Involuntary Allocation Of Attention Research Articles

Auditory deviance detection and involuntary attention allocation in occupational burnout-A follow-up study.

Here, we investigated the central auditory processing and attentional control associated with both recovery and prolongation of occupational burnout. We recorded the event-related brain potentials N1, P2, mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a to nine changes in speech sounds and to three rarely presented emotional (happy, angry and sad) utterances from individuals with burnout (N = 16) and their matched controls (N = 12). After the 5 years follow-up, one control had acquired burnout, half (N = 8) of the burnout group had recovered, and the other half (prolonged burnout) still had burnout. The processing of acoustical changes in speech sounds was mainly intact. Prolongation of the burnout was associated with a decrease in MMN amplitude and an increase in P3a amplitude for the happy stimulus. The results suggest that, in the absence of interventions, burnout is a persistent condition, associated with alterations of attentional control, that may be amplified with the prolongation of the condition.

Alcohol and sleep restriction combined reduces vigilant attention, whereas sleep restriction alone enhances distractibility.

Alcohol and sleep loss are leading causes of motor vehicle crashes, whereby attention failure is a core causal factor. Despite a plethora of data describing the effect of alcohol and sleep loss on vigilant attention, little is known about their effect on voluntary and involuntary visual attention processes. Repeated-measures, counterbalanced design. Controlled laboratory setting. Sixteen young (18-27 y; M = 21.90 ± 0.60 y) healthy males. Participants completed an attention test battery during the afternoon (13:00-14:00) under four counterbalanced conditions: (1) baseline; (2) alcohol (0.05% breath alcohol concentration); (3) sleep restriction (02:00-07:00); and (4) alcohol/sleep restriction combined. This test battery included a Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) as a measure of vigilant attention, and two ocular motor tasks-visually guided and antisaccade-to measure the involuntary and voluntary allocation of visual attention. Only the combined condition led to reductions in vigilant attention characterized by slower mean reaction time, fastest 10% responses, and increased number of lapses (P < 0.05) on the PVT. In addition, the combined condition led to a slowing in the voluntary allocation of attention as reflected by increased antisaccade latencies (P < 0.05). Sleep restriction alone however increased both antisaccade inhibitory errors [45.8% errors versus < 28.4% all others; P < 0.001] and the involuntary allocation of attention, as reflected by faster visually guided latencies (177.7 msec versus > 185.0 msec all others) to a peripheral target (P < 0.05). Our data reveal specific signatures for sleep related attention failure: the voluntary allocation of attention is impaired, whereas the involuntary allocation of attention is enhanced. This provides key evidence for the role of distraction in attention failure during sleep loss.

Alterations in attention capture to auditory emotional stimuli in job burnout: An event-related potential study

Job burnout is a significant cause of work absenteeism. Evidence from behavioral studies and patient reports suggests that job burnout is associated with impairments of attention and decreased working capacity, and it has overlapping elements with depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances. Here, we examined the electrophysiological correlates of automatic sound change detection and involuntary attention allocation in job burnout using scalp recordings of event-related potentials (ERP). Volunteers with job burnout symptoms but without severe depression and anxiety disorders and their non-burnout controls were presented with natural speech sound stimuli (standard and nine deviants), as well as three rarely occurring speech sounds with strong emotional prosody. All stimuli elicited mismatch negativity (MMN) responses that were comparable in both groups. The groups differed with respect to the P3a, an ERP component reflecting involuntary shift of attention: job burnout group showed a shorter P3a latency in response to the emotionally negative stimulus, and a longer latency in response to the positive stimulus. Results indicate that in job burnout, automatic speech sound discrimination is intact, but there is an attention capture tendency that is faster for negative, and slower to positive information compared to that of controls.

Orbitofrontal cortex biases attention to emotional events

We examined the role of orbitofrontal (OF) cortex in regulating emotion–attention interaction and the balance between involuntary and voluntary attention allocation. We studied patients with OF lesion applying reaction time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) measures in a lateralized visual discrimination task with novel task-irrelevant affective pictures (unpleasant, pleasant, or neutral) preceding a neutral target. This allowed for comparing the effects of automatic attention allocation to emotional versus neutral stimuli on subsequent voluntary attention allocation to target stimuli. N2–P3a and N2–P3b ERP components served as measures of involuntary and voluntary attention allocation correspondingly. Enhanced N2–P3a amplitudes to emotional distractors and reduced N2–P3b amplitudes to targets preceded by emotional distractors were observed in healthy subjects, suggesting automatic emotional orienting interfered with subsequent voluntary orienting. OF patients showed an opposite pattern with tendency towards reduced N2–P3a responses to emotional distractors, suggesting impaired automatic orienting to emotional stimuli due to orbitofrontal damage. Enhanced N2–P3b responses to targets preceded by any affective distractor were observed in OF patients, suggesting bias towards voluntary target-related attention allocation due to orbitofrontal lesion. Behavioral evidence indicated that left visual field (LVF) attention performance was modulated by emotional stimuli. Specifically, OF patients responded faster to LVF targets subsequent to pleasant emotional distractors. We suggest that damage to the orbitofrontal circuitry leads to dysbalance between voluntary and involuntary attention allocation in the context of affective distractors with predisposition to posterior target-related processing over frontal novelty and affect-related processing. Furthermore, we suggest that orbitofrontal influence on emotion–attention interaction is valence and hemisphere dependent.

A critical evaluation of the disengagement hypothesis

Theeuwes (2010) presents an array of evidence in support of the theoretical claim that “early” visual selection is completely stimulusdriven, and that top–down factors play a role only after attention has been allocated, through recurrent feedback processing. As noted by Theeuwes, however, this view represents one side of a heated debate over the role of top–down attentional “set” in the involuntary allocation of attention (i.e., attentional “capture”). On the other side of the debate is the “contingent capture” view, which states that the attention allocation system can be “configured” or “set” to respond to stimulus properties that are needed to distinguish target stimuli from non-target stimuli. With a top–down control setting in place, stimuli that match the setting will elicit a shift of attention, even when the stimuli are irrelevant (i.e., when the observer knows in advance that such shifts will likely impair relevant target processing). In addition, according to the contingent capture view, irrelevant, salient stimuli that do not match top–down control settings will not result in a shift of attention. As summarized in Theeuwes (2010), the primary evidence for the stimulus-driven view comes from Theeuwes' additional singleton paradigm, while the primary evidence for the contingent capture view comes from the modified spatial cuing paradigm of Folk, Remington, and Johnston (1992). These two paradigms differ in the temporal presentation of distractors and targets: in the additional singleton paradigm distractors and targets are presented simultaneously, while in the spatial cuing paradigm the distractor precedes the target. The opposing theories have each proposed mechanisms to account for the discrepant results from the other paradigm. In this commentary, rather than providing a full critique of Theeuwes’ theoretical perspective (which is well beyond the scope of a short commentary), we will focus specifically on one critical aspect of his account, the notion that rapid disengagement of attention accounts for the results of the spatial cuing paradigm. The rapid disengagement construct is indeed critical to the stimulus-driven perspective because it is the only way to salvage a bottom–up account of the “contingent capture” pattern found in the spatial cuing task. We will argue, however, that a critical evaluation of the evidence suggests that the rapid disengagement account of contingent capture is at best unsupported, and at worst, unfalsifiable.