高低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪注意偏向的差异

摘 要 本研究采用返回抑制范式,以诱发厌恶、恐惧和中性情绪的图片为线索,考察高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对负性情绪刺激注意偏向的差异及其发生机制。结果表明：（1）被试对诱发厌恶和恐惧的图片均产生了注意偏向且注意偏向是由注意解除困难所引起;（2）被试对诱发厌恶图片的注意偏向程度显著大于对诱发恐惧图片的注意偏向程度;（3）高、低强迫清洗倾向个体对诱发厌恶和恐惧图片的注意偏向程度之间的组间差异均不显著。     

试次历史对跨通道非空间返回抑制的影响

个体对刺激的反应不仅受刺激本身的影响, 还会受到先前刺激的影响, 表现为对当前试次中刺激的反应会受到前一试次的影响, 即试次历史。本研究采用“线索-中性线索-靶子”范式探讨前一试次有效性对跨通道的非空间返回抑制的影响。实验1通过连续两个试次间的线索有效性考察在跨通道非空间返回抑制中试次历史的影响。为了在跨通道非空间返回抑制中减小试次历史的影响, 实验2通过延长试次间时间间隔考察跨通道非空间返回抑制中试次历史的作用是否减小。结果发现, 前一试次线索无效时, 当前试次中的返回抑制效应量显著小于前一试次有效时, 这种影响会根据试次中线索和靶子通道的不同而不同。并且当延长试次间的时间间隔可以有效地减少前一试次对当前试次的影响。因此本研究表明, 试次历史能够对跨通道非空间返回抑制产生影响, 并且这种影响可以通过增大试次间时间间隔来减小。     

The effects of anxiety upon attention allocation to affective stimuli

Pictures of emotionally aversive, neutral, and pleasant scenes were presented for 500 ms, followed by a probe presented in the same location (valid trials) or an alternate location (invalid trials) as the picture. Response-times to the probes were recorded in low (N=20) and high (N=27) trait anxious participants. Results revealed an overall negative cue validity effect of shorter reaction times (RTs) on invalid than valid trials, suggestive of an inhibition of return effect. Moreover, high trait anxious females showed a reduced negative cue validity effect for aversive pictures in comparison with neutral and pleasant pictures, suggestive of selective interference by the unpleasant material. By contrast, low trait anxious females showed an enhanced negative cue validity effect for aversive pictures relative to neutral and pleasant pictures, suggestive of attentional avoidance of the aversive content. The emotional content of picture cues did not significantly affect RTs in males, regardless of anxiety status. The results suggest that biased attention processes for aversive stimuli may contribute to the greater female propensity for anxiety disorders.     

An examination of attentional control in the auditory modality: Further evidence for auditory orienting

Four experiments are reported that examine attentional control in the auditory modality. In Experiment 1, the subjects made detection responses to the onset of a monaurally presented pure tone that was preceded by a pure-tone cue. On a valid trial, the cue was presented in the same ear as the target; on an invalid trial, it was presented in the contralateral ear to the target; and on a neutral trial, it was presented in both ears. Overall performance was facilitated on valid trials in comparison with invalid trials. In later experiments, the subjects made choice decisions about the location of the target, and significant cuing effects were found relative to the neutral condition. Finally, performance was assessed in the presence of central (spoken) word cues. Here, the content of the cue specified the likely location of the target. Under these conditions, costs and benefits were found over a range of cue-target stimulus onset asynchronies. The results are discussed in terms of automatic and controlled attentional processes.     

