Attentional State Research Articles

Driving Attention State Detection Based on GRU-EEGNet.

The present study utilizes the significant differences in θ, α, and β band power spectra observed in electroencephalograms (EEGs) during distracted versus focused driving. Three subtasks, visual distraction, auditory distraction, and cognitive distraction, were designed to appear randomly during driving simulations. The θ, α, and β band power spectra of the EEG signals of the four driving attention states were extracted, and SVM, EEGNet, and GRU-EEGNet models were employed for the detection of the driving attention states, respectively. Online experiments were conducted. The extraction of the θ, α, and β band power spectrum features of the EEG signals was found to be a more effective method than the extraction of the power spectrum features of the whole EEG signals for the detection of driving attention states. The driving attention state detection accuracy of the proposed GRU-EEGNet model is improved by 6.3% and 12.8% over the EEGNet model and PSD_SVM method, respectively. The EEG decoding method combining EEG features and an improved deep learning algorithm, which effectively improves the driving attention state detection accuracy, was manually and preliminarily selected based on the results of existing studies.

Associations among attentional state, retrieval quality, and mnemonic discrimination

Memory specificity is shown when participants reject lures that are similar to studied objects. Lure rejections may reflect hippocampal pattern separation that encodes objects distinctively. However, lure features shared with studied objects may evoke pattern completion of varying quality. This was shown when self-reported attention during study promoted lure rejections and false alarms. We used an experimental and individual differences approach to examine the roles of attentive encoding and retrieval quality in lure classifications. An object-based mnemonic discrimination task included thought probes during study and subjective retrieval reports after recognition responses. On-task reports reflecting attentive encoding were associated with lure rejections and false alarms within-and between-subjects. Additionally, accurate lure and target classifications were more strongly associated with subjective recollection following on- than off-task reports. Collectively, these results suggest that attention during study was associated with recollection of criterial features that differentiated existing memories from perceptual inputs.

The influence of transcranial direct current stimulation to the trigeminal nerve on attention and arousal.

One mechanism by which transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been proposed to improve attention is by transcutaneous stimulation of cranial nerves, thereby activating the locus coeruleus (LC). Specifically, placement of the electrodes over the frontal bone and mastoid is thought to facilitate current flow across the face as a path of least resistance. The face is innervated by the trigeminal nerve, and the trigeminal nerve is interconnected with the LC. In this study, we tested whether stimulating the trigeminal nerve impacts indices of LC activity and performance on a sustained attention task. We replicated previous research that shows deterioration in task performance, increases in the rate of task-unrelated thoughts, and reduced pupil responses due to time on task irrespective of tDCS condition (sham, anodal, and cathodal stimulation). Importantly, tDCS did not influence pupil dynamics (pretrial or stimulus-evoked), self-reported attention state, nor task performance in active versus sham stimulation conditions. The findings reported here are consistent with theories about arousal centered on a hypothesized link between LC activity indexed by pupil size, task performance, and self-reported attention state but fail to support hypotheses that tDCS over the trigeminal nerve influences indices of LC function.

The Corporate Chief of Staff: Strategic Leadership Influence From Outside the Spotlight

For decades, scholars of strategic leadership have explored the degree to which senior executives and the team of top managers influence firm outcomes. However, one growing quasi-executive role in corporate settings, the chief of staff (COS), has been almost entirely ignored. Our paper presents a novel, foundational exploration of the COS role, including primary job functions and challenges, characteristics and backgrounds of incumbents, and relevance for strategic leadership and upper echelons theory. We synthesize three original sources of data — 2,500 LinkedIn COS profiles, surveys of 108 COSs, and in-depth interviews of 13 current and former COSs — to identify COS tasks and functions that interface with and influence the CEO, the top management team (TMT), and the broader organization. Though not typically considered a member of the TMT, we find compelling evidence for their ‘behind the scenes’ relevance to strategic leadership processes and outcomes. We then lay out a future research agenda comprising four domains: COS influence on CEO attention and psychological states, COS influence on TMT and organizational processes and outcomes, characteristics and conditions of organizations with a COS, and long-term career trajectories of COSs.

The impact of cue and preparation prompts on attention guidance in goal-directed tasks.

