Attentional Instructions Research Articles

Mindful attention reduces linguistic intergroup bias.

A brief mindfulness intervention diminished bias in favor of one's in-group and against one's out-group. In the linguistic intergroup bias (LIB), individuals expect in-group members to behave positively, and out-group members to behave negatively. Consequently, individuals choose abstract language beset with character inferences to describe these expected behaviors, and in contrast, choose concrete, objective language to describe unexpected behaviors. Eighty-four participants received either mindful attention instructions (observe their thoughts as fleeting mental states) or immersion instructions (become absorbed in the vivid details of thoughts). After instruction, participants viewed visual depictions of an imagined in-group or out-group member's positive or negative behavior, selecting the best linguistic description from a set of four descriptions that varied in abstractness. Immersion groups demonstrated a robust LIB. Mindful attention groups, however, exhibited a markedly tempered LIB, suggesting that even a brief mindfulness-related instruction can implicitly reduce the propensity to perpetuate stereotypical thinking through language. These results contribute to understanding the mechanisms that facilitate unprejudiced thinking.

Don't Think about Your Movements: Effects of Attentional Instructions on Rowing Performance

The beneficial effect of adopting an external as opposed to an internal focus of attention during movement execution is well established for a range of motor tasks. As up-to-date findings in the field of endurance sports using physiological outcome measures are rare, the aim of this study was to examine attentional focus effects in rowing using oxygen consumption (V̇O2) as the main dependent variable. Eighteen experienced athletes rowed three times eight minutes at a submaximum intensity on a rowing ergometer. For each of the three rowing blocks they had to adopt a different focus of attention which was on leg movement (internal), on a video (external) or without instructions (control). Results revealed an increase in V̇O2 in the internal focus condition compared with the external as well as with the control condition. We conclude that it is an internal focus that led to performance decrements rather than an external focus enhancing performance. The implications of these findings for application in practice are discussed.

Multisensory perception of the six basic emotions is modulated by attentional instruction and unattended modality.

Previous studies have shown that the perception of facial and vocal affective expressions interacts with each other. Facial expressions usually dominate vocal expressions when we perceive the emotions of face–voice stimuli. In most of these studies, participants were instructed to pay attention to the face or voice. Few studies compared the perceived emotions with and without specific instructions regarding the modality to which attention should be directed. Also, these studies used combinations of the face and voice which expresses two opposing emotions, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the emotion perception is modulated by instructions to pay attention to the face or voice using the six basic emotions. Also we examine the modality dominance between the face and voice for each emotion category. Before the experiment, we recorded faces and voices which expresses the six basic emotions and orthogonally combined these faces and voices. Consequently, the emotional valence of visual and auditory information was either congruent or incongruent. In the experiment, there were unisensory and multisensory sessions. The multisensory session was divided into three blocks according to whether an instruction was given to pay attention to a given modality (face attention, voice attention, and no instruction). Participants judged whether the speaker expressed happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, or surprise. Our results revealed that instructions to pay attention to one modality and congruency of the emotions between modalities modulated the modality dominance, and the modality dominance is differed for each emotion category. In particular, the modality dominance for anger changed according to each instruction. Analyses also revealed that the modality dominance suggested by the congruency effect can be explained in terms of the facilitation effect and the interference effect.

Auditory verbal hallucinations reflect stable auditory attention deficits: a prospective study

Introduction. Previous studies have shown that auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) in psychosis are associated with reduced verbal auditory attention. Whether this is an effect of ongoing AVH or reflects a more stable cognitive vulnerability also present after treating the AVH is unknown. The aim of this study was to follow patients with acute psychosis with and without AVH, and to test their auditory attention in a more stabilised clinical phase.Methods. Fifty patients (35 males and 15 females) were examined when admitted to an acute psychiatry ward and tested three months later with a dichotic listening test with attention instructions. The patients were divided into a frequent (n = 33) and non-frequent (n = 17) AVH group based on their score on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale item hallucinatory behaviour (≥4 and ≤3, respectively) at baseline.Results. A significant interaction emerged between AVH group and attention instruction condition; the frequent AVH group failed to control their auditory attention as opposed to the non-frequent AVH group.Conclusions. Patients with frequent AVH in an acute psychotic state showed impaired auditory attention three months after their AVH had been treated, indicating a stable cognitive vulnerability factor for experiencing AVH.

