Relationships between the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style and psychiatric subclassification

Examined the ability of a self-report measure of attentional and interpersonal characteristics to discriminate between groups of psychiatric patients and normal controls. Seventy-eight psychiatric patients and 30 nonpsychiatric medical inpatients completed the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style (TAIS). Discriminant analyses of TAIS scores showed that: (a) psychiatric patients in comparison with normal controls described themselves as more overloaded by external and internal stimuli and as less effective in narrowing their attentional focus to task-relevant stimuli; (b) good premorbid schizophrenics appeared more externally overloaded and less able to narrow attentional focus than poor premorbid schizophrenics; and (c) psychotics and neurotics described themselves as more introverted and less pleasant in social encounters, while individuals diagnosed as character or personality disorders tended to be more extroverted and impulsive. The results were compatible with past experimental work and clinical reports identifying attentional and interpersonal differences among psychiatric subgroups.     

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.     

Behavioral inhibition and attentional network functioning

The goal of the present study was to examine the interrelations between the sensitivity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and attentional network functioning (i.e., the orienting, alerting, and executive attentional networks), with the aim of identifying a potentially relevant mechanism for understanding the relation between BIS sensitivity and the pathogenesis of anxiety and its disorders. To this end, 99 participants were recruited from the community and administered a questionnaire assessing BIS sensitivity, as well as the Attentional Network Test. Results demonstrated a significant association between BIS sensitivity and enhanced orienting attention. Further, BIS sensitivity predicted orienting attention above and beyond relevant covariates, including state negative affect. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the role of BIS sensitivity in the pathogenesis of pathological anxiety.     

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.     

Dysfunctional personality traits in adolescence: effects on alerting,orienting and executive control of attention

The present study examined attentional networks performance in 39 adolescents with dysfunctional personality traits, split into two group, Group < 10 and Group ≥ 10, according to the number of criteria they met at the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders. The attentional performance has been tested by means of a modified version of the Attentional Network Test (ANTI-V) which allows testing both phasic and tonic components of the alerting system, the exogenous aspect of the orienting system, the executive network and their interactions. Results showed that the orienting costs of having an invalid spatial cue were reduced in the Group ≥ 10 criteria compared to the Group < 10. Moreover, adolescents included in the Group ≥ 10 showed lower conflict when attention was cued to the target location (valid trials) but showed normal interference when there was no overpowering focus of attention (invalid trials). The results found with ANOVA after splitting the sample into two categorical groups were also observed in a complementary correlation analysis keeping intact the continuous nature of such variables. These findings are consistent with the notion that dysfunctional features of personality disorders may represent the psychological manifestations of a neuropsychological abnormality in attention and executive functioning. Finally, we discuss the implications of this attentional anomaly for dysfunctional personality traits and behaviour.     

Effects of increasing cognitive load on sustained attention tasks in schizophrenic disorders and schizotypy

In this study we analyze the attentional performance using different cognitive load attentional tasks: low-load cognition (0-CPT) and high-load cognition (DS-CPT). Participants were a group of schizophrenic patients and two groups of normal population psychometrically classified as low schizotypy and high schizotypy according to the SPQ. Our results show that schizophrenic patients were more sensitive to increments on cognitive load, being their attentional performace worse than the rest of the groups. The lack of significant findings in vigilance on the schizotypal traits group is discussed in terms of conceptual and methodological issues about the utility of psychometric strategies to identify vulnerable populations within the spectrum of the schizophrenic disorders.     

Attentional bias to threat in clinical anxiety states

Abstract

Attentional responses to threat stimuli were assessed in anxious patients, normal controls, and subjects who had recovered from a clinical anxiety state. The main aims of the study were: (1) to replicate MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata's (1986) finding of an attentional bias to threat in currently anxious patients compared with normal control subjects; (2) to assess whether the bias is related to the predominant worries of anxious patients; and (3) to investigate whether the bias is present in recovered anxious patients. The original finding of an anxiety-related attentional bias was replicated. The results indicated that the extent to which anxious patients selectively attended to social threat words was associated with the seventy of their social worries. The attentional responses of the recovered anxious group were not significantly differentiated from those of the currently anxious or normal control groups.     

Cortisol,stress, and attentional bias toward threat

Abstract

Attentional bias toward threatening stimuli is a central characteristic of anxiety and acute stress. Recent small-scale studies have provided divergent perspectives on the association between the stress hormone cortisol and attentional bias toward threat cues. In a larger sample size than previous studies, we examined this association by investigating the impact of cortisol on attentional bias in two studies using a psychological stressor (N=35) and a physical stressor (N=65), respectively. Attentional bias and salivary cortisol were measured prior to and following the administration of a stressful task designed to increase cortisol levels. Results across these studies were equivocal relative to the association between baseline cortisol and baseline attentional bias. In addition, the association between acute change in cortisol and change in attentional bias appeared to differ as a function of the presence or absence of psychological stress. There was a trend toward a stronger negative association between acute cortisol change and attentional bias change among women relative to men. These results imply that the association between cortisol and attentional bias may be moderated by additional factors, such as gender or presence of stress.     

