A computerized task for investigating the relation between attentional and emotional processes in children

The authors' goals in this article are to (a) describe a new task for the assessment of shifting attention between different affective stimuli, The Children's Attentional Shifting Task (CAST); (b) present the theoretical background for the development of the CAST; and (c) report initial information on the developmental appropriateness and validity of the CAST. The task was tested using a sample of kindergarten and 1st-grade children, 50% of whom had social and conduct problems. Preliminary analyses showed that the CAST was not subject to problems arising from fatigue or loss of interest. Moreover, children's ability to shift attention away from angry facial expressions was positively related to teachers' ratings of their ability to shift attention and parents' reports of children's emotion regulation. Shifting away from negative affect also predicted children's academic performance as reported by teachers.     

Ear asymmetries on a selective attentional task

To ascertain whether there are ear-hemisphere asymmetries of selective attention, signal stimuli (tonal sequences) were presented monaurally with and without complex maskers (music and speech). The right ear-left hemisphere was more disrupted by language maskers; the left ear-right hemisphere was more disrupted by music maskers. These results suggest that there are hemispheric asymmetries of selective attention and that the ear hemisphere that usually processes a class of stimuli has greater difficulty filtering out those stimuli than does the nonspecialized hemisphere.     

Controlling the unconscious: attentional task sets modulate subliminal semantic and visuomotor processes differentially

Are unconscious processes susceptible to attentional influences? In two subliminal priming experiments, we investigated whether task sets differentially modulate the sensitivity of unconscious processing pathways. We developed a novel procedure for masked semantic priming of words (Experiment 1) and masked visuomotor priming of geometrical shapes (Experiment 2). Before presentation of the masked prime, participants performed an induction task in which they attended to either semantic or perceptual object features designed to activate a semantic or perceptual task set, respectively. Behavioral and electrophysiological effects showed that the induction tasks differentially modulated subliminal priming: Semantic priming, which involves access to conceptual meaning, was found after the semantic induction task but not after the perceptual induction task. Visuomotor priming was observed after the perceptual induction task but not after the semantic induction task. These results demonstrate that unconscious cognition is influenced by attentional control. Unconscious processes in perceptual and semantic processing streams are coordinated congruently with higher-level action goals.     

Within-modality and cross-modality attentional blinks in a simple discrimination task

Following up on studies of the "attentional blink," we studied interference between successive target stimuli in visual and auditory modalities. In each experiment, stimuli were two tones and four dots, simultaneously presented for 1,800 msec. Targets were brief intensity changes in either a tone or a dot. Subjects gave unspeeded responses. In four experiments, our results showed interference between targets in the same modality, but not across modalities. We conclude that, under our experimental conditions, restrictions in concurrent target identification are largely modality specific.     

The attentional demands of negation in a memory-scanning task

Subjects were run in a Sternberg recognition memory task modified to occasionally require a transformation prior to response. The transformation was similar to logical negation since onplus or nontransformed trials subjects responded "yes" if the probe was from the current memory set and "no" otherwise, while onminus or transformed trials subjects responded "no" to memory set probes and "yes" to nonmemory set probes. Two models proposed to account for the effects of logical negation were compared: The encoding and comparison model predicts that logical negation requires an additional processing stage, while the capacity sharing model argues that negation adds a processing stage and also retards the rate of memory search. The results indicated that minus probes had 50% larger mean reaction time by set size slopes than the corresponding plus probes. This finding offers clear support for the capacity sharing model.     

Priming T2 in a visual and auditory attentional blink task

Participants performed an attentional blink (AB) task including digits as targets and letters as distractors within the visual and auditory domains. Prior to the rapid serial visual presentation, a visual or auditory prime was presented in the form of a digit that was identical to the second target (T2) on 50% of the trials. In addition to the "classic" AB effect, an overall drop in performance on T2 was observed for the trials on which the stream was preceded by an identical prime from the same modality. No cross-modal priming was evident, suggesting that the observed inhibitory priming effects are modality specific. We argue that the present findings represent a special type of negative priming operating at a low feature level.     

Visual mental imagery influences attentional guidance in a visual-search task

Visual mental imagery resembles visual working memory (VWM). Because both visual mental imagery and VWM involve the representation and manipulation of visual information, it was hypothesized that they would exert similar effects on visual attention. Several previous studies have demonstrated that working-memory representations guide attention toward a memory-matching task-irrelevant stimulus during visual-search tasks. Therefore, mental imagery may also guide attention toward imagery-matching stimuli. In the present study, five experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of visual mental imagery on visual attention during a visual-search task. Participants were instructed to visualize a color or an object clearly associated with a specific color, after which they were asked to detect a colored target in the visual-search task. Reaction times for target detection were shorter when the color of the target matched the imagined color, and when the color of the target was similar to that strongly associated with the imagined object, than when the color of the target did not match that of the mental representation. This effect was not observed when participants were not instructed to imagine a color. These results suggest that similar to VWM, visual mental imagery guides attention toward imagery-matching stimuli.     