Perceived depth in non-transitive stereo displays.

The separation between the eyes shapes the distribution of binocular disparities and gives a special role to horizontal disparities. However, for one-dimensional stimuli, disparity direction, like motion direction, is linked to stimulus orientation. This makes the perceived depth of one-dimensional stimuli orientation dependent and generally non-veridical. It also allows perceived depth to violate transitivity. Three stimuli, A, B, and C, can be arranged such that A > B (stimulus A is seen as farther than stimulus B when they are presented together) and B > C, yet A ⩽ C. This study examines how the visual system handles the depth of A, B, and C when they are presented together, forming a pairwise inconsistent stereo display. Observers' depth judgments of displays containing a grating and two plaids resolved transitivity violations among the component stimulus pairs. However, these judgments were inconsistent with judgments of the same stimuli within depth-consistent displays containing no transitivity violations. To understand the contribution of individual disparity signals, observers were instructed in subsequent experiments to judge the depth of a subset of display stimuli. This attentional instruction was ineffective; relevant and irrelevant stimuli contributed equally to depth judgments. Thus, the perceived depth separating a pair of stimuli depended on the disparities of the other stimuli presented concurrently. This context dependence of stereo depth can be approximated by an obligatory pooling and comparison of the disparities of one- and two-dimensional stimuli along an axis defined locally by the stimuli.

Top-down modulation of visual and auditory cortical processing in aging

Age-related cognitive decline has been accounted for by an age-related deficit in top-down attentional modulation of sensory cortical processing. In light of recent behavioral findings showing that age-related differences in selective attention are modality dependent, our goal was to investigate the role of sensory modality in age-related differences in top-down modulation of sensory cortical processing. This question was addressed by testing younger and older individuals in several memory tasks while undergoing fMRI. Throughout these tasks, perceptual features were kept constant while attentional instructions were varied, allowing us to devise all combinations of relevant and irrelevant, visual and auditory information. We found no top-down modulation of auditory sensory cortical processing in either age group. In contrast, we found top-down modulation of visual cortical processing in both age groups, and this effect did not differ between age groups. That is, older adults enhanced cortical processing of relevant visual information and suppressed cortical processing of visual distractors during auditory attention to the same extent as younger adults. The present results indicate that older adults are capable of suppressing irrelevant visual information in the context of cross-modal auditory attention, and thereby challenge the view that age-related attentional and cognitive decline is due to a general deficits in the ability to suppress irrelevant information.

Focusing attention instructions, accuracy, and quiet eye in a self-paced task—an exploratory study

The purpose of this exploratory study was twofold: (a) to examine the effectiveness of internal (INT; focusing on the swinging motion of the arms) and external (EXT; focusing on the pendulum motion of the club head) focus of attention instructions on the performance of a golf-putting task under non-distracted and distracted (noisy) conditions, and (b) to examine the relationship between attentional focus instructions and gaze behaviour under these two conditions. A two-phase study was conducted. In Phase 1 participants performed the task under non-distracted conditions, while in Phase 2 they performed the task under both non-distracted and distracted conditions. Performance and gaze behaviour were measured in both non-distracted and distracted conditions in three groups: INT focus, EXT focus, and control (C). Two main findings emerged from the current study: (a) under non-distracted conditions, quiet eye (QE) durations were longer in the EXT participants than in the INT and C participants; however, accuracy and consistency of the golfing performance did not improve in the EXT participants; and (b) under distracted conditions, higher performance was observed in both the INT and EXT attentional focus participants than in the C participants. To further determine the relationship between EXT focusing instructions and QE, additional studies should be conducted.