In goal-directed tasks, visual prompts before the appearance of goals can make people ready in advance, which helps them to complete the movement better, and the presentation type of the visual prompt is very important. In previous studies, it has not been clear how different types of visual prompts guide attention in goal-directed tasks. According to the characteristics of goal-directed tasks, our research designed three different prompts: the cue prompt (featuring static arrow), the preparation prompt (involving dynamic countdown), and the combination prompt of cue and preparation information (simultaneously incorporating arrow and countdown). We used event-related potential components (CNV and P300) and graph theory indicators (clustering coefficient and characteristic path length) under the brain function connection to analyze the attention state of the brain. The results showed that the combination prompts better guided the participants' sustained attention during the prompt stage, making them well prepared for the movement. Thus, after the target appeared, the participants had better executive control and achieved a faster response to the target. However, under the combination prompt, the participants consumed more attention resources during the prompt stage. We believe that for the participants with impaired cognitive function, cue prompts or preparation prompts can be considered, which also play a role in guiding the participants' attention and helping them make motor preparations when less attention resources are consumed. This study provides a neurophysiological and behavioral foundation for the design of visual prompts in goal-directed tasks.

Fluctuation in cortical excitation/inhibition modulates capability of attention across time scales ranging from hours to seconds.

Sustained attention, as the basis of general cognitive ability, naturally varies across different time scales, spanning from hours, e.g. from wakefulness to drowsiness state, to seconds, e.g. trial-by-trail fluctuation in a task session. Whether there is a unified mechanism underneath such trans-scale variability remains unclear. Here we show that fluctuation of cortical excitation/inhibition (E/I) is a strong modulator to sustained attention in humans across time scales. First, we observed the ability to attend varied across different brain states (wakefulness, postprandial somnolence, sleep deprived), as well as within any single state with larger swings. Second, regardless of the time scale involved, we found highly attentive state was always linked to more balanced cortical E/I characterized by electroencephalography (EEG) features, while deviations from the balanced state led to temporal decline in attention, suggesting the fluctuation of cortical E/I as a common mechanism underneath trans-scale attentional variability. Furthermore, we found the variations of both sustained attention and cortical E/I indices exhibited fractal structure in the temporal domain, exhibiting features of self-similarity. Taken together, these results demonstrate that sustained attention naturally varies across different time scales in a more complex way than previously appreciated, with the cortical E/I as a shared neurophysiological modulator.

Neural Substrates of Emotion Processing and Cognitive Control Over Emotion in Youth Anxiety: An RDoC-Informed Study Across the Clinical to Nonclinical Continuum of Severity

Clinically anxious youth are hypervigilant to emotional stimuli and display difficulty shifting attention from emotional to nonemotional stimuli, suggesting impairments in cognitive control over emotion. However, it is unknown whether the neural substrates of such biases vary across the clinical-to-nonclinical range of anxiety or by age. Youth aged 7 to 17 years with clinical anxiety (n= 119) or without an anxiety diagnosis (n= 41) matched emotional faces or matched shapes flanked by emotional face distractors during magnetic resonance imaging, probing emotion processing and cognitive control over emotion, respectively. Building from the National Institute of Mental Health Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework, clinically anxious youth were sampled across diagnostic categories, and non-clinically affected youth were sampled across minimal-to-subclinical severity. Across both conditions, anxiety severity was associated with hyperactivation in the right inferior parietal lobe, a substrate of hypervigilance. Brain-anxiety associations were also differentiated by attentional state; anxiety severity was associated with greater left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activation during emotion processing (face matching) and greater activation in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus and temporoparietal junction (and slower responses) during cognitive control over emotion (shape matching). Age also moderated associations between anxiety and cognitive control over emotion, such that anxiety was associated with greater right thalamus and bilateral posterior cingulate cortex activation for children at younger and mean ages, but not for older youth. Aberrant function in brain regions implicated in stimulus-driven attention to emotional distractors may contribute to anxiety in youth. Results support the potential utility of attention modulation interventions for anxiety that are tailored to developmental stage. Dimensional Brain Behavior Predictors of CBT Outcomes in Pediatric Anxiety; https://clinicaltrials.gov; NCT02810171.

From the Lab to the Wild: Examining Generalizability of Video-based Mind Wandering Detection

AbstractStudent’s shift of attention away from a current learning task to task-unrelated thought, also called mind wandering, occurs about 30% of the time spent on education-related activities. Its frequent occurrence has a negative effect on learning outcomes across learning tasks. Automated detection of mind wandering might offer an opportunity to assess the attentional state continuously and non-intrusively over time and hence enable large-scale research on learning materials and responding to inattention with targeted interventions. To achieve this, an accessible detection approach that performs well for various systems and settings is required. In this work, we explore a new, generalizable approach to video-based mind wandering detection that can be transferred to naturalistic settings across learning tasks. Therefore, we leverage two datasets, consisting of facial videos during reading in the lab (N = 135) and lecture viewing in-the-wild (N = 15). When predicting mind wandering, deep neural networks (DNN) and long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) achieve F$$_{1}$$ 1 scores of 0.44 (AUC-PR = 0.40) and 0.459 (AUC-PR = 0.39), above chance level, with latent features based on transfer-learning on the lab data. When exploring generalizability by training on the lab dataset and predicting on the in-the-wild dataset, BiLSTMs on latent features perform comparably to the state-of-the-art with an F$$_{1}$$ 1 score of 0.352 (AUC-PR = 0.26). Moreover, we investigate the fairness of predictive models across gender and show based on post-hoc explainability methods that employed latent features mainly encode information on eye and mouth areas. We discuss the benefits of generalizability and possible applications.

