The Effects of Continuous and Intermittent Distractors on Cognitive Performance and Attention in Preschoolers

We investigated the effects of different amounts of distraction on preschoolers’ task performance and attention. Children 3.5 and 4 years of age completed problem-solving tasks in one of three conditions: no distraction, intermittent (periodic) distraction, or continuous distraction. The results revealed differential effects of the distractors at the different ages. The younger group was susceptible to any kind of distraction; task performance and attention were equally impaired during both distraction conditions. The older group was less susceptible to external distraction, with task performance and attention most impaired in the continuous distraction condition. The results are discussed in terms of the relevance of the amount of competition for attentional focus present in distractors and the development of executive functions in early childhood.     

Now,Pay Attention! The Effects of Instruction on Children's Attention

We investigated the effects of instructions to “stay on task” on preschoolers' attention and cognitive performance in the face of either incomprehensible or comprehensible distraction. Three- and 4-year-olds completed problem-solving tasks while a distracting event played continuously in the background under conditions of a) no instruction, b) moderate instruction, or c) frequent instruction to “stay on task.” Under conditions where an incomprehensible distractor was present, any amount of instruction reduced looking to the distracting event. Under conditions where a comprehensible distractor was present, however, frequent instruction was the most effective in increasing looking to the task and decreasing looking to the distracting event.     

Habituation during exposure treatment: Distraction vs attention-focusing

To investigate the effects of distraction and attention-focusing during in-vivo exposure to feared stimuli, the responses of 16 obsessive-compulsives with washing rituals were studied. A cross-over design was employed in which 6 of the subjects underwent exposure with attention focusing on the first day followed by exposure with distraction on the second day. The remaining subjects received the reverse order. Habituation of both heart rate and subjective anxiety was observed under both conditions, the rate of habituation tending to remain constant throughout the 90-min exposure. Greater between-session habituation and greater synchrony between the psychophysiological and the subjective measures of anxiety was observed when attention-focusing preceded distraction. Since habituation and synchrony have previously been found to be positively related to treatment outcome, the present results suggest that treatment by exposure to feared stimuli may be more effective if attention-focusing is promoted.     

Social Facilitation: A Test of Competing Theories1

Evaluation–apprehension and distraction–conflict have typically been treated as alternative explanations for social facilitation. The present study tested both theories under a single design. The study examined (a) whether each explanation predicted social‐facilitation performance outcomes and (b) whether combining evaluation and distraction manipulations produced even greater performance outcomes. The present study also explored whether physical presence is necessary to produce social‐facilitation effects when evaluation and distraction manipulations are already present. The study found significant facilitation effects on the simple task only in the evaluation–apprehension condition. Significant performance impairment was found for both evaluation and distraction. Combining evaluation with distraction led to greater effects only on the complex task. Furthermore, physical presence does not appear necessary to produce social‐facilitation effects.     

青少年孤独感与抑郁症状:反应风格的中介作用以及性别的调节作用

基于反应风格理论,本研究探索反应风格在青少年孤独感与抑郁症状之间的中介效应。使用孤独感量表、儿童反应风格量表以及儿童抑郁量表对 795 名 青少年进行调查。结果发现：（1）青少年孤独感能显著预测抑郁症状。（2）青少年孤独感能通过反刍、问题解决间接预测抑郁症状。（3）反应风格整体（比率分数）中介青少年孤独感与抑郁症状之间的关系。本研究结果显示,反应风格能够解释青少年孤独感与抑郁症状之间的内在机制。     

青少年孤独感与抑郁症状:反应风格的中介作用以及性别的调节作用

基于反应风格理论,本研究探索反应风格在青少年孤独感与抑郁症状之间的中介效应。使用孤独感量表、儿童反应风格量表以及儿童抑郁量表对 795 名 青少年进行调查。结果发现：（1）青少年孤独感能显著预测抑郁症状。（2）青少年孤独感能通过反刍、问题解决间接预测抑郁症状。（3）反应风格整体（比率分数）中介青少年孤独感与抑郁症状之间的关系。本研究结果显示,反应风格能够解释青少年孤独感与抑郁症状之间的内在机制。     

Self-Awareness, Task Failure, and Disinhibition: How Attentional Focus Affects Eating

ABSTRACT Dieting and nondieting subjects were given either failure or neutral performance feedback on a problem-solving task. Failure subjects were then assigned to one of three self-awareness conditions: One group was forced to watch a video clip of themselves failing on the problem-solving task, one group was asked to watch a distracting video clip on bighorn sheep, and the final group was asked to sit quietly for 10 minutes. Subjects were then allowed to eat as much ice cream as they wanted. Only in those conditions which allowed—or promoted—low self-awareness (the failure/distraction and simple failure condition) did dieters show disinhibited eating. In the failure/videotape condition, which enforced high levels of self-awareness, eating in dieters remained inhibited. This supports the proposal that a reduction in self-awareness is necessary for lifting of inhibitions. Eating in nondieters was reduced in the failure/videotape and simple failure conditions, possibly because of the autonomic correlates of distress.     