A motor imagery during blind action is guided by the same foci of attention as actual performance in a sample comprising females

There is strong evidence that focussing on the goal of an action improves performance relative to focussing on the concrete motor behaviours. The current study tests whether blind action guided by imagery relies on the same foci of attention. Thirty female participants took part in an experiment. In each condition there were 20 trials, they were asked to close their eyes and draw a straight line between two landmarks on a graphics tablet. We instructed them, in three conditions, to focus on (1) mental imagery of the goal landmark (external focus of attention), (2) drawing a straight line with the fingers (internal focus), or (3) without a specific focus of attention (control). We tested to what extent these attention instructions affected drawing performance, in terms of both deviations of the participants’ lines from an ideal straight line, and the time it took to complete the line. The study revealed that the manipulation specifically affected the deviation measure and that an external focus of attention was better than an internal focus and the control condition. These findings reveal that that mental imagery during blind action relies on same processes as actual performance. These data give perceptual representations of a direct role in motor control. They will be related to current theories of action control (constrained action hypothesis, ideomotor theories, and dual task accounts).

Temperament and negative semantic priming in children 7 to 12 years old

The present research assessed whether children with high and low scores on temperament traits differed in their ability to inhibit irrelevant task information in a lexical decision task. Children from 7 to 12 years old were classified based on temperament dimensions measured using a version of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire. The participants were instructed to either attend to (and remember) or to ignore a masked prime word followed by a central probe target on which they made a lexical decision. The results revealed several notable outcomes. First of all, recognition memory was better for attended than ignored words, providing further evidence that attention instructions influenced the processing of the primes.Secondly, although no negative priming effect was obtained in the “ignore” condition, 43% of children showed this effect. Thirdly, children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and Impulsivity showed ignored negative priming, whereas children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and low on Impulsivity ignored facilitation. Data are discussed within the framework of negative priming as a complex phenomenon that involves the interaction of different factors such as age, type of task, and certain temperament traits.

Effects of External and Internal Attention Focus Training on Foot-Strike Patterns in Running

The provision of instructions is an important task constraint when altering movement behaviours. Using instructions as a form of task constraint could be an effective approach to help learners improve their performances. Specifically, changing running gait from a heel to forefoot strike pattern can reduce incidences of injuries. By providing different attentional instructions, external and internal focus instructions, which emphasise movement effect and movement form respectively, can be used to alter foot strike patterns in running gait. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of external or internal focus instructions in facilitating a change from a heel strike to a forefoot strike pattern. Sixteen participants (9 males, 7 females), were randomly assigned to either an external focus condition (n=8) or an internal focus condition (n=8). Participants underwent six training sessions with their respective instructional conditions over three weeks with 10 one-minute running trials per session during the intervention phase. A 3D motion analysis system was used to determine kinematic changes between pre and post-test sessions. Both external (0.025m ± 0.006) and internal (0.027m ± 0.008) participants showed a significant change in calcaneus displacement at initial contact (IC) by post-test, which indicates the change from heel strike to forefoot strike pattern. However, cycle time and stride length were not significantly different at post-test for participants in internal and external conditions. The effectiveness of both focus instructions could be task and individual dependent.

The Effect of Attention Allocation Instructions on Self-paced Task Performance under Quiet and Distracted Conditions

This study examined the effectiveness of external and internal focusing attention instructions on the performance of three throwing tasks under both quiet and distracted conditions. The main finding was that during acquisition, the external focus of attention led to improved performance when compared to internal focus of attention and control, but only under quiet conditions. It was also found that during auditory and visual distraction conditions, both types of focus attention produced similar levels of performance, and both groups were superior to the control condition. It is suggested that sport psychology consultants provide their athletes with external focusing attention instructions.

Effects of different instructional constraints on task performance and emergence of coordination in children

The objectives of this study were to determine the impact of different instructional constraints on standing board jump (sbj) performance in children and understand the underlying changes in emergent movement patterns. Two groups of novice participants were provided with either externally or internally focused attentional instructions during an intervention phase. Pre- and post-test sessions were undertaken to determine changes to performance and movement patterns. Thirty-six primary fourth-grade male students were recruited for this study and randomly assigned to either an external, internal focus or control group. Different instructional constraints with either an external focus (image of the achievement) or an internal focus (image of the act) were provided to the participants. Performance scores (jump distances), and data from key kinematic (joint range of motion, ROM) and kinetic variables (jump impulses) were collected. Instructional constraints with an emphasis on an external focus of attention were generally more effective in assisting learners to improve jump distances. Intra-individual analyses highlighted how enhanced jump distances for successful participants may be concomitant with specific changes to kinematic and kinetic variables. Larger joint ROM and adjustment to a comparatively larger horizontal impulse to a vertical impulse were observed for more successful participants at post-test performance. From a constraints-led perspective, the inclusion of instructional constraints encouraging self-adjustments in the control of movements (i.e., image of achievement) had a beneficial effect on individuals performing the standing broad jump task. However, the advantage of using an external focus of attentional instructions could be task- and individual-specific.

