Voluntary Attention Research Articles

Effects of Cognitive Loading on the Development of Muscle Fatigue

The aim of the present work was to study the effects of cognitive loading requiring activation of the attention systems on the development of muscle fatigue. The dynamics of measures of arm muscle fatigue were evaluated in two sessions, separated by 5 min, consisting of 250 maximum-strength dynamometer compressions in response to acoustic target signals in three tasks with different levels of cognitive loading. The first experiment used only the target signals; in experiment two, the subjects had to discriminate the target signal from an equal number (250) of nontarget signals, which required voluntary attention. In experiment three, the proportions of target stimuli were 17 and 83%, respectively, i.e., the target stimulus was random (deviant), activating not only voluntary attention, but also involuntary attention. Measurements of grip strength, maximum voluntary contraction strength, and subjective assessments of fatigue before and after the motor tasks showed that experiments involving voluntary and involuntary attention to sound stimuli produced a smaller rate of development of muscle fatigue. Activation of involuntary attention, accompanied by the appearance of mismatch negativity on the EEG, enhanced the effect of voluntary attention.

Top-Down Control of Visual Attention by the Prefrontal Cortex. Functional Specialization and Long-Range Interactions.

The ability to select information that is relevant to current behavioral goals is the hallmark of voluntary attention and an essential part of our cognition. Attention tasks are a prime example to study at the neuronal level, how task related information can be selectively processed in the brain while irrelevant information is filtered out. Whereas, numerous studies have focused on elucidating the mechanisms of visual attention at the single neuron and population level in the visual cortices, considerably less work has been devoted to deciphering the distinct contribution of higher-order brain areas, which are known to be critical for the employment of attention. Among these areas, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) has long been considered a source of top-down signals that bias selection in early visual areas in favor of the attended features. Here, we review recent experimental data that support the role of PFC in attention. We examine the existing evidence for functional specialization within PFC and we discuss how long-range interactions between PFC subregions and posterior visual areas may be implemented in the brain and contribute to the attentional modulation of different measures of neural activity in visual cortices.

Predictions, precision, and agentive attention.

Ransom, Fazelpour, and Mole (this journal - 2017) raise an important puzzle for the 'prediction error minimization' account of cognitive processing. That account depicts all cognitive processing as fundamentally in the business of minimizing prediction errors concerning the evolving flow of sensory information. One of the cornerstones of these highly ambitious, would-be unifying accounts is their depiction of attention as nothing other than the process of optimizing the precision (inverse variance) of critical prediction error signals. But that story, Ransom et al. suggest, cannot accommodate voluntary shifts of attention. In this paper, I show why this challenge to the grand unifying project fails. It fails because it locates the origins of voluntary attention in complexes of unanalyzed desire rather than in changing complexes of beliefs.

COMPASSION OF PROVISION OF LEARNING RESOURCES FOR SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION PUPILS IN SELECTED PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN KAKAMEGA COUNTY, KENYA

The conceptual frame was used in a study which sought to investigate the achievement of equity in the provision of Physical Education learning resources to physically challenged and typical learners in inclusive schools. The importance of the conceptual framework is to sensitize the stakeholders, education administrators, staffing officers, learners, Parents and the community on how quality education could easily be achieved through provision of appropriate learning resources in an inclusive setting. The problem of lack of conducive learning environment for challenged learners in inclusive settings has been echoed in many reports. The main objective of making the conceptual framework is to help the educators be in a position to use appropriate resources in an inclusive setting to achieve a meaningful education. The conceptual framework uses ideas from the Resource Dependence Theory and Social Development Theories. The theories were utilized to address the key issues in the study. The Resource Dependence Theory which sees organizations to be dependent on resources in their environment and succeed by maximizing on their power to compete and utilize those resources. On the other hand, the Social Development Theory argues that every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first on the social level and later on the individual level, first between people (Inter-psychology) and later inside the child (Intra-psychology). This applies equally to voluntary attention, logical memory and formation of concepts. Article visualizations:

Changes in behavior and salivary cortisol after targeted cognitive training in typical 12-month-old infants.