多个非线索化位置易代的一项实验研究

现在采用返回抑制范式所进行的空间非信息线索作用的研究,大多以非线索化位置反应时为参照,发现线索化位置的反应先易化后抑制。后者即返回抑制。本研究采用在返回抑制范式上增设中性线索化条件的方法,发现当靶子可以出现的位置为四个时,相对于中性线索化条件,非线索化位置反应快。这种非线索化位置的易化作用是独立存在的,它能使生物体尽快地对出现在多个非线索化位置的靶子作出反应。     

Localizing cortical sources of event-related potentials in infants' covert orienting

This study used cortical source analysis to locate potential cortical sources of event-related potentials (ERPs) during covert orienting in infants aged 14 and 20 weeks. The infants were tested in a spatial cueing procedure. The reaction time to localize the target showed response facilitation for valid trials relative to invalid or neutral trials. High-density EEG (126 channels) was recorded during the task, and independent component analysis and equivalent current dipole analysis was used to estimate the cortical sources of the EEG during the task. There was a larger P1 ERP component on the valid trials than the other trials (P1 validity effect). The cortical source analysis suggested that this occurred due to activity in Brodmann's areas 18 and 19. A presaccadic ERP component occurred over the frontal scalp areas (-65 ms) and was larger to a target in a cued location than in uncued locations. A potential cortical source for this ERP component was the superior frontal gyrus on the inferior portion of the prefrontal cortex. Increases from 14 to 20 weeks in amplitude of the P1 validity effect and the presaccadic ERP could be modeled by an increase in activation in the corresponding cortical areas.     

三维空间中视觉空间返回抑制对Simon效应的影响

通过虚拟现实技术构建虚拟三维场景,采用视觉空间返回抑制范式与Simon任务的变式相结合,操纵了目标深度、线索有效性以及空间一致性三个变量,考察三维空间深度位置上视觉空间返回抑制如何影响任务无关的反应表征(Simon效应)。结果发现,(1)三维空间深度位置上存在基于空间的返回抑制效应,且空间返回抑制效应会削减Simon效应;(2)目标出现在远处空间时,线索化条件下的Simon效应显著大于非线索化条件下的Simon效应;(3)目标出现在近处空间时,线索化条件与非线索化条件下的Simon效应之间无显著差异。研究表明,空间返回抑制并不是"深度盲",且目标的空间位置会对空间返回抑制与Simon效应的交互关系产生影响。     

Attentional shifts to emotionally charged cues: Behavioural and erp data

Abstract

When information activated in memory involves emotional associations, the ability to shift attention away from an emotional cue is impaired compared to an emotionally neutral cue. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how emotional stimuli modulate attentional processes, and how this is reflected in localised brain electrical activity. Eight emotion and eight neutral words served as cues in a covert attention spatial orienting task. The cues were either valid or invalid indicators of which hemifield the target would be presented to. In the remaining trials, no cue was presented prior to the target. Twenty subjects were instructed to manually respond to the target as fast as possible. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed an enhanced P3 component to the emotion words. The ERPs to the target showed enhanced P1 and P3 components on invalid trials, with emotional cues. There were faster reaction times (RTs) to validly cued targets, but only when the emotion words served as cues. The results demonstrated that the emotional cues elicited sustained focused attention, facilitating an engage mechanism of spatial orienting.     

奖赏预期对选择性注意的影响——基于客体和空间的注意的区别

为了探究奖赏预期对选择性注意的影响,结合金钱激励延迟任务和双矩形范式,通过两个实验分别考察了奖赏预期的有无以及高低对选择性注意的影响。实验结果表明,在有奖赏预期的情况下,选择性注意更快,奖赏预期的有无对基于空间的注意影响区别不大,但奖赏预期几乎消除了基于客体的注意效应。在低奖赏预期条件下,基于客体和空间的注意均存在;而高奖赏预期条件下,基于空间的注意仍然存在,基于客体的注意几乎被消除了。结果表明奖赏预期可以影响选择性注意,并对基于空间和客体的注意产生不同影响。     

Exogenous orienting of crossmodal attention in 3-D space: Support for a depth-aware crossmodal attentional system

