Author Correction: Early social adversity modulates the relation between attention biases and socioemotional behaviour in juvenile macaques

Effectiveness of drug-attention-control training on detoxified drug users’ attentional bias and other treatment indices

While previous studies have shown memory enhancement for items with statistical regularities, it remains unclear whether this advantage persists when people are not anticipating the need to recall that information. Here, we used the attribute amnesia paradigm to examine whether statistical regularities influence working memory encoding in the absence of intentional memorization. In Experiment 1, participants reported the location of a colored target that appeared more frequently in one color. On a surprise trial probing target color, participants who saw the target in the frequent color were significantly more likely to answer correctly than those who saw it in a less frequent color. More importantly, regardless of which color was actually shown, participants across both groups tended to choose the frequent color as target color, suggesting a response bias, rather than enhanced encoding, driven by statistical regularities. Experiment 2 inserted a separate visual search task with equalized color probabilities and found an attentional bias toward the frequent color, confirming its attentional prioritization. Experiment 3 extended the above findings to task-irrelevant, yet physically salient and attention-grabbing distractors. Together, these findings indicate that although statistical regularities do not enhance working memory encoding, participants implicitly extract summary statistics of attended item attributes across trials, which in turn shapes their subsequent decisions.

Testing the utility of Mouseview.js for measuring associations between alcohol related attentional bias and problematic alcohol use

Camouflaged Object Segmentation (COS) faces significant challenges due to the scarcity of annotated data, where meticulous pixel-level annotation is both labor-intensive and costly, primarily due to the intricate object-background boundaries. Addressing the core question, "Can COS be effectively achieved in a zero-shot manner without manual annotations for any camouflaged object?", we propose an affirmative solution. We examine the learned attention patterns for camouflaged objects and introduce a robust zero-shot COS framework. Our findings reveal that while transformer models for salient object segmentation (SOS) prioritize global features in their attention mechanisms, camouflaged object segmentation exhibits both global and local attention biases. Based on these findings, we design a framework that adapts with the inherent local pattern bias of COS while incorporating global attention patterns and a broad semantic feature space derived from SOS. This enables efficient zero-shot transfer for COS. Specifically, We incorporate a Masked Image Modeling (MIM) based image encoder optimized for Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT), a Multimodal Large Language Model (M-LLM), and a Multi-scale Fine-grained Alignment (MFA) mechanism. The MIM encoder captures essential local features, while the PEFT module learns global and semantic representations from SOS datasets. To further enhance semantic granularity, we leverage the M-LLM to generate caption embeddings conditioned on visual cues, which are meticulously aligned with multi-scale visual features via MFA. This alignment enables precise interpretation of complex semantic contexts. Moreover, we introduce a learnable codebook to represent the M-LLM during inference, significantly reducing computational demands while maintaining performance. Our framework demonstrates its versatility and efficacy through rigorous experimentation, achieving state-of-the-art performance in zero-shot COS with $F_{\beta }^{w}$Fβw scores of 72.9% on CAMO and 71.7% on COD10K. By removing the M-LLM during inference, we achieve an inference speed comparable to that of traditional end-to-end models, reaching 18.1 FPS. Additionally, our method excels in polyp segmentation, and underwater scene segmentation, outperforming challenging baselines in both zero-shot and supervised settings, thereby implying its potentiality in various segmentation tasks.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) presents promising yet often overlooked opportunities for international business. This study investigates how senior managers from developed countries, particularly Canada, cognitively recognize or dismiss opportunities in geographically and institutionally distant markets like SSA. We draw on in-depth case studies of seven Canadian companies internationalizing into SSA countries. Our framework rests on an attention-based view (ABV), which we refine and extend by emphasizing cognitive processes that precede the noticing of opportunity-relevant information. We offer nuanced insights into this pre-noticing phase, showing how managers’ initial expectations and mental categorization of SSA shape their later attention to market cues. We also highlight how the salience and perceived credibility of information sources, including diaspora networks, can influence whether these cues are acted upon. Our findings suggest that persistent SSA disengagement by Western firms could stem from SSA-specific attentional biases or failures, rather than just concerns about informational or institutional voids. The evidence-based insights add to a managerial cognition view of firm internationalization. They also help reframe conventional entry barriers, such as information problems linked to foreignness or outsidership, as cognitively constructed. Meanwhile, senior managers and policymakers gain insights into cognitive filters that can hamper business expansion into historically stigmatized but high-potential markets.

