Determinants of assessing efficiency within auditory attention networks

The attention network test (ANT) assesses efficiency across alerting, orienting, and executive components of visual attention. This study examined approaches to assessing auditory attention networks, and performance was compared to the visual ANT. Results showed (1) alerting was sufficiently elicited in a pitch discrimination and sound localization task, although these effects were unrelated, (2) weak orienting of attention was elicited through pitch discrimination, which varied based on ISI and conflict level, but robust orienting of attention was found through sound localization, and (3) executive control was sufficiently assessed in both pitch discrimination and sound localization tasks, but these effects were unrelated. Correlation analysis suggested that, unlike alerting and orienting, sound localization auditory executive control functions tap a shared attention network system. Overall, the results suggest that auditory ANT measures are largely task and modality specific, with sound localization offering potential to assess all three attention networks in a single task.     

Efficiency and interactions of alerting,orienting and executive networks: The impact of imperative stimulus type

The Attention Network Test (ANT) generates measures of three attention networks: alerting, orienting and executive control. Arrows have been generally used as imperative stimuli in the different versions of this paradigm. However, it is unknown whether the directional nature of these stimuli can modulate the efficiency of the executive control and its interaction with alerting and orienting. We developed three ANT variants to examine attentional effects in response to directional and non-directional stimuli. Arrows (ANTI-A), colored fruits (ANTI-F) and black geometrical-shape (ANTI-G) were used as imperative stimuli (i.e., flanker stimuli). Data collected from fifty-two university students, in two experiments, showed that arrows stimuli produced a greater interference effect and a greater orienting effect as compared to the other stimuli. Moreover, only arrows modulated the interaction between executive control and orienting: a reduced flanker effect in spatially cued trials was only observed in ANTI-A. These results suggest that the directional value of the stimuli increases the conflict and modulates the efficiency of executive control and its interaction with orienting network.     

French adaptation of the Attentional Control Scale: Confirmatory factor analyses and relationship with trait anxiety and efficiency of orienting,alerting, and executive control attentional networks

BackgroundThe Attentional Control Scale (ACS) is a self-report questionnaire that measures individual differences in attentional control.ObjectiveThis study compared four models of the French version of the ACS and examined its links to trait anxiety and three attentional networks (orienting, alerting, and executive control) measured with the Attention Network Test (ANT).ResultsConfirmatory analyses conducted with a sample of 284 university students supported a two-factor (focusing and shifting) model. For 59 participants who completed the ANT, we found a positive correlation between focusing and the executive control network, while shifting was negatively correlated with alerting and orienting. Trait anxiety was negatively correlated with focusing and the alerting and executive control networks.ConclusionResults are discussed with a view to improving the assessment of attentional control, a key executive dimension for emotion regulation and attentional disengagement in anxiety.     

万拉法新对抑郁症注意网络功能的影响

目的 研究抑郁症的注意网络状况及抑制神经递质再摄取的药物万拉法新对其的影响,探索神经递质与注意网络的关系。方法 对32例应用万拉法新治疗的抑郁症患者治疗前及疗后6周进行注意网络测定和临床症状评分。结果 与正常组比较,抑郁组的警觉网络和执行控制网络效率差异有显著性,定向网络效率差别无显著性。警觉网络效率与HAMD评分的睡眠障碍因子分呈负相关。治疗后,抑郁组的警觉效率显著增加,其改善与睡眠障碍的好转呈正相关。执行控制网络效率,平均反应时和临床症状评分均较治疗前显著降低,定向网络效率无变化。结论 抑郁症患者存在警觉和执行控制注意网络的异常,万拉法新可选择性地改善警觉和执行控制注意网络的异常而不影响其定向网络     

Attention Network Performance and Psychopathic Symptoms in Early Adolescence: An ERP Study

Reaction time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) measures were used to examine the relationships between psychopathic symptoms and three major attention networks (alerting, orienting, and executive attention) among a community sample of youth. Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick and Hare 2001) total and subscale scores were negatively correlated with ERP measures of attentional alerting, indicating that youth with psychopathic symptoms had difficulty using warning cues to prepare for upcoming targets. APSD total scores were not related to performance on measures of orienting or executive attention, although weaker executive attention was found among youth with higher scores on the Impulsivity subscale. These findings support attention-based models of psychopathy and provide evidence of specific deficits in attentional alerting among youth with psychopathic traits. Deficiencies in attentional alerting may be related to noradrenergic functioning and may have cascading effects on higher order cognitive and affective processing.     