Effects of test anxiety,ego stress,and attentional skills training on arithmetic reasoning: An experimental evaluation of a brief counseling strategy

Abstract

Two hundred forty high school students (120 male and 120 female) in India performed a moderately difficult multiple choice Arithmetic Reasoning task after undergoing short-term (40 minutes) cognitive treatment in the form of Attentional Skills Training. A 2 × 2 × 2 (Test Anxiety x Attentional Skills Training x Stress) design with separate analysis for boys and girls indicated these results: with intervention the high anxiety subjects under ego stress conditions, compared to their high-anxious control, low-anxious ego stress, or low-anxious control counterparts, reported the maximum significant improvement in performance on the Arithmetic Reasoning test. The low-anxiety subjects performed consistently well with or without treatment or stress conditions. The findings shed new light on the attentional theory of test anxiety, and it was reasoned that long-term effects of cognitive treatment be studied by using varied performance tasks (difficulty level controlled) on different gender and age groups across cultures.     

Effects of test anxiety, ego stress, and attentional skills training on arithmetic reasoning: An experimental evaluation of a brief counseling strategy

Abstract Two hundred forty high school students (120 male and 120 female) in India performed a moderately difficult multiple choice Arithmetic Reasoning task after undergoing short-term (40 minutes) cognitive treatment in the form of Attentional Skills Training. A 2 × 2 × 2 (Test Anxiety x Attentional Skills Training x Stress) design with separate analysis for boys and girls indicated these results: with intervention the high anxiety subjects under ego stress conditions, compared to their high-anxious control, low-anxious ego stress, or low-anxious control counterparts, reported the maximum significant improvement in performance on the Arithmetic Reasoning test. The low-anxiety subjects performed consistently well with or without treatment or stress conditions. The findings shed new light on the attentional theory of test anxiety, and it was reasoned that long-term effects of cognitive treatment be studied by using varied performance tasks (difficulty level controlled) on different gender and age groups across cultures.     

Relationships among defensive styles, cognitive styles, processing styles, and attentional styles of normal adolescents

Cognitive and psychodynamic theorists agree that an individual's personality and behavior are determined by both cognitive and dynamic processes. This study examined the relationship among three cognitive approaches--cognitive style, attentional style, and processing style--and examined their relations to defensive style. Adolescents from Grades 11 and 12 (146 boys, 164 girls) were examined in groups for cognitive style (Group Embedded Figures Test), attentional style (Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style), processing style (a sequential/simultaneous processing test battery), and defensive style (Defense Mechanism Inventory). Least squares completely randomized two-way analyses of variance (or analyses of covariance where applicable) were employed to assess the relations among the three cognitive measures and/or between the cognitive measures and defensive style. While most comparisons were nonsignificant, a significant relationship was observed between sequential processing and field-dependence and between simultaneous processing and field-independence. Also, a trend was noted between field-independence and ideational defenses and between field-dependence and repression-based defenses.     

Attentional processing of emotional material in types of anxiety and depression

ABSTRACT

The present study was designed to address the hypothesis that differences and similarities in patterns of attentional processing in recently proposed types of anxiety and depression are connected with the dominant (reactive, regulative) function they play in stimulation processing and their structural components. Participants (N?=?1247) filled out the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire, which assesses types of anxiety and depression, and completed the Emotional Faces Attentional Test one week later. The obtained results confirmed our prediction and suggested that the proposed typology of anxiety and depression is valid in the adaptive meanings of both phenomena.     

视觉搜索中注意模板促进搜索的内在机制

生物的视觉搜索能力对适应外部复杂环境具有非常重要的生存意义。注意模板可以在搜索任务的过程中增强相关信息和抑制无关信息,从而快速找到目标。总结近期研究结果主要有以下发现：在建立注意模板的过程中并不能明确是基于语义信息还是视觉特征信息;注意模板不仅可以存储在工作记忆中,也可以存储在长时记忆中;不同类型注意模板的神经机制存在差异。未来的研究应关注注意模板在建立过程中内部信息如何传递,并关注不同人群注意模板的神经机制,以及解决拒绝模板抑制机制的理论争议。     

