Role of frontal cortex in attentional capture by singleton distractors

The role of frontal cortex in selective attention to visual distractors was examined in an attentional capture task in which participants searched for a unique shape in the presence or absence of an additional colour singleton distractor. The presence of the additional singleton was associated with slower behavioural responses to the shape target, and a greater neural signal in inferior frontal gyrus. To investigate the involvement of cognitive control functions of the frontal lobes in the capture of attention by the additional singletons, we measured the effect of the additional singleton in a context of either low or high working memory load. Whereas behavioural capture was unaffected by the level of load on working memory, greater activity associated with the presence of the additional singleton was observed in inferior frontal gyrus, but only under high load. This effect was greater in participants who experienced greater capture. We argue that the role of inferior frontal gyrus in selective attention is to detect potential sources of distraction.     

Predicting parental social influences: The role of physical activity variability

Objectives

This study examined how variations in the activity of adolescents might relate to the social influences used by parents. Specifically, mean differences in activity across adolescents (individual differences) as well as variation in activity within adolescents (intra-individual variation) were used to predict the use of family social influence.

Design

A prospective design was used.

Methods

High school students (N = 329) completed measures of activity (six times) and social influences received from family (positive, negative, collaborative) (five times) over a one-year period. A multilevel analysis was used to predict each of the three types of social influence. The predictors included activity in two forms: The individual’s mean level of activity (i.e., individual differences) and activity at the previous time point as a deviation from the individual’s mean activity level (i.e., intra-individual variation).

Results

Controlling for age, gender and school, results revealed that both individual differences in mean activity level (b = 0.04, p < .001) and intra-individual variation in activity (b = −0.02, p = .055) predicted use of collaborative influence. For positive influence, only individual differences in mean activity level was a predictor (b = 0.02, p < .001). Neither form of activity predicted parental use of negative influence.

Conclusions

Results revealed support for the positive relationship between both positive and collaborative types of influence and individual differences in activity that is typically reported in the literature. However, a negative relationship between intra-individual variation in activity and collaborative social influences also was found. This negative relationship, where lower activity than normal by the adolescent was related to a greater use of collaborative influence by the parent, may be indicative of a regulatory form of social influence.     

Gaze-fixation and pupil dilation in the processing of emotional faces: The role of rumination

Sustained attentional processing of negative information plays a significant role in the development and maintenance of depression. The present study examines the relationships between rumination, a relevant factor in information processing in depression, and the attentional mechanisms activated in individuals with different levels of depression severity when attending to emotional information (i.e., sad, angry and happy faces). Behavioural and physiological indicators of sustained processing were assessed in 126 participants (39 dysphoric and 87 non-dysphoric) using eye-tracking technology. Pupil dilation and total time attending to negative faces were correlated with a global ruminative style in the total sample once depression severity was controlled. Furthermore, in dysphoric participants the brooding component of rumination was specifically associated with the total time attending to sad faces. Finally, bootstrapping analyses showed that the relationships between global rumination and pupil diameter to emotional faces were accounted by total time attending to emotional faces, specifically for participants reporting lower levels of depression severity. The results support the idea that sustained processing of negative information is associated with a higher ruminative style and indicate differential associations between these factors at different levels of depressive symptomatology.     

Anxious mood narrows attention in feature space

Spatial attention can operate like a spotlight whose scope can vary depending on task demands. Emotional states contribute to the spatial extent of attentional selection, with the spotlight focused more narrowly during anxious moods and more broadly during happy moods. In addition to visual space, attention can also operate over features, and we show here that mood states may also influence attentional scope in feature space. After anxious or happy mood inductions, participants focused their attention to identify a central target while ignoring flanking items. Flankers were sometimes coloured differently than targets, so focusing attention on target colour should lead to relatively less interference. Compared to happy and neutral moods, when anxious, participants showed reduced interference when colour isolated targets from flankers, but showed more interference when flankers and targets were the same colour. This pattern reveals that the anxious mood caused these individuals to attend to the irrelevant feature in both cases, regardless of its benefit or detriment. In contrast, participants showed no effect of colour on interference when happy, suggesting that positive mood did not influence attention in feature space. These mood effects on feature-based attention provide a theoretical bridge between previous findings concerning spatial and conceptual attention.     

