Current Focus Of Attention Research Articles

Dynamic alpha power modulations and slow negative potentials track natural shifts of spatio-temporal attention.

Alpha power modulations and slow negative potentials have previously been associated with anticipatory processes in spatial and temporal top-down attention. In typical experimental designs, however, neural responses triggered by transient stimulus onsets can interfere with attention-driven activity patterns and our interpretation of such. Here, we investigated these signatures of spatio-temporal attention in a dynamic paradigm free from potentially confounding stimulus-driven activity using electroencephalography. Participants attended the cued side of a bilateral stimulus rotation and mentally counted how often one of two remembered sample orientations (i.e., the target) was displayed while ignoring the uncued side and non-target orientation. Afterwards, participants performed a delayed match-to-sample task, in which they indicated if the orientation of a probe stimulus matched the corresponding sample orientation (previously target or non-target). We observed dynamic alpha power reductions and slow negative waves around task-relevant points in space and time (i.e., onset of the target orientation in the cued hemifield) over posterior electrodes contralateral to the locus of attention. In contrast to static alpha power lateralization, these dynamic signatures correlated with subsequent memory performance (primarily detriments for matching probes of the non-target orientation), suggesting a preferential allocation of attention to task-relevant locations and time points at the expense of reduced resources and impaired performance for information outside the current focus of attention. Our findings suggest that humans can naturally and dynamically focus their attention at relevant points in space and time and that such spatio-temporal attention shifts can be reflected by dynamic alpha power modulations and slow negative potentials.

Reduced attentional inhibition for peripheral distractors of angry faces under central perceptual load in deaf individuals: evidence from an event-related potentials study.

Studies have shown that deaf individuals distribute more attention to the peripheral visual field and exhibit enhanced visual processing for peripheral stimuli relative to hearing individuals. This leads to better detection of peripheral target motion and simple static stimuli in hearing individuals. However, when threatening faces that represent dangerous signals appear as non-targets in the periphery, it remains unclear whether deaf individuals would retain an advantage over hearing individuals in detecting them. In this study, 23 deaf and 28 hearing college students were included. A modified perceptual load paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs) were adopted. In the task, participants were instructed to search for a target letter in a central letter array, while task-irrelevant face distractors (happy, neutral, and angry faces) were simultaneously presented in the periphery while the central perceptual load was manipulated. Behavioral data showed that angry faces slowed deaf participants' responses to the target while facilitating the responses of hearing participants. At the electrophysiological level, we found modulation of P1 amplitude by central load only in hearing individuals. Interestingly, larger interference from angry face distractors was associated with higher P1 differential amplitude only in deaf individuals. Additionally, the amplitude of N170 for happy face distractors was smaller than that for angry and neutral face distractors in deaf participants. The present data demonstrates that, despite being under central perceptual load, deaf individuals exhibit less attentional inhibition to peripheral, goal-irrelevant angry faces than hearing individuals. The result may reflect a compensatory mechanism in which, in the absence of auditory alertness to danger, the detection of visually threatening information outside of the current attentional focus has a high priority.

On the spread of spatial attention in touch: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

To investigate the distribution of tactile spatial attention near the current attentional focus, participants were cued to attend to one of four body locations (hand or shoulder on the left or right side) to respond to infrequent tactile targets. In this Narrow attention task, effects of spatial attention on the ERPs elicited by tactile stimuli delivered to the hands were compared as a function of the distance from the attentional focus (Focus on the hand vs. Focus on the shoulder). When participants focused on the hand, attentional modulations of the sensory-specific P100 and N140 components were followed by the longer latency Nd component. Notably, when participants focused on the shoulder, they were unable to restrict their attentional resources to the cued location, as revealed by the presence of reliable attentional modulations at the hands. This effect of attention outside the attentional focus was delayed and reduced compared to that observed within the attentional focus, revealing the presence of an attentional gradient. In addition, to investigate whether the size of the attentional focus modulated the effects of tactile spatial attention on somatosensory processing, participants also completed the Broad attention task, in which they were cued to attend to two locations (both the hand and the shoulder) on the left or right side. Attentional modulations at the hands emerged later and were reduced in the Broad compared to the Narrow attention task, suggesting reduced attentional resources for a wider attentional focus.

Attentional capture mediates the emergence and suppression of intrusive memories.

