Habituation Of Attention Research Articles

Differentiating recognition for anger and fear facial expressions via inhibition of return.

The goal of this study was to find out whether two negative emotions—fear and anger, known for their attention grabbing capacity-are equally prone to the detection cost or habituation of attention as measured by IOR. This study adopted the more ecological meaning of the video screenshots as target stimulus; the finding was that anger relative to fear could override the IOR effect. We discussed this differentiation according to the two cognitive systems one evolved for mastery of the natural environment, the other for purposes of social harmony in the evolutionary framework, anger poses a social/relational threat, whereas fear refers to threat that comes from the environment.

Novelty detection in long-term attentional habituation processes using a Bayesian change point algorithm

Habituation is defined as a response decrement resulting from repeated stimulation [1]. This process is very important in filtering a large amount of information in the surrounding environment and focusing our attention on only the features of the environment that are important to us. Here we address the problem of objectively assessing long-term habituation using electroencephalographic auditory late responses (ALRs). We propose using a Bayesian change point algorithm to measure the novelty process and apply it to two experimental data sets of 50dB and 100dB stimuli responses. These correspond to cases of habituation and non-habituation respectively.

Infant habituation: assessments of individual differences and short-term reliability at five months.

This study is concerned with individual differences and short-term reliability of infant-control habituation of visual attention. Habituation to single female faces and to single geometric patterns was observed separately in 2 groups of comparable 5-month-olds. Each group participated in habituation twice, and habituation sessions for each were separated from one another by 10 days. Across the 2 conditions, habituation was found to be distributed into 3 patterns: Most infants decreased looking and achieved criterion in a negatively exponential fashion, some infants first increased looking and then rapidly habituated, and some infants showed fluctuating and idiosyncratic looking-time functions prior to habituating. Both qualitative patterns and quantitative indexes of habituation showed moderate but significant reliability between assessment sessions. Quantitative and psychometric characteristics of habituation and the meaningfulness of habituation of attention as an index of infant cognition are discussed.