The effect of music-induced mood on attentional networks

Attention network theory suggests that there are three separate neural networks that execute the discrete functions of alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Previous research on the influence of mood on attention has shown subtle and inconsistent results. The attention network theory may aid in clarifying the influence of mood on attention. The present study investigated the influence of mood on attentional networks in a normal population. Participants performed the Attention Network Test (ANT), which provides functional measures of alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Positive or negative mood was induced by listening to music with a positive or negative valence, respectively; neutral mood was induced by reading a collection of basic facts about China. The results revealed that negative mood led to a significantly higher alerting efficiency relative to other moods, while there were no significant mood effects on orienting or executive attention efficiency. According to the algorithm underlying the ANT, the higher alerting efficiency in the negative mood condition can be attributed to relatively greater benefits of cueing effects. The findings are discussed in the context of the noradrenergic system and of evolutionary significance. Specifically, the increase in the alerting function during negative mood states may be due to the modulation effect of negative mood on the noradrenergic system, and/or to the survival benefit resulting from an increase in automatic vigilance towards negative information. The current results suggest that as the influence of negative mood on attention appears to specifically consist in an enhanced alerting function, it may not be found in studies where the three attentional networks are not dissociated.     

A longitudinal analysis of the attention networks in 6- to 11-year-old children

Attention is critical for everyday functioning. Posner and Petersen’s model of attention describes three neural networks involved in attention control—the alerting network for arousal, the orienting network for selecting sensory input and reorienting attention, and the executive network for the regulatory control of attention. No longitudinal research has examined relative change in these networks in children. A modified version of the attention network task (ANT) was used to examine changes in the three attention networks, three times over 12 months, in 114 6-, 8- and 10-year-olds. Findings showed that the alerting network continued to develop over this period, the orienting network had stabilized by 6 years, and the conflict network had largely stabilized by 7 years. The reorienting of attention was also assessed using invalid cues, which showed a similar developmental trajectory to the orienting attention network and had stabilized by 6 years. The results confirm that age 6 to 7 years is a critical period in the development of attention, in particular executive attention. The largest improvement over the evaluation period was between 6 and 7 years; however, subtle changes were found in attention beyond 8 years of age.     

Age-related differences in attentional networks of alerting and executive control in young, middle-aged, and older Chinese adults

Previous studies suggest that aging is associated with impairment of attention. However, it is not known whether this represents a global attentional deficit or relates to a specific attentional network. We used the attention network test to examine three groups of younger, middle-aged, and older participants with respect to the efficiency of three anatomically defined attentional networks: alerting network, orienting network, and executive control network. Age-related change was found to have the greatest effect on the executive network and the least effect on the alerting network as well as on overall mean response time. Impairment of the orienting network was found to be insignificant. Age-related deterioration of the prefrontal lobe, the dopaminergic system, and function of specific genes may explain the age-related changes in executive attention, which occur after the fourth decade of life.     

Attention network test — The impact of social information on executive control,alerting and orienting

According to the attention network approach, attention is best understood in terms of three functionally and neuroanatomically distinct networks — alerting, orienting, and executive attention. An important question is whether social information influences the efficiency of these networks. Using the same structure as the Attentional Network Test (ANT), we developed a variant of this test to examine attentional effects in response to stimuli with and without social-cognitive content. Fish, drawings or photographs of faces looking to the left or right were used as target stimuli. Results collected from twenty-four university students showed that photographs of faces positively affected attentional orienting and executive control, whereas reduced the efficiency of alerting, as compared to both face drawings and fish. These results support the status of human faces as a special class of visual stimuli for the human attentional systems.     