Dissociation of attentional state and behavioral outcome using local field potentials.

Successful behavior depends on attentional state and other factors related to decision-making, which may modulate neuronal activity differently. Here, we investigated whether attentional state and behavioral outcome (i.e., whether a target is detected or missed) are distinguishable using the power and phase of local field potential (LFP) recorded bilaterally from area V4 of monkeys performing a cued visual attention task. To link each trial's outcome to pairwise measures of attention that are typically averaged across trials, we used several methods to obtain single-trial estimates of spike count correlation and phase consistency. Surprisingly, while attentional location was best discriminated using gamma and high-gamma power, behavioral outcome was best discriminated by alpha power and steady-state visually evoked potential. Power outperformed absolute phase in attentional/behavioral discriminability, although single-trial gamma phase consistency provided reasonably high attentional discriminability. Our results suggest a dissociation between the neuronal mechanisms that regulate attentional focus and behavioral outcome.

Cortical signatures of auditory looming bias show cue-specific adaptation between newborns and young adults

Adaptive biases in favor of approaching, or “looming”, sounds have been found across ages and species, thereby implicating the potential of their evolutionary origin and universal basis. The human auditory system is well-developed at birth, yet spatial hearing abilities further develop with age. To disentangle the speculated inborn, evolutionary component of the auditory looming bias from its learned counterpart, we collected high-density electroencephalographic data across human adults and newborns. As distance-motion cues we manipulated either the sound’s intensity or spectral shape, which is pinna-induced and thus prenatally inaccessible. Through cortical source localisation we demonstrated the emergence of the bias in both age groups at the level of Heschl’s gyrus. Adults exhibited the bias in both attentive and inattentive states; yet differences in amplitude and latency appeared based on attention and cue type. Contrary to the adults, in newborns the bias was elicited only through manipulations of intensity and not spectral cues. We conclude that the looming bias comprises innate components while flexibly incorporating the spatial cues acquired through lifelong exposure.

Attention spotlight in V1-based cortico-cortical interactions in human visual hierarchy

Attention is often viewed as a mental spotlight, which can be scaled like a zoom lens at specific spatial locations and features a center-surround gradient. Here, we demonstrate a neural signature of attention spotlight in signal transmission along the visual hierarchy. fMRI background connectivity analysis was performed between retinotopic V1 and downstream areas to characterize the spatial distribution of inter-areal interaction under two attentional states. We found that, compared to diffused attention, focal attention sharpened the spatial gradient in the strength of the background connectivity. Dynamic causal modeling analysis further revealed the effect of attention in both the feedback and feedforward connectivity between V1 and extrastriate cortex. In a context which induced a strong effect of crowding, the effect of attention in the background connectivity profile diminished. Our findings reveal a context-dependent attention prioritization in information transmission via modulating the recurrent processing across the early stages in human visual cortex.

Ocular working memory signals are flexible to behavioral priority and subjective imagery strength.

The pupillary light response was long considered a brainstem reflex, outside of cognitive influence. However, newer findings indicate that pupil dilation (and eye movements) can reflect content held "in mind" with working memory (WM). These findings may reshape understanding of ocular and WM mechanisms, but it is unclear whether the signals are artifactual or functional to WM. Here, we ask whether peripheral and oculomotor WM signals are sensitive to the task-relevance or "attentional state" of WM content. During eye-tracking, human participants saw both dark and bright WM stimuli, then were retroactively cued to the item that would most likely be tested. Critically, we manipulated the attentional priority among items by varying the cue reliability across blocks. We confirmed previous findings that remembering darker items is associated with larger pupils (vs. brighter), and that gaze is biased toward cued item locations. Moreover, we discovered that pupil and eye movement responses were influenced differently by WM item relevance. Feature-specific pupillary effects emerged only for highly prioritized WM items but were eliminated when cues were less reliable, and pupil effects also increased with self-reported visual imagery strength. Conversely, gaze position consistently veered toward the cued item location, regardless of cue reliability. However, biased microsaccades occurred at a higher frequency when cues were more reliable, though only during a limited post-cue time window. Therefore, peripheral sensorimotor processing is sensitive to the task-relevance or functional state of internal WM content, but pupillary and eye movement WM signals show distinct profiles. These results highlight a potential role for early visual processing in maintaining multiple WM content dimensions.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Here, we found that working memory (WM)-driven ocular inflections-feature-specific pupillary and saccadic biases-were muted for memory items that were less behaviorally relevant. This work illustrates that functionally informative goal signals may extend as early as the sensorimotor periphery, that pupil size may be under more fine-grained control than originally thought, and that ocular signals carry multiple dimensions of cognitively relevant information.

Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) display gaze alternation and referential communication in an impossible task

Gaze cues play a vital role in conveying critical information about objects and locations necessary for survival, such as food sources, predators, and the attentional states of conspecific and heterospecific individuals. During referential intentional communication, the continuous alternation of gaze between a communicative partner and a specific object or point of interest attracts the partner's attention towards the target. This behaviour is considered by many as essential for understanding intentions and is thought to involve mental planning. Here, we investigated the behavioural responses of seven bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) that were given an impossible task in the presence of two experimenters (a ‘commanding experimenter’ and a ‘non-commanding experimenter’), whose attentional state towards the dolphins varied. We found that the dolphins spontaneously displayed gaze alternation, specifically triadic referential pointing, only when the human commanding experimenter was facing them. However, they ceased to alternate their gaze between the impossible object and the commanding experimenter when the experimenter had their back turned. Notably, the dolphins' behaviour differed from general pointing and gaze, as their triadic sequence occurred within a narrow time window. These findings suggest that the dolphins were sensitive to human attentional cues and utilized their own gaze cue (pointing) as a salient signal to attract the attention of the commanding experimenter towards a specific location.

Leveraging machine learning techniques for student’s attention detection: a review

With the advances of the internet and today's innovation, it has become conceivable to conduct teaching and learning activities remotely through the online platform. Existing research says that student’s attention state and learning result are strongly correlated. However, despite its importance, this can be a challenging task, as students in general taking an online class may be in a variety of different environments and may be multitasking or distracted by other factors. This review paper aims to address these challenges by exploring the opportunities offered by machine learning techniques in attention detection for effective online teaching and learning. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, which can analyze large volumes of data, including eye-tracking, facial expressions, and body movements, we can develop robust models for attention detection in online learning environments. This paper reviews the challenges specific to online learning, such as students' attention deficits and learning styles, and highlights the limitations of current attention detection methods. Furthermore, it provides recommendations to advance attention detection technology, emphasizing the potential of machine learning to enhance attention detection technology for effective online teaching and learning.

Driver Distraction Detection and Alert System Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract: The Driver Distraction and Alert System Using Convolutional Neural Networks provide a real-time machine learning and webcam-based monitoring system for driver distraction detection. The system uses a sophisticated Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture trained on the State Form of Distracted Driver Detection dataset, which is made possible by utilizing the OpenCV, TensorFlow, and Pandas packages. With improvements like dropout layers and Xavier weight initialization, the model efficiently classifies ten driver attention states through preprocessing stages like image scaling and normalization. The results of the experiment show how well the suggested method works to identify distracted driving behaviors; a revised model on the Kaggle competition platform achieved a competitive public score of 2.67118

Using Synchronized Eye Movements to Predict Attention in Online Video Learning

Concerns persist about attentional engagement in online learning. The inter-subject correlation of eye movements (ISC) has shown promise as an accessible and effective method for attention assessment in online learning. This study extends previous studies investigating ISC of eye movements in online learning by addressing two research questions. Firstly, can ISC predict students’ attentional states at a finer level beyond a simple dichotomy of attention states (e.g., attending and distracted states)? Secondly, whether learners’ learning styles affect ISC’s prediction rate of attention assessment in video learning? Previous studies have shown that learners of different learning styles have different eye movement patterns when viewing static materials. However, limited research has explored the impact of learning styles on viewing patterns in video learning. An eye tracking experiment with participants watching lecture videos demonstrated a connection between ISC and self-reported attention states at a finer level. We also demonstrated that learning styles did not significantly affect ISC’s prediction rate of attention assessment in video learning, suggesting that ISC of eye movements can be effectively used without considering learners’ learning styles. These findings contribute to the ongoing discourse on optimizing attention assessment in the evolving landscape of online education.