Intrusive memories hijack consciousness and their control may lead to forgetting. However, the contribution of reflexive attention to qualifying a memory signal as interfering is unknown. We used machine learning to decode the brain's electrical activity and pinpoint the otherwise hidden emergence of intrusive memories reported during a memory suppression task. Importantly, the algorithm was trained on an independent attentional model of visual activity, mimicking either the abrupt and interfering appearance of visual scenes into conscious awareness or their deliberate exploration. Intrusion of memories into conscious awareness were decoded above chance. The decoding accuracy increased when the algorithm was trained using a model of reflexive attention. Conscious detection of intrusive activity decoded from the brain signal was central to the future silencing of suppressed memories and laterforgetting. Unwanted memories require the reflexive orienting of attention and access to consciousness to be suppressed effectively by inhibitory control.

Does a look of fear prompt to act? The effects of gaze and face emotional expression on manipulable objects.

Gaze direction is an important social cue for understanding the intentions of other people. Indeed, interacting with others requires the ability to encode their current focus of attention in order to predict their future actions. Previous studies have showed that when asked to detect or identify a target, people are faster if shown a gaze oriented toward rather than away from that target. Most importantly, there is evidence that the emotion conveyed by the face with the averted gaze matters. We further tested the interplay between gaze and face emotion in the context of manipulable objects to understand whether and to what extent other people's gaze influences our own actions toward objects. Participants judged whether a target graspable object was upright or inverted after viewing a face cue with a central or averted gaze. Importantly, the target's handle could be oriented toward the gazed-at location or the opposite side such that gaze and handle were corresponding or non-corresponding in space. Furthermore, we manipulated the expression of the cue by using neutral and fearful faces. Results showed a handle-response (H-R) compatibility effect (i.e., a facilitation when the response key is on the same side as the object's handle) only with fearful cues with a central gaze.

Optimizing on flash hydrothermal liquefaction environment for improving the quality of bio-crude

Reducing carbon emissions has become the current focus of attention all over the world. Alternative biofuels are an important means to achieve the carbon reduction. Among them, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of algae-based biomass has been widely studied because of its environmental friendliness and mild conditions. In this paper, the effect of different conditions on microalgae bio-crude enhancement was investigated, using innovative experimental methods, including flash heating HTL with two step or by co-solvent. It showed that recovery of carbon, hydrogen and energy could reach 0.53, 0.48 and 0.58 respectively at 250 °C for 30 min with ethanol-water co-solvent as the medium. The highest total content of fatty acids and fatty acid esters were found in the bio-crude with methanol/ethanol-water co-solvent as the medium. The nitrogen content of the bio-crude obtained by the two-step method is lower than that of the one-step method. The content of cholesterol and vitamin E as indicators of bioactive substances performed well with ethanol-water co-solvent as the liquid phase medium, containing 16.1% in bio-crude at 240 °C for 3 min, and also advantageously with air as the gas phase medium.

TNF-Alpha Pathway Alternation Predicts Survival of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Translational research on immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) has been underway. However, in the unselected population, only a few patients benefit from ICIs. Therefore, screening predictive markers of ICI efficacy has become the current focus of attention. We collected mutation and clinical data from an ICI-treated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cohort. Then, a univariate Cox regression model was used to analyze the relationship between tumor necrosis factor α signaling mutated (TNFα-MT) and the prognosis of immunotherapy for NSCLC. We retrospectively collected 36 NSCLC patients (local-cohort) from the Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University and performed whole-exome sequencing (WES). The expression and mutation data of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-NSCLC cohort were used to explore the association between TNFα-MT and the immune microenvironment. A local cohort was used to validate the association between TNFα-MT and immunogenicity. TNFα-MT was associated with significantly prolonged overall survival (OS) in NSCLC patients after receiving immunotherapy. Additionally, TNFα-MT is related to high immunogenicity (tumor mutational burden, neoantigen load, and DNA damage response signaling mutations) and enrichment of infiltrating immune cells. These results suggest that TNFα-MT may serve as a potential clinical biomarker for NSCLC patients receiving ICIs.

The Effect of Saliency Between Distractor and Target Attention Capture

A rarely occurring and highly relevant auditory stimulus occurring outside of the current focus of attention can cause a switching of attention. Such attention capture is often studied in oddball paradigms consisting of a frequently occurring “standard” stimulus which is changed at odd times to form a “deviant”. The deviant may result in the capturing of attention. An auditory ERP, the P3a, is often associated with this process. To collect a sufficient amount of data is however very time-consuming. A more multi-feature “optimal” paradigm has been proposed but it is not known if it is appropriate for the study of attention capture.An optimal paradigm was run in which 6 different rare deviants (p=.08) were separated by a standard stimulus (p=.50) and compared to results when 4 oddball paradigms were also run.A large P3a was elicited by some of the deviants in the optimal paradigm but not by others. However, very similar results were observed when separate oddball paradigms were run.The present study indicates that the optimal paradigm provides a very time-saving method to study attention capture and the P3a.