Hemispheric asymmetry in the efficiency of attentional networks

Despite the fact that hemispheric asymmetry of attention has been widely studied, a clear picture of this complex phenomenon is still lacking. The aim of the present study was to provide an efficient and reliable measurement of potential hemispheric asymmetries of three attentional networks, i.e. alerting, orienting and executive attention. Participants (N=125) were tested with the Lateralized Attention Network Test (LANT) that allowed us to investigate the efficiency of the networks in both visual fields (VF). We found a LVF advantage when a target occurred in an unattended location, which seems to reflect right hemisphere superiority in control of the reorienting of attention. Furthermore, a LVF advantage in conflict resolution was observed, which may indicate hemispheric asymmetry of the executive network. No VF effect for alerting was found. The results, consistent with the common notion of general right hemisphere dominance for attention, provide a more detailed account of hemispheric asymmetries of the attentional networks than previous studies using the LANT task.     

The three attentional networks: on their independence and interactions

The present investigation was aimed to the study of the three attentional networks (Alerting, Orienting, and Executive Function) and their interactions. A modification of the task developed by Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, and Posner (2002) was used, in which a cost and benefit paradigm was combined with a flanker task and an alerting signal. We obtained significant interactions as predicted. The alerting network seemed to inhibit the executive function network (a larger flanker-congruency effect was found on trials where an alerting signal had been previously presented). The orienting network influenced the executive function network in a positive way (the flanker effect was smaller for cued than for uncued trials). Finally, alertness increased orienting (the cueing effect was bigger after the alerting signal). This last result, taken together with previous findings, points to an influence in the sense of a faster orienting under alertness, rather than a larger one. These results offer new insight into the functioning of the attentional system.     

Caffeine modulates attention network function

The present work investigated the effects of caffeine (0 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg, 400 mg) on a flanker task designed to test Posner’s three visual attention network functions: alerting, orienting, and executive control [Posner, M. I. (2004). Cognitive neuroscience of attention. New York, NY: Guilford Press]. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind study using a repeated-measures design, we found that the effects of caffeine on visual attention vary as a function of dose and the attention network under examination. Caffeine improved alerting and executive control function in a dose–response manner, asymptoting at 200 mg; this effect is congruent with caffeine’s adenosine-mediated effects on dopamine-rich areas of brain, and the involvement of these areas in alerting and the executive control of visual attention. Higher doses of caffeine also led to a marginally less efficient allocation of visual attention towards cued regions during task performance (i.e., orienting). Taken together, results of this study demonstrate that caffeine has differential effects on visual attention networks as a function of dose, and such effects have implications for hypothesized interactions of caffeine, adenosine and dopamine in brain areas mediating visual attention.     

Different efficiencies of attentional orienting in different wandering minds

This study examined the relations between properties of attentional networks and Mind Wandering (MW) across individuals. For the attentional networks, we measured three components of attention, known as alerting, orienting, and executive control, using the Attention Network Test (ANT). To investigate MW, we measured thought probes embedded in the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). Moreover, four performance characteristics of the SART were calculated as behavioral indices of MW. Three of them showed significant associations with probed MW. Most research regarding MW focused on its relation to executive functions, while the present study revealed that MW, as indexed by self-reports and RT variability, was negatively correlated with orienting, specifically the exogenous orienting system. Furthermore, there was a positive association between RT variability and executive control. Our results suggest that individuals with higher tendency of MW are less sensitive to irrelevant external stimuli, supporting the decoupling hypothesis of MW.     

Upbeat and happy: Arousal as an important factor in studying attention

The present study examined the effects of music-induced mood changes on different components of visual attention. Affective valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low) were manipulated by having participants listen to one of four versions of a Mozart Sonata that varied in mode (major or minor) and tempo (fast or slow). Attention was measured in three domains—alerting, orienting, and executive control. Affective valence and arousal had an effect on executive control, but not on alerting or orienting. Individuals who experienced positive valence had less efficient control over their responses than those who experienced negative valence, but only when arousal levels were high. Positive and negative valence did not influence executive control measures when arousal levels were low. These findings demonstrate that affective valence and arousal interact with one another to influence the processing of items in visual attention.     

