Processing spatial-temporal information in recent-onset schizophrenia: the study of short-term memory and its susceptibility to distraction

Memory impairment is a core feature in schizophrenia (SZ). The aim of this study was to investigate short-term memory (STM) and its sensitivity to distraction with visual-spatial material. This study comprised 23 recent-onset SZ patients and 23 healthy controls. The degree of disruption upon recall from interleaving irrelevant items within a sequence of to-be-remembered items-the sandwich effect [Hitch, G. J. (1975). The role of attention in visual and auditory suffix effects. Memory and Cognition, 3, 501-505]-was examined. STM performance, whether in the presence or absence of distraction, was poorer and markedly more vulnerable to disruption in SZ. Our results suggest that processing spatial information in STM is susceptible to interference in SZ.     

Perceptual load does not modulate auditory distractor processing

In vision, it is well established that the perceptual load of a relevant task determines the extent to which irrelevant distractors are processed. Much less research has addressed the effects of perceptual load within hearing. Here, we provide an extensive test using two different perceptual load manipulations, measuring distractor processing through response competition and awareness report. Across four experiments, we consistently failed to find support for the role of perceptual load in auditory selective attention. We therefore propose that the auditory system – although able to selectively focus processing on a relevant stream of sounds – is likely to have surplus capacity to process auditory information from other streams, regardless of the perceptual load in the attended stream. This accords well with the notion of the auditory modality acting as an ‘early-warning’ system as detection of changes in the auditory scene is crucial even when the perceptual demands of the relevant task are high.     

Selective Attention and Anxiety: A Perspective on Developmental Issues and the Causal Status

A plethora of studies on selective information processing in anxiety have been carried out over the past two decades. One of the most robust findings is that anxiety is associated with selective attention (SA) for threatening information. The rationale of research into SA is that it is assumed to play a vital role in the maintenance, and even in the etiology of anxiety disorders. It is the aim of this paper to explicate on the validity of this assumption. There is ample evidence that anxiety enhances SA. Although there is a lack of studies on the effect of SA on anxiety, there is now some evidence that SA increases the level of anxiety. This leads us to conclude that SA is not a by-product of anxiety only. Hence, the suggestion that SA plays a role in the maintenance of anxiety disorders seems to be justified. Studies on SA in children suggest that if SA plays any role at all in the development of anxiety disorders, it is not the SA in itself that is a vulnerability factor, but the continuation of this SA. Individuals who develop an anxiety disorder could have difficulty learning to inhibit this SA. Considering the finding that SA increases the level of anxiety, the authors suggest that anxiety in childhood causes failure to inhibit SA, which in turn enhances the vulnerability to anxiety disorder in adulthood.     

On the saliency of negative stimuli: Evidence from attentional blink1

Abstract: When people are asked to detect two targets from a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream, impairment of recognition of the second target (T2) can be observed if the T2 is presented several hundred milliseconds later than the first target (T1). This phenomenon is known as attentional blink, and is considered to reflect some temporal characteristic of the attentional process. The aim of the present study was to use the attentional blink paradigm to examine whether the affective meaning of the stimuli could affect the magnitude of attentional blink. In Experiment 1, the valence of the T2 (neutral, positive, and negative) was manipulated. Significant T2 detection deficit was observed with neutral and positive T2 but not with negative T2. Experiment 2 demonstrated that non‐significant attentional blink in negative T2 in Experiment 1 could be attributed to the negative affective meaning of T2. Results are discussed in terms of the high saliency of negative information.     

高效率学习的选择性注意研究

本文回顾了视觉加工、双语学习、内隐认知、学习不能与专注力训练等领域的研究成果,从不同层面阐述了选择性注意对高效学习的贡献及其影响因素,为深入研究高效率学习的心理机制提供支持。     

Virtue and Salience

This paper explores two ways in which evaluations of an agent's character as virtuous or vicious are properly influenced by what the agent finds salient or attention-grabbing. First, we argue that ignoring salient needs reveals a greater deficit of benevolent motivation in the agent, and hence renders the agent more blameworthy. We use this fact to help explain our ordinary intuition that failing to give to famine relief (for example) is in some sense less bad than failing to help a child who is drowning right before your eyes, in a way that's compatible with the contention that there's no principled reason to see the one life-saving act as any more or less choiceworthy than the other. Second, we argue that alleged ‘virtues of ignorance’ (modesty, believing better of friends than the evidence supports, etc.) are better understood as ‘virtues of salience’. Rather than placing demands on what we believe, these virtues place demands on what we find salient.     