Situational and personality determinants of social attention in a waiting room scenario

ABSTRACT Eye gaze allows extracting information but also signals the current focus of attention to conspecifics. Social gaze thus needs to be investigated in real social scenarios. In such conditions, fixations on other persons are often avoided, presumably because an interaction is possible but not desired. The current study examined this hypothesis and also addressed potential influences of social skills on fixation patterns. In a waiting room situation with a stranger, we varied the potential for an interaction, while eye movements were recorded. Analyses replicated an avoidance of looking at the other person which, however, was not modulated by the potential for an interaction. Autism spectrum traits and social skills were largely unrelated to the pattern of fixations. These results indicate that social norms dominate visual attention in such waiting room scenario and challenge the notion that social skills are specifically relevant for adjusting visual exploration behaviour to situational demands.

The peculiarities of speech portrait of Russian female politicians

The relevance of analyzing the speech aspect of political communication of Russian female lies in the fact that today the current focus of attention is the questions of creating a political image of state and public figures for achieve the needed social effects. A significant role in the process of creating the image is assigned not only to physical appearance of the politician, but also to peculiarities of their communication with the audience. The goal of this article is the analysis of speech portrait of a public linguistic personality on the example of modern Russian female politicians. The research employs contextological analysis and semantic-stylistic analysis, which allows revealing the semantic content of speeches and determining various stylistic functions in linguistic practice. Characteristic is given to the internal and external side of the personality image, specificity of its formation in the minds of the audience, peculiarities of the speech portrait of prominent Russian female politicians. The author pinpoints the important role of language in the sociopolitical and public spheres of communication. The conclusion is made on the degree of presence of masculine and feminine traits in the linguistic portrait of female politicians, the factors that substantiate such combination, as well as the desire of the female politicians to represent themselves as a “person of the people”. The analysis of speech portrait is conducted on the example of public speeches, polemics with opponents, etc, which implies an outline of a political position using speech techniques for effective resolution of the set tasks.

HammerDrive: A Task-Aware Driving Visual Attention Model

We introduce HammerDrive, a novel architecture for task-aware visual attention prediction in driving. The proposed architecture is learnable from data and can reliably infer the current focus of attention of the driver in real-time, while only requiring limited and easy-to-access telemetry data from the vehicle. We build the proposed architecture on two core concepts: 1) driving can be modeled as a collection of sub-tasks (maneuvers), and 2) each sub-task affects the way a driver allocates visual attention resources, i.e., their eye gaze fixation. HammerDrive comprises two networks: a hierarchical monitoring network of forward-inverse model pairs for sub-task recognition and an ensemble network of task-dependent convolutional neural network modules for visual attention modeling. We assess the ability of HammerDrive to infer driver visual attention on data we collected from 20 experienced drivers in a virtual reality-based driving simulator experiment. We evaluate the accuracy of our monitoring network for sub-task recognition and show that it is an effective and light-weight network for reliable real-time tracking of driving maneuvers with above 90% accuracy. Our results show that HammerDrive outperforms a comparable state-of-the-art deep learning model for visual attention prediction on numerous metrics with ~13% improvement for both Kullback-Leibler divergence and similarity, and demonstrate that task-awareness is beneficial for driver visual attention prediction.

Public Administration Reform over Time – Did Change Lead to a More Effective Integrity Management?

The following discussion adds to the discourse regarding the relationship between public administration reform and ethics policies. In this theoreti­cal paper, a narrative is employed that re-reads the old Weberian model as a model of ‘institutional integrity’, which is slowly replaced by a public management concept that focuses on individual integrity. Whereas the Weberian concept defined institutional integrity as a quality of institu­tions, more recent management concepts define institutional integrity as a quality of public officers within institutions. This also explains why the current focus of attention is ever more on individuals (as the main cause for unethical conduct) and the bad-person model of integrity. An alterna­tive framing of this paper is about ‘institutional ethics’ over time. During the last decades, we are moving from an institutional, but mechanical and rigid Weberian model, to an individual, but more fluid New Public Management model. We are moving towards a version of institutional in­tegrity that tries to use new behavioural mechanism to get back to some Weberian virtues, without its structures and technical focus. This novel ‘integrity management’ movement is really all about filling the gaps left by New Public Management doctrines. However, the reform of integrity management also develops into a specialised, sophisticated and profes­sionalised ethics bureaucracy. Trends are towards ever more broader and stricter integrity requirements. Still, ethics policies are ineffective and shortcomings in implementing integrity policies are neglected.

