The delay in N2pc latency in AAMI subjects suggested they require more time than healthy seniors to shift their visuospatial attention onto the task-relevant information. However, the lack of significant differences between the groups in N2pc mean amplitude and scalp distribution suggested that the amount of attentional resources allocated to the target did not differ between older adult with and without memory impairment. The lack of N2pc component for irrelevant non-target stimuli indicated that the mechanism of top-down suppression of task-irrelevant information is preserved.Funding: Xunta de Galicia (GPC2014/082)

Interactive effects between gaze direction and facial expression on attentional resources deployment: the task instruction and context matter.

In three experiments, we tested whether the amount of attentional resources needed to process a face displaying neutral/angry/fearful facial expressions with direct or averted gaze depends on task instructions, and face presentation. To this end, we used a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation paradigm in which participants in Experiment 1 were first explicitly asked to discriminate whether the expression of a target face (T1) with direct or averted gaze was angry or neutral, and then to judge the orientation of a landscape (T2). Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that participants had to discriminate the gender of the face of T1 and fearful faces were also presented randomly inter-mixed within each block of trials. Experiment 3 differed from Experiment 2 only because angry and fearful faces were never presented within the same block. The findings indicated that the presence of the attentional blink (AB) for face stimuli depends on specific combinations of gaze direction and emotional facial expressions and crucially revealed that the contextual factors (e.g., explicit instruction to process the facial expression and the presence of other emotional faces) can modify and even reverse the AB, suggesting a flexible and more contextualized deployment of attentional resources in face processing.

Configural and featural face processing are differently modulated by attentional resources at early stages: An event-related potential study with rapid serial visual presentation

It is widely reported that face recognition relies on two dissociable mechanisms, the featural and the configural processing. However, it is unclear whether these two processing types involve different neural mechanisms and are differently modulated by attentional resources. Using the attentional blink (AB) paradigm, we aimed to investigate the effect of attentional resources on configural and featural face processing by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The amount of attentional resources was manipulated as deficient or sufficient by presenting the second target (T2) in or out of the AB period, respectively. We found that in addition to a traditional P3 attention effect, the amplitude of N170/VPP to the T2 stimuli was also sensitive to attentional resources, suggesting that attention affects face processing at an earlier perceptual processing stage. More importantly, configural face processing elicited a larger posterior P1 compared to featural face processing, but only when the attentional resources were sufficient. In contrast, the anterior N1 was larger for configural relative to featural face processing only when the attentional resources were deficient. These results suggest that early stages of configural and featural face processing are differently modulated by attentional resources, possibly with different underlying mechanisms.

Irrelevant probe technique using somatosensory stimuli for evaluating the amount of attentional resource allocated to a task

Irrelevant probe technique using somatosensory stimuli for evaluating the amount of attentional resource allocated to a task

注意資源配分量の指標としてのP300:体性感覚プローブ刺激と聴覚プローブ刺激の比較

注意資源配分量の指標としてのP300:体性感覚プローブ刺激と聴覚プローブ刺激の比較

Challenging prior evidence for a shared syntactic processor for language and music

A theoretical landmark in the growing literature comparing language and music is the shared syntactic integration resource hypothesis (SSIRH; e.g., Patel, 2008), which posits that the successful processing of linguistic and musical materials relies, at least partially, on the mastery of a common syntactic processor. Supporting the SSIRH, Slevc, Rosenberg, and Patel (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16(2):374-381, 2009) recently reported data showing enhanced syntactic garden path effects when the sentences were paired with syntactically unexpected chords, whereas the musical manipulation had no reliable effect on the processing of semantic violations. The present experiment replicated Slevc et al.'s (2009) procedure, except that syntactic garden paths were replaced with semantic garden paths. We observed the very same interactive pattern of results. These findings suggest that the element underpinning interactions is the garden path configuration, rather than the implication of an alleged syntactic module. We suggest that a different amount of attentional resources is recruited to process each type of linguistic manipulations, hence modulating the resources left available for the processing of music and, consequently, the effects of musical violations.

