类别注意控制定势在注意捕获中的加工机制

注意捕获是指注意定向的过程中刺激不自觉地捕获注意的现象。在复杂的视觉搜索任务中, 类别注意控制定势(cACS)能够帮助我们将注意引导到与目标定义类别匹配的刺激上, 并对其进行优先加工。探讨cACS在注意捕获中的加工机制, 不仅能够扩展注意捕获领域的理论研究, 还能对实际生活提供指导。通过文献梳理, 从cACS的作用阶段、cACS的加工强度及cACS作用时的激活脑区三个方面总结了注意捕获中的cACS的加工机制。未来研究可以就抑制分心物的ACS、不同类型的cACS加工差异和人工类别ACS加工过程等进行探讨。     

The effect of varying danger controllability on attention to threat messages

The objective of this study is to determine whether attention toward fear messages is affected by variation in the controllability of the associated danger. There is no consensus regarding the effectiveness of fear appeals in driving adaptive behaviour, and it may be the case that threat messages fail to capture attention if the associated danger is not explicitly controllable. One hundred and sixty undergraduate university students completed a computer task that involved exposure to threat cues signalling a danger (money loss). In high control blocks, attending to threat cues provided a high chance of avoiding the danger, whereas in low control blocks, attending to threat cues provided little chance of avoiding the danger. Attentional capture by threat was measured. A mixed-design analysis of variance showed there was greater attentional capture by threat cues in high control blocks compared with low control blocks. This effect was observed with a short stimulus exposure duration and was magnified with a long exposure duration. Fear appeals could capture attention to a greater degree if the danger related to the threat message was communicated as being controllable. This has significant practical implications for the implementation of fear appeals.     

注意捕获与自上而下的加工过程

注意捕获对揭示两种控制过程——自下而上的加工与自上而下的加工之间的关系有着重要的研究意义。在当前对注意捕获的研究中,主要存在两大类的实验范式：线索化范式与视觉搜索范式;涉及以下几个方面：刺激驱动的注意捕获与自上而下控制的关系;注意捕获是否涉及注意的空间转移;刺激的显著性对注意捕获的影响;实验范式对注意捕获的影响。总的来说,没有任何一种视觉刺激能绝对的独立于自上而下的控制之外来捕获注意,因此也可以这样认为,注意捕获被默认为是一种自动化的过程,但这个自动化的过程可以被内源性的调节所抑制或者易化。     

Altering attentional control settings causes persistent biases of visual attention

Attentional control settings have an important role in guiding visual behaviour. Previous work within cognitive psychology has found that the deployment of general attentional control settings can be modulated by training. However, research has not yet established whether long-term modifications of one particular type of attentional control setting can be induced. To address this, we investigated persistent alterations to feature search mode, also known as an attentional bias, towards an arbitrary stimulus in healthy participants. Subjects were biased towards the colour green by an information sheet. Attentional bias was assessed using a change detection task. After an interval of either 1 or 2 weeks, participants were then retested on the same change detection task, tested on a different change detection task where colour was irrelevant, or were biased towards an alternative colour. One experiment included trials in which the distractor stimuli (but never the target stimuli) were green. The key finding was that green stimuli in the second task attracted attention, despite this impairing task performance. Furthermore, inducing a second attentional bias did not override the initial bias toward green objects. The attentional bias also persisted for at least two weeks. It is argued that this persistent attentional bias is mediated by a chronic change to participants’ attentional control settings, which is aided by long-term representations involving contextual cueing. We speculate that similar changes to attentional control settings and continuous cueing may relate to attentional biases observed in psychopathologies. Targeting these biases may be a productive approach to treatment.     

时间任务需求对无关情绪面孔注意捕获的影响

注意捕获是指与任务无关的刺激能够不自觉地吸引注意的现象。实验一采用视觉搜索任务,考察与主任务无关的情绪面孔的注意捕获水平及其机制,实验二进一步探究时间任务需求对无关情绪面孔注意捕获的影响。结果发现:与其他情绪面孔相比,愤怒的情绪面孔捕获了更多的注意,且受到整体情绪加工的影响;时间任务需求影响了目标刺激的注意选择,但愤怒优势效应不受到时间任务需求的影响,因此可能是一种较为自动化的加工过程。     

