Inattentional blindness as a function of proximity to the focus of attention.

The effect of the distance between the center of the focus of attention and an unexpected stimulus on detection was examined in two experiments with the use of the inattentional-blindness paradigm [Mack and Rock, 1998 Inattentional Blindness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)]. In experiment 1, the closer a stimulus was to the center of attention, the more likely it was to be detected. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and controlled for retinal eccentricity. These results suggest that low-level stimulus characteristics (e.g. location) may play an important role in the detection of unexpected stimuli. The data are consistent with previous research on the spatial aspects of attention demonstrating that the distance to the focus of attention is a critical variable. This study demonstrates that the effect of distance is similar under conditions of inattention. Theories put forward to explain inattentional blindness should include 'early' attentional factors, as well as factors resulting from later stages of processing.     

Parental focus of attention in a videotape feedback task as a function of hypothesized risk for offspring schizophrenia

The families of 29 disturbed but nonpsychotic adolescents were observed in a structured task in which they discussed their reactions to viewing themselves interacting on videotape. Measures derived from the Singer-Wynne concenpt of transactional style deviance were applied to the parental behaviors and related to prior assessments of parental communication disorder based on individual parental TAT protocols. The results confirm the Singer-Wynne hypothesis of the cross-situational stability of transactional style deviance. The most striking finding, however, is that an index of positive focusing behavior differentiates more strongly parents of adolescents hypothesized to be at varying leves of risk for schizophrenia than does the measure of transactional style deviance.     

Everyday risk taking as a function of regulatory focus

Uncertainty is an inherent aspect of everyday life. However, faced with uncertainty, some individuals take risks more eagerly than others. Regulatory focus theory may explain such differences because risky behavior may arise naturally from the eagerness of promotion focused individuals, while safe behavior may arise naturally from the vigilance of prevention focused individuals. A highly relevant real-life context for studying risk is mobility, as engaging in traffic inherently carries uncertainty about negative outcomes. We present two studies showing a direct link between regulatory focus and risky behavior going beyond traditional laboratory approaches. In both naturalistic speeding behavior (Study 1) and simulated risk taking (Study 2) promotion focus was positively, and prevention focus was negatively related to actual risky behavior.     

Vision outside the focus of attention

We investigated the relationship between focal attention and a feature-gradient detection that is performed in a parallel manner. We found that a feature gradient can be detected without measurable impairment of performance even while a concurrent form-recognition task is carried out. In spite of the fact that the form-recognition task engages focal attention and thus removes attentive resources from the vicinity of the feature gradient. This outcome suggests strongly that certain perceptions concerning salient boundaries and singularities in a visual scene can be accomplished without the aid of resource-limited processes, such as focal attention, and, by implication, that there may exist two distinct perceptual faculties (one attentive, the other not) that are able to bring complementary kinds of visual information simultaneously to our awareness.     

Contingent reliance on the affect heuristic as a function of regulatory focus

Results from four studies show that the reliance on affect as a heuristic of judgment and decision making is more pronounced under a promotion focus than under a prevention focus. Two different manifestations of this phenomenon were observed. Studies 1–3 show that different types of affective inputs are weighted more heavily under promotion than under prevention in person-impression formation, product evaluations, and social recommendations. Study 4 additionally shows that valuations performed under promotion are more scope-insensitive—a characteristic of affect-based valuations—than valuations performed under prevention. The greater reliance on affect as a heuristic under promotion seems to arise because promotion-focused individuals tend to find affective inputs more diagnostic, not because promotion increases the reliance on peripheral information per se.     

Voluntary and involuntary attention vary as a function of impulsivity

In the present study we examined, first, whether voluntary and involuntary attention manifest differently in people who differ in impulsivity (measured with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale). For Experiment 1, we used the spatial cueing task with informative and noninformative spatial cues to probe voluntary and involuntary attention, respectively. We found that participants with high impulsivity scores exhibited larger involuntary attention effects, whereas participants with low impulsivity scores exhibited larger voluntary attention effects. For Experiment 2, we used the correlated-flanker task to determine whether the differences between groups in Experiment 1 were due to high-impulsive participants being less sensitive to the display contingencies or to high-impulsive participants having a greater spread of spatial attention. Surprisingly, high-impulsive participants showed a greater sensitivity to contingencies in the environment (correlated-flanker effect). Our results illustrate one situation in which involuntary attention associated with high impulsivity can play a useful role.     

