Impact of a brief auditory attention training on a modified colour-word Stroop task in a high anxiety and worry sample

Poor attentional control leads to attentional biases that are implicated in psychological distress. Attention Training Technique (ATT) is an auditory intervention designed to strengthen attentional control. Research indicates that ATT alleviates anxiety and depressive symptoms. This study is a randomised control trial with repeated measures that tested if a lab-based, single-exposure of ATT strengthened attentional control. Forty-six nonclinical, high anxiety/worry participants received either ATT or a sham control intervention. Attentional control was assessed using the standard and a modified version of the colour-word Stroop task. The modified version incorporated tactile interference to increase perceptual load. A series of mixed effects models, simple contrasts, and z-tests were used to evaluate if cross-modal interference worsened, and whether ATT was beneficial to, attentional control. Tactile interference increased reaction times but, when Stroop interference was controlled for, this was only true on incongruent trials. The impact of ATT was greatest under high perceptual load.     

旧客体抑制和新客体捕获视角下预览效应的机制

预览效应是一种在已经存在的多个旧客体中优先选择多个新客体, 对新客体表现出优先加工的现象。文章综述了预览效应认知神经机制的两种主要观点：(1)旧客体抑制观点, 认为预览效应是由于对旧客体的抑制; (2)新客体突现捕获注意观点, 认为预览效应是由于新客体出现伴随着亮度突然增加捕获注意。这两种观点之间的主要争论在于：预览效应与新旧客体亮度变化的关系; 新旧客体的颜色关系是否影响对目标的搜索; 在一些因素的作用下, 旧客体形状变化是否还会破坏预览效应。文章指出, 预览效应是旧客体抑制机制与新客体突现捕获注意机制共同作用的结果。     

线索靶子关联和搜索策略对注意捕获的作用

采用线索化范式, 通过实验任务设计线索与靶子不同的关联并鼓励被试采用不同的搜索策略, 探讨线索与靶子间的知觉关联、语义关联及特征独子检测模式、特征搜索模式对注意捕获的作用。通过线索无效条件和线索有效条件反应时之差判断每一条件下的捕获量, 并综合各条件的反应情况做出结论如下：(1)线索与靶子的知觉关联调控注意捕获, 其效应不受语义关联和搜索策略影响; (2)线索与靶子的语义关联只在排除知觉关联后调控注意捕获; (3)控制知觉关联和语义关联后, 特征搜索模式不影响注意捕获, 而特征独子检测模式对注意捕获有影响。这表明语义知识和知觉经验根据当前任务要求共同作用指导个体的视觉加工, 表现了人类加工系统的灵活性和可调节性。     

Attentional Capture by Emotional Stimuli: Manipulation of Emotional Valence by the Sample Pre‐rating Method

Eye movements directed at emotional and neutral pictures were investigated. Participants were instructed to fixate on a target and avoid looking at a non‐target. Results of trials consisting of emotional and neutral pictures were analyzed based on participants’ evaluations of the stimuli before the experiment. Results indicated that the number and duration of fixations were larger and longer for targets than for non‐targets. Further, the probability of first fixation was less for neutral targets than for emotional targets. This suggests that unpleasant pictures capture visual attention and that the attentional orienting is subject to automatic response. The possibility that top‐down processes of visual attention may be involved in attentional capture was also discussed.     

Concurrent anticipation of two object dimensions during grasping in 10-month-old infants: A quantitative analysis

The anticipation of more than one object dimension while grasping for objects has been rarely investigated in infancy. The few existing studies by Newell et al. and Schum et al. have revealed mixed results probably mainly due to methodological limitations. Therefore, the present experiments tested concurrent anticipatory grasping for two object dimensions, namely, object size and object orientation using a quantitative motion capture system (Vicon), in 10-month-old infants and adults. We presented objects varying in size (small vs. large) and orientation (horizontally vs. vertically) and analyzed participants’ anticipatory hand configurations. As with adults, we observed that infants rotated their wrists, thumbs, and index fingers as a function of object orientation and adjusted their maximum grip apertures and their grip apertures shortly before they touched the objects as a function of object size. Analyses on an individual level showed that infants like adults anticipated both dimensions when the maximal values of aperture and angle were used but not when the measures shortly before touch were considered. Thus, the ability to anticipate more than one object dimension can already be observed at 10 months of age but seems to improve considerably over the first year of life.     