Previous research has suggested that early development may be an optimal period to implement cognitive training interventions, particularly those relating to attention control, a basic ability that is essential for the development of other cognitive skills. In the present study, we administered gaze-contingent training (95 min across 2 weeks) targeted at voluntary attention control to a cohort of typical 12-month-old children (N = 24) and sham training to a control group (N = 24). We assessed training effects on (a) tasks involving nontrained aspects of attention control: visual sustained attention, habituation speed, visual recognition memory, sequence learning, and reversal learning; (b) general attentiveness (on-task behaviors during testing); and (c) salivary cortisol levels. Assessments were administered immediately after the cessation of training and at a 6-week follow-up. On the immediate posttest infants showed significantly more sustained visual attention, faster habituation, and improved sequence learning. Significant effects were also found for increased general attentiveness and decreased salivary cortisol. Some of these effects were still evident at the 6-week follow-up (significantly improved sequence learning and marginally improved sustained attention). These findings extend the emerging literature showing that attention training is possible in infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record

A Atenção Voluntária na Construção de Conceitos Trigonométricos em Ambientes de Geometria Dinâmica

This article presents the results of the project, obtained through didactic sequences applications. The objective was to investigate the voluntary attention span of students when subjected to Dynamic Geometry Environment (GDE) in the exploration of trigonometric concepts. To carry out the didactic sequences was used GeoGebra software, a free Dynamic Geometry Environment software that allows the identification of algebraic and geometric concepts simultaneously in an interactive interface and simples. The methodology used, regarding the approach of the problem, was defined as qualitative, regarding the objectives of exploratory form and as for the research technique, case study Para support the research used the Socio-Historical theory of Vygotsky, and to address the semiotic issues was based on the theory of Duval. From the implementation of the project highlighted the importance of using these environments to obtain the voluntary attention of students in the trigonometric concepts construction process.This article presents the results of the project, obtained through didactic sequences applications. The objective was to investigate the voluntary attention span of students when subjected to Dynamic Geometry Environment (GDE) in the exploration of trigonometric concepts. To carry out the didactic sequences was used GeoGebra software, a free Dynamic Geometry Environment software that allows the identification of algebraic and geometric concepts simultaneously in an interactive interface and simples. The methodology used, regarding the approach of the problem, was defined as qualitative, regarding the objectives of exploratory form and as for the research technique, case study Para support the research used the Socio-Historical theory of Vygotsky, and to address the semiotic issues was based on the theory of Duval. From the implementation of the project highlighted the importance of using these environments to obtain the voluntary attention of students in the trigonometric concepts construction process.

Characterizing the effects of feature salience and top-down attention in the early visual system.

The visual system employs a sophisticated balance of attentional mechanisms: salient stimuli are prioritized for visual processing, yet observers can also ignore such stimuli when their goals require directing attention elsewhere. A powerful determinant of visual salience is local feature contrast: if a local region differs from its immediate surround along one or more feature dimensions, it will appear more salient. We used high-resolution functional MRI (fMRI) at 7T to characterize the modulatory effects of bottom-up salience and top-down voluntary attention within multiple sites along the early visual pathway, including visual areas V1-V4 and the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). Observers viewed arrays of spatially distributed gratings, where one of the gratings immediately to the left or right of fixation differed from all other items in orientation or motion direction, making it salient. To investigate the effects of directed attention, observers were cued to attend to the grating to the left or right of fixation, which was either salient or nonsalient. Results revealed reliable additive effects of top-down attention and stimulus-driven salience throughout visual areas V1-hV4. In comparison, the LGN exhibited significant attentional enhancement but was not reliably modulated by orientation- or motion-defined salience. Our findings indicate that top-down effects of spatial attention can influence visual processing at the earliest possible site along the visual pathway, including the LGN, whereas the processing of orientation- and motion-driven salience primarily involves feature-selective interactions that take place in early cortical visual areas.NEW & NOTEWORTHY While spatial attention allows for specific, goal-driven enhancement of stimuli, salient items outside of the current focus of attention must also be prioritized. We used 7T fMRI to compare salience and spatial attentional enhancement along the early visual hierarchy. We report additive effects of attention and bottom-up salience in early visual areas, suggesting that salience enhancement is not contingent on the observer's attentional state.

