Distraction Condition Research Articles

Attentional Modulation and Individual Differences in Explaining the Changing Role of Fundamental Frequency in Korean Laryngeal Stop Perception.

Previous research has shown differential degrees of attention in processing hierarchical linguistic information where higher order cues require greater attention in speech processing. The current study investigated the influence of attentional resources on acoustic cue weightings in speech perception by examining Korean listeners' identifications of the three-way laryngeal stops (tense vs. lax vs. aspirated). Using a dual-task paradigm, we presented 28 adult Korean listeners with identification tasks blocked by no-distractor versus distractor conditions where arithmetic calculations distracted the listeners' speech processing. Auditory stimuli were prepared by combining voice-onset times (VOTs) and fundamental frequencies (F0s) based on natural production. Group analyses revealed that VOT was an informative parameter across the three stop laryngeal categories and the listeners' reliance on VOT was consistently reduced under the distracting condition. Subsequent individual-level analysis further showed that listeners with heavier perceptual reliance on VOT were hindered by the distractor more than others in utilizing VOT. Unlike VOT, the F0 cue did not systematically interact with the distracting listening condition. The findings indicated that VOT (but not F0) required greater attention in processing the Korean laryngeal stops, and was presumably a higher order acoustic cue than F0. The current study contributes to the understanding of attention and cue primacy in general as well as to the clarification of the relative roles of VOT and F0 for the Korean stop laryngeal contrast.

College Binge Drinking Associated with Decreased Frontal Activation to Negative Emotional Distractors during Inhibitory Control.

The transition to college is associated with an increase in heavy episodic alcohol use, or binge drinking, during a time when the prefrontal cortex and prefrontal-limbic circuitry continue to mature. Traits associated with this immaturity, including impulsivity in emotional contexts, may contribute to risky and heavy episodic alcohol consumption. The current study used blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) multiband functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain activation during a task that required participants to ignore background images with positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence while performing an inhibitory control task (Go-NoGo). Subjects were 23 college freshmen (seven male, 18–20 years) who engaged in a range of drinking behavior (past 3 months’ binge episodes range = 0–19, mean = 4.6, total drinks consumed range = 0–104, mean = 32.0). Brain activation on inhibitory trials (NoGo) was contrasted between negative and neutral conditions and between positive and neutral conditions using non-parametric testing (5000 permutations) and cluster-based thresholding (z = 2.3), p ≤ 0.05 corrected. Results showed that a higher recent incidence of binge drinking was significantly associated with decreased activation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), brain regions strongly implicated in executive functioning, during negative relative to neutral inhibitory trials. No significant associations between binge drinking and brain activation were observed for positive relative to neutral images. While task performance was not significantly associated with binge drinking in this sample, subjects with heavier recent binge drinking showed decreased recruitment of executive control regions under negative versus neutral distractor conditions. These findings suggest that in young adults with heavier recent binge drinking, processing of negative emotional images interferes more with inhibitory control neurocircuitry than in young adults who do not binge drink often. This pattern of altered frontal lobe activation associated with binge drinking may serve as an early marker of risk for future self-regulation deficits that could lead to problematic alcohol use. These findings underscore the importance of understanding the impact of emotion on cognitive control and associated brain functioning in binge drinking behaviors among young adults.

Distracted Sniffing of Food Odors Leads to Diminished Behavioral and Neural Responses.

Eating under distracted conditions such as viewing television is associated with overeating and weight gain. Following evidence from earlier findings, in this issue Hoffman-Hensel et al. report a study in which they investigated the influence of distraction on intensity perception of low and high caloric food odors and neural responses to these food odors. Their findings suggest that distraction directly leads to decreased neural response in olfactory cortex and decreased intensity, and, indirectly to overeating, through a mechanism that then compensates for the decrease in strength of the olfactory signals. I discuss these results in a broader context of attention to odors.