Visual exploration during everyday tasks reveals attentional processes and offers promising avenues for clinical assessment. In this study, we examined whether the spatial attention bias induced by the presence of a mobile phone during a routine activity, eating dinner, can be effectively captured using wearable sensors that record gaze and body orientation. In a within-subject design, participants ate spaghetti while their mobile phone was either absent or placed on the left or right side of their tray. Our analyses focused on deviations in gaze and body orientation from the center of the plate and fixations on target objects automatically extracted through computer vision. Phone placement shifted gaze toward its location, producing a clear lateralization throughout the meal: without a phone, gaze centered normally; with a phone, participants fixated more on nearby objects and less on those opposite. These results demonstrate that wearable eye-tracking can detect spatial attention biases in natural behavior. Integrating computer vision enabled automatic contextualization of gaze data, allowing for the extraction of meaningful features related to specific elements of the visual environment. This scalable, non-invasive, and ecologically valid approach holds promise for assessing attentional dynamics in real-world context.

Several large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that adding alcohol-avoidance training to abstinence-oriented treatment for alcohol use disorders leads to reduced relapse rates. Given the consistently positive but relatively modest magnitude of these effects (i.e., an overall risk reduction of 7.1%, comparable with current medication for alcohol use disorders), we conducted a double-blind, multisite RCT ( N = 247) to examine the effect of combining alcohol-avoidance training with an intervention aimed at reducing the attentional bias toward alcohol-related stimuli. Using a 2 × 2 factorial design, we found that neither intervention resulted in a reduction in the number of relapses or alcohol-related problems (assessed at 3, 6, and 12 months after completion of the 6-week training regimen). In fact, alcohol-avoidance training even tended to increase (rather than decrease) relapse rates. Cognitive-bias indices were also unaffected by the two interventions. Possible explanations for these null findings are discussed.

BackgroundSerial dependence (SD) is a contextual bias in visual processing, where current perception is influenced by past stimuli. This study explores how prioritization in visual working memory (VWM) modulates SD through three experiments.ResultsExperiment 1 revealed that tasks requiring active memory maintenance (thus prioritization in VWM) amplified SD, with stronger biases observed when participants retained prior stimuli for extended periods. Conversely, Experiments 2 and 3, which employed pre- and post-cueing in a dual-stimuli setup, found no significant differences in SD strength between congruent and incongruent conditions, suggesting that simple attentional prioritization alone does not influence SD magnitude.ConclusionsThe results highlight the nuanced interplay between memory maintenance, attention, and perceptual biases, suggesting that SD arises from complex interactions beyond simple attentional mechanisms. This study advances the understanding of SD within perceptual decision-making, underscoring the role of memory maintenance in shaping visual judgments.

Converging evidence suggests that visual spatial attention is preferentially allocated to emotional over neutral stimuli, referred to as an attentional bias to emotional information. Intriguing questions emerged about whether this attentional bias is facilitated by an assumed right hemispheric dominance of emotion processing and by converging cross-modal information (Gerdes et al., 2021). However, we argue that a critical condition that would allow an interpretation in terms of an influence on an emotional attention bias is missing from the experimental design testing these effects: namely, a condition presenting only neutral pictures. To corroborate our argument, we conducted a replication and extension of the eye-tracking study by Gerdes et al. (2021), including this control condition. Specifically, we presented pairs of pictures and lateralized sounds in a free-viewing paradigm and tested the effect of picture position, sound position, and sound valence on an attentional bias score (BS), a difference value for the number of first fixations to unpleasant pictures compared to neutral ones. Importantly, we included a neutral-neutral condition and computed a corresponding BS for an arbitrary set of neutral pictures. Both the supposed leftward bias of emotional attention (i.e., the BS for unpleasant pictures is more pronounced if they are presented on the left) and its supposed guidance by sounds (i.e., the BS for unpleasant pictures is more pronounced if a sound was heard on the same side as the unpleasant picture) emerged in striking parallelism for both unpleasant-neutral and neutral-neutral picture pairs. Thus, the paradigm gives no evidence for emotion specificity of results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognitive models of anxiety propose that attention bias towards threat causes and maintains anxiety symptoms. However, the effect of working memory (WM) load on selective attention of threatening faces in individuals with socially anxious symptoms and the electrophysiological correlates are unclear. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 30 socially anxious participants and 32 controls during an adapted emotional flanker task. Overall, socially anxious individuals showed worse accuracy and slower reaction times (RTs) in facial emotion recognition than controls. Furthermore, under high WM load, the N2 amplitudes for targets flanked by angry distractors was significantly larger than that for targets flanked by happy distractors and the late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes for angry targets was significantly larger than that for happy targets in socially anxious participants. No such effects were found for N2 and LPP amplitudes under low WM load. The results suggest the impairment of top-down cognitive control in socially anxious individuals. The increased N2 amplitudes for targets flanked by angry distractors and LPP amplitudes for angry targets under high WM load in socially anxious individuals may be related to enhanced conflict monitoring and perceptual engagement for threatening faces under conditions where cognitive resources are taxed.