Voluntary regulation of the functional state and its influence on the effectiveness of cognitive activity during adolescence

We have analyzed the impact of voluntary relaxation on the functional organization and the effectiveness of the voluntary prestimulus attention in performing cognitive tasks in adolescents at the ages of 12–13 and 13–14 years. The effectiveness of cognitive task performance (audio-verbal short-term memory) was estimated on the basis of the number of correctly remembered words. We have found that both age groups are characterized by reduced capacity for voluntary relaxation and its impact on the effectiveness of cognitive task performance. The analysis of the coherence function of EEG rhythmic components in a situation of voluntary attention focused on the performance of cognitive tasks showed no significant change in the interaction of the prefrontal cortex with other cortical areas during the switch from quiet wakefulness or post-relaxation state to the preparation to perform the task, which is typical of adults and young children. Our findings can be a result of sub-optimal functioning of voluntary regulation mechanisms and organization of activities during adolescence.

Revising the link between microsaccades and the spatial cueing of voluntary attention

Microsaccades – i.e., small fixational saccades generated in the superior colliculus (SC) – have been linked to spatial attention. While maintaining fixation, voluntary shifts of covert attention toward peripheral targets result in a sequence of attention-aligned and attention-opposing microsaccades. In most previous studies the direction of the voluntary shift is signaled by a spatial cue (e.g., a leftwards pointing arrow) that presents the most informative part of the cue (e.g., the arrowhead) in the to-be attended visual field. Here we directly investigated the influence of cue position and tested the hypothesis that microsaccades align with cue position rather than with the attention shift. In a spatial cueing task, we presented the task-relevant part of a symmetric cue either in the to-be attended visual field or in the opposite field. As a result, microsaccades were still weakly related to the covert attention shift; however, they were strongly related to the position of the cue even if that required a movement opposite to the cued attention shift. Moreover, if microsaccades aligned with cue position, we observed stronger cueing effects on manual response times. Our interpretation of the data is supported by numerical simulations of a computational model of microsaccade generation that is based on SC properties, where we explain our findings by separate attentional mechanisms for cue localization and the cued attention shift. We conclude that during cueing of voluntary attention, microsaccades are related to both – the overt attentional selection of the task-relevant part of the cue stimulus and the subsequent covert attention shift.

Voluntary Attentional Orienting in Schoolchildren

Voluntary attentional orienting is the foundation of the capacity to highlight relevant stimuli and suppress competing distractions. It plays a role in the scholastic skills. This study investigated the changes in the orienting skills in 630 schoolchildren (age range: 5.7–10.2 years old), who attended the first ( N = 205, M = 6.1, SD = 0.4), third (212 children, M = 8.2, SD = 0.6), and fifth grade (213 children, M = 10, SD = 0.4) of four primary schools in Italy. Simple attentional orienting, choice attentional orienting on written stimuli, double attentional orienting (auditory and visual), and re-orienting were investigated. The tasks required pressing a key in response to some target stimuli. The stimuli were digits, images of objects, written words, letters, geometric forms, and auditory verbal stimuli. Results showed that attentional orienting improved with age. The children's performances depended on the type of stimuli and activities required for the task. The accuracy of re-orienting with written verbal stimuli did not improve during primary school. With increasing age, children became faster but not more able to focus on written verbal stimuli when shifting of attention was required.