杏仁核对感觉刺激的情绪性加工:自动化过程和注意调控过程的整合

利用有限的认知资源应对多变的环境刺激,选择性注意和情绪加工一个重要的共同机制是优先化关键信息的加工。尽管情绪性刺激(特别是威胁刺激)能够影响注意资源的分配,但一些关键脑区(如杏仁核)的对情绪性刺激的加工是自动化过程还是受到注意调节一直是个有争议的问题。最新的结合高时间分辨率和高空间分辨率的神经生理记录研究表明,情绪加工的重要核团,杏仁核,对情绪性刺激的加工包含早期快速的不依赖于注意资源和认知加工负荷的自动化加工成分和晚期受到额-顶叶皮层自上而下的注意调控成分,这种功能整合证实杏仁核情绪性加工存在并行的皮层下和皮层通路。     

Counter-regulation in affective attentional biases: a basic mechanism that warrants flexibility in emotion and motivation

We investigated whether anticipating positive or negative future outcomes during goal pursuit has a modulatory effect on attentional biases for affectively congruent and incongruent distractor stimuli. In two experiments using a flanker task, we found that distractor interference of stimuli signaling opportunities or dangers was stronger after inducing an outcome focus of the opposite valence. The second experiment provided additional evidence that the incongruency effect reflects a global shift in affective attentional biases and is not mediated by changes in strategies or in the perceived valence of the stimuli. It is argued that counter-regulation in affective attentional biases serves an important function for the regulation of emotion and action.     

Attentional capture by emotional stimuli is modulated by semantic processing

The attentional blink paradigm was used to examine whether emotional stimuli always capture attention. The processing requirement for emotional stimuli in a rapid sequential visual presentation stream was manipulated to investigate the circumstances under which emotional distractors capture attention, as reflected in an enhanced attentional blink effect. Emotional distractors did not cause more interference than neutral distractors on target identification when perceptual or phonological processing of stimuli was required, showing that emotional processing is not as automatic as previously hypothesized. Only when semantic processing of stimuli was required did emotional distractors capture more attention than neutral distractors and increase attentional blink magnitude. Combining the results from 5 experiments, the authors conclude that semantic processing can modulate the attentional capture effect of emotional stimuli.     

Danger stereotypes predict racially biased attentional allocation

The current research investigates whether threat-relevant associations have specific implications for attentional allocation, over and above the effects of other category-based associations. Using a modified dot-probe task [Koster, Crombez, Verscheuere, & DeHouwer (2004)], we separately measured attentional capture and attentional holding by Black compared to White faces. Black-danger associations significantly predicted the extent to which Black faces captured attention faster than White faces. Black-danger stereotypes also marginally predicted the extent to which Black faces held attention longer than White faces. These effects remained significant when controlling for the effects of other (danger-irrelevant) stereotypes and prejudice, and neither danger-irrelevant stereotypes nor prejudice predicted racially biased attentional allocation. We posit that societal stereotypes linking Blacks with danger lead Black faces to function as fear-conditioned stimuli, biasing attention.     

动物面孔的识别优势:一项基于快速扫视任务的研究

为了检验视觉注意分配的类别性偏好,采用快速扫视任务,以首次扫视的正确率和反应时作为指标,探寻动物是否有和面孔类似的注意捕获优势; 如果有,则该优势发生在基本类别层次还是上位类别层次。结果发现:(1)相对于非动物而言,动物更容易捕获观察者注意;(2)当动物(狗)作为目标刺激,匹配同领域基本层次的动物(猫)作为分心刺激时,注意捕获优势消失;(3)动物的注意优势是领域间效应。     

自动情绪调节对负性情绪面孔注意偏向的影响

本研究通过成语匹配任务启动情绪调节目标,在情绪flanker任务中考察了自动情绪调节启动对注意偏向的影响。结果表明,中性启动条件下,被试表现出对负性情绪面孔的注意偏向,而情绪调节启动条件下,被试对正性、负性情绪面孔的注意分配不存在显著差异。这一结果说明自动情绪调节可以有效地减弱被试的负性情绪面孔注意偏向。     

Threat-based cognitive biases in anxious children: comparison with non-anxious children before and after cognitive behavioural treatment

Attention and interpretation biases for threat stimuli were assessed in 19 anxious (ANX) children before and after cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and compared with responses from 19 non-anxious (NA) control children collected over the same period. Attentional bias was assessed using a picture version of the visual probe task with threat, neutral and pleasant pictures. Threat interpretation bias was assessed using both a homographs task in which children used homograph words in a sentence and their neutral or threatening meaning was assessed, and a stories task in which children rated their negative emotion, danger judgments, and influencing ability in ambiguous situations. ANX children showed attention biases towards threat on the visual probe task and threat interpretation biases on the stories task but not the homographs task at pre-treatment in comparison with NA children. Following treatment, ANX children's threat interpretation biases as assessed on the stories task reduced significantly to within levels comparable to NA children. However, ANX children continued to show larger attentional biases towards threat than pleasant pictures on the visual probe task at post-treatment, whereas NA children did not show attentional biases. Moreover, a residual threat interpretation style on the stories task at post-treatment was associated with higher anxiety symptoms in both ANX and NA children.     