The aim of the present study was to investigate exogenous crossmodal orienting of attention in three-dimensional (3-D) space. Most studies in which the orienting of attention has been examined in 3-D space concerned either exogenous intramodal or endogenous crossmodal attention. Evidence for exogenous crossmodal orienting of attention in depth is lacking. Endogenous and exogenous attention are behaviorally different, suggesting that they are two different mechanisms. We used the orthogonal spatial-cueing paradigm and presented auditory exogenous cues at one of four possible locations in near or far space before the onset of a visual target. Cues could be presented at the same (valid) or at a different (invalid) depth from the target (radial validity), and on the same (valid) or on a different (invalid) side (horizontal validity), whereas we blocked the depth at which visual targets were presented. Next to an overall validity effect (valid RTs < invalid RTs) in horizontal space, we observed an interaction between the horizontal and radial validity of the cue: The horizontal validity effect was present only when the cue and the target were presented at the same depth. No horizontal validity effect was observed when the cue and the target were presented at different depths. These results suggest that exogenous crossmodal attention is “depth-aware,” and they are discussed in the context of the supramodal hypothesis of attention.     

阈下情绪面孔的注视线索提示效应

采用线索-靶子范式，利用2个预实验和1个正式实验，考察阈下不同情绪面孔的注视线索提示效应。要求被试在具有表情与注视线索的面孔呈现完毕后，快速而准确地对目标的位置进行判断。记录被试反应时间。结果显示，当被试未有意识的觉察到注视线索与面孔表情时，注视线索提示效应存在，并受到表情的调节。表现为：在注视线索有效并伴有恐惧表情时，被试对于目标的判断更加迅速；当比较不同表情下线索无效与线索有效条件下的反应时差异时发现，恐惧表情面孔出现时，线索无效与线索有效条件之间反应时的差异最大。结果表明，阈下情绪刺激能够激发个体更原始的生物性反应；在早期注意阶段，个体对于恐惧信息更加敏感，注意存在负向情绪偏差。     

Sequence effects in a spatial cueing task: Endogenous orienting is sensitive to orienting in the preceding trial

In a spatial cueing paradigm it was investigated whether endogenous orienting is sensitive to orienting processes in the previous trial. Specifically, the effect of the previous cue direction, the previous trial type (valid, invalid, neutral, catch) and target alternation effects were studied. Strategic effects were shown as attentional costs and benefits were larger after a valid than after an invalid trial. Following catch trials, an overall response slowing was observed, but costs and benefits were unaffected. This was interpreted as a reduction in alertness and as support for the dissociation between spatial and temporal attentional mechanisms. Repetition of target position per se had no effect, but in neutral trials responses were slower to targets appearing at the location that was cued in the previous trial, independent of validity of the preceding trial. This suggests that long-term inhibition-of-return can occur between trials when attention is controlled endogenously.     

Covert orienting to central visual cues and sport practice relations in the development of visual attention.

This study examines the development of controlled covert orienting of visual attention, according to the age and the level of performance of tennis players. Practicers and nonpracticers age 13, 16, and 25 participated in a covert orienting task. On each trial, subjects responded to a target which appeared in one of four locations arrayed horizontally across the display. Three central cues were used: neutral, the cue did not specify in which location the target would appear; valid, the target was present in the cued location on 80% of the trials; invalid, the target was present in one of the uncued locations on the remaining 20% of the trials. The results showed that (1) practicers were not faster than nonpracticers in processing the signals, (2) observers of all ages oriented attention voluntarily to the cued locations, (3) central cues had a smaller effect on older and practiced subjects, and (4) developmental and sport practice factors had similar effects on orienting efficiency. The implications of these findings for theories of attentional development are discussed.     