Effect of Attentional Instruction on Dual Task Training

Effect of Attentional Instruction on Dual Task Training

Joint attention in autism: Teaching smiling coordinated with gaze to respond to joint attention bids

Children with autism demonstrate early deficits in joint attention and expressions of affect. Interventions to teach joint attention have addressed gaze behavior, gestures, and vocalizations, but have not specifically taught an expression of positive affect such as smiling that tends to occur during joint attention interactions. Intervention was applied to teach smile and gaze shift with eye contact to respond to others’ joint attention instructions. All targeted responses increased during intervention, with generalized performance as well as maintenance of performance during follow-up. Related measures of joint attention and characteristics of autism showed overall improvements from pre- to post-intervention.

The effects of external and internal focus of attention on physiological responses during running

Ziv G, Meckel Y, Lidor R, Rotstein A. The effects of external and internal focus of attention on physiological responses during running. J. Hum. Sport Exerc. Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 608-616, 2012. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of external focus of attention and internal focus of attention instructions on physiological responses in experienced adolescent basketball players (n = 17; mean age = 15.1±0.6 years). After a 10-min warm-up at a running velocity equal to 60% of the heart rate reserve, participants ran on a treadmill under two 10-min conditions: (a) internal focus instructions – focusing on the legs and running motion, and (b) external focus instructions – focusing on a film of a basketball game that did not provide visual feedback on running speed. It was found that oxygen consumption and respiratory exchange ratio did not significantly differ among the three conditions. It was concluded that an external focus of attention that does not provide additional visual feedback pertinent to the task of running (e.g., a film clip from the runner's perspective that shows advancing in a virtual environment) does not affect physiological

An Attentional Control Task Reduces Intrusive Thoughts About Smoking

Attentional control tasks such as body scanning and following isometric exercise instructions have been shown to reduce smoking cravings, apparently by reducing stress (Ussher, M., Cropley, M., Playle, S., Mohidin, R., & West, R. [2009]. Effect of isometric exercise and body scanning on cigarette cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Addiction, 104, 1251-1257. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02605.x). Related work based upon elaborated intrusion theory (Kavanagh, D. J., Andrade, J., & May, J. [2005]. Imaginary relish and exquisite torture: The elaborated intrusion theory of desire. Psychological Review, 112, 446-467. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.112.2.446) has shown that similar tasks can reduce hungry participants' involuntary food-related thoughts (May, J., Andrade, J., Batey, H., Berry, L.-M., & Kavanagh, D. [2010]. Less food for thought: Impact of attentional instructions on intrusive thoughts about snack foods. Appetite, 55, 279-287. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2010.06.014). This study tests the effect of body scanning instructions upon smoking-related thoughts as well as craving. Twenty-seven smokers took part in 2 counterbalanced sessions, on different days, having been asked to abstain from smoking for 2 hr. In each session, they followed audio instructions for three 10-min blocks during which their thoughts were probed 10 times. In the first and third blocks, they were instructed to let their mind wander; during the second block of the control session, they also let their mind wander, but in the experimental session, they followed body scanning instructions. "Smoking thought frequency" was assessed using thought probes; "Craving" was measured using Factor 1 of the Questionnaire on Smoking Urges (Tiffany, S. T., & Drobes, D. J. [1991]. The development and initial validation of a questionnaire on smoking urges. British Journal of Addiction, 86, 1467-1476. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.1991.tb01732.x). Participants reported fewer smoking-related thoughts and lower smoking cravings in the body scanning block of the experimental session, whereas they rose in the comparable mind-wandering block of the control session. The reduction in thoughts during the body scanning correlated with the corresponding reduction in craving. Body scanning reduces cravings and reduces the frequency or shortens the duration of smoking thoughts. Attentional control strategies may form a useful part of smoking cessation practices.