Accidental Thinking: A Model of Serendipity’s Cognitive Processes

Serendipity captures the interaction between a skilled human agent and a fortuitous event in the environment. Although it features in many stories of invention and discovery, its antecedents remain elusive. This paper combines research from different domains of psychology to present a model of the cognitive processes required for a serendipitous episode to occur. The model describes a prepared mind that consists of an informational state and an attentional state. Both states are considered as dynamic rather than fixed. An accident is then the trigger event that updates both of these and feeds information back into the prepared mind. If the accident is noticed, a cycle of judgement and amplification occurs, eventually leading to an output. The model generates novel predictions that point to an increased understanding of how best to scaffold serendipitous moments.

Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation over Frontal Eye Fields Mimics Attentional Modulation of Visual Processing.

Attentional control over sensory processing has been linked to neural alpha oscillations and related inhibition of cerebral cortex. Despite the wide consensus on the functional relevance of alpha oscillations for attention, precise neural mechanisms of how alpha oscillations shape perception and how this top-down modulation is implemented in cortical networks remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that alpha oscillations in frontal eye fields (FEFs) are causally involved in the top-down regulation of visual processing in humans (male and female). We applied sham-controlled, intermittent transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over bilateral FEF at either 10 Hz (alpha) or 40 Hz (gamma) to manipulate attentional preparation in a visual discrimination task. Under each stimulation condition, we measured psychometric functions for contrast perception and introduced a novel linear mixed modeling approach for statistical control of neurosensory side effects of the electric stimulation. tACS at alpha frequency reduced the slope of the psychometric function, resulting in improved subthreshold and impaired superthreshold contrast perception. Side effects on the psychometric functions were complex and showed large interindividual variability. Controlling for the impact of side effects on the psychometric parameters by using covariates in the linear mixed model analysis reduced this variability and strengthened the perceptual effect. We propose that alpha tACS over FEF mimicked a state of endogenous attention by strengthening a fronto-occipitoparietal network in the alpha band. We speculate that this network modulation enhanced phasic gating in occipitoparietal cortex leading to increased variability of single-trial psychometric thresholds, measurable as a reduction of psychometric slope.

How Do You Know If You Were Mind Wandering? Dissociating Explicit Memories of Off Task Thought From Subjective Feelings of Inattention.

Mind wandering is a common experience in which your attention drifts away from the task at hand and toward task-unrelated thoughts. To measure mind wandering we typically use experience sampling and retrospective self-reports, which require participants to make metacognitive judgments about their immediately preceding attentional states. In the current study, we aimed to better understand how people come to make such judgments by introducing a novel distinction between explicit memories of off task thought and subjective feelings of inattention. Across two preregistered experiments, we found that participants often indicated they were "off task" and yet had no memory of the content of their thoughts-though, they were less common than remembered experiences. Critically, remembered experiences of mind wandering and subjective feelings of inattention differed in their behavioral correlates. In Experiment 1, we found that only the frequency of remembered mind wandering varied with task demands. In contrast, only subjective feelings of inattention were associated with poor performance (Experiments 1 and 2) and individual differences in executive functioning (Experiment 2). These results suggest that the phenomenology of mind wandering may differ depending on how the experiences are brought about (e.g., executive functioning errors versus excess attentional resources), and provide preliminary evidence of the importance of measuring subjective feelings of inattention when assessing mind wandering.

Slow and steady: Validating the rhythmic visual response task as a marker for attentional states.

A principal goal of attention research is to develop tasks with clear behavioral signatures of attentional fluctuations. Measures that index attentional states oftenfall under two broad umbrellas: decision tasks, in which participants make responses based on the changing requirements of each trial, and rhythm tasks, in which participants respond rhythmically to a uniform stimulus (e.g., a metronome tone). In the former, response speeding typically precedes errors (indicative of attention failures). In the latter, increased response variability precedes subjective reports of off-task states. We developed and validated the rhythmic visual response task (RVRT); a rhythm task incorporating trial-unique scene stimuli. The RVRT incorporates two important advances from both task categories: (1) it is free from the influence that differential decision-making has on fluctuations in attentional states, and (2) trial-unique stimuli enable later cognitive judgments to be mapped to specific moments in the task. These features allow a relatively unobtrusive measure of mind wandering that facilitates the downstream assessment of its consequences. Participants completed 900 trials of the RVRT, interrupted periodically by thought probes that assessed their attentional state. We found that both response time variance and speed predicted depth of mind wandering. Encouraged by these findings, we used the same analysis approach on archival data to demonstrate that the combination of variance and speed best predicted attentional states in several rhythm and decision task datasets. We discuss the implications of these findings and suggest future research that uses the RVRT to investigate the impact of spontaneous mind wandering on memory, decision-making, and perception.