An initial validation of the Virtual Environment Grocery Store

BackgroundVirtual reality-based neuropsychological assessments proffer the potential to address the limited ecological validity of pen-and-paper measures of memory. New methodTo investigate the construct validity of a newly developed virtual reality-based multiple errands task, the Virtual Environment Grocery Store (VEGS), two studies were performed. Comparison with existing method(s)In Study 1, we explored construct validity via comparison of traditional neuropsychological measures of memory and executive functioning with a low distraction condition of the VEGS. In Study 2, a new sample was used to compare traditional neuropsychological measures of memory and executive functioning with a high distraction condition of the VEGS. ResultsPerformances on the VEGS memory tasks (in Study 1: low distraction condition) and the traditional neuropsychological assessments of memory were positively correlated, indicating that memory for VEGS content was similar to memory for traditional paper-and-pencil measures. Again, in Study 2, performances on the VEGS memory tasks correlated with the traditional neuropsychological assessments of memory, indicating that memory for VEGS content was similar to memory for traditional paper-and-pencil measures. As expected, though, the addition of distractors into the virtual environment resulted in significant correlations with traditional measures of inhibitory control. ConclusionsThe VEGS has the advantage over traditional measures of providing objective measurement of individual components of memory in simulations of everyday activities.

From the Lab to the Field: Effects of Self-Talk on Task Performance Under Distracting Conditions

This study explored the effectiveness of self-talk strategies on task performance under conditions of external distraction in laboratory and field experiments. In the laboratory experiment, 28 sport science students (Mage21.48±1.58 years) were tested on a computer game requiring attention and fine execution following a baseline assessment and a short self-talk training. In the field experiment, 28 female basketball players (Mage20.96±4.51 years) were tested on free-throwing, following a baseline assessment and a six-week intervention. In both settings the final assessment took place under conditions of external distraction (noncontinuous, sudden, loud noise). Analyses of covariance showed that participants of the self-talk group performed better than participants of the control group. Findings suggest that self-talk can counter the effects of distraction on performance, and indicate that the attentional effects of self-talk is a viable mechanism to explain the facilitating effects of self-talk on performance.

Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence reveals the effects of trait anxiety on contingent attentional capture.

Few studies have investigated the effects of anxiety on contingent attentional capture. The present study examined contingent attentional capture in trait anxiety by applying a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm during electroencephalographic recording. Overall, the behavioral and electrophysiological results showed a larger capture effect when a distractor was the same color as the target compared to when the distractor was not of the target color. Moreover, high-anxiety individuals showed a larger N2pc in the target colored distractor condition and nontarget colored distractor condition compared to the distractor-absent condition. In addition, the reaction time was slower when distractors were presented in the left visual field compared to when they were in the right visual field. This pattern was not seen in low-anxiety individuals. The findings may indicate that high-anxiety individuals allocate attention to the target less efficiently and have reduced suppression of distractors compared to low-anxiety individuals who could suppress attention to the distractors more efficiently. Future work could valuably investigate the consequences of such differences in terms of benefits and disruption associated with attentional capture differences in a range of anxious populations in different risk monitoring situations.

The effect of different distractions on remembering delayed intentions

ABSTRACTIn safety-critical domains, frequently intentions need to be delayed until an ongoing task is completed. Research using the delay-execute paradigm showed that interruptions during the delay cause forgetting. However, staff members often handle an initial distraction not by interrupting the ongoing task but by acknowledging the distraction or multitasking. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we observed that, compared to a no distraction condition, multitasking significantly decreased remembering of intentions and interrupting decreased remembering even further. In Experiment 2, interruptions with context change reduced remembering of intentions compared to uninterrupted delays, and at the same time, interruptions without context change improved memory performance compared to uninterrupted delays. However, improved memory performance resulted in decreased interrupting task performance. Theoretically, the results support the contextual cueing mechanism of delay-execute tasks. Considering safety-critical domains, multitasking, interruptions and context changes can contribute to forgetting of tasks.

The effect of background music and noise on the cognitive test performance of Chinese introverts and extraverts

Previous research has shown that background auditory distractors (music and sound/noise) have a more severe impact on introverts’ performances on complex cognitive tasks than extraverts (Dobbs, Furnham, & McClelland, 2011). The present study is a partial replication of Dobbs et al., but involving Chinese rather than English participants. Ninety-two Chinese participants (59 female) carried out three cognitive tasks with the presence of Chinese pop songs, background office noise, and silence. The results did not reveal any differences in performance as a function of the distraction condition, nor was there a difference in performance between extraverts and introverts. The failure to replicate is explained in terms of habituation to noisy environments among Chinese participants.