Attention flexibly trades off across points in time

Sensory signals continuously enter the brain, raising the question of how perceptual systems handle this constant flow of input. Attention to an anticipated point in time can prioritize visual information at that time. However, how we voluntarily attend across time when there are successive task-relevant stimuli has been barely investigated. We developed a novel experimental protocol that allowed us to assess, for the first time, both the benefits and costs of voluntary temporal attention when perceiving a short sequence of two or three visual targets with predictable timing. We found that when humans directed attention to a cued point in time, their ability to perceive orientation was better at that time but also worse earlier and later. These perceptual tradeoffs across time are analogous to those found across space for spatial attention. We concluded that voluntary attention is limited, and selective, across time.

THE INTERNET AND SPIRITUAL WORLD OF MAN: VALUES AND IDEOLOGICAL APPROACH

Introduction. The problem of understanding conscience in the conditions of the influence on it by modern information technologies has become of great importance. In this case the purpose of this work is a research of changes taking place in the intellectual world of active users of the Internet in the context of their predicament of value-based structure of a personality. Materials and methods. In this work there are the main methods used in social-humanitarian sciences first of all analytical and system approaches, a secondary analysis of the data of empiric researches. The research of the problem (case study) takes place also on the basis of using a new methodological approach – a worldview analysis of the phenomena of intellectual( spiritual) world of a person having made by the author. Results. The article concludes that the impact of the Internet on people’s spiritual world is determined by its essential characteristics - a huge number of hypertext information which is readily available and can be quickly found by a person. The possibility to generate and spread the information by an anonym on the Web affects the Network users’ spiritual world. A large amount of information that can be quickly spread and the phenomenon of hipertextuality, – all this stimulates the trend towards a mosaic thinking, an important feature of which is multitasking. Hypertextuality and multitasking, in its turn, contribute to the process of reducing Network users’ voluntary attention, up to attention deficit disorder. Orientation toward the information that is continuously available to a Network user changes the nature of its memorizing. It is increasingly happening due to the external expansion of consciousness. In addition, there is activation of the process of visualizing consciousness that may reduce the role of abstract logical thinking. The Internet gives the opportunity to meet a variety of needs. Discussion and Conclusions. However, the impact of the Internet on the people’s spiritual world is complex. The degree of negative or positive effects can be determined in relation to a particular person taking into consideration the characteristics of his spiritual world, above all, his values and outlook. Sustainable outlook which includes positive values for an individual and society helps to avoid the negative influence of informational technologies and make use of their opportunities for personal development. An individual with more developed values and world outlook can better point out important and necessary information in the information flow. He can better generalize it to his advantage, correlate it with the existing knowledge and successfully apply it in practice.

ФОРМУВАННЯ ДОВІЛЬНОЇ УВАГИ У ЧОЛОВІКІВ ТА ЖІНОК ПРИ ВИКОНАННІ ЗАВДАНЬ ІЗ ВИСОКИМ КОГНІТИВНИМ НАВАНТАЖЕННЯМ

The differences in brain mechanisms that underlie the switch between involuntary and voluntary attention associated with gender were investigated. We compared reaction time, the number of errors and the electrical activity of the brain during the Emotional Stroop test on the background of visual content that contained affective images when presenting stimuli through a dominant and non-dominant eye in 20 men and 20 women. The model of significant cognitive load was created, when it is quite difficult to correctly respond to the relevant characteristics of the stimulus. Different patterns of brain activity have been found: in women, this task is accompanied by an increase in spectral power in the theta range of the predominantly left hemisphere; in men, the power of alpha rhythm in the parietal-occipital associative cortex decreases with the local increase of theta rhythm in the posterior-frontal areas and beta-rhythm in left prefrontal zone. Under the conditions of high cognitive load created by the distracting visual content and the perception of visual stimuli through the non-dominant eye, the brain mechanisms of voluntary attention provide a more thorough analysis of the relevant stimuli in women that is seen in accurate responses over a longer period in comparison with men.