Amygdala circuitry in attentional and representational processes

The amygdala has long been implicated in the display of emotional behavior and emotional information processing, especially in the context of aversive events. In this review, we discuss recent evidence that links the amygdala to several aspects of food-motivated associative learning, including functions often characterized as attention, reinforcement and representation. Each of these functions depends on the operation of separate amygdalar subsystems, through their connections with other brain systems. Notably, very different processing systems seem to be mediated by the central nucleus and basolateral amygdala, subregions of the amygdala that differ in their anatomy and in their connectivity. The basolateral amygdala is involved in the acquisition and representation of reinforcement value, apparently through its connections with ventral striatal dopamine systems and with the orbitofrontal cortex. The dentral nucleus, however, contributes heavily to attentional function in conditioning, by way of its influence on basal forebrain cholinergic systems and on the dorsolateral striatum.     

Implicit attentional orienting in a target detection task with central cues

Studies using Posner’s spatial cueing paradigm have demonstrated that participants can allocate their attention to specific target locations based on the predictiveness of preceding cues. Four experiments were conducted to investigate attentional orienting processes operating in a high probability condition (cues 75% predictive) as compared to a low probability condition (cues 50% predictive) using various types of centrally-presented cues. Spatially-informative cues (arrows and circles with gaps) resulted in cueing effects (CEs) for both probability conditions, with significantly larger CEs in the high probability conditions than the low probability conditions. Participants in the high probability conditions reported little or no awareness of cue–target probabilities after task completion. Our results provide support for an implicit learning account of the proportion valid effect under experimental conditions involving spatially-informative central cues and relatively short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs).     

Intrinsic motivation and attentional capture from gamelike features in a visual search task

In psychology research studies, the goals of the experimenter and the goals of the participants often do not align. Researchers are interested in having participants who take the experimental task seriously, whereas participants are interested in earning their incentive (e.g., money or course credit) as quickly as possible. Creating experimental methods that are pleasant for participants and that reward them for effortful and accurate data generation, while not compromising the scientific integrity of the experiment, would benefit both experimenters and participants alike. Here, we explored a gamelike system of points and sound effects that rewarded participants for fast and accurate responses. We measured participant engagement at both cognitive and perceptual levels and found that the point system (which invoked subtle, anonymous social competition between participants) led to positive intrinsic motivation, while the sound effects (which were pleasant and arousing) led to attentional capture for rewarded colors. In a visual search task, points were awarded after each trial for fast and accurate responses, accompanied by short, pleasant sound effects. We adapted a paradigm from Anderson, Laurent, and Yantis (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(25):10367-10371, 2011b), in which participants completed a training phase during which red and green targets were probabilistically associated with reward (a point bonus multiplier). During a test phase, no points or sounds were delivered, color was irrelevant to the task, and previously rewarded targets were sometimes presented as distractors. Significantly longer response times on trials in which previously rewarded colors were present demonstrated attentional capture, and positive responses to a five-question intrinsic-motivation scale demonstrated participant engagement.     

Contingent muscular tension during a choice reaction task

This study examined the effects of contingent muscular tension on a choice reaction task, and especially, the effects various amounts of muscular tension have on the information processing of choice reaction time. The reactive movement task included a choice reaction task. Ten right-handed healthy men (ages 18 to 19 years) underwent trials with stimulus presentation probabilities of 50% and 20% on the muscular tension task and choice reaction tasks. The conditions for the muscular tension tasks were divided into seven different conditions: 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, and 60% of maximum voluntary contraction. On these tasks, subjects performed isometric contraction of the biceps brachii. The choice reaction task was a rapid extension of the left or right knee as a choice reaction. Measures were choice reaction time, movement time, and total reaction time. Analysis indicated that shortening choice reaction time of the left and right feet was observed under 10% muscular tension of maximum strength. Muscular tension appreciably influenced information processing, including choice reaction time. Muscular tension did not affect movement time. Results are discussed with respect to previous research and the optimal muscular tension for best performance.     