Attentional biases toward humor: Separate effects of incongruity detection and resolution

Previous research has indicated that the comprehension of humor involves two stages: incongruity detection and incongruity resolution. However, little is known about the temporal parameters of these stages and the degree to which they influence attentional processing. In the current study, 155 participants completed a dot-probe task to examine these questions. On each trial, humor versus control, novel (incongruent but not humorous) versus control, or neutral versus neutral image pairs were presented for 300, 400, or 500 ms. A probe immediately replaced the experimental image (valid trial) or control image (invalid trial). An attentional bias toward humor and novelty by 300 ms was shown by faster probe-detection reaction times (RTs) on valid compared to invalid humor and novel trials for all three exposure times. When compared to the neutral trials, humor and novel stimuli elicited slower RTs, indicating a difficulty in attentional disengagement. An exploratory analysis found that subjective humor ratings predicted the disengagement bias at 500 ms, but not at 400 or 300 ms. These results suggest that incongruity detection biases attention by 300 ms, whereas incongruity resolution may only contribute at 500 ms.     

Working memory, perceptual priming, and the perception of hierarchical forms: Opposite effects of priming and working memory without memory refreshing

Previous research has shown that stimuli held in working memory (WM) can influence spatial attention. Using Navon stimuli, we explored whether and how items in WM affect the perception of visual targets at local and global levels in compound letters. Participants looked for a target letter presented at a local or global level while holding a regular block letter as a memory item. An effect of holding the target’s identity in WM was found. When memory items and targets were the same, performance was better than in a neutral condition when the memory item did not appear in the hierarchical letter (a benefit from valid cuing). When the memory item matched the distractor in the hierarchical stimulus, performance was worse than in the neutral baseline (a cost on invalid trials). These effects were greatest when the WM cue matched the global level of the hierarchical stimulus, suggesting that WM biases attention to the global level of form. Interestingly, in a no-memory priming condition, target perception was faster in the invalid condition than in the neutral baseline, reversing the effect in the WM condition. A further control experiment ruled out the effects of WM being due to participants’ refreshing their memory from the hierarchical stimulus display. The data show that information in WM biases the selection of hierarchical forms, whereas priming does not. Priming alters the perceptual processing of repeated stimuli without biasing attention.     

Microsaccadic modulation of response times in spatial attention tasks

Covert shifts of attention are usually reflected in RT differences between responses to valid and invalid cues in the Posner spatial attention task. Such inferences about covert shifts of attention do not control for microsaccades in the cue-target interval. We analyzed the effects of microsaccade orientation on RTs in four conditions, crossing peripheral visual and auditory cues with peripheral visual and auditory discrimination targets. Reaction time was generally faster on trials without microsaccades in the cue-target interval. If microsaccades occurred, the target-location congruency of the last microsaccade in the cue-target interval interacted in a complex way with cue validity. For valid visual cues, irrespective of whether the discrimination target was visual or auditory, target-congruent microsaccades delayed RT. For invalid cues, target-incongruent microsaccades facilitated RTs for visual target discrimination but delayed RT for auditory target discrimination. No reliable effects on RT were associated with auditory cues or with the first microsaccade in the cue-target interval. We discuss theoretical implications on the relation about spatial attention and oculomotor processes.     

Cross-modal exogenous attention and distance effects in vision and hearing

In the present study we investigated cross-modal orienting in vision and hearing by using a cueing task with four different horizontal locations. Our main interest concerned cue–target distance effects, which might further our insight in the characteristics of cross-modal spatial attention mechanisms. A very consistent pattern was observed for both the unimodal (cue and target were both visual or auditory) and the cross-modal conditions (cue and target from different modalities). RTs to valid trials were faster than for invalid trials, and, most interestingly, there was a distance effect: RTs increased with greater cue–target distance. This applied to detection of visual targets and to localisation of both visual and auditory targets. The time interval between cue and target was also varied. Surprisingly, there was no indication of inhibition of return even with the longest cue–target intervals. In order to assess the role of endogenous (strategic) factors in exogenous spatial attention we increased in two additional experiments the cue validity from 25% to 80%. This appeared to have no large influence on the cueing pattern in both the detection and localisation tasks. Currently, it is assumed that spatial attention is organised in multiple strongly linked modality-specific systems. The foregoing results are discussed with respect to this supposed organisation.     

