头部朝向在社会性注意转移中的作用

注视指向是非常重要的社会性注意线索,但是在日常情境中,注视指向往往伴随着头部朝向信息,而且两者都包含空间指向信息.已有研究发现头部朝向会影响注视指向知觉的速度和准确性,为注视指向提供参照系,进而会影响注视指向诱发的社会性注意.头部朝向和注视指向加工的神经机制也存在着广泛的重合.因此,除眼睛注视以外,头部朝向也是建构和完善基于心理模型的社会性