Interference by process, not content, determines semantic auditory distraction

Distraction by irrelevant background sound of visually-based cognitive tasks illustrates the vulnerability of attentional selectivity across modalities. Four experiments centred on auditory distraction during tests of memory for visually-presented semantic information. Meaningful irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars more than meaningless irrelevant sound (Experiment 1). This effect was exacerbated when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material (Experiment 2). Importantly, however, these effects of meaningfulness and semantic relatedness were shown to arise only when instructions emphasized recall by category rather than by serial order (Experiments 3 and 4). The results favor a process-oriented, rather than a structural, approach to the breakdown of attentional selectivity and forgetting: performance is impaired by the similarity of process brought to bear on the relevant and irrelevant material, not the similarity in item content.     

从知觉负载理论来理解选择性注意

知觉负载理论被认为解决了选择性注意研究的早选择和晚选择观点之争。当前任务对注意资源的耗用程度决定了与任务无关的干扰刺激得到多少加工,从而导致在低知觉负载下,注意资源自动溢出去加工干扰刺激（晚选择）,而在高知觉负载下,注意资源被当前任务耗尽而无法加工干扰刺激（早选择）。知觉负载理论提出后,研究者进行了一系列研究。一部分工作专注于知觉负载对选择性注意的调节作用;另外一些工作则关注其他认知过程如何影响注意资源的分配,其中知觉负载与工作记忆负载的关系是当前关注重点。     

汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童视觉同时性加工技能子成分的发展及其与阅读的关系

通过分别以高频汉字(实验1)和图形非言语材料(实验2)为刺激的两个联合视觉注意任务, 并采用基于Budensen视觉注意理论的参数估计方法, 系统地探查小学三~六年级汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童的视觉同时性加工技能缺陷的内在机制。以43名汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童和46名生理年龄匹配典型发展儿童为被试, 每类被试均被分为小学中年级组(三、四年级)和高年级组(五、六年级)。两个实验均发现不同年级组的阅读障碍儿童在知觉加工速度参数上显著小于控制组儿童。在空间注意分布权重参数上, 实验1的结果显示, 不同于控制组儿童向左侧化发展的注意分布模式, 两个年级组的阅读障碍儿童均表现为无偏的注意分布; 而实验2未发现显著组别差异。且这两种同时性加工子技能分别与不同水平的汉语阅读技能密切相关。结果表明, 汉语阅读障碍儿童在同时加工多个视觉刺激时存在持续的知觉加工速度缓慢的问题, 在同时加工言语类刺激时还表现出异常的空间注意分布模式。本研究有助于从基础认知层面揭示汉语发展性阅读障碍儿童的缺陷机理, 为进一步设计相关的提高阅读效率的干预方案提供理论依据。     

Selective attention and interhemispheric response competition in the split-brain

The interfering effect of an unattended stimulus on processing of an attended item was studied in a single split-brain participant (LB) and in normal controls. Pairs of letters were presented to the left visual field (LVF), right visual field (RVF), or bilaterally. Participants attended to the rightmost letter while attempting to ignore the leftmost letter. Responses associated with the attended and to-be-ignored letters could be compatible or incompatible. Manual response latencies were generally slower on Response Incompatible compared to Response Compatible trials. Notably, LB displayed this effect on Bilateral trials, where target and distractor were presented to opposite visual fields. LB was unable to perform a same-different matching task with bilateral letter stimuli, but was able to name bilateral letters accurately. Hence, in the bilateral condition, the ability to cross-compare letters was dissociated from attentional interference and from letter naming. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Extinction of likes and dislikes: effects of feature-specific attention allocation

The evaluative conditioning (EC) effect refers to the change in the liking of a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) due to its pairing with another stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US). We examined whether the extinction rate of the EC effect is moderated by feature-specific attention allocation. In two experiments, CSs were abstract Gabor patches varying along two orthogonal, perceptual dimensions (i.e. spatial frequency and orientation). During the acquisition phase, one of these dimensions was predictive of the valence of the USs. During the extinction phase, CSs were presented alone and participants were asked to categorise the CSs either according to their valence, the perceptual dimension that was task-relevant during the acquisition phase, or a perceptual dimension that was task-irrelevant during the acquisition phase. As predicted, explicit valence measures revealed a linear increase in the extinction rate of the EC effect as participants were encouraged to assign attention to non-evaluative stimulus information during the extinction phase. In Experiment 1, Affect Misattribution Paradigm (AMP) data mimicked this pattern of results, although the effect just missed conventional levels of significance. In Experiment 2, the AMP data revealed an increase of the EC effect if attention was focused on evaluative stimulus information. Potential mechanisms to explain these findings are discussed.     