Target-distractor synchrony affects performance in a novel motor task for studying action selection.

The study of action selection in humans can present challenges of task design since our actions are usually defined by many degrees of freedom and therefore occupy a large action-space. While saccadic eye-movement offers a more constrained paradigm for investigating action selection, the study of reach-and-grasp in upper limbs has often been defined by more complex scenarios, not easily interpretable in terms of such selection. Here we present a novel motor behaviour task which addresses this by limiting the action space to a single degree of freedom in which subjects have to track (using a stylus) a vertical coloured target line displayed on a tablet computer, whilst ignoring a similarly oriented distractor line in a different colour. We ran this task with 55 subjects and showed that, in agreement with previous studies, the presence of the distractor generally increases the movement latency and directional error rate. Further, we used two distractor conditions according to whether the distractor’s location changes asynchronously or synchronously with the location of the target. We found that the asynchronous distractor yielded poorer performance than its synchronous counterpart, with significantly higher movement latencies and higher error rates. We interpret these results in an action selection framework with two actions (move left or right) and competing ‘action requests’ offered by the target and distractor. As such, the results provide insights into action selection performance in humans and supply data for directly constraining future computational models therein.

Mild Cognitive Impairment and driving: Does in-vehicle distraction affect driving performance?

ObjectivesIn-vehicle distraction is considered to be an important cause of road accidents. Drivers with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), because of their attenuated cognitive resources, may be vulnerable to the effects of distraction; however, previous relevant research is lacking. The main objective of the current study was to explore the effect of in-vehicle distraction on the driving performance of MCI patients, by assessing their reaction time at unexpected incidents and accident probability. MethodsThirteen patients with MCI (age: 64.5±7.2) and 12 cognitively intact individuals (age: 60.0±7.7), all active drivers were introduced in the study. The driving simulator experiment included three distraction conditions: (a) undistracted driving, (b) conversing with passenger and (c) conversing through a hand-held mobile phone. ResultsThe mixed ANOVA models revealed a greater effect of distraction on MCI patients. Specifically, the use of mobile phone induced a more pronounced impact on reaction time and accident probability in the group of patients, as compared to healthy controls. On the other hand, in the driving condition “conversing with passenger” the interaction effects regarding reaction time and accident probability were not significant. Notably, the aforementioned findings concerning the MCI patients in the case of the mobile phone were observed despite the effort of the drivers to apply a compensatory strategy by reducing significantly their speed in this driving condition. ConclusionOverall, the current findings indicate, for the first time, that a common driving practice, such as the use of mobile phone, may have a detrimental impact on the driving performance of individuals with MCI.

The Effect of Visual Environmental Distraction on Gait Performance in Children

ABSTRACTPurpose: Identify the effect of visual distraction on gait parameters in children and describe the role of walking experience (WE) in the management of visual distraction. Methods: Forty-two typically developing children, mean age 43.2 months (SD = 22.9) participated and were divided into three groups according to WE: early walkers (6–11 months of WE), preschool walkers (12–37 months of WE), and experienced walkers (38–79 months of WE). Gait parameters measured under two conditions (no visual distraction and with visual distraction) included: velocity, step length, step width, and double limb support percentage (DLS%) of gait cycle. Multivariate analysis of variance assessed differences in gait between groups (effect of WE) and within groups (effect of condition). Results: Significant main effects of WE group F(8,74) = 5.300, p ≤.001 and visual distraction condition F(4,36) = 2.586, p = 0.053 were found. Visual environmental distraction significantly affected gait performance in children regardless of walking experience. Velocity decreased from 110.04 to 97.73 cm/sec (p = 0.003) while DLS% of gait cycle increased from 18.29% to 20.39% (p = 0.025). Conclusions: Results suggest physical therapists need to consider attentional requirements when assessing gait; even in children with more WE. If attention to task is a limiting factor for performance or learning of a motor task, it may need to be addressed directly as part of the treatment plan.