Distraction,counterarguing and the internalization of attitude change

The hypothesis that distraction during a persuasive communication enhances the resulting attitude change by disrupting counterarguing was critically examined. Although previous research using Brock's postcommunication counterarguing index has shown that distraction inhibits counterarguing, the relationship was re-evaluated in the present experiments with a more direct measure of counterarguing. In these experiments, the direct measure of counterarguing was shown to increase with distraction, contradicting hypotheses that attribute the distraction effect to counterarguing disruption. Furthermore, with a wide range of distraction, Brock's measure was nonmonotonically related to distraction. Since observed attitude change is also predicted to be nonmonotonically related to distraction, Brock's index was interpreted us a correlate rather than a mediator of measured attitude change. The results suggested that distraction actually inhibits the internalization of the message and that the apparently enhancing effects of distraction are a result of the demand characteristics and/or evaluation apprehension created by the experimental task of paying attention to both a message and a distractor. The implications of the results for the theoretical role of counterarguing in mediating the internalization of persuasive communications were discussed.     

Measuring being lost in thought: An exploratory driving simulator study

In driver behaviour research there is considerable focus on distraction caused by specific external systems, such as navigation systems or mobile telephones. However, it is not clear whether self-paced actions such as daydreaming have the same negative effects on driving behaviour. In a driving simulator study, the effects of an internal cognitive process (internal distraction) on driving behaviour and physiological data were compared to the effects of a sound and speech task (external distraction). Three groups of participants made two drives on a motorway, with one control group, one internal distraction group and one external distraction group. Dependent measures included driving behavioural measures, physiological measures and a subjective indication of participants’ experienced involvement in the driving task.The effects of both the internal and external distraction task were reflected in speed, number of lane changes, deceleration, glances and subjective ratings. When an effect was found for both the internal and the external distraction task, the results indicated similar (negative) effects. Participants also indicated that they had the feeling they were less involved in the driving task with both secondary tasks.     

Examination of the Response Styles Theory in a Community Sample of Young Adolescents

This study examined the Response Styles Theory in a large, racially and ethnically diverse sample (N = 722) of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. We examined the role of response styles (rumination, distraction, and problem-solving) as predictors of changes in depressive symptoms over a seven-month period. Higher levels of rumination and lower levels of problem-solving and distraction were associated with increases in depressive symptoms over time. Response style ratio scores (rumination scores divided by the sum of distraction and problem-solving scores) also predicted increases in depressive symptoms over time. Girls reported greater depressive symptoms compared to boys, and both rumination and response style ratio score statistically accounted for the gender difference in depressive symptoms. Clinical implications include the importance of problem-solving training and rumination reduction techniques in preventive interventions.     

Effects of cross-modal and intramodal division of attention on perceptual implicit memory

Extant results motivate 3 hypotheses on the role of attention in perceptual implicit memory. The first proposes that only intramodal manipulations of attention reduce perceptual priming. The second attributes reduced priming to the effects of distractor selection operating in a central bottleneck process. The third proposes that manipulations of attention only affect priming via disrupted stimulus identification. In Experiment 1, a standard cross-modal manipulation did not disrupt priming in perceptual identification. However, when study words and distractors were presented synchronously, cross-modal and intramodal distraction reduced priming. Increasing response frequency in the distractor task produced effects of attention regardless of target-distractor synchrony. These effects generalized to a different category of distractors arguing against domain-specific interference. The results support the distractor-selection hypothesis.     

Top-down control over involuntary attention switching in the auditory modality

We tested the effects of predictability on involuntary attention switching to task-irrelevant sound changes (distraction). Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence are provided, showing that the predictability of task-irrelevant sound changes eliminates effects of distraction even though the automatic auditory change detection system remains responsive. Two indices of distraction, slower task performance and cortical brain responses associated with attention switching, were seen only in the unpredictable condition, in which the irrelevant acoustic changes were unexpected. Attention was not involuntarily drawn away from the primary task when the subjects had foreknowledge of when the irrelevant changes would occur. These results demonstrate attentional control over orienting to sound changes and suggest that involuntary attention switching occurs mainly when an irrelevant stimulus change is unexpected. The present data allowed observation of the temporal dynamics of attention switching in the human brain.     