Examination of reactive motor responses to Achilles tendon vibrations during an inhibitory stepping reaction time task

Inhibition is known to influence balance, step initiation and gait control. A specific subcomponent of inhibition, the perceptual inhibition process, has been suggested to be specifically involved in the integration of proprioceptive information that is necessary for efficient postural responses. This study aimed to investigate the inhibition requirements of planning and executing a choice step initiation task in young adults following experimental perturbation of proprioceptive information using Achilles tendon vibrations. We developed an inhibitory stepping reaction time task in which participants had to step in response to visual arrows that manipulated specific perceptual or motor inhibition according to two proprioceptive configurations: without or with application of vibrations. Performance of twenty-eight participants (mean age 21 years) showed that Achilles tendon vibrations induced an increase in attentional demands (higher reaction time and longer motor responses). Further, this increase in attentional demands did not affect specifically the different inhibitory processes tested in this reactive stepping task. It suggests that attentional demands associated with the vibratory perturbation to postural control do not lead to a shift from automatic to more attentional inhibition processes, at least in young adults.     

Linking attentional control and PTSD symptom severity: the role of rumination

Although deficits in attentional control have been linked to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the mechanism that may account for this association has not been fully elucidated. The present study examined rumination as a mediator of the relationship between attentional control and PTSD symptoms. Veterans with PTSD and trauma-exposed veterans without PTSD completed measures of attentional control, rumination, and PTSD symptom severity. As predicted, the findings showed that veterans with PTSD reported significantly lower levels of attentional control than veterans without PTSD. Veterans with PTSD also reported significantly higher levels of rumination than veterans without PTSD. Subsequent analysis of the total sample revealed that the relationship between attentional control and PTSD symptom severity was accounted for by excessive rumination. Attentional control may contribute to PTSD symptoms through excessive rumination. Attentional control and rumination may be important targets for PTSD interventions.     

Attentional bias for body and food in eating disorders: increased distraction, speeded detection, or both?

Previous research suggests that eating disorder patients show an attentional bias for body- and food-related information. However, so far little is known about the mechanisms that underlie the attentional favoring of this particular information in eating disorder patients. In the present study, we used both a body and a food visual search task to study speeded detection and increased distraction in eating disorder patients (n=67) and healthy controls (n=60). Compared with controls, eating disorder patients showed evidence of speeded detection of body-related information, and increased distraction by food information. These results suggest that the mechanism underlying the biased attentional allocation of eating disorder patients varies, and is dependent upon the type of information they are presented with.     

The cognitive locus of distraction by acoustic novelty in the cross-modal oddball task

Unexpected stimuli are often able to distract us away from a task at hand. The present study seeks to explore some of the mechanisms underpinning this phenomenon. Studies of involuntary attention capture using the oddball task have repeatedly shown that infrequent auditory changes in a series of otherwise repeating sounds trigger an automatic response to the novel or deviant stimulus. This attention capture has been shown to disrupt participants' behavioral performance in a primary task, even when distractors and targets are asynchronous and presented in distinct sensory modalities. This distraction effect is generally considered as a by-product of the capture of attention by the novel or deviant stimulus, but the exact cognitive locus of this effect and the interplay between attention capture and target processing has remained relatively ignored. The present study reports three behavioral experiments using a cross-modal oddball task to examine whether the distraction triggered by auditory novelty affects the processing of the target stimuli. Our results showed that variations in the demands placed on the visual analysis (Experiment 1) or categorical processing of the target (Experiment 2) did not impact on distraction. Instead, the cancellation of distraction by the presentation of an irrelevant visual stimulus presented immediately before the visual target (Experiment 3) suggested that distraction originated in the shifts of attention occurring between attention capture and the onset of the target processing. Possible accounts of these shifts are discussed.     

Towards a cognitive model of distraction by auditory novelty: The role of involuntary attention capture and semantic processing

Unexpected auditory stimuli are potent distractors, able to break through selective attention and disrupt performance in an unrelated visual task. This study examined the processing fate of novel sounds by examining the extent to which their semantic content is analyzed and whether the outcome of this processing can impact on subsequent behavior. This issue was investigated across five laboratory experiments in which participants categorized visual left and right arrows while instructed to ignore irrelevant sounds. The results showed that auditory novels that were incongruent with the visual target (e.g., word “left” presented before a right arrow) disrupted performance over and above congruent novels (semantic effect) while both types of novels delayed responses in the visual task compared to a standard sound (novelty effect). No semantic effect was observed for congruent and incongruent standards, suggesting that novelty detection is necessary for involuntary semantic processing to unravel. While the novelty effect augmented as the difference between novels and the standard increased, the semantic effect was immune to this variation. Furthermore, the novelty effect decreased across the task while the semantic effect did not. A general cognitive framework is proposed encompassing these new findings and previous work in an attempt to account for the behavioral impact of irrelevant auditory novels on primary task performance.