Limits in controlling the focus of attention

Abstract

In a series of five experiments, we attempted to answer three questions concerning the flexibility of visuospatial attention: Is it possible to exert control on the shape of the attentional focus? Can attention be distributed not uniformly but in a gradient fashion within the focus? Does the way in which attentional resources are distributed within the focus affect the way in which they are distributed outside its borders? We provide evidence indicating that observers successfully allocated attention to the cued region. When the cued region was demarcated by a polygon, target detection was speeded up within the polygon. The results also show that the observers were unable to suppress information arising from an irrelevant location falling between two relevant locations (Experiments 1, 2, 3A and 3B). In accord with the zoom lens model, we interpret these results as suggesting that attention forms a unitary zone that may expand to encompass multiple relevant locations but must also include the area between them. In addition, we found that some sort of lateral masking effect occurred when the borders were close to the target location. In Experiment 4, we obtained a gradient inside     

Further evidence for a time-independent shift of the focus of attention

The separation between stimuli was manipulated in a same-different matching task. In Experiment 1, stimuli were upright Ts and/or Ls, whereas in Experiment 2, they were rotated Ts and/or Ls. In both experiments, mean reaction time (RT) for the same-different judgment did not increase as a function of interletter separation, suggesting either that the time needed to relocate attention was independent of distance, or that the stimuli were processed in parallel. These alternatives were tested in a third experiment, with a diagnostic for parallel processing proposed by Egeth and Dagenbach (1991). The diagnostic indicated that the rotated Ts and Ls in Experiment 2 were processed serially. If serial processing implies the utilization of attention, then the results of Experiment 2 suggest that relocation of attention is time-invariant with respect to distance.     

Personally-significant information affects performance only within the focus of attention: a direct manipulation of attention

It has been suggested that personally significant (PS) information interferes with performance only when presented within the focus of attention. However, this claim was never tested by a systematic manipulation of attention, but only by using correlative measures of its locus. We addressed this issue in two experiments, utilizing a cued visual search paradigm that allowed us to directly manipulate attention and to measure behavioral and physiological responses. One of the stimuli in the search display had a higher luminance value (i.e., was cued), and, orthogonally, one of the stimuli could be a PS or neutral name. When the cue did not predict target location, PS distractors mildly interfered with task performance, regardless of the cue's location. However, when the cue predicted target location, responses were facilitated for cued targets, indicating that attention was shifted to the cue. Importantly, PS distractors interfered with task performance and elicited enhanced orienting responses only when they were cued. This implies that PS information affects performance only when presented within but not outside the focus of attention.     

Detectability as a function of spatial location: effects of selective attention

In a series of previous reports we have described differences in detectability of a target in a background of nontarget patterns as a function of its spatial location. These differences, referred to as a "detectability gradient," have been attributed to target detection accomplished by a serial processing mechanism--a scan. The mathematical model of such a mechanism, developed in the previous report, is equally applicable to a series of attentional shifts or to a perceptual, i.e., a preattentive, mechanism. The present experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that this scan is attentional in nature. The results provide additional evidence for the scanning hypothesis but do not support the view that this scan represents a series of attentional shifts.     

Revisiting the global-dominance phenomenon outside the focus of attention

Previous research has demonstrated global dominance for attended and unattended stimuli. In this paper, this phenomenon is shown to be restricted to small compound stimuli. As a first step, local dominance was obtained with large (8 deg in height) attended stimuli when a single stimulus was displayed. Next, dominance in attended and unattended stimuli was investigated by displaying two large compound stimuli, one surrounded by a square (attended compound stimulus), the other one enclosed in a circle (unattended compound stimulus). The way attention was directed to the attended stimulus was varied. No dominance was observed when subjects were instructed to process the stimulus appearing in the square (experiment 2). However, when a rapid-onset cue pre-directed attention to the attended stimulus, local dominance emerged for attended, but not for unattended stimuli (experiment 3). This latter result was obtained whether or not subjects were more experienced at local than global processing (experiment 4). The implications of the results for the locus of processing dominance are discussed.     