Influence of attentional demand and instruction on Time up and Go Test

The aim of the current study was to evaluate the performance of young healthy adults on the "Timed Up and Go" (TUG) test on the dual task paradigm. Twelve young adults performed the TUG test in four conditions: a) no secondary task;b) with a task of holding a tube with both hands without defined attentional focus; c) holding the tube with internal attentional focus; and,d) holding the tube with external attentional focus. A digital chronometer was used to record the time taken to complete the tests. The movement variability of the tube was assessed by recording the kinematics of markers placed on the lateral side of the tube. Analyses of variance were used to compare the total and relative time and tube variability across conditions. More time was necessary to complete the TUG test when specific instruction about the secondary task was given, mainly when related to the movement of the tube (external focus). However, the variability of the tube was also smallest in that condition. Therefore, the addition of a secondary task (holding a tube) affects the performance of TUG only when specific instructions on the attentional focus are given in particular about external effects of the secondary task.

Global feature-based attention to orientation

Selective attention to motion direction can modulate the strength of direction-selective sensory responses regardless of their spatial locations. Although such spatially global modulation is thought to be a general property of feature-based attention, few studies have examined visual features other than motion. Here, we used an adaptation protocol combined with attentional instructions to assess whether attention to orientation, a prominent feature in early visual processing, also exhibit such spatially global modulation. We adapted observers to an orientation by cuing them to attend to the orientation in a compound grating that was presented at a peripheral location. We then assessed the size of the tilt aftereffect at three locations that were never stimulated by the adapter. Attending to orientation produced a tilt aftereffect in these locations, indicating that attention modulated orientation-selective mechanisms in remote locations from the adapter. Furthermore, there was no difference in the magnitude of the tilt aftereffect for test stimuli that were located at different distances and hemifields to the adapter. These results suggest that attention to orientation spreads uniformly across the visual field. Thus, spatially global modulation seems to be a general property of feature-based attention, and it provides a flexible mechanism to modulate feature salience across the visual field.

Patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Show Decreased Cognitive Control: Evidence from Dichotic Listening

The influence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on cognitive control and auditory attention modulation was examined with the use of a dichotic-listening (DL) task. The participants were 45 war-exposed refugees. The PTSD group comprised 22 participants meeting the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD, and the Control group comprised 23 war-exposed participants without PTSD. Both groups were tested with a consonant-vowel syllables DL task under three different attentional instructions. The two groups did not differ in the non-forced and forced-right conditions and showed, as expected, right-ear advantages. The Control group showed, as expected, a left-ear advantage in the forced-left (FL) condition. However, the PTSD group continued to show a right-ear advantage--and only minor modulation of the performance during the FL condition. This finding suggests that PTSD is associated with a reduced capacity for top-down attentional control of a bottom-up or stimulus-driven effect. The result shows that participants with PTSD have impaired cognitive control functions when tested on information processing of neutral stimuli.

The Influence of Selective Attention to Auditory and Visual Speech on the Integration of Audiovisual Speech Information

Conflicting visual speech information can influence the perception of acoustic speech, causing an illusory percept of a sound not present in the actual acoustic speech (the McGurk effect). We examined whether participants can voluntarily selectively attend to either the auditory or visual modality by instructing participants to pay attention to the information in one modality and to ignore competing information from the other modality. We also examined how performance under these instructions was affected by weakening the influence of the visual information by manipulating the temporal offset between the audio and video channels (experiment 1), and the spatial frequency information present in the video (experiment 2). Gaze behaviour was also monitored to examine whether attentional instructions influenced the gathering of visual information. While task instructions did have an influence on the observed integration of auditory and visual speech information, participants were unable to completely ignore conflicting information, particularly information from the visual stream. Manipulating temporal offset had a more pronounced interaction with task instructions than manipulating the amount of visual information. Participants' gaze behaviour suggests that the attended modality influences the gathering of visual information in audiovisual speech perception.