Attentional Bias for Threat: Evidence for Delayed Disengagement from Emotional Faces

The present paper reports three new experiments suggesting that the valence of a face cue can influence attentional effects in a cueing paradigm. Moreover, heightened trait anxiety resulted in increased attentional dwell-time on emotional facial stimuli, relative to neutral faces. Experiment 1 presented a cueing task, in which the cue was either an "angry", "happy", or "neutral" facial expression. Targets could appear either in the same location as the face (valid trials) or in a different location to the face (invalid trials). Participants did not show significant variations across the different cue types (angry, happy, neutral) in responding to a target on valid trials. However, the valence of the face did affect response times on invalid trials. Specifically, participants took longer to respond to a target when the face cue was "angry" or "happy" relative to neutral. In Experiment 2, the cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was increased and an overall inhibition of return (IOR) effect was found (i.e., slower responses on valid trials). However, the "angry" face cue eliminated the IOR effect for both high and low trait anxious groups. In Experiment 3, threat-related and jumbled facial stimuli reduced the magnitude of IOR for high, but not for low, trait-anxious participants.These results suggest that: (i) attentional bias in anxiety may reflect a difficulty in disengaging from threat-related and emotional stimuli, and (ii) threat-related and ambiguous cues can influence the magnitude of the IOR effect.     

Effects of spatial cues on locating emotional targets

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slower responding to a visual target appearing at a previously cued versus uncued location. In three experiments, we asked whether IOR would be affected by the emotional content of target stimuli. Participants reported the location of negative (spiders, angry faces) or neutral (objects, neutral faces) targets as quickly and accurately as possible after a valid or invalid location cue (a simple circle). IOR was significantly smaller when detecting negative versus neutral targets, but only after repeated exposures to these stimuli (i.e., with blocked presentations). This effect was eliminated when target type was randomized within blocks. By presenting negative versus neutral targets in short alternating blocks and examining IOR on the first trial of each new block, we show that the emotional modulation of IOR stems from the affective context in place before visual orienting is initiated, not by perceptual processing of the target after cue offset.     

Selective response activation can begin before stimulus recognition is complete: a psychophysiological and error analysis of continuous flow

In discussions of process models of human information processing, the continuous flow conception (Eriksen and Schultz 1979) plays a prominent role. A central prediction of this conception is that any information in a display associated with a response activates that response as soon as it becomes available in the perceptual system. If it concerns the correct response channel, then response facilitation occurs. If it concerns the incorrect response channel, then response competition occurs. To assess these mechanisms more directly, we used psychophysiological measures as well as reaction time (RT). We used the latency of the P3 component of the event related brain potential (ERP) as an index of stimulus evaluation duration, the onset of lateralized motor activity derived from the ERP as an index of selective central motor activation, and the onset of electromyographic activity as an index of the start of peripheral motor activation. Subjects were required to respond to target letters that were either flanked by letters that signalled the opposite response (incompatible arrays), by the target itself (compatible arrays), by letters not associated with a response (neutral arrays), or by no other letters (targets alone). Our results replicated the basic findings obtained in this paradigm. RTs to targets alone did not differ from RTs to compatible arrays. The latter were faster than RTs to neutral arrays, which were faster than RTs to incompatible arrays. P3 latencies were longer on incompatible than on neutral trials, and longer on compatible than on target alone trials. Incorrect central response activation on incompatible trials and correct central response activation on compatible trials, both began earlier than on target alone trials. Peripheral responding on both trial types, however, began later than on target alone trials. More incompatible but less compatible trials than neutral ones exhibited incorrect peripheral response activation. Peripheral response execution was faster and more accurate on compatible than on target alone trials, while it was slower and less accurate on incompatible than on neutral trials. These results indicate, that the flankers activated their associated response channel while display evaluation was still going on, and that response facilitation and competition occurred. After applying criteria proposed by Miller (1988), it was concluded that the set of stimulus recognition processes and the set of response activation processes cannot be regarded as independent stages of processing.