Automatic attention towards face or body as a function of mating motivation

Because women?s faces and bodies carry different cues of reproductive value, men may attend to different perceptual cues as functions of their long-term versus short-term mating motivations. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments on 135 male and 132 female participants. When influenced by short-term rather than long-term mating motivations, men?s attention was captured by (Study 1), was shifted to (Study 2), and was distracted by (Study 3) the waist/hip area rather than the face on photographs of attractive women. Similar effects were not found among the female participants in response to photographs of attractive men. These results support the evolutionary view that, similar to the attentional selectivity found in other domains of life, male perceptual attention has evolved to selectively capture and hold reproductive information about the opposite sex as a function of short-term versus long-term mating goals.     

The automaticity of complex motor skill learning as a function of attentional focus

The present experiment was designed to test the predictions of the constrained-action hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that when performers utilize an internal focus of attention (focus on their movements) they may actually constrain or interfere with automatic control processes that would normally regulate the movement, whereas an external focus of attention (focus on the movement effect) allows the motor system to more naturally self-organize. To test this hypothesis, a dynamic balance task (stabilometer) was used with participants instructed to adopt either an internal or external focus of attention. Consistent with earlier experiments, the external focus group produced generally smaller balance errors than did the internal focus group and responded at a higher frequency indicating higher confluence between voluntary and reflexive mechanisms. In addition, probe reaction times (RTs) were taken as a measure of the attention demands required under the two attentional focus conditions. Consistent with the hypothesis, the external focus participants demonstrated lower probe RTs than did the internal focus participants, indicating a higher degree of automaticity and less conscious interference in the control processes associated with the balance task.     

Illusory conjunctions inside and outside the focus of attention

This article addresses 2 questions that arise from the finding that visual scenes are first parsed into visual features: (a) the accumulation of location information about objects during their recognition and (b) the mechanism for the binding of the visual features. The first 2 experiments demonstrated that when 2 colored letters were presented outside the initial focus of attention, illusory conjunctions between the color of one letter and the shape of the other were formed only if the letters were less than 1 degree apart. Separation greater than 2 degrees resulted in fewer conjunction errors than expected by chance. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that inside the spread of attention, illusory conjunctions between the 2 letters can occur regardless of the distance between them. In addition, these experiments demonstrated that the span of attention can expand or shrink like a spotlight. The results suggest that features inside the focus of attention are integrated by an expandable focal attention mechanism that conjoins all features that appear inside its focus. Visual features outside the focus of attention may be registered with coarse location information prior to their integration. Alternatively, a quick and imprecise shift of attention to the periphery may lead to illusory conjunctions among adjacent stimuli.     

Covariation between bizarre and nonbizarre speech as a function of the content of verbal attention

A functional analysis suggested that the bizarre speech of an individual with developmental disabilities was maintained by attention. The content of verbal attention was manipulated in two subsequent analyses and revealed that (a) bizarre speech was more frequent when attention was related to the participant's bizarre speech and (b) the participant's statements tended to reflect the content of the therapist's attention, whether bizarre or nonbizarre.     

Memory as a function of attention, level of processing, and automatization

The relationships between long-term memory (LTM) modification, attentional allocation, and type of processing are examined. Automatic/controlled processing theory (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977) predicts that the nature and amount of controlled processing determines LTM storage and that stimuli can be automatically processed with no lasting LTM effect. Subjects performed the following: (a) an intentional learning, (b) a semantic categorization, (c) a graphic categorization, (d) a distracting digit-search while intentionally learning words, and (e) a distracting digit-search while ignoring words. Frequency judgments were more accurate in the semantic and intentional conditions than the graphic condition. Frequency judgments in the digit-search conditions were near chance. Experiment 2 extensively trained subjects to develop automatic categorization. Automatic categorization produced no frequency learning and little recognition. These results also disconfirm the Hasher and Zacks (1979) "automatic encoding" proposal regarding the nature of processing.     

External focus of attention improves performance in a speeded aiming task

Athletic skills are often executed better when learners focus attention externally (e.g., on the trajectory of the ball after a tennis serve), rather than internally (e.g., on the position of their arm) (e.g., Wulf, 2007a). The current study explored the effects of attention focus on learning of speeded responses, and examined whether these benefits hold for retention and transfer. Participants performed a computerized speeded aiming task while focusing on the direction of the cursor (external focus) versus the direction in which their hand moved the mouse (internal focus). One week later, half of the participants performed the same task again (retention), and half performed the task under conditions in which the mouse movements were changed (transfer). Relative to internal focus, external focus led to faster acquisition and better maintenance of speeded responses over the retention interval.