Proactive and reactive sequential effects on selective attention

Sequences of events can affect selective attention either through proactive mechanisms, through reactive mechanisms, or through a combination of the two. The current study examined electrophysiological responses to both prime and target stimuli in a primed dichotic listening task. Each trial presented a distractor prime syllable followed by two simultaneous syllables, and participants were asked to report one of the simultaneous syllables. Trials where the participant reported the non-primed syllable showed more negative event-related potentials at prime presentation, which may indicate inhibition of the prime representation. Trials where the participant reported the primed syllable showed more negative event-related potentials at target presentation, which may indicate cognitive conflict and effortful response selection. In context of current theories, the data suggest that the interplay of a proactive inhibition bias and a reactive potential for conflict is involved in causing sequential effects on selective attention mechanisms.     

How do students improve their value-based learning with task experience?

When learning items that vary in reward, students improve their scores (i.e., earned reward) with task experience. In four experiments, we examined whether such improvements arise from better selective encoding of items that would earn more (vs. less) reward. Participants studied and recalled words across multiple study-test trials. On each trial, 12 words were slated with different values (typically from 1 to 12), and participants earned the point value assigned to a given word if it was correctly recalled. In all experiments, participants earned more points across the first two trials. In Experiment 1, participants either self-paced their study or had experimenter-paced study and in Experiment 2, some participants were penalised for each second spent during study. Improvements in points earned were related to increases in overall recall but not to selective encoding. In Experiment 3, some participants were given value-emphasised instructions, yet they did not demonstrate selective encoding. In Experiment 4, we used a larger range of point values, but selective encoding still did not account for the improvement in point scores across lists. These results suggest that metacognitively-driven selective encoding is not necessary to observe improvements in value-based learning.     

Coping in relationships: the interplay between individual and dyadic coping and their effects on relationship satisfaction

The main aim of the present study was to determine how individual and dyadic coping efforts are related in the context of relationships. This aim was achieved by studying partners simultaneously and taking into account the interdependent nature of couple data. Specifically tested was whether dyadic coping mediates the influence of individual coping, and whether there is a mutual influence of partners' dyadic coping. Cross-sectional data of 240 German couples were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that dyadic coping is a stronger predictor of relationship satisfaction than individual coping, and that it mediates the individual coping efforts. Mutual influence could be demonstrated for pragmatic coping but not for emotional coping. This research highlights the importance of dyadic coping by focusing on the ways in which couples cope together.     

Stimulus-specific dynamics of learning in conjunction search tasks

We investigated the time course of learning in visual search for within-dimension conjunctions in homogeneous (inverted V in Vs) or heterogeneous distractors (L in 90° counterclockwise-rotated Ls and 180° rotated Ls), and for across-dimension conjunctions search (green\in green/s and red\s). Two learning sessions of 10 and 5 blocks each took place three months apart. In the first session, the reduction in mean search time was greater for within-dimension conjunctions with heterogeneous distractors. Learning endured from one session to the other for all stimuli, suggesting that learning can be long-term in search for feature conjunctions. However, when the positional regularity between elements was perturbed, the effect of prior learning was reduced for homogeneous within-dimension conjunctions. This suggests that, for these stimuli, learning facilitates grouping by positional regularity. Finally, the learning effect with homogeneous withindimension conjunctions disappeared when both target and distractors were rotated to modify the orientation of conjunction patterns. This suggests that learning improves a grouping mechanism selective for the relative orientations of combined form features.     

The interacting effect of load and space on visual selective attention

In the study of visual attention, two major determinants of our ability to ignore distracting information have been isolated, namely, (1) the spatial separation from the focus of attention and (2) perceptual load. This study manipulated both factors using a dual-task adaptation of the flanker paradigm (Eriksen & Hoffman, 1973). It showed that (1) although attention followed a gradient profile under low perceptual load it followed a Mexican-hat profile under high perceptual load, consistent with the idea that increasing load focuses spatial attention; and (2) increasing perceptual load did not improve overall selectivity: Though selectivity improved at near separations, it was impaired at far ones. Load and spatial separation exert interacting effects.     

Group mate absence,dissimilarity, and individual absence: Another look at “monkey see,monkey do”

In this study, we examined whether the alignment of individual and group absence depended on an individual's similarity or dissimilarity with his or her group mates. The study hypotheses were tested with organizational data, involving 1382 employees from 181 work groups. Our criterion was individual absence frequency, observed over a 12-month period. Dissimilarity indices fororganizational tenure and union affiliation were computed from organizational records. We found that the relation between group mate absence and individual absence was moderated by dissimilarity with respect to union affiliation (but not tenure dissimilarity), such that those with low union dissimilarity scores were more likely to align their absence behaviour with that of their group mates.