Modulation of somatosensory processing in dual tasks: an event-related brain potential study

The amplitudes of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have been associated with the amount of attentional resources. The present study investigated whether force production type (increasing or decreasing force) in a visuomotor force tracking task modulates the ERPs elicited in a somatosensory oddball task performed simultaneously, whether stimulus-response coupling assessed by a single-trial analysis of P300 latency is modulated by the concurrent performance of the tasks, and whether dynamic visuomotor coordination rather static coordination is sensitive to the ERP modulation. In the dual-task condition, the subjects tracked a target line moving on the display with another line representing the force generated by the grip of their left hand, while executing the somatosensory oddball task with the right hand. In the oddball-only condition, the oddball task only was performed. The amplitude of the P300 elicited in the oddball task was decreased in the dual-task condition compared with the oddball-only condition, and further decreased in the force-decreasing phase compared with the increasing phase, but was not altered by the concurrently performed isometric contraction. P100, N140, reaction time (RT), and error rate were not influenced by force production type. A correlation analysis of single-trial P300 latency and RT showed that the dual-task condition produced a stronger coupling of the P300 and RT. In summary, different force production types requiring dynamic visuomotor coordination alter a modality-nonspecific late stage of somatosensory processing but have less of an effect on early stages. During the performance of the dual task, stimulus-response coupling in the somatosensory discrimination task becomes stronger to compensate for a lack of resources and/or due to snap decisions owing to sufficient resources.

Divided attention modulates semantic activation: Evidence from a nonletter-level prime task

Research has recently shown that semantic activation is modulated in proportion to the amount of attention required for letter-level processing of the prime (the attention modulation hypothesis; Smith, Bentin, & Spalek, 2001). In this study, we examined this hypothesis with an auditory divided-attention task. Participants were asked to decide whether the pitch of a probe tone presented with the prime word was higher or lower than the basic tone presented with the fixation cross. Their target task was lexical decision to the target word. Experiment 1 showed that semantic priming was modulated by the amount of attentional resources. Moreover, in Experiment 2, this modulation was also found in a situation that eliminated the possibility of participants' response strategies. Yet, Experiment 3 showed repetition priming to be unaffected. These results support an amended attention modulation hypothesis in which modulation is not limited to letter-level processing.

Cognitive aspects of change in drawings: A neo‐Piagetian theoretical account

This study reconsiders a series of drawing tasks (Goodnow, 1978) in which children have to modify their stereotypical drawing of the human figure to represent a person in movement. Another task, in which children have to differentiate the drawing of a kangaroo from that of a person, is also considered. According to a neo‐Piagetian model of drawing development (Morra, 1995), it is hypothesized that three factors underlie children's ability to flexibly modify their drawings: (a) the amount of attentional resources (M capacity) that a child can use to activate task‐relevant figurative and operative schemes; (b) automatic activation of figurative schemes from perceptual input that can be obtained by presenting a model; and (c) activation of executive schemes that set appropriate goals and monitor performance, which can be obtained by manipulating contextual variables, such as task order. Three experiments (with a total of 645 participants in the age range from 5 to 9 years) tested successfully the theoretical predictions about the causal factors of drawing flexibility.

The conceptual overlap between cognition and conditioning in clinical psychology

Given the fact that contemporary theories of conditioning regularly utilise information processing concepts such as memory and expectancies, classifying clinical theories as either cognitive or conditioned appears to be outdated. Yet, this dichotomy is still upheld in many clinical writings. Such a false dichotomy seems to serve more of a political function than a theoretical one and thus is likely to interfere with a complete understanding of psychopathology. While the terms conditioning and cognition are often used to imply unconscious learning on the one hand versus conscious, rational learning on the other, this usage is not consistent. A more empirically useful way to describe pathological behavior may be in terms of the amount of attentional resources utilised.

Multiple resources in divided attention: a cross-modal test of the independence of hemispheric resources.

Dual-task methodology was used to assess a multiple-resources account of information processing in which each cerebral hemisphere is assumed to have access to its own finite amount of attentional resources. A visually presented verbal memory task was paired with an auditory tone memory task, and subjects were paid to emphasize one task more than the other. When subjects were trying to remember tones presented to the right ear, they could trade performance between tasks as a function of the emphasis condition, whereas on left-ear trials they could not. In addition, a control session indicated that stimuli presented to the unattended ear demanded processing resources, even when it was to the detriment of performance. The data support the assumption of independence between the hemispheres' resource supplies.