Accountability and judgment processes in a personality prediction task

In this experiment, we investigated the impact of accountability--social pressures to justify one's views to others--on cognitive processing in a personality-prediction task. Subjects were presented with the responses of actual test-takers to 16 items from Jackson's Personality Research Form (PRF) and asked to predict how these individuals responded to an additional set of 16 items from the same test. Subjects were assigned to a no-accountability condition (they learned that all of their responses would be anonymous), a preexposure-accountability condition (they learned of the need to justify their responses before seeing the test-takers' PRF responses), and a postexposure-accountability condition (they learned of the need to justify their responses after seeing the test-takers' PRF responses). Preexposure-accountability subjects reported more integratively complex impressions of test-takers, made more accurate behavioral predictions, and reported more appropriate levels of confidence in their predictions than did either no-accountability or postexposure-accountability subjects. We conclude by considering possible psychological mediators of these effects as well as the broader theoretical implications of the findings for the development of contingency models of judgment and choice.     

Memory and frequency estimation processes in a decision task

Two experiments examined the role of information storage and frequency estimation processes in a simple decision task. On each trial from one to five simultaneous sequences of information were presented, and subjects were required to monitor and respond to each sequence. In one study independent groups of subjects gave decisions, recognition responses. or frequency judgments. In a second study recall responses were obtained from subjects as part of the decision and frequency judgment tasks. Changes in performance as the number of simultaneous sequences increased suggested an independence of decisions from memory for specific information. Performance on the decision and frequency judgment tasks exceeded at times that which was possible on the basis of specific information available. Other data suggested that subjects in the frequency estimation tasks maintained an accurate frequency count when possible, but in the decision task kept little more than a record of their currently favored hypothesis. When direct counting was prevented in the second experiment. performance in the two tasks was not significantly different, suggesting that the two processes are very similar under such conditions.     

Implicit and explicit processes in a second-language learning task

Abstract

Two experiments examined the learning of a set of Greek pronunciation rules through explicit and implicit modes of rule presentation. Experiment 1 compared the effectiveness of implicit and explicit modes of presentation in two modalities, visual and auditory. Subjects in the explicit or rule group were presented with the rule set, and those in the implicit or natural group were shown a set of Greek words, composed of letters from the rule set, linked to their pronunciations. Subjects learned the Greek words to criterion and were then given a series of tests which aimed to tap different types of knowledge. The results showed an advantage of explicit study of the rules. In addition, an interaction was found between mode of presentation and modality. Explicit instruction was more effective in the visual than in the auditory modality, whereas there was no modality effect for implicit instruction. Experiment 2 examined a possible reason for the advantage of the rule groups by comparing different combinations of explicit and implicit presentation in the study and learning phases. The results suggested that explicit presentation of the rules is only beneficial when it is followed by practice at applying them.     

Large sex difference in adolescents on a timed line judgment task: attentional contributors and task relationship to mathematics

Visuospatial performance, assessed with the new, group-administered Judgment of Line Angle and Position test (JLAP-13), varied with sex and mathematical competence in a group of adolescents. The JLAP-13, a low-level perceptual task, was modeled after a neuropsychological task dependent upon functioning of the posterior region of the right hemisphere [Benton et al, 1994 Contributions to Neuropsychological Assessment: A Clinical Manual (New York: Oxford University Press)]. High-school boys (N = 52) performed better than girls (N = 62), with a large effect for sex (d = 1.11). Performance increased with mathematical competence, but the sex difference did not vary significantly across different levels of mathematics coursework. On the basis of earlier work, it was predicted that male, but not female, performance in line judgment would decline with disruptions to task geometry (page frame), and that the sex difference would disappear with disruptions to geometry. These predictions were supported by a number of univariate and sex-specific analyses, although an omnibus repeated-measures analysis did not detect the predicted interaction, most likely owing to limitations in power. Thus, there is partial support for the notion that attentional predispositions or strategies may contribute to visuospatial sex differences, with males more likely than females to attend to, and rely upon, internal or external representations of task geometry. Additional support for this hypothesis may require development of new measures or experimental manipulations with more powerful geometrical disruptions.     

Monetary reward increases attentional effort in the flanker task

An important question is whether monetary reward can increase attentional effort in order to improve performance. Up to now, evidence for a positive answer is weak. Therefore, in the present study, the flanker task was used to examine this question further. Participants had to respond sooner than a certain deadline in a flanker task. One group of participants received a performance-contingent monetary reward, whereas the other group earned a fixed amount of money. As a result, monetary reward significantly improved performance in comparison with the control group. The analysis of speed-accuracy trade-off functions revealed that monetary reward increased attentional effort, leading to an enhanced quality of stimulus coding. Little evidence was found that reward also improved selective spatial attention.