Preschool Children's Collaborative Problem-Solving Interactions: The Role of Gender,Pair Type,and Task

The purpose of this study was to investigate gender differences in problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills in preschool children. Children between 4 and 5 years of age completed 3 problem-solving tasks with either a same-sex or a different-sex peer. Children's verbal and nonverbal interactions were analyzed. Girls used mitigation more often than did boys. Mixed-sex dyads engaged in controlling verbal interactions more often than same-sex dyads. There were relationships between verbal and nonverbal behaviors and task success; these relationships also differed across pair types. The results of the study demonstrate that the gender differences in types of verbal interactions previously observed in preschool children's free play are also present in their problem-solving interactions and that children are able to alter the types of behaviors they use depending upon both partner gender and the type of task involved.     

How distraction affects pedestrian response: Evidence from behavior patterns and cortex oxyhemoglobin changes

ObjectivesDistracted walking is a major cause of pedestrian road traffic injuries, but little is known about how distraction affects pedestrian safety. The study was designed to explore how visual and auditory distraction might influence pedestrian safety.MethodsThree experiments were conducted to explore causal mechanisms from two theoretical perspectives, increased cognitive load from the distraction task and resource competition in the same sensory modality. Pedestrians’ behavior patterns and cortex oxyhemoglobin changes were recorded while they performed a series of dual tasks.ResultsFour primary results emerged: (a) participants responded more slowly to both visual and auditory stimuli in traffic, as well as walked more slowly, while talking on the phone or text messaging compared to when undistracted or listening to music; (b) when participants completed pedestrian response tasks while distracted with a high cognitive load, their response was significantly slower and poorer than when they carried out a lower cognitive load distraction task, (c) participants had higher levels of oxy-Hb change in cortices related to visual processing and executive function while distracted with a higher cognitive load; and (d) participants' responses to traffic lights were slower and resulted in a higher activation in prefrontal cortex and occipital areas when distracted by a visual distraction task compared to when distracted with an auditory task; similarly, brain activation increased significantly in temporal areas when participants responded to an auditory car horn task compared to when they responded to visual traffic lights.ConclusionsBoth distracting cognitive load demands and the type of distraction task significantly affect young adult pedestrian performance and threaten pedestrian safety. Pedestrian injury prevention efforts should consider the effects of the type of distracting task and its cognitive demands on pedestrian safety.     

The cognitive locus of distraction by acoustic novelty in the cross-modal oddball task

Unexpected stimuli are often able to distract us away from a task at hand. The present study seeks to explore some of the mechanisms underpinning this phenomenon. Studies of involuntary attention capture using the oddball task have repeatedly shown that infrequent auditory changes in a series of otherwise repeating sounds trigger an automatic response to the novel or deviant stimulus. This attention capture has been shown to disrupt participants' behavioral performance in a primary task, even when distractors and targets are asynchronous and presented in distinct sensory modalities. This distraction effect is generally considered as a by-product of the capture of attention by the novel or deviant stimulus, but the exact cognitive locus of this effect and the interplay between attention capture and target processing has remained relatively ignored. The present study reports three behavioral experiments using a cross-modal oddball task to examine whether the distraction triggered by auditory novelty affects the processing of the target stimuli. Our results showed that variations in the demands placed on the visual analysis (Experiment 1) or categorical processing of the target (Experiment 2) did not impact on distraction. Instead, the cancellation of distraction by the presentation of an irrelevant visual stimulus presented immediately before the visual target (Experiment 3) suggested that distraction originated in the shifts of attention occurring between attention capture and the onset of the target processing. Possible accounts of these shifts are discussed.     

Short-term retention of pictures and words as a function of type of distraction and length of delay interval

Picture and word triads were tested in a Brown-Peterson short-term retention task at varying delay intervals (3, 10, or 30 sec) and under acoustic and simultaneous acoustic and visual distraction. Pictures were superior to words at all delay intervals under single acoustic distraction. Dual distraction consistently reduced picture retention while simultaneously facilitating word retention. The results were interpreted in terms of the dual coding hypothesis with modality-specific interference effects in the visual and acoustic processing systems. The differential effects of dual distraction were related to the introduction of visual interference and differential levels of functional acoustic interference across dual and single distraction tasks. The latter was supported by a constant 2/1 ratio in the backward counting rates of the acoustic vs. dual distraction tasks. The results further suggest that retention may not depend on total processing load of the distraction task, per se, but rather that processing load operates within modalities.     

