Predicting cognitive styles from spatial abilities

Previous studies on spatial memory reveal that people represent spatial information in 3 different forms: landmark, route, and survey. The aim of this work was to assess spatial abilities in order to predict a person's cognitive style. In order to do this we used 9 different spatial tasks, which were linked with these 3 forms of spatial representations. We found that the 9 spatial tasks are able to distinguish different levels of spatial ability.     

Predicting school adjustment from motor abilities in kindergarten

The present study assessed the relations between basic motor abilities in kindergarten and scholastic, social, and emotional adaptation in the transition to formal schooling. Seventy‐one five‐year‐old kindergarten children were administered a battery of standard assessments of basic motor functions. A year later, children's adjustment to school was assessed via a series of questionnaires completed by the children and their class teachers. The results indicate that in addition to the already documented association between visual–motor integration and academic achievement, other motor functions show significant predictive value to both scholastic adaptation and social and emotional adjustment to school. The results further suggest a better prediction of scholastic adaptation and level of disruptive behaviour in school when using an aggregate measure of children's ability in various motor domains than when using assessments of singular motor functions. It is concluded that good motor ability may serve as a buffer to the normative challenges presented to children in the transition to school. In contrast, poor motor ability emerges as a vulnerability factor in the transition to formal schooling. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predictors of media multitasking in Chinese adolescents

We examined predictors of media multitasking in Chinese adolescents from 3 contexts: characteristics of the media user, types of media use and family media contexts. Three hundred and twenty adolescents, 11–18 years of age, completed questionnaires to measure media use, impulsivity, sensation seeking, time management disposition and family media environment. The results showed that media multitasking was positively correlated with age and total media use time. Participants with high levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking reported more multitasking behaviour. Multitasking was negatively correlated with time management. Children from media‐oriented families often engage in more multitasking. What's more, social networking sites use and music use can mediate the effect of individual and family factors on media multitasking.     

Media multitasking and failures of attention in everyday life

Using a series of online self-report measures, we examine media multitasking, a particularly pervasive form of multitasking, and its relations to three aspects of everyday attention: (1) failures of attention and cognitive errors (2) mind wandering, and (3) attentional control with an emphasis on attentional switching and distractibility. We observed a positive correlation between levels of media multitasking and self-reports of attentional failures, as well as with reports of both spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering. No correlation was observed between media multitasking and self-reported memory failures, lending credence to the hypothesis that media multitasking may be specifically related to problems of inattention, rather than cognitive errors in general. Furthermore, media multitasking was not related with self-reports of difficulties in attention switching or distractibility. We offer a plausible causal structural model assessing both direct and indirect effects among media multitasking, attentional failures, mind wandering, and cognitive errors, with the heuristic goal of constraining and motivating theories of the effects of media multitasking on inattention.     

Media multitasking predicts unitary versus splitting visual focal attention

Research evidence now suggests that the deployment of multiple attentional foci in noncontiguous locations (i.e., splitting visual focal attention) is possible under some circumstances. However, the exact circumstances under which focal attention might ‘split’ have not been well understood. Here, we examined the possibility that ecological differences arising from our increasingly media-saturated environment result in individual differences in the capacity to demonstrate splitting focal attention. The Media Multitasking Index (MMI) was used to assess the extent to which participants engaged in media multitasking—the consumption of more than one stream of media content at the same time. Capacity to split attention was assessed with a paradigm previously employed by McCormick, Klein, and Johnston. The present data suggest a significant relationship between the behavioural preference for consuming multiple media forms simultaneously and the capacity to employ a split mode of attention. Specifically, High-MMI participants (who tend to consume multiple visual media forms simultaneously) adopted a splitting mode of visual attention, whereas Low-MMI participants (who tend to consume fewer visual media forms simultaneously) adopted a unitary mode of attention. These data advanced our understanding of the circumstances under which visual focal attention might split. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Predicting sights from sounds: 6-month-olds' intermodal numerical abilities

Although the psychophysics of infants’ nonsymbolic number representations have been well studied, less is known about other characteristics of the approximate number system (ANS) in young children. Here three experiments explored the extent to which the ANS yields abstract representations by testing infants’ ability to transfer approximate number representations across sensory modalities. These experiments showed that 6-month-olds matched the approximate number of sounds they heard to the approximate number of sights they saw, looking longer at visual arrays that numerically mismatched a previously heard auditory sequence. This looking preference was observed when sights and sounds mismatched by 1:3 and 1:2 ratios but not by a 2:3 ratio. These findings suggest that infants can compare numerical information obtained in different modalities using representations stored in memory. Furthermore, the acuity of 6-month-olds’ comparisons of intermodal numerical sequences appears to parallel that of their comparisons of unimodal sequences.     