How meaning shapes seeing

Inattentional blindness refers to the failure to see an unexpected object that one may be looking at directly when one's attention is elsewhere. We studied whether a stimulus whose meaning is relevant to the attentional goals of the observer will capture attention and escape inattentional blindness. The results showed that an unexpected stimulus belonging to the attended semantic category but not sharing physical features with the attended stimuli was detected more often than a semantically unrelated stimulus. This effect was larger when the unexpected stimuli were words than when they were pictures. The results imply that the semantic relation between the observer's attentional set and the unexpected stimulus plays a crucial role in inattentional blindness: An unexpected stimulus semantically related to the observer's current interests is likely to be seen, whereas unrelated unexpected stimuli are unseen. Attentional selection may thus be driven by purely semantic features: Meaning may determine whether or not one sees a stimulus.     

Voluntary allocation versus automatic capture of visual attention

Is there a difference in the kind of attention elicited by an abrupt-onset peripheral cue and that elicited by an instruction (e.g., a central arrow cue) to move attention to a peripheral location? In Experiment 1, we found that peripheral cues are no more effective in orienting attention than are central cues. No evidence was found for separable attentional systems consisting of a volitional response to central cues and an automatic response triggered only by peripheral cues. Rather, an identical or similar attentional process seems to be activated by either type of cue, although perhaps in different ways. Peripheral cues seem to have an automatic component, however, in that once attention is engaged by a peripheral cue, it cannot easily be disengaged for refocus elsewhere. In Experiment 2, after several sessions of practice, subjects were able to circumvent automatic attentional capture by an abrupt-onset peripheral cue and to volitionally redirect the focus of attention. Thus, attentional capture by abrupt-onset stimuli is not strongly automatic.     

Attentional capture by irrelevant emotional distractor faces is contingent on implicit attentional settings

Although expressions of facial emotion hold a special status in attention relative to other complex objects, whether they summon our attention automatically and against our intentions remains a debated issue. Studies supporting the strong view that attentional capture by facial expressions of emotion is entirely automatic reported that a unique (singleton) emotional face distractor interfered with search for a target that was also unique on a different dimension. Participants could therefore search for the odd-one out face to locate the target and attentional capture by irrelevant emotional faces might be contingent on the adoption of an implicit set for singletons. Here, confirming this hypothesis, an irrelevant emotional face captured attention when the target was the unique face with a discrepant orientation, both when this orientation was unpredictable and when it remained constant. By contrast, no such capture was observed when the target could not be found by monitoring displays for a discrepant face and participants had to search for a face with a specific orientation. Our findings show that attentional capture by emotional faces is not purely stimulus driven and thereby resolve the apparent inconsistency that prevails in the literature on the automaticity of attentional capture by emotional faces.     

Attentional bias to emotional stimuli is altered during moderate- but not high-intensity exercise

Little is known regarding how attention to emotional stimuli is affected during simultaneously performed exercise. Attentional biases to emotional face stimuli were assessed in 34 college students (17 women) using the dot-probe task during counterbalanced conditions of moderate- (heart rate at 45% peak oxygen consumption) and high-intensity exercise (heart rate at 80% peak oxygen consumption) compared with seated rest. The dot-probe task consisted of 1 emotional face (pleasant or unpleasant) paired with a neutral face for 1,000 ms; 256 trials (128 trials for each valence) were presented during each condition. Each condition lasted approximately 10 min. Participants were instructed to perform each trial of the dot-probe task as quickly and accurately as possible during the exercise and rest conditions. During moderate-intensity exercise, participants exhibited significantly greater attentional bias scores to pleasant compared with unpleasant faces (p < .01), whereas attentional bias scores to emotional faces did not differ at rest or during high-intensity exercise (p > .05). In addition, the attentional bias to unpleasant faces was significantly reduced during moderate-intensity exercise compared with that during rest (p < .05). These results provide behavioral evidence that during exercise at a moderate intensity, there is a shift in attention allocation toward pleasant emotional stimuli and away from unpleasant emotional stimuli. Future work is needed to determine whether acute exercise may be an effective treatment approach to reduce negative bias or enhance positive bias in individuals diagnosed with mood or anxiety disorders, or whether attentional bias during exercise predicts adherence to exercise.     