Coloring Versus Drawing: Effects of Cognitive Demand on Mood Repair, Flow, and Enjoyment

We examined whether using drawing to distract, by either coloring a design or drawing a design, improves mood more than drawing to express feelings. We manipulated levels of cognitive demand in the first 2 conditions by asking participants to color a design (low cognitive demand) or draw a design (high cognitive demand). After a sad mood induction, we randomly assigned 70 participants to coloring, drawing, or drawing to express thoughts and feelings. Affect was measured before and after the mood induction and after drawing. Participants also reported on their level of enjoyment and flow when drawing. Both distraction conditions, regardless of level of cognitive demand, improved affect. Whereas those in both the coloring and drawing conditions enjoyed the activity more than the drawing to express condition, only the coloring condition resulted in greater states of flow.

Visual crowding is a combination of an increase of positional uncertainty, source confusion, and featural averaging

Although we perceive a richly detailed visual world, our ability to identify individual objects is severely limited in clutter, particularly in peripheral vision. Models of such “crowding” have generally been driven by the phenomenological misidentifications of crowded targets: using stimuli that do not easily combine to form a unique symbol (e.g. letters or objects), observers typically confuse the source of objects and report either the target or a distractor, but when continuous features are used (e.g. orientated gratings or line positions) observers report a feature somewhere between the target and distractor. To reconcile these accounts, we develop a hybrid method of adjustment that allows detailed analysis of these multiple error categories. Observers reported the orientation of a target, under several distractor conditions, by adjusting an identical foveal target. We apply new modelling to quantify whether perceptual reports show evidence of positional uncertainty, source confusion, and featural averaging on a trial-by-trial basis. Our results show that observers make a large proportion of source-confusion errors. However, our study also reveals the distribution of perceptual reports that underlie performance in this crowding task more generally: aggregate errors cannot be neatly labelled because they are heterogeneous and their structure depends on target-distractor distance.

Stereoscopic Segmentation Cues Improve Visual Timing Performance in Spatiotemporally Cluttered Environments.

Recently, Cass and Van der Burg demonstrated that temporal order judgment (TOJ) precision could be profoundly impaired by the mere presence of dynamic visual clutter elsewhere in the visual field. This study examines whether presenting target and distractor objects in different depth planes might ameliorate this remote temporal camouflage (RTC) effect. TOJ thresholds were measured under static and dynamic (flickering) distractor conditions. In Experiment 1, targets were presented at zero, crossed, or uncrossed disparity, with distractors fixed at zero disparity. Thresholds were significantly elevated under dynamic compared with static contextual conditions, replicating the RTC effect. Crossed but not uncrossed disparity targets improved performance in dynamic distractor contexts, which otherwise produce substantial RTC. In Experiment 2, the assignment of disparity was reversed: targets fixed at zero disparity; distractors crossed, uncrossed, or zero. Under these conditions, thresholds improved significantly in the nonzero distractor disparity conditions. These results indicate that presenting target and distractor objects in different planes can significantly improve TOJ performance in dynamic conditions. In Experiment 3, targets were each presented with a different sign of disparity (e.g., one crossed and the other uncrossed), with no resulting performance benefits. Results suggest that disparity can be used to alleviate the performance-diminishing effects of RTC, but only if both targets constitute a single and unique disparity-defined surface.

Virtual Reality for Management of Pain in Hospitalized Patients: Results of a Controlled Trial

BackgroundImprovements in software and design and reduction in cost have made virtual reality (VR) a practical tool for immersive, three-dimensional (3D), multisensory experiences that distract patients from painful stimuli.ObjectiveThe objective of the study was to measure the impact of a onetime 3D VR intervention versus a two-dimensional (2D) distraction video for pain in hospitalized patients.MethodsWe conducted a comparative cohort study in a large, urban teaching hospital in medical inpatients with an average pain score of ≥3/10 from any cause. Patients with nausea, vomiting, dementia, motion sickness, stroke, seizure, and epilepsy and those placed in isolation were excluded. Patients in the intervention cohort viewed a 3D VR experience designed to reduce pain using the Samsung Gear Oculus VR headset; control patients viewed a high-definition, 2D nature video on a 14-inch bedside screen. Pre- and postintervention pain scores were recorded. Difference-in-difference scores and the proportion achieving a half standard deviation pain response were compared between groups.ResultsThere were 50 subjects per cohort (N=100). The mean pain reduction in the VR cohort was greater than in controls (−1.3 vs −0.6 points, respectively; P=.008). A total of 35 (65%) patients in the VR cohort achieved a pain response versus 40% of controls (P=.01; number needed to treat=4). No adverse events were reported from VR.ConclusionsUse of VR in hospitalized patients significantly reduces pain versus a control distraction condition. These results indicate that VR is an effective and safe adjunctive therapy for pain management in the acute inpatient setting; future randomized trials should confirm benefit with different visualizations and exposure periods.Trial RegistrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT02456987; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02456987 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6pJ1P644S)

