State test‐anxiety,selective attention and concentration in university students

The principal aim of this study was to assess the level of selective attention and mental concentration before exams in a sample of university students and to determine a possible relationship between anxiety and reduction of levels of attention in this circumstance. A total of 403 university students, 176 men and 227 women, aged from 18 to 46 years, participated in the study. Of them, 169 were first‐year undergraduates, 118 were second to fourth‐year undergraduates and 116 were postgraduate Master's degree students. All of them completed the Spanish version of the Spielberger State‐Anxiety Inventory and the D2 Attention Test just before taking an exam. Our results showed that participants with lower levels of anxiety had higher levels of selective attention and mental concentration before the exam. These results specifically indicate that when anxiety levels are very high, this could over‐activate the orientating and alerting functions and to reduce the capacity of attentional control. These processes could have a negative impact on specific attentional processes and become a negative influence on performance in exams.     

Validity of the German Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI‐G) in an Australian sample

Test anxiety (TA) is a prevalent issue among students that can result in deleterious consequences, such as underachievement. However, a contemporary measure that has been validated for use with Australian students seems to be lacking. This study, therefore, investigated the suitability of the German Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI‐G) for use with Australian university students. While the original TAI‐G contains 30 items and was designed to measure four factors (worry, emotionality, interference, and lack of confidence), differing factorial models have been supported in the literature using either the original or a shortened 17‐item version of the measure. These differing TAI‐G models were tested and compared in the current study via confirmatory factor analysis using 224 Australian university students. As expected, results supported the superior fit of the 17‐item four‐factor model. Additionally, the convergent validity of the measure was supported since measures of self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and general anxiety were all found to correlate significantly with the TAI‐G in the hypothesised directions. Finally, the finding that all of the TAI‐G subscales had acceptably high reliabilities led to the conclusion that the 17‐item TAI‐G is a valid and reliable measure of TA in an Australian university population.     

The role of eye movements in motor sequence learning

An experiment that utilized a 16-element movement sequence was designed to determine the impact of eye movements on sequence learning. The participants were randomly assigned to two experimental groups: a group that was permitted to use eye movements (FREE) and a second group (FIX) that was instructed to fixate on a marker during acquisition (ACQ). A retention test (RET) was designed to provide a measure of learning, and two transfer tests were designed to determine the extent to which eye movements influenced sequence learning. The results demonstrated that both groups decreased the response time to produce the sequence, but the participants in the FREE group performed the sequence more quickly than participants of the FIX group during the ACQ, RET and the two transfer tests. Furthermore, continuous visual control of response execution was reduced over the course of learning. The results of the transfer tests indicated that oculomotor information regarding the sequence can be stored in memory and enhances response production.     

Redundant food searches by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella): a failure of metacognition?

This study investigated capuchin monkeys' understanding of their own visual search behavior as a means to gather information. Five monkeys were presented with three tubes that could be visually searched to determine the location of a bait. The bait's visibility was experimentally manipulated, and the monkeys' spontaneous visual searches before tube selection were analyzed. In Experiment 1, three monkeys selected the baited tube significantly above chance; however, the monkeys also searched transparent tubes. In Experiment 2, a bent tube in which food was never visible was introduced. When the bent tube was baited, the monkeys failed to deduce the bait location and responded randomly. They also continued to look into the bent tube despite not gaining any pertinent information from it. The capuchin monkeys' behavior contrasts with the efficient employment of visual search behavior reported in humans, apes and macaques. This difference is consistent with species-related variations in metacognitive abilities, although other explanations are also possible.     

Pseudoneglect: evidence for both perceptual and attentional factors

When neurologically normal individuals bisect a horizontal line as accurately as possible, they reliably show a slight leftward error. This leftward inaccuracy is called pseudoneglect because errors made by neurologically normal individuals are directionally opposite to those made by persons with visuospatial neglect (Jewell & McCourt, 2000). In the current study, normal right-handed observers bisected horizontal lines that were altered to bias line length judgments either toward the right or the left side of the line. Non-target dots were placed on or near the line stimuli using principles derived from a theory of visual illusions of length called centroid extraction (Morgan, Hole, & Glennerster, 1990). This theory argues that the position of a visual target is calculated as the mean position of all stimuli in close proximity to the target stimulus. We predicted that perceptual alterations that shifted the direction of centroid extraction would also shift the direction of line bisection errors. Our findings confirmed this prediction and support the idea that both perceptual and attentional factors contribute to the pseudoneglect effect.     