Synesthesia: Strong and Weak

In this review, we distinguish strong and weak forms of synesthesia. Strong synesthesia is characterized by a vivid image in one sensory modality in response to stimulation in another one. Weak synesthesia is characterized by cross-sensory correspondences expressed through language, perceptual similarity, and perceptual interactions during information processing. Despite important phenomenological dissimilarities between strong and weak synesthesia, we maintain that the two forms draw on similar underlying mechanisms. The study of strong and weak synesthetic phenomena provides an opportunity to enrich scientists' understanding of basic mechanisms involved in perceptual coding and cross-modal information processing.     

认知失败的研究综述：概念、测量及相关研究

自Broadbent等首次提出认知失败的概念以来,认知失败引起了研究者的广泛注意。认知失败是个体基于认知上的因素,使他们在完成那些平日中能够胜任的简单任务时出现错误。文章从认知失败的因素结构、认知失败与选择注意、持续注意等认知因素的关系,以及与人格特征等关系几个角度回顾了已有的研究,并提出未来的研究方向。     

基于空间和基于物体的选择注意在信号检测中的作用

先前的研究认为基于空间和基于物体的注意选择都是存在的,但是很少有研究探讨这两者的关系,即两者是存在交互作用还是单独作用的。因此本研究采用Egly等修正的线索提示实验范式,探讨基于物体和基于空间的注意选择机制在信号检测任务中的关系。实验采用2(两种物体)×2(两种空间)×3(有效线索、物体内无效线索和物体间无效线索)的被试内设计。16名大学生被试参加实验。结果表明:(1)对有效线索的反应快于无效线索,且物体内无效线索快于物体间无效线索;(2)在不同材料之间,两类无效线索反应时之差存在显著差异;(3)空间因素和物体因素的作用是独立的。结论提示:基于空间和基于物体的选择性注意都是存在的,且两者独立作用于注意的选择过程。     

线索有效性对儿童返回抑制的影响

采用通常的线索—靶子实验,来考察不同的线索有效性对儿童返回抑制的影响。所用的外源性线索分高有效性、低有效性和非信息性三类。儿童被试在实验中的任务为觉察圆形光点后即按键反应,记录反应时。结果表明,7岁、9岁和11岁儿童在高有效性和非信息性线索条件下均出现返回抑制;但7岁和9岁儿童在低有效性线索条件未出现返回抑制,而11岁儿童则出现。这些儿童的实验结果有别于成人。结果提示,7岁、9岁和11岁儿童的返回抑制是在外源性线索的作用下自动出现的,具有反射性质;但7岁和9岁儿童的返回抑制仍受线索有效性的制约,而11岁儿童返回抑制的发展已不受线索有效性的影响。     

从维度权值看自上而下和自下而上的控制

Mnller提出维度权值概念（Dimensinal weighting）来解释注意选择,他认为在视觉搜索过程中,来自自上而下和自下而上的信息会根据任务的需求联合起来,对注意进行动态性调整。维度权值理论对选择注意的解释得到了行为、脑成像及脑损伤研究的支持,目前它已经成为解释两种控制加工关系的重要理论。     

知觉负载、注意定势与选择性注意

本研究采用Eriksen Flanker（侧抑制）范式,将当前任务区分为高、低知觉负载两种条件．并系统操纵边缘视野干扰项与中央靶子的不同加工层次关系,从而考察注意选择的知觉负载理论。实验一发现,高知觉负载情况下没有任何flanker冲突效应,而低知觉负载情况下既有知觉层次和反应层次的冲突效应,也有一致条件下的促进效应。实验二增加了一致条件试次的比例,从而操纵自上而下的注意定势,发现高、低知觉负载情况下都存在知觉冲突效应和一致条件下的促进效应。这些发现表明,对任务无关信息的加工既受到任务相关信息的知觉负载和剩余加工资源的分配的影响,也受到自上而下注意定势的影响;自下而上和自上而下过程相互作用,共同决定加工资源的分配和注意选择的认知阶段。     

空间方位及SOA对视觉选择注意的影响

该文采用注意线索技术探讨颜色、角度和空间方位对视觉选择性注意的影响。研究结果表明:1)随着突现刺激呈现角度的变化,表现出从左至右的明显的倒“V”字型效应,当突现刺激特征显著时(颜色明显变化),“V”字型效应消失;2)随着SOA的延长,空间角度对选择注意加工的影响越来越显著;3)综合处理空间角度结果表明,被试对“上”方目标的反应速度最快,其次是左和右,对“下”的目标的反应速度最慢,而且相对受SOA的影响较小。