A Double Dissociation between Conscious and Non-conscious Priming of Responses and Affect: Evidence for a Contribution of Misattributions to the Priming of Affect

Studies have demonstrated conscious and non-conscious priming of responses and of affect. Concerning response priming, presenting a target-related (congruent) distractor prior to a target typically facilitates target responses. This facilitation – the response-priming effect – is observed in comparison to a less related (incongruent) distractor. An incongruent distractor would interfere with the required response to the target. This response-priming effect is found with both conscious distractors, of which participants are aware, and non-conscious distractors, of which participants are not aware. In partly related research, distractors have also yielded affective priming effects on the evaluations of task-unrelated neutral symbols that followed the target: In comparison to the congruent condition, participants evaluated a neutral symbol presented after an incongruent distractor-target sequence as more negative. This affective priming effect was sometimes ascribed to the participants’ misattributions of distractor-target conflict to the unrelated neutral symbols. Here, we set out to test this possibility. If the misattribution explanation of affective priming holds true, affective priming would be stronger with non-conscious than with conscious distractors: Mostly the non-conscious distractors would mask distractor-target conflict as the true affect-origin and, therefore, invite participants’ misattribution of the primed affect to the neutral symbol in temporal vicinity. In contrast, only with conscious distractors, participants would be aware of distractor-target conflict as the true affect-origin and should, therefore, be better able to attribute their affective responses to the distractor-target relationship itself. In three experiments, we confirmed this prediction of a stronger affective priming effect in non-conscious than conscious distractor conditions, while at the same time showing conscious response-priming effects to even exceed non-conscious response-priming effects. Together, these results amount to a double dissociation between affective priming, being stronger with unconscious distractors, and response priming, being stronger with conscious distractors. This double dissociation supports the misattribution explanation and makes clear that the amount of distractor-elicited response conflict alone does not account for the amount of affective priming. Moreover, the participants’ unawareness of the distractors is critical for the amount of affective priming of neutral symbols in temporal vicinity.

Rumination induces a pattern of attention characterized by increased vigilance followed by avoidance of affective pain words.

This study examined the effects of rumination on attentional processes in relation to an acute experimental pain task. In keeping with recent theory and research, it was hypothesized that we would identify a pattern of attentional bias characterized by enhanced initial vigilance followed by avoidance of pain-related stimuli. Undergraduate students were randomized to a rumination condition, which received threat-inducing information about the cold pressor task, or a distraction condition. Using the dot probe task, attentional biases to sensory and affective pain words were assessed at two presentation intervals (500 and 1250ms). Those in the rumination condition did not show differences in attentional biases compared to the control group, however, they did respond more quickly to pain congruent trials compared to neutral/neutral trials when affective pain words were presented for 500ms. In addition, those in the rumination group responded more slowly in congruent trials to neutral/neutral trials than affective/neutral trials indicating avoidance at 1250ms. Although those in the rumination condition exhibited higher levels of distress and reported higher levels of pain when they withdrew their hands from the cold pressor task, the congruency biases did not predict these results. These results suggest that experimentally manipulating rumination changes attentional processes consistent with the vigilance-avoidance hypothesis. The rumination manipulation led to increased worry about pain and induced to an attentional pattern of vigilance-avoidance for affective pain words. The induction also led to more distress and pain. Rumination and worry appear to increase unhelpful patterns of attention and could be an appropriate focus of intervention.

Validating emotional attention regulation as a component of emotional intelligence: A Stroop approach to individual differences in tuning in to and out of nonverbal cues.