FEATURES OF DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER MENTAL FUNCTIONS IN CHILDREN WITH TUBEROUS SCLEROSIS

Tuberous sclerosis is a polysystemic genetic disease. The features of the development of mental functions in this disease are of interest to specialists who are called upon to determine the educational, social and other needs of children with tuberous sclerosis, to provide them with the necessary medical, psychological and pedagogical support. Data of the results of the study of mental functions in children diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis are presented. A sample of subjects comprised 15 children aged 6 to 16 years, both with normal and with reduced mental development of varying severity. The diagnostic possibilities of using neuropsychological methods for this disease in childhood are considered. In all sick children a neuropsychological deficiency is revealed, which manifests itself in the lack of neurodynamic characteristics of mental activity, in the reduction of mental capacity and rate of task perfomance, exhaustion, distractibility, instability of voluntary attention. It is shown that the use of modern diagnostic techniques allows to give an objective quantitative and qualitative assessment of the development of mental functions in children with this disease.

ВОЗРАСТНЫЕ ИЗМЕНЕНИЯ КОГНИТИВНЫХ ФУНКЦИЙ У ПОЖИЛЫХ ЛЮДЕЙ

The paper considers the age-specific involution of cognitive processes in the elderly: thinking, short-term visual memory, and the voluntary attention stability. The relevance of the study is associated with the aging population of the country. Skilled intellectual workers when reaching the retirement, at the discretion of the employers, become eliminated from the active working life. At the same time, their experience turns out frequently to be much-in-demand. The psychological issue is the determination of cognitive resource allowing them to prolong their working efficiency. The empirical study is carried out on the total sample of 322 people at the ages from 18 to 89; they include 144 males and 178 females with higher and secondary education who still work now. Using the age section methods, the authors studied the productivity of the superior mental functions at different age periods during natural aging without pathological changes. The authors used the well-known valid and reliable psychodiagnostic methodologies. The data obtained are presented in the diagrams reflecting the changes in productivity of cognitive processes (Y) depending on the age (X). The authors determined the gender shift in the trends and the nature of age involution of cognitive functions and established that the cognitive processes regress, according to T. Ribot’s law, follows in the order inverted to their genesis. Using the partial sample of 70 people with the higher education and 70 people with the secondary education working at the ages of 60–85, the authors carried out the correlation and factor analyses and detected the psychosocial factors influencing the retention of the efficient mental activity in the elderly. Family support, mental activity, and person’s education are the main factors. It is empirically proved that the cognitive functions regress of the intellectual workers proceeds less intensively and settles down at the age period of 65–70. In the elderly, the prior regular intellectual activity in the spheres of “man – man” and “man – sign” professions influences positively the retention of mental operations. The education of nonintellectual workers has just the latent inhibitory effect on the cognitive functions regress.

Changes in the distribution of sustained attention alter the perceived structure of visual space

Visual spatial attention is a critical process that allows for the selection and enhanced processing of relevant objects and locations. While studies have shown attentional modulations of perceived location and the representation of distance information across multiple objects, there remains disagreement regarding what influence spatial attention has on the underlying structure of visual space. The present study utilized a method of magnitude estimation in which participants must judge the location of briefly presented targets within the boundaries of their individual visual fields in the absence of any other objects or boundaries. Spatial uncertainty of target locations was used to assess perceived locations across distributed and focused attention conditions without the use of external stimuli, such as visual cues. Across two experiments we tested locations along the cardinal and 45° oblique axes. We demonstrate that focusing attention within a region of space can expand the perceived size of visual space; even in cases where doing so makes performance less accurate. Moreover, the results of the present studies show that when fixation is actively maintained, focusing attention along a visual axis leads to an asymmetrical stretching of visual space that is predominantly focused across the central half of the visual field, consistent with an expansive gradient along the focus of voluntary attention. These results demonstrate that focusing sustained attention peripherally during active fixation leads to an asymmetrical expansion of visual space within the central visual field.

Covert spatial attention is functionally intact in amblyopic human adults.