Abstract BACKGROUND Persistent fatigue, mood disturbance, and cognitive dysfunction are increasingly recognized as neurological complications of cancer and its treatment. These symptoms are commonly associated with frontoparietal network disruption, a mechanism implicated across multiple malignancies and therapeutic regimens. Multimodal Multistable Bias Modification (MMBM) is a smartphone-delivered digital therapeutic designed to restore frontoparietal homeostasis through audiovisual neuromodulation and implicit attentional retraining. This randomized controlled trial used breast cancer as a model system to evaluate the neurocognitive effects of MMBM. METHODS In this fully remote, single-blind, randomized controlled pilot study (NCT06136923), 81 breast cancer survivors with prior chemotherapy exposure (3 months to 5 years post-treatment) and persistent neurological symptoms were randomized to receive either 28 days of MMBM or an inert digital control (DC). MMBM consisted of daily 7-minute cognitive-perceptual tasks using multistable stimuli and embedded attentional bias modification algorithms. Key exploratory endpoints included PROMIS-29 + 2 (fatigue, cognitive function, mood, sleep), Brief Pain Inventory, and Pain Catastrophizing Scale. Post hoc analyses examined the moderating role of baseline symptom severity. Safety, usability, and adherence were also evaluated. RESULTS Seventy-eight participants completed the study (MMBM=41, DC=37). Compared to DC, MMBM produced statistically and clinically significant improvements in fatigue (−3.4, p<0.05), anxiety (−3.0, p<0.05), depression (−2.8, p<0.05), and pain outcomes. Directional improvements were also observed in sleep disturbance (−1.6 vs −0.2) and cognitive function domains. Participants with higher baseline symptom severity experienced amplified treatment effects. The intervention was well-tolerated with no serious or device-related adverse events. Mean session adherence exceeded 91%, with an average daily use of 7.3 minutes and high usability ratings. CONCLUSIONS MMBM is a safe, engaging, and mechanism-driven digital therapeutic that modulates frontoparietal function to address cancer-related neurocognitive symptoms. Though breast cancer was used as the initial model, the observed improvements across multiple neurological domains support MMBM’s broader application to malignancies. These findings position MMBM as a scalable intervention for mitigating the long-term neurological complications of cancer care.

There is an age-related positivity effect in attention to emotional faces. However, all of these studies have relied on computer tasks where people are directed to look at faces on a screen. The primary aim of this study was to test whether the age-related positivity effect to emotional faces emerges under more naturalistic settings. The secondary aim was to test whether an own-age bias exists in attention to emotional faces and whether task ecological validity moderates any observed effect. Younger and older adults completed a naturalistic positivity effect task where they sat in a waiting room with emotional faces on the walls while their eye-gaze behavior was monitored with a mobile eye-tracker. They also completed a computer-based task that involved viewing pairs of emotional faces on a screen while wearing a mobile eye-tracker. As predicted, a positivity effect emerged in the computer-based task where older adults looked less at negative faces compared to younger adults, but no age-related positivity bias emerged in the naturalistic task. In addition, younger adults showed an own-age bias in attention to faces, and this was strongest in the naturalistic task. There was no evidence of an own-age bias in older adults for either task. These findings highlight the importance of considering ecological validity in studies of attention and emotional aging. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

While individuals exhibit heightened attentional bias toward social media information, it remains debated whether this reflects a content-specific priority or a broader cognitive adaptation. Using visual search tasks, self-report scales, and the Embedded Figures Test, this study investigated attentional capture by digital icons and the role of cognitive style. Results showed that icons, particularly for field-independent individuals, elicited greater capture, suggesting a generalized digital attentional bias, and cognitive style play a key role in the process.

BackgroundAttentional processes toward high-calorie foods contribute to the maintenance of binge eating disorder (BED) and have been targeted by attentional modification trainings (AMTs). In this study, we quantified food-related attentional bias (AB) in individuals with BED versus control groups with normal-weight (NCG) and overweight (OCG), and evaluated whether AMT effects would persist after one week and generalize to novel stimuli.MethodsWe assessed eating pathology and AB in 135 participants (BED: n = 72; NCG: n = 32; OCG: n = 31). We used a dot-probe paradigm with concurrent eye-tracking and reaction-time measures. Sixty-one participants with BED were then randomized to four sessions of AMT or placebo training. All participants with BED underwent re-evaluations of AB and eating pathology one week after the final training session.ResultsAt baseline, the group with BED presented significantly greater AB toward high-calorie food cues than both the NCG and OCG did. One week post-training, no differential effects of AMT were observed: both the AMT and placebo groups showed modest, nonspecific reductions in initial fixation duration bias and reaction-time variability. Correlations between changes in AB toward food and eating pathology were small and not significant.ConclusionsThe presence of a food-related AB in individuals with BED was confirmed. However, AMT did not yield sustained or generalized modifications in attentional processing beyond those observed in the placebo condition. Nonspecific improvements may reflect enhanced overall attentional control or general exposure effects. Future research should isolate the active components of AMT and explore strategies to increase its ecological validity.Trial registration: Registered in the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS00012984) on 2017-11-30.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40337-025-01450-4.