The effects of auditory and visual distractors on children's performance in a short-term memory task

Five- and 8-year-old children's performance in a short-term memory task was assessed under two auditory and two visual distraction conditions, as well as with no extraneous stimuli present. Performance under distraction was found to be inferior to that under nondistraction, but the degree of difference was roughly the same at ages 5 and 8, indicating little developmental change in the effects of distraction over this age range. Other findings included differences in the effectiveness of the distractors used and evidence that the children adapted somewhat to the influence of extraneous stimulation.     

Bottom-up influences on working memory: behavioral and electrophysiological distraction varies with distractor strength

The present study investigates bottom-up effects serving the optimal balance between focusing attention on relevant information and distractibility by potentially significant events outside the focus of attention. We tested whether distraction, indicated by behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures, varies with the strength of task-irrelevant deviances. Twenty subjects performed a tone-duration discrimination task (200 or 400 ms sinusoidal tones presented equiprobably). The stimuli were presented with frequent standard (p = 0.84; 1000 Hz) or infrequent deviant (p = 0.16) pitch. These task-irrelevant pitch changes consisted in a frequency increase/decrease of 1%, 3%, 5%, or 10%. Each of them resulted in prolonged reaction times (RT) in the duration discrimination task and elicited the MMN, P3a, and RON components of the ERP. Importantly, these measures did increase as a function of pitch deviance. Separating the individual trials on the 1% deviation level into trials with and without RT prolongation, i.e., behavioral distraction effect, revealed that both subgroups had similar MMN, but P3a and RON were confined to the trials with RT prolongation. Results are interpreted within a model relating preattentive deviance detection, distraction, and working memory.     

How drivers adapt their behaviour to changes in task complexity: The role of secondary task demands and road environment factors

The present study investigates the impact of different sources of task complexity such as driving demands and secondary task demands on driver behaviour. Although much research has been dedicated to understanding the impact of secondary task demands or specific road traffic environments on driving performance, there is little information on how drivers adapt their behaviour to their combined presence. This paper aims to describe driver behaviour while negotiating different sources of task complexity, including mobile phone use while driving (i.e., calling and texting) and different road environments (i.e., straight segments, curves, hills, tunnels, and curves on hills). A driving simulator experiment was conducted to explore the effects of different road scenarios and different types of distraction while driving. The collected data was used to estimate driving behaviour through a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) with repeated measures. The analysis was divided into two phases. Phase one aimed to evaluate driver performance under the presence and absence of pedestrians and oncoming traffic, different lanes width and different types of distraction. The second phase analysed driver behaviour when driving through different road geometries and lane widths and under different types of distraction. The results of the experiment indicated that drivers are likely to overcorrect position in the vehicle lane in the presence of pedestrians and oncoming traffic. The effect of road geometry on driver behaviour was found to be greater than the effect of mobile phone distraction. Curved roads and hills were found to influence preferred speeds and lateral position the most. The results of this investigation also show that drivers under visual-manual distraction had a higher standard deviation of speed and lateral position compared to the cognitive distraction and the non-distraction condition.     

Distraction and social comparison as mediators of social facilitation effects

Sanders and Baron (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 956–963) suggested that increases in drive produced by the presence of others (social facilitation) are due to the tendency for others to distract task performers as they worked on a task. This Distraction-Conflict theory proposes that socially mediated drive induction will occur whenever there is some reason to shift attention from the task to the social stimuli. In the case of humans, one such reason may be the opportunity to obtain social comparison information from an audience or coactors. The present research demonstrated that social facilitation effects (improved simple task performance and impaired complex task performance produced by the presence of others) occurred only when subjects were motivated to obtain comparison information (Experiment I) and when comparison information was available (Experiment II). The availability of comparison information also led to increased accuracy in estimating the coactor's performance. This indicated that in conditions manifesting social facilitation, subjects were spending some time monitoring the coactor's work, which is an inherently distracting activity. Several supplementary measures of distraction were generally consistent in indicating greater distraction under conditions manifesting social facilitation. The present results offer no support for the explanations of social facilitation suggested by Zajonc and by Cottrell.