Predicting environmental learning from spatial abilities: An indirect route

Relationships among spatial abilities, as assessed by a battery of psychometric tests and experimental tasks, and environmental learning, as assessed by a series of macrospatial tasks, were examined in two studies using confirmatory factor analysis with directional paths. The initial study indicated the utility of a five-factor model, one (general spatial ability) derived from psychometric tests, two (spatial-sequential memory and spatial perspective-taking latency) from experimental tasks, and two (topological knowledge and Euclidean direction knowledge) from measures of environmental learning. The best fitting path model further indicated that the spatial-sequential memory factor mediated the relationship between general spatial ability and topological knowledge, and that perspective-taking latency mediated the relationship between general spatial ability and Euclidean direction knowledge. The second study confirmed the five-factor path model using a different participant sample and environmental setting. The only failure to replicate involved the path between perspective-taking latency in the lab and Euclidean direction knowledge in the environment. Results indicate that the relationship between basic spatial abilities and environmental learning is significantly mediated by cognitive processes that can be assessed using laboratory tasks.     

Visual field asymmetries in attention vary with self-reported attention deficits

The purpose of this study was to determine whether an index of self-reported attention deficits predicts the pattern of visual field asymmetries observed in behavioral measures of attention. Studies of “normal” subjects do not present a consistent pattern of asymmetry in attention functions, with some studies showing better left visual field (LVF) performance, others showing no asymmetry or even a right visual field (RVF) advantage. Here we found that a participant variable (a measure of self-reported attention problems) may help to explain these inconsistencies. We used Conners’ Adult ADHD Rating Scales to measure self-reported attention problems in a group of 36 normal (non-ADHD) subjects, and we used two behavioral tasks to directly measure their attentional abilities: a lateralized Attention Network Task (ANT) and a visual search task. Comparing subjects with relatively Low versus High scores on the attention-deficit (AD) scale, we found that subjects with High scores were less efficient in orienting attention to the left visual field. When LVF targets were preceded by a valid spatial cue, response times were positively correlated with AD scores, indicating slower covert-attention shifts as attention-deficit scores increased. Right visual field data showed a different pattern of results. Subjects with High AD scores were at least as efficient as those with Low AD scores in orienting attention to the RVF. This study provides evidence that visual field asymmetries in orienting attention vary across individuals, and that level of self-reported attention problems correlates with behavioral deficiencies in orienting attention to the left visual field.     

Impaired shifting of attention in Balint's syndrome

We assessed the efficiency of attentional shifts across the horizontal and vertical axes of the visual field in a patient with Balint's syndrome caused by bilateral parieto-occipital infarctions. This was performed using an adaptation of Posner's peripheral cueing paradigm. In contrast to normal controls and patients with unilateral parietal lesions previously reported, this patient did not benefit from cues directing attention to the left or right visual field. She appeared to benefit only when the cues directed attention to the upper visual field. This suggests a defect in shifting attention that may occur following bilateral parietal lesions. We discuss the implications of these findings for the role of the parietal lobes in attentional processes and for our understanding of the behavioral abnormalities observed in Balint's syndrome.     

Linguistic attention control: attention shifting governed by grammaticized elements of language

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated attention control for tasks involving the processing of grammaticized linguistic stimuli (function words) contextualized in sentence fragments. Attention control was operationalized as shift costs obtained with adult speakers of English in an alternating-runs experimental design (R. D. Rogers & S. Monsell, 1995). Experiment 1 yielded significant attention shift costs between tasks involving judgments about the meanings of grammatical function words. The authors used a 3-stage experimental design (G. Wylie & A. Allport, 2000), and the emerging pattern of results implicated task set reconfiguration and not task set inertia in these shift costs. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that shift costs were lower when the tasks involved shared attentional resources (processing the same grammatical dimension) versus unshared resources (different grammatical dimensions). The authors discuss the results from a cognitive linguistic perspective and for their implications for the view that language itself can serve a special attention-directing function.     

Individual differences in multiple types of shifting attention

Many researchers consider costs in shifting attention and mental set to reflect a basic ability to use top-down goal information to guide action. Although switch costs have been used as measures of individuals' executive function, whether common abilities underlie task set switching across different types of shifting tasks has not been well studied. In 249 participants, we studied whether switch costs in a novel two-choice reaction time task were correlated across variations in two variables: thelocus of representation (stimuli were either perceptually available or stored in working memory [WM]) and which of two judgment tasks was performed. Switch costs were asymmetrical, in that it was easier to switch to the easier judgment, and were related to overall and relative processing speed: Switch costs were higher when the task was more difficult. These factors should be accounted for when one is measuring individual differences in switch costs. After controlling for these effects, we found evidence for a common ability underlying switch costs that involved both task set preparation and response selection; however, residual shift costs, which involve only response selection, were uncorrelated across tasks. Correlations among switch costs were substantially higher within task type (e.g., correlations of WM shifting tasks with other WM shifting tasks and of perceptual tasks with perceptual ones), suggesting that there are also processes unique to switching within WM and switching among visible stimuli.     

Adults with dyslexia demonstrate space-based and object-based covert attention deficits: shifting attention to the periphery and shifting attention between objects in the left visual field

Performance on a covert visual attention task is compared between a group of adults with developmental dyslexia (specifically phonological difficulties) and a group of age and IQ matched controls. The group with dyslexia were generally slower to detect validly-cued targets. Costs of shifting attention toward the periphery when the target was invalidly cued were significantly higher for the group with dyslexia, while costs associated with shifts toward the fovea tended to be lower. Higher costs were also shown by the group with dyslexia for up-down shifts of attention in the periphery. A visual field processing difference was found, in that the group with dyslexia showed higher costs associated with shifting attention between objects in they LVF. These findings indicate that these adults with dyslexia have difficulty in both the space-based and the object-based components of covert visual attention, and more specifically to stimuli located in the periphery.     