Bilingualism aids conflict resolution: evidence from the ANT task

The need of bilinguals to continuously control two languages during speech production may exert general effects on their attentional networks. To explore this issue we compared the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in the attentional network task (ANT) developed by Fan et al. [Fan, J., McCandliss, B.D. Sommer, T., Raz, A., Posner, M.I. (2002). Testing the efficiency and independence of attentional networks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 340-347]. This task is supposed to tap into three different attentional networks: alerting, orienting and executive control. The results revealed that bilingual participants were not only faster in performing the task, but also more efficient in the alerting and executive control networks. In particular, bilinguals were aided more by the presentation of an alerting cue, and were also better at resolving conflicting information. Furthermore, bilinguals experienced a reduced switching cost between the different type of trials compared to monolinguals. These results show that bilingualism exerts an influence in the attainment of efficient attentional mechanisms by young adults that are supposed to be at the peak of their attentional capabilities.     

Attentional networks and visuospatial working memory capacity in social anxiety

Social anxiety is associated with attentional bias and working memory for emotional stimuli; however, the ways in which social anxiety affects cognitive functions involving non-emotional stimuli remains unclear. The present study focused on the role of attentional networks (i.e. alerting, orienting, and executive control networks) and visuospatial working memory capacity (WMC) for non-emotional stimuli in the context of social anxiety. One hundred and seventeen undergraduates completed questionnaires on social anxiety. They then performed an attentional network test and a change detection task to measure visuospatial WMC. Orienting network and visuospatial WMC were positively correlated with social anxiety. A multiple regression analysis showed significant positive associations of alerting, orienting, and visuospatial WMC with social anxiety. Alerting, orienting networks, and high visuospatial WMC for non-emotional stimuli may predict degree of social anxiety.     

The development of and interaction among alerting,orienting, and executive attention in children

A sex-balanced sample (N = 96) of children from age 6.5 to age 12.5 completed a modified Attention Network Test. Across these ages, we found evidence for developmental changes to alerting and executive control but stable orienting. Additionally, we found that the youngest members of our sample manifested an interaction between alerting and executive control that is opposite to that typically found in adults; a reversal that diminishes with age to achieve the adult pattern by the older end of the age range of our sample.     

社会性信息对Flanker效应的影响

研究显示,面孔Flanker任务中,经典Flanker效应会消失,但其机制还不明确。本文在ANT-I范式的基础上,除常规的箭头Flanker,增加面孔Flanker、两侧为箭头中间为面孔和两侧为面孔中间为箭头的混合Flanker,探究造成该现象的可能原因。结果发现,当Flanker任务中的干扰刺激为箭头时,Flanker效应存在;而干扰刺激为面孔时,Flanker效应则消失了。提示,Flanker任务中干扰刺激的社会性可能是造成Flanker效应消失的原因。这为冲突信息加工中社会性与非社会性信息的控制机制提供了新的视角。     

Attentional networks,vigilance, and distraction as a function of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms in an adult community sample

Attentional difficulties are a core axis in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, establishing a consistent and detailed pattern of these neurocognitive alterations has not been an easy endeavour. Based on a dimensional approach to ADHD, the present study aims at comprehensively characterizing three key attentional domains: the three attentional networks (alerting, orienting, and executive attention), two components of vigilance (executive and arousal vigilance), and distraction. To do so, we modified a single, fine-grained task (the ANTI-Vea) by adding irrelevant distractors. One hundred and twenty undergraduates completed three self-reports of ADHD symptoms in childhood and adulthood and performed the ANTI-Vea. Despite the low reliability of some ANTI-Vea indexes, the task worked successfully. While ADHD symptoms in childhood were related to alerting network and arousal vigilance, symptoms in adulthood were linked to executive vigilance. No association between ADHD symptom severity and executive attention and distraction was found. In general, our hypotheses about the relationships between ADHD symptoms and attentional processes were partially supported. We discuss our findings according to ADHD theories and attention measurement.     

Upbeat and happy: arousal as an important factor in studying attention

The present study examined the effects of music-induced mood changes on different components of visual attention. Affective valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low) were manipulated by having participants listen to one of four versions of a Mozart Sonata that varied in mode (major or minor) and tempo (fast or slow). Attention was measured in three domains-alerting, orienting, and executive control. Affective valence and arousal had an effect on executive control, but not on alerting or orienting. Individuals who experienced positive valence had less efficient control over their responses than those who experienced negative valence, but only when arousal levels were high. Positive and negative valence did not influence executive control measures when arousal levels were low. These findings demonstrate that affective valence and arousal interact with one another to influence the processing of items in visual attention.