Research Progress on Improving the Sulfur Conversion Efficiency on the Sulfur Cathode Side in Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

Energy storage devices are indispensable for supporting human activities; thus, producing sustainable environmental energy is a current focus of attention. Lithium–sulfur batteries (Li–S batteries)...

Prejudice drives exogenous attention to outgroups.

Exogenous attention allows the automatic detection of relevant stimuli and the reorientation of our current focus of attention towards them. Faces from an ethnic outgroup tend to capture exogenous attention to a greater extent than faces from an ethnic ingroup. We explored whether prejudice toward the outgroup, rather than lack of familiarity, is driving this effect. Participants (N = 76) performed a digit categorization task while distractor faces were presented. Faces belonged to (i) a prejudiced outgroup, (ii) a non-prejudiced outgroup and (iii) their ingroup. Half of the faces were previously habituated in order to increase their familiarity. Reaction times, accuracy and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to index exogenous attention to distractor faces. Additionally, different indexes of explicit and implicit prejudice were measured, the latter being significantly greater towards prejudiced outgroup. N170 amplitude was greater to prejudiced outgroup—regardless of their habituation status—than to both non-prejudiced outgroup and ingroup faces and was associated with implicit prejudice measures. No effects were observed at the behavioral level. Our results show that implicit prejudice, rather than familiarity, is under the observed attention-related N170 effects and that this ERP component may be more sensitive to prejudice than behavioral measures under certain circumstances.

Attentional repulsion effects produced by feature-guided shifts of attention.

Attention shifts to particular objects in the visual field can distort perceptual location judgments. Visual stimuli are perceived to be shifted away from the current focus of attention (the attentional repulsion effect [ARE]). Although links between repulsion effects and stimulus-driven exogenous attentional capture have been demonstrated conclusively, it remains disputed whether AREs can also be elicited as a result of feature-guided attention shifts that are controlled by endogenous task sets. Here we demonstrate that this is indeed the case. Color singleton cues that appeared together with equiluminant gray items triggered repulsion effects only if they matched a current task-relevant color but not when their color was irrelevant. When target-color and nontarget-color singleton cues appeared in the same display, AREs emerged relative to the position of the target-color cue. By obtaining independent behavioral measures of perceptual repulsion and electrophysiological measures of attentional capture by target-color cues, we also showed that these two phenomena are correlated. Individuals who were more susceptible to attentional capture also produced larger AREs. These results confirm the existence of links between task-set contingent attentional capture and AREs. They also provide the first direct demonstration of the attentional nature of these effects with online brain activity measures: perceptual repulsion arises as the result of prior feature-guided attention shifts to specific locations in the visual field.

Problem Solving as a Path to Comprehension

The ability to read, write and manipulate complex mathematical expressions is assumed in most user interfaces for programs designed for authoring, collaboration and reasoning in mathematics. However, little is actually known about how people cognitively process and integrate information when solving complex mathematical problems. In this paper eye-tracking was used to examine how people read and integrate information from mathematical symbols and complex formula, with eye fixations being used as a measure of their current focus of attention. We studied two groups of subjects: mathematically “Expert” and “Non-Expert”. Each participant in the study was presented with a series of stimuli in the form of mathematical problems and their eyes were tracked as they worked through the problems mentally. We discuss the performance differences between Experts and Non-Experts, and between subjects who completed problems Correctly and Incorrectly. From these examinations, we were able to demonstrate differences in both the comprehension and problem-solving approach of the two groups, with the results suggesting that what information is selected, and how, is responsible for a particularly large portion of success in solving such problems. This study has implications in mathematical software usability and accessibility, in particular for educational software, as comprehension of mathematical notation and formalism is often inherent in the implementation of structured mathematical software interfaces.

The neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio indexes individual variation in the behavioural stress response of wild roe deer across fluctuating environmental conditions

Understanding how wild animals adapt to perturbations and their consequences for life history traits and population dynamics is a current focus of attention in ecology and conservation biology. Here, we analysed variation in the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (N:L ratio), a proxy of stress level, in wild roe deer Capreolus capreolus from three populations experiencing markedly different environmental conditions. We first assessed whether among-individual differences in the N:L ratio were consistent over time and across environmental contexts. We then investigated how both individual characteristics (behaviour at capture, age, sex, body mass), and environmental context (habitat and year quality) were linked to this indicator of stress level. We found moderate, but consistent, repeatability of the N:L ratio in all three populations, indicating stable among-individual differences in the way individuals cope physiologically with varying environmental conditions. In addition, we found a weak, but consistent, association between the N:L ratio and behaviour at capture in two of the three populations. Finally, the N:L ratio also varied in relation to temporal changes in environmental conditions. In particular, individuals had, on average, higher levels of stress in poor-quality years in two of the three populations. We discuss our results in relation to the coping styles framework. Due to global change, natural populations are increasingly faced with unpredictable fluctuations of their environment. The stress response, via the release of glucocorticoids, is a key mechanism that enables individuals to cope with these variations. However, all individuals do not necessarily cope with life threatening and/or stressful situations in the same way, but as yet, the major drivers underlying variation in stress level remain unclear. We showed that the N:L ratio, reflecting baseline stress level, was repeatable and influenced by both individual and environmental factors. In particular, variation in the N:L ratio was linked to the quality of the year in terms of resource availability and, to a lesser extent, to the individual’s behaviour at capture. Our study demonstrates that both environmental context and individual characteristics drive variation in the N:L ratio in a wild vertebrate population.

EEG-Based Classification of Internally- and Externally-Directed Attention in an Augmented Reality Paradigm.

One problem faced in the design of Augmented Reality (AR) applications is the interference of virtually displayed objects in the user's visual field, with the current attentional focus of the user. Newly generated content can disrupt internal thought processes. If we can detect such internally-directed attention periods, the interruption could either be avoided or even used intentionally. In this work, we designed a special alignment task in AR with two conditions: one with externally-directed attention and one with internally-directed attention. Apart from the direction of attention, the two tasks were identical. During the experiment, we performed a 16-channel EEG recording, which was then used for a binary classification task. Based on selected band power features, we trained a Linear Discriminant Analysis classifier to predict the label for a 13-s window of each trial. Parameter selection, as well as the training of the classifier, were done in a person-dependent manner in a 5-fold cross-validation on the training data. We achieved an average score of approximately 85.37% accuracy on the test data (± 11.27%, range = [66.7%, 100%], 6 participants > 90%, 3 participants = 100%). Our results show that it is possible to discriminate the two states with simple machine learning mechanisms. The analysis of additionally collected data dispels doubts that we classified the difference in movement speed or task load. We conclude that a real-time assessment of internal and external attention in an AR setting in general will be possible.

Short-term memory based on activated long-term memory: A review in response to Norris (2017).

Short-term memory (STM), the limited information temporarily in a state of heightened accessibility, includes just-presented events and recently retrieved information. Norris (2017) argued for a prominent class of theories in which STM depends on the brain keeping a separate copy of new information, and against alternatives in which the information is held only in a portion of long-term memory (LTM) that is currently activated (aLTM). Here I question premises of Norris' case for separate-copy theories in the following ways. (a) He did not allow for implications of the common assumption (e.g., Cowan, 1999; Cowan & Chen, 2009) that aLTM can include new, rapidly formed LTM records of a trial within an STM task. (b) His conclusions from pathological cases of impaired STM along with intact LTM are tenuous; these rare cases can be explained by impairments in encoding, processing, or retrieval related to LTM rather than passive maintenance. (c) Although Norris reasonably allowed structured pointers to aLTM instead of separate copies of the actual item representations in STM, the same structured pointers may well be involved in long-term learning. (d) Last, models of STM storage can serve as the front end of an LTM learning system rather than being separate. I summarize evidence for these premises and an updated version of an alternative theory in which storage depends on aLTM (newly clarified), and, embedded within it, information enhanced by the current focus of attention (Cowan, 1988, 1999), with no need for a separate STM copy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The influence of gaze direction on food preferences

In our information-rich environment, the gaze direction of another indicates their current focus of attention. Following the gaze of another, results in gaze-evoked shifts in joint attention, a phenomenon critical for the functioning of social cognition. Previous research in joint attention has shown that objects that are attended by another are more liked than ignored objects. Here, we investigated this effect of gaze-cueing on participants’ preferences for unknown food items. Participants provided their willingness to pay (WTP), taste and health preferences for food items before and after a standard gaze-cueing paradigm. We observed a significant effect of gaze-cueing on participants’ WTP bids. Specifically, participants were willing to pay more money for the food items that were looked at by another person. In contrast, there was a decrease in preference for the food items that were ignored by another person. Interestingly, this increase in WTP occurred without participants’ awareness of the contingency between the cue and target. These results highlight the influence of social information on human choice behavior and lay the foundation for experiments in neuromarketing and consumer decision making.