Emotional intelligence (EI) has captivated researchers and the public alike, but it has been challenging to establish its components as objective abilities. Self-report scales lack divergent validity from personality traits, and few ability tests have objectively correct answers. We adapt the Stroop task to introduce a new facet of EI called emotional attention regulation (EAR), which involves focusing emotion-related attention for the sake of information processing rather than for the sake of regulating one's own internal state. EAR includes 2 distinct components. First, tuning in to nonverbal cues involves identifying nonverbal cues while ignoring alternate content, that is, emotion recognition under conditions of distraction by competing stimuli. Second, tuning out of nonverbal cues involves ignoring nonverbal cues while identifying alternate content, that is, the ability to interrupt emotion recognition when needed to focus attention elsewhere. An auditory test of valence included positive and negative words spoken in positive and negative vocal tones. A visual test of approach-avoidance included green- and red-colored facial expressions depicting happiness and anger. The error rates for incongruent trials met the key criteria for establishing the validity of an EI test, in that the measure demonstrated test-retest reliability, convergent validity with other EI measures, divergent validity from factors such as general processing speed and mostly personality, and predictive validity in this case for well-being. By demonstrating that facets of EI can be validly theorized and empirically assessed, results also speak to the validity of EI more generally. (PsycINFO Database Record

Engaging in an experiential processing mode increases positive emotional response during recall of pleasant autobiographical memories

It is important to identify effective emotion regulation strategies to increase positive emotion experience in the general population and in clinical conditions characterized by anhedonia. There are indications that engaging in experiential processing (direct awareness of sensory and bodily experience) bolsters positive emotion experience but this has not been extensively tested during memory recall. To further test this notion, 99 community participants recalled two positive autobiographical memories. Prior to the second recall, participants either underwent an experiential, analytical, or distraction induction (n = 33 per condition). Subjective happiness and sadness ratings and heart rate variability (HRV) response were measured during each recall. Greater spontaneous use of experiential processing during the first memory was associated with greater happiness experience, but was unrelated to HRV and sadness experience. Inducing experiential processing increased happiness experience relative to both the analytical and distraction conditions (but had no impact on sadness experience). There was a significant difference in HRV between conditions. The experiential condition led to a trend-significant increase, and the other conditions a non-significant decrease, in HRV from the first to the second memory. These results suggest that engaging in experiential processing is an effective way to up-regulate positive emotion experience during positive memory recall.

Effects of road infrastructure and traffic complexity in speed adaptation behaviour of distracted drivers

The use of mobile phones while driving remains a major human factors issue in the transport system. A significant safety concern is that driving while distracted by a mobile phone potentially modifies the driving speed leading to conflicts with other road users and consequently increases crash risk. However, the lack of systematic knowledge of the mechanisms involved in speed adaptation of distracted drivers constrains the explanation and modelling of the extent of this phenomenon. The objective of this study was to investigate speed adaptation of distracted drivers under varying road infrastructure and traffic complexity conditions. The CARRS-Q Advanced Driving Simulator was used to test participants on a simulated road with different traffic conditions, such as free flow traffic along straight roads, driving in urbanized areas, and driving in heavy traffic along suburban roads. Thirty-two licensed young drivers drove the simulator under three phone conditions: baseline (no phone conversation), hands-free and handheld phone conversations. To understand the relationships between distraction, road infrastructure and traffic complexity, speed adaptation calculated as the deviation of driving speed from the posted speed limit was modelled using a decision tree. The identified groups of road infrastructure and traffic characteristics from the decision tree were then modelled with a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) with repeated measures to develop inferences about speed adaptation behaviour of distracted drivers. The GLMM also included driver characteristics and secondary task demands as predictors of speed adaptation. Results indicated that complex road environments like urbanization, car-following situations along suburban roads, and curved road alignment significantly influenced speed adaptation behaviour. Distracted drivers selected a lower speed while driving along a curved road or during car-following situations, but speed adaptation was negligible in the presence of high visual cutter, indicating the prioritization of the driving task over the secondary task. Additionally, drivers who scored high on self-reported safe attitudes towards mobile phone usage, and who reported prior involvement in a road traffic crash, selected a lower driving speed in the distracted condition than in the baseline. The results aid in understanding how driving task demands influence speed adaptation of distracted drivers under various road infrastructure and traffic complexity conditions.