Attentional fixation in panic disorder

According to Beck's (1988) clinical observations, patients with panic disorder describe a fixation on their distressing physical and psychological symptoms and an inability to access corrective information during panic attacks. The present study sought to evaluate empirically the notion that attentional fixation is characteristic of these patients. A subset of panic patients participating in 3 cognitive therapy clinical trials completed the Attentional Fixation Questionnaire (AFQ) at intake, during treatment and at termination. The AFQ had adequate internal consistency at all time intervals, and it correlated positively with measures of depression, anxiety and distorted cognitive content. At termination, the AFQ total score and nearly all single items decreased significantly, and patients who continued to meet diagnostic criteria for panic disorder scored higher on most items than patients who no longer met diagnostic criteria for panic disorder. These preliminary data suggest that attentional fixation is an important dimension of cognition relevant to panic disorder.     

Limits of control: The effects of uncontrollability experiences on the efficiency of attentional control

Two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of experiencing uncontrollability on the efficiency of attentional control. The experience of uncontrollability was induced either by unsolvable tasks (Experiment 1) or by tasks in which non-contingent feedback was provided (Experiment 2). A version of the Attentional Network Test-Interactions with an additional measure of vigilance (ANTI-V) was used to evaluate the efficiency of the attentional networks (i.e., alerting, orienting, and executive). Results of both experiments revealed a decreased efficiency of executive attention in participants who experienced stable control deprivation but no negative effects in participants who were able to restore their sense of previously deprived control. Additionally, when participants were asked to perform unsolvable tasks and did not receive feedback (Experiment 1), detrimental effects on the orienting network and vigilance were observed. The motivational and cognitive mechanisms underlying the effects of various uncontrollability experiences on conflict resolution and attentional control are discussed.     

Attentional interference by threat and post-traumatic stress disorder: The role of thought control strategies

Attentional interference by threat is associated with PTSD, but the mechanisms of this relationship remain unclear. Attentional interference might be related to increased use of maladaptive thought control strategies, such as suppressing unwanted thoughts (thought suppression) or replacing threatening thoughts with everyday concerns (worry), which increase PTSD risk. Conversely, attentional interference might be associated with reduced use of adaptive strategies, such as talking about threatening thoughts (social control), which decrease PTSD risk. This study tested if thought control strategies mediate the relationship between attentional interference and PTSD. Sixty-one male Vietnam-era veterans completed measures of PTSD symptoms and thought control strategies. Participants also completed a Visual Search Task measuring attentional interference, which required participants to identify a target letter string among a group of threat or neutral words. Attentional interference by threat was related to PTSD symptoms, and mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of attentional interference through thought suppression and worry. Attentional interference was related to re-experiencing and avoidance, but not hyperarousal, symptom clusters. Thought suppression was a unique mediator for re-experiencing, whereas thought suppression and worry both mediated the relationship with avoidance. These results offer evidence for maladaptive thought control strategies as a mechanism linking attentional biases for threat to PTSD.     

Correlation between tests of attention and performance on grooved and Purdue pegboards in normal subjects

This study investigated the relation between tests of manual dexterity and attentional functions with 49 normal, right-handed medical students (26 women, 23 men, ages 19-30 years) who were assessed with a Purdue Pegboard Test, Grooved Pegboard Test, and a Test for Attentional Performance, comprising measures of tonic and phasic alertness and divided attention. Weak to moderately high partial correlations controlling for finger size were obtained between pegboard test performance of the left hand and phasic alertness (r = .31-.50). Purdue Pegboard Assembly subtest scores were weakly correlated with divided attention (r = -.39). These findings suggest that attention is an important determinant of performance for manual dexterity tests of the nondominant hand.     

抑郁患者的注意偏向

抑郁患者的注意偏向是抑郁认知研究中的重要问题。该文从研究范式、注意偏向特点及理论解释等方面进行了探讨,在研究范式上有Stroop范式、点探测任务和线索–靶子范式等,在抑郁患者注意偏向的特点上有对象为临床患者、需要阈上刺激、刺激内容针对抑郁患者和刺激强度不能太弱等,在理论解释上有注意成分、注意聚焦变窄、认知负荷和唤醒水平等,并对将来的研究方向进行了探讨     

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。     

高趋近动机积极情绪对注意灵活性的影响

该研究通过两个实验探讨不同趋近动机强度的积极情绪对注意灵活性的影响。实验一中40名大学生被试分别在高趋近和低趋近动机积极情绪条件下完成隐性注意朝向任务;实验二以35名大学生为被试,考察高趋近动机积极情绪和中性情绪条件下的注意灵活性。两项实验结果表明,与低趋近动机积极情绪和中性情绪条件相比,高趋近动机积极情绪下个体的注意灵活性降低,实验结果支持情绪的动机维度模型。