The effect of encoding time on retention by infants and young children

Using a Visual Recognition Memory (VRM) procedure, we examined the effect of encoding time on retention by 1- and 4-year olds. Irrespective of age, shorter familiarization time reduced retention, and longer familiarization time prolonged retention. The amount of familiarization that yielded retention after a given delay decreased as a function of age.     

Attention and the multiple stages of multisensory integration: A review of audiovisual studies

Multisensory integration and crossmodal attention have a large impact on how we perceive the world. Therefore, it is important to know under what circumstances these processes take place and how they affect our performance. So far, no consensus has been reached on whether multisensory integration and crossmodal attention operate independently and whether they represent truly automatic processes. This review describes the constraints under which multisensory integration and crossmodal attention occur and in what brain areas these processes take place. Some studies suggest that multisensory integration and crossmodal attention take place in higher heteromodal brain areas, while others show the involvement of early sensory specific areas. Additionally, the current literature suggests that multisensory integration and attention interact depending on what processing level integration takes place. To shed light on this issue, different frameworks regarding the level at which multisensory interactions takes place are discussed. Finally, this review focuses on the question whether audiovisual interactions and crossmodal attention in particular are automatic processes. Recent studies suggest that this is not always the case. Overall, this review provides evidence for a parallel processing framework suggesting that both multisensory integration and attentional processes take place and can interact at multiple stages in the brain.     

Gaze avoidance in social phobia: Objective measure and correlates

Gaze aversion could be a central component of the physiopathology of social phobia. The emotions of the people interacting with a person with social phobia seem to model this gaze aversion. Our research consists of testing gaze aversion in subjects with social phobia compared to control subjects in different emotional faces of men and women using an eye tracker. Twenty-six subjects with DSM-IV social phobia were recruited. Twenty-four healthy subjects aged and sex-matched constituted the control group. We looked at the number of fixations and the dwell time in the eyes area on the pictures. The main findings of this research are: confirming a significantly lower amount of fixations and dwell time in patients with social phobia as a general mean and for the 6 basic emotions independently from gender; observing a significant correlation between the severity of the phobia and the degree of gaze avoidance. However, no difference in gaze avoidance according to subject/picture gender matching was observed. These findings confirm and extend some previous results, and suggest that eye avoidance is a robust marker of persons with social phobia, which could be used as a behavioral phenotype for brain imagery studies on this disorder.     

Visual working memory and threat monitoring: Spider fearfuls show disorder-specific change detection

Previous studies of biased information processing in anxiety addressed biases of attention and memory, but little is known about the processes taking place between them: visual working memory (VWM) and monitoring of threat. We investigated these processes with a change detection paradigm. In Experiment 1, spider fearfuls (SF) and non-anxious controls (NAC) judged two subsequently presented displays as same or different. The displays consisted of several pictures, one of which could depict a spider. In Experiment 2, SF and NAC, both without snake fear, were tested with displays including either a spider or a snake image to determine the material-specificity of biased VWM. Both groups showed increased change detection for threat images. This effect was significantly stronger in SF, for spider images only, indicating a threat-specific VWM bias. Thus, contrary to the assumptions made by most cognitive models of anxiety, an explicit memory bias was found.     

Looking away from death: Defensive attention as a form of terror management

Previous research has suggested that the physical aspects of human nature in general, and physical human frailties in particular become disagreeable and repugnant following death primes. The current research tested this hypothesis in two studies using an eye-tracking methodology. Participants were subliminally primed with death or with a control word and then viewed a series of arrays containing four pictures each, during which their eye-movements were monitored. In Study 1, the arrays included pictures of physical injury or neutral objects, and in Study 2 pictures of physical injury, threatening images, and neutral objects. The results indicated that in both studies death primes significantly decreased gaze duration towards pictures of physical injury, and did not have a significant effect on gaze duration towards neutral images. However, in Study 2 death primes increased gaze duration towards threatening images. The discussion examines the role of motivated unconscious attention in terror management processes.