Effects of long-term meditation practice on attentional biases towards emotional faces: An eye-tracking study

Attentional biases towards affective stimuli reflect an individual balance of appetitive and aversive motivational systems. Vigilance in relation to threatening information reflects emotional imbalance, associated with affective and somatic problems. It is known that meditation practice significantly improves control of attention, which is considered to be a tool for adaptive emotional regulation. In this regard, the main aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of meditation on attentional bias towards neutral and emotional facial expressions. Eyes were tracked while 21 healthy controls and 23 experienced meditators (all males) viewed displays consisting of four facial expressions (neutral, angry, fearful and happy) for 10 s. Measures of biases in initial orienting and maintenance of attention were assessed. No effects were found for initial orienting biases. Meditators spent significantly less time viewing angry and fearful faces than control subjects. Furthermore, meditators selectively attended to happy faces whereas control subjects showed attentional biases towards both angry and happy faces. In sum we can conclude that long-term meditation practice adaptively affects attentional biases towards motivationally significant stimuli and that these biases reflect positive mood and predominance of appetitive motivation.     

注意控制定势和线索类型在注意捕获中的作用

采用前线索范式, 通过3个实验考察了注意控制定势和线索类型在注意捕获中的作用。实验1要求被试搜索颜色奇异项目标或突现目标, 涉及较弱的注意控制定势, 结果表明, 突现线索在作为匹配线索和不匹配线索时都能捕获注意, 而颜色奇异项线索只有在作为匹配线索时才能捕获注意。实验2要求被试搜索具体特征的红色或白色目标, 使被试建立较强的特征搜索定势, 结果表明, 颜色奇异项线索和突现线索在作为匹配线索时都能捕获注意, 但是在不匹配条件下, 颜色奇异项线索被抑制了, 而突现线索不能捕获注意; 实验3采取go/no-go范式, 要求被试对红色目标进行反应, 对白色目标进行抑制, 并通过设置不同的线索-目标时间间隔来进一步考察注意捕获的机制, 结果表明, 在600 ms间隔下, no-go突现线索被抑制, 而对于go颜色奇异项线索来说, 随着时间间隔的增加, 注意捕获效应减少。结果与相倚捕获假说和抑制独立捕获假说不符, 支持注意转移假说：自上而下的注意控制定势通过把注意从和目标不匹配的特征位置转移发挥作用; 颜色奇异项线索和突现线索的注意捕获机制相同, 但是突现线索相对于颜色奇异项线索来说, 在与目标不匹配的条件下, 更容易捕获注意, 更难被抑制。     

工作记忆负荷、形状干扰对聋人与听力正常人注意捕获影响的眼动研究

通过记录和分析被试的行为和眼动指标,本研究试图探讨不同工作记忆负荷下,形状干扰对聋人与听力正常人不同视野位置上刺激信息捕获注意的异同。研究结果表明：（1）形状干扰刺激虽然没有影响被试视觉加工的认知绩效,但被试的眼动模式会由于工作记忆负荷的改变而改变,高工作记忆负荷时,有形状干扰的注视次数高于无形状干扰。（2）工作记忆负荷、视野位置影响被试视觉加工任务的完成,被试在不同视野位置的加工过程表现出不一致的眼动模式。（3）聋人视觉加工在高工作记忆负荷时存在一定的劣势,但其对不同视野位置的信息加工及形状干扰所产生的注意捕获效应与听力正常人一致。     

Capturing attention is not that simple: Different mechanisms for stimulus-driven and contingent capture

Attentional orienting can be involuntarily directed to task-irrelevant stimuli, but it remains unsolved whether such attentional capture is contingent on top-down settings or could be purely stimulus-driven. We propose that attentional capture depends on the stimulus property because transient and static features are processed differently; thus, they might be modulated differently by top-down controls. To test this hybrid account, we adopted a spatial cuing paradigm in which a noninformative onset or color cue preceded an onset or color target with various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Results showed that the onset cue captured attention regardless of target type at short—but not long—SOAs. In contrast, the color cue captured attention at short and long SOAs, but only with a color target. The overall pattern of results corroborates our hypothesis, suggesting that different mechanisms are at work for stimulus-driven capture (by onset) and contingent capture (by color). Stimulus-driven capture elicits reflexive involuntary orienting, and contingent capture elicits voluntary feature-based enhancement.