Certain abnormalities in behavioral performance and neural signaling have been attributed to a deficit of visual attention in amblyopia, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a diverse array of visual deficits following abnormal binocular childhood experience. Critically, most have inferred attention's role in their task without explicitly manipulating and measuring its effects against a baseline condition. Here, we directly investigate whether human amblyopic adults benefit from covert spatial attention—the selective processing of visual information in the absence of eye movements—to the same degree as neurotypical observers. We manipulated both involuntary (Experiment 1) and voluntary (Experiment 2) attention during an orientation discrimination task for which the effects of covert spatial attention have been well established in neurotypical and special populations. In both experiments, attention significantly improved accuracy and decreased reaction times to a similar extent (a) between the eyes of the amblyopic adults and (b) between the amblyopes and their age- and gender-matched controls. Moreover, deployment of voluntary attention away from the target location significantly impaired task performance (Experiment 2). The magnitudes of the involuntary and voluntary attention benefits did not correlate with amblyopic depth or severity. Both groups of observers showed canonical performance fields (better performance along the horizontal than vertical meridian and at the lower than upper vertical meridian) and similar effects of attention across locations. Despite their characteristic low-level vision impairments, covert spatial attention remains functionally intact in human amblyopic adults.

Where to start? Bottom-up attention improves working memory by determining encoding order.

The present study aimed to characterize the mechanism by which working memory is enhanced for items that capture attention because of their novelty or saliency-that is, via bottom-up attention. The first experiment replicated previous research by corroborating that bottom-up attention directed to an item is sufficient for enhancing working memory and, moreover, generalized the effect to the domain of verbal working memory. The subsequent 3 experiments sought to determine how bottom-up attention affects working memory. We considered 2 hypotheses: (1) Bottom-up attention enhances the encoded representation of the stimulus, similar to how voluntary attention functions, or (2) It affects the order of encoding by shifting priority onto the attended stimulus. By manipulating how stimuli were presented (simultaneous/sequential display) and whether the cue predicted the tested items, we found evidence that bottom-up attention improves working memory performance via the order of encoding hypothesis. This finding was observed across change detection and free recall paradigms. In contrast, voluntary attention improved working memory regardless of encoding order and showed greater effects on working memory. We conclude that when multiple information sources compete, bottom-up attention prioritizes the location at which encoding should begin. When encoding order is set, bottom-up attention has little or no benefit to working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record

PAPEL RELEVANTE DE LOS ESTILOS EDUCATIVOS EN LA EVOLUCIÓN DE LOS SÍNTOMAS DE TDAH

Abstract:EXCELLENT ROLE OF PARENTING STYLES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE SYMPTOMS OF ADHD.Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobiological disorder characterized by a difficulty or incapability to maintain the voluntary attention opposite to activities, so much academic as daily joined, to the absence of control of impulses. It is a chronic disorder, evolutionary and of probably genetically transmission (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2002). This work takes as a main target to make aware on the relevancy that can have to intervene in the establishment of practices of upbringing that benefit the satisfactory evolution of the symptomatology of ADHD.Keywords: Prevention, ADHD, Parenting Styles, FamilyResumen:El Trastorno por Déficit de Atención con Hiperactividad (TDAH) es un trastorno neurobiológico caracterizado por una dificultad o incapacidad para mantener la atención voluntaria frente a actividades, tanto académicas como cotidianas, unida a la falta de control de impulsos. Es un trastorno crónico, sintomáticamente evolutivo y de probable transmisión genética (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2002). Este trabajo tiene como objetivo principal concienciar sobre la relevancia que puede tener intervenir en el establecimiento de prácticas de crianza que beneficien la evolución satisfactoria de la sintomatología del TDAH.Palabras Clave: Prevención, TDAH, Estilos Parentales, Familia

Involuntary attention in the absence of visual awareness

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have found a dissociation between voluntary attention and awareness. Here, we examined the relationship between involuntary attention and awareness. We presented a masked cue such that participants were unaware of the cue. This was followed by a search array, for which participants detected the presence of a shape target. Even though the cue was task irrelevant and unconscious, we observed faster reaction times when either the cue’s location or colour was congruent with shape target. We conclude an unconscious stimulus can elicit both space- and feature-based attention. These results provide further evidence for the dissociation between attention and consciousness.