Hold the future,let the past go: Attention prefers the features of future targets

Previous studies have shown that attention can be captured by task-irrelevant distractors under the guidance of attentional control settings. However, it is unknown whether people can establish an attentional control setting (ACS) for a sequence of distinct events. The present study tested that question by asking observers to expect a sequence of two colored targets in a specific order. The results show that irrelevant distractors that matched either the color of the first expected target or that of the second target captured attention. Thus observers are unable to temporarily suppress the color of the future target in their ACS. However, the temporal order of targets is still useful for guiding attention: Observers were able to abandon the color of the first target and maintain an ACS for the second one as long as there was a sufficient time interval between the two targets.     

Development of oral motor behavior related to the skill assisted spoon feeding

Milestones in the typical development of eating skills are considered to be nippling (breast or bottle), eating from a spoon, drinking from a cup, biting and chewing.The purpose of this research was to study the development and consolidation of oral motor behavior related to the skill assisted spoon feeding in young infants. The present study longitudinally investigated the development of this skill in 39 healthy children from the start of spoon feeding until the skill was acquired. The Observation List Spoon Feeding with 7 observation items for oral motor behavior and 6 items for abnormal behavior was used. Results showed that infants between 4 and 8 months of age needed 5.7 weeks (SD 2.1), with a range of 8 weeks (from 2 to 10 weeks) to acquire this skill. No significant correlation (p = .109) between age at start spoon feeding and weeks needed to develop the skill was found. During this period oral motor behavior consolidated and abnormal behavior diminished.With this study it is shown that the period in weeks needed to acquire the oral motor behavior for the skill assisted spoon feeding is important in case of feeding problems.     

No commonality between attentional capture and attentional blink

Visual search for a unique target is impaired when a salient distractor is presented (attentional capture). This phenomenon is said to occur because attention is diverted to a distractor before it reaches the target. Similarly, perception of the second of two targets embedded in a rapid stream of nontargets is impaired, suggesting attentional deprivation due to the processing of the first target (attentional blink). We examined whether these phenomena emerge from a common underlying attentional mechanism by using correlation studies. If these phenomena share a common foundation, the magnitude of these deficits should show within-subject correlations. Participants (N?=?135) revealed significant attentional deficits during spatial and temporal capture and the attentional blink tasks. However, no significant correlation was found among these tasks. Experiment 2 (N?=?95) replicated this finding using the same procedure as that used in Experiment 1 but included another attentional blink task that required spatial switching between the two targets. Strong correlations emerged only between the two attentional blink tasks (with/without spatial switching). The present results suggest that attentional deficits during spatial and temporal capture and the attentional blink tasks reflect different aspects of attention.     

Complex attentional control settings

One way that dis/likes are formed is through evaluative conditioning (EC). In two experiments we investigated the role of cognitive resources in flavour–flavour conditioning. Both experiments employed an EC procedure in which three novel flavoured conditioned stimuli (CSs) were consumed. One was consumed with a pleasant unconditioned stimulus (US; CS+ sugar), one with an aversive US (CS+ saline), and a third with plain water (CS–). Half of participants in each experiment performed a cognitive load task during conditioning. We measured EC using self-reported measures of liking (Experiments 1 and 2) and an indirect measure of liking: drink pick-up latency (Experiment 2). In both experiments, differential EC was observed in the no cognitive load condition but not in the cognitive load condition. This pattern of results was observed in self-reported measures of liking as well as in the drink pick-up latency data. Results from both experiments show that EC occurs only when there are sufficient cognitive resources available. The fact that this was observed using both self-reported and indirect measures suggests that insufficient cognitive resources affect learning itself rather than merely obstructing reporting.     

Exploring the breadth of the top-down representations that control attentional disengagement

Recent studies attribute top-down control as the primary determinant of the speed with which attention can be disengaged from an object, and disengagement has received increased interest as a means to distinguish between top-down and bottom-up accounts of attention capture. We present the results of three experiments exploring the breadth of the representations that delay attentional disengagement based on top-down goals. Experiments 1 and 2 examined whether objects similar to an observers' search target, but differing in luminance and hue, delayed the reallocation of attention in a search paradigm designed to isolate disengagement time. Experiment 3 explored whether the representations that delay disengagement are based on absolute similarity with the search target, or are tuned based on target/nontarget relationships. These three studies confirmed the role of top-down goals in automatically contributing to dwell times and revealed that the representations that underlie disengagement effects are broad (automatically delaying disengagement for items similar, but not identical to, the search target). In some cases, attention sets appeared to be graded in nature, but in others target–distractor relationships influenced the degree to which an irrelevant item held attention. Implications for theories of attention capture and potential functional significance of these automatic effects are discussed.     