This essay argues against the view proposed by Schellenberg that there is a functional continuum between imagination and belief, focusing on the attitudinal question of imaginative immersion. The overarching question is whether an immersed imaginer to some extent truly believes or only imagines the content of their imagination. Schellenbergs functional continuum fails because the fundamental observations she posits in support of a functional continuum, a phenomenological continuity from non-immersed to immersed states, are better explained by a theory of immersion with attentional biasing. This essay demonstrates this by proposing a theory of immersion with attention, where immersion deepens as attention shifts from real-life representations to imagined representations, while preserving the functional distinction between belief and imagination. Finally, it concludes that imagination and belief are separate attitudes, while attention best explains the phenomenal continuity of imaginative immersion, allowing imagination to possess a belief-like quality without ever assuming the functional roles of belief.

Abstract Background Stroke is a leading cause of disability, often accompanied by unilateral spatial neglect (USN), which severely impairs recovery. Traditional assessments like paper-pencil tests provide limited insights into behaviors and eye–hand coordination during real-world tasks. Advances in hand pose estimation and eye tracking in combination with augmented reality (AR) offer potential for data-driven assessments of naturalistic interactions. Objective This proof-of-concept study presents and evaluates a multimodal behavioral tracking system that captures gaze, body, and hand movements during interactions within an AR environment. Our primary goals are to (1) validate that this system can achieve robust and accurate interaction data capture in clinical settings, (2) show that the system can reliably detect known USN behavioral patterns, and (3) explore how comprehensive data can provide new understanding of eye–hand coordination deficits in USN. Methods We developed an AR-based assessment system using Microsoft HoloLens 2 and an external body-tracking camera to capture real-time gaze, hand, and body movements in an interactive environment. Multimodal data streams were temporally synchronized, fused, and filtered to enhance spatial accuracy and availability. Tracking performance was benchmarked against a traditional optical motion-capture system to validate reliability. In a study, 7 patients with right-brain lesions with mild to moderate USN and 8 healthy controls participated. Each performed a designed reaching task, stamping virtual sheets of paper that appeared randomly on a table. We analyzed participants’ search behavior patterns to assess attentional biases and examined gaze anchoring timing during targeted reaching motions to explore potential eye–hand coordination deficits. Results The fusion of hand-tracking data from the HoloLens 2 and external system reduced tracking loss from 25.7% to 2.4%, with an absolute trajectory error of 3.27 cm. The system demonstrated high usability and was well accepted by patients. Data from the control group confirmed the absence of intrinsic lateral biases in the system and task design. The USN group displayed typical search behavior through ipsilesional biases in gaze direction during visual exploration (median deviation 7.46 [1.61-9.48] deg, P <.05) and longer times to find contralesional targets (median difference 1.08 [0.20-1.80] s, P =.02). Additionally, the eye–hand coordination analysis revealed lateral differences in gaze anchoring during targeted reaching motions in the USN group, with earlier fixation on contralesional targets (median difference 112 [71-146] ms, P =.02). Conclusions The proposed AR framework provides a novel, comprehensive data-driven method for capturing interaction behavior in a controlled, yet naturalistic environment. Our results demonstrated the system’s effectiveness in measuring hallmark USN symptoms, such as gaze and head orientation biases, and highlighted its potential to complement traditional assessments by offering deep insights into torso rotation and eye–hand coordination with a high resolution and accuracy. This data-driven approach shows promise for enhancing current USN assessment practices and gaining new insights into patients’ behaviors.

In this manuscript, I provide a reflection on Bartlett et al.'s (2022) study, No Meaningful Difference in Attentional Bias Between Daily and Non-Daily Smokers. I begin with an overview of attentional bias and its measurement in addiction research, followed by a summary of the study by Bartlett et al. (2022). I then discuss the broader implications of this research, with particular emphasis on methodological implications for the field. Finally, I outline directions for future research that address limitations of previous studies and seek to integrate attentional bias mechanisms into contemporary value-based decision-making frameworks.

Eyes tell all: Dissecting attentional bias in social anxiety through emotional faces.

Linking attention bias to youth social anxiety and depression: Insights from computational modeling of the affective Posner task.