Tuning in and tuning out: media multitasking among young consumers

• While commercial media are increasingly attended to in multitasking contexts, advertising research is dominated by sequential marketing communication models where the consumer is a passive receiver of one type of media at a time. This study examine's media multitasking behaviors and experiences among young consumers. Media multitasking is the practice of participating in multiple exposures to two or more commercial media forms at a single point in time, including traditional, online, social, and entertainment media. Prior research argues that multitasking results in diminished comprehension and performance. Through a qualitative approach with a sample of 64 young consumers involving interviews and collages, this study highlights the paradoxical experiences of media multitasking. The authors develop a conceptual model that explains the personal benefits and costs associated with media multitasking, and proposes its impact on consumers' motivation, ability and opportunity (the MAO model) to process commercial media content. Further, the study suggests an inverted‐U relationship between media multitasking and the MAO model and proposes four behavioral coping moderators to this relationship.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reducing the own-race bias in face recognition by shifting attention

The own-race bias (ORB) in face recognition can be interpreted as a failure to generalize expert perceptual encoding developed for own-race faces to other-race faces. Further, black participants appear to use different features to describe faces from those used by white participants (Shepherd & Deregowski, 1981). An experiment is reported where the size of the ORB was assessed using a standard face recognition procedure. Four groups were tested at two time intervals. One group received a training regime involving learning to distinguish faces that varied only on their chin, cheeks, nose, and mouth. Three control groups did not receive this training. The ORB, present prior to training, was reduced after the critical perceptual training. It is concluded that the ORB is a consequence of a failure of attention being directed to those features of other race faces that are useful for identification.     

Reducing the own-race bias in face recognition by shifting attention

The own-race bias (ORB) in face recognition can be interpreted as a failure to generalize expert perceptual encoding developed for own-race faces to other-race faces. Further, black participants appear to use different features to describe faces from those used by white participants (Shepherd & Deregowski, 1981). An experiment is reported where the size of the ORB was assessed using a standard face recognition procedure. Four groups were tested at two time intervals. One group received a training regime involving learning to distinguish faces that varied only on their chin, cheeks, nose, and mouth. Three control groups did not receive this training. The ORB, present prior to training, was reduced after the critical perceptual training. It is concluded that the ORB is a consequence of a failure of attention being directed to those features of other race faces that are useful for identification.     

Joint attention abilities in Brazilian preterm and full-term infants

Joint attention abilities of preterm and full-term Brazilian infants were assessed at 12- and 18-months, age corrected for prematurity. Results showed that preterm infants displayed significantly lower levels of correct responses to others’ bids for joint attention at both time-points, compared to full-term infants. Both groups improved their responding to joint attention from 12 to 18 months of age. Contrastingly, prematurity did not impact infants’ initiating joint attention behaviors, which remained stable over time for both groups. Findings were discussed in terms of the specific mental processes involved in distinct behavioural dimensions of joint attention.     

Shorter articles and notes noise and the shifting of attention

An experiment was carried out to test the hypothesis that performance on a task which involves a shift of attention between spatially separated sources would be lower under noise conditions than one which involved no such shift. The results indicated that the hypothesis was not proved; rather they showed that the subject's performance on the shift of attention task was better under noise than under quiet. An attempt is made to put forward possible reasons for this occurrence.     

Decision-making,cognitive functions,impulsivity, and media multitasking expectancies in high versus low media multitaskers

In several studies, individuals who reported to frequently multitask with different media displayed reduced cognitive performance, for example in fluid intelligence and executive functioning. These cognitive functions are relevant for making advantageous decisions under both objective risk (requiring reflection and strategical planning) and ambiguous risk (requiring learning from feedback). Thus, compared to low media multitaskers (LMMs), high media multitaskers (HMMs) may perform worse in both types of decision situations. The current study investigated HMMs and LMMs in a laboratory setting with the Game of Dice Task (GDT; objective risk), the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; ambiguous risk), various tests quantifying cognitive functions (logical reasoning, working memory, information processing, general executive functions), and self-report measures of impulsivity, media multitasking expectancies, and problematic Internet use. From 182 participants, 25 HMMs and 19 LMMs were identified using the Media Multitasking Index. Results show that HMMs compared to LMMs performed weaker on the IGT but not on the GDT. Furthermore, HMMs had slightly decreased performance in tests of logical reasoning and working memory capacity. HMMs tended to increased information processing speed but this difference was not significant. Furthermore, HMMs have more positive expectancies regarding media multitasking and reported higher tendencies toward problematic Internet use. HMMs and LMMs did not differ significantly with respect to impulsivity and executive functions. The results give a first hint that HMMs may have difficulties in decision-making under ambiguous but not under objective risk. HMMs may be more prone to errors in tasks that require feedback processing. However, HMMs appear not to be impaired in aspects of long-term strategic decision-making.