Early adolescents show sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by emotional distractors

A child's ability to continuously pay attention to a cognitive task is often challenged by distracting events. Distraction is especially detrimental in a learning or classroom environment in which attended information is typically associated with establishing skills and knowledge. Here we report a study examining the effect of emotional distractors on performance in a subsequent visual lexical decision task in 11- to 13-year-old students (n=30). Lexical decisions about neutral verbs and verb-like pseudowords (i.e., targets) were analysed as a function of the preceding distractor type (pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant photos) and the picture–target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA; 200 or 600 ms). Across distractor categories, emotionally arousing pictures prolonged decisions about word targets when compared to neutral pictures, irrespective of the SOA. The present results demonstrate that similar to adults, early adolescent students exhibit sustained susceptibility to cognitive interference by irrelevant emotional events.     

Emotional triangles: A test of emotion-based attentional capture by simple geometric shapes

Previous work has proposed that simple geometric shapes, carrying the features present within negative or threatening faces are especially effective at capturing or guiding attention. Here we test this account and provide converging evidence for a threat-based attentional advantage. Experiment 1 found that downward-pointing triangles continue to be detected more efficiently than upward-pointing triangles when: (i) both overall RT and search slope measures are obtained; and (ii) when the set size is varied and the stimuli are presented in random configurations. Experiment 2 tested and ruled out an alternative account of the selection advantage, based on differences between triangle shape consistencies with scene perspective cues. Overall, the data provide converging evidence that simple geometric shapes, which might be particularly important in providing emotional signals in faces, can also attract attention preferentially even when presented outside of a face context.     

Visual field asymmetry in attentional capture

The present study examined the spatial distribution of involuntary attentional capture over the two visual hemi-fields. A new experiment, and an analysis of three previous experiments showed that distractors in the left visual field that matched a sought-for target in color produced a much larger capture effect than identical distractors in the right visual field, revealing a visual field asymmetry in color-based contingent capture. On the other hand, abrupt onsets in the two hemi-fields did not differ in the magnitude of their capture effect, indicating a symmetric distribution of onset capture. The different spatial patterns for contingent capture and onset capture reveal differences between the two types of attentional capture, possibly indicating differences in the underlying brain mechanisms.     

Awareness of the saccade goal in oculomotor selection: Your eyes go before you know

The aim of the present study was to investigate how saccadic selection relates to people’s awareness of the saliency and identity of a saccade goal. Observers were instructed to make an eye movement to either the most salient line segment (Experiment 1) or the only right-tilted element (Experiment 2) in a visual search display. The display was masked contingent on the first eye movement and after each trial observers indicated whether or not they had correctly selected the target. Whereas people’s awareness concerning the saliency of the saccade goal was generally low, their awareness concerning the identity was high. Observers’ awareness of the saccade goal was not related to saccadic performance. Whereas saccadic selection consistently varied as a function of saccade latency, people’s awareness concerning the saliency or identity of the saccade goal did not. The results suggest that saccadic selection is primarily driven by subconscious processes.     

Valuable orientations capture attention

Visual attention has long been known to be drawn to stimuli that are physically salient or congruent with task-specific goals. Several recent studies have shown that attention is also captured by stimuli that are neither salient nor task relevant, but that are rendered in a colour that has previously been associated with reward. We investigated whether another feature dimension—orientation—can be associated with reward via learning and thereby elicit value-driven attentional capture. In a training phase, participants received a monetary reward for identifying the colour of Gabor patches exhibiting one of two target orientations. A subsequent test phase in which no reward was delivered required participants to search for Gabor patches exhibiting one of two spatial frequencies (orientation was now irrelevant to the task). Previously rewarded orientations robustly captured attention. We conclude that reward learning can imbue features other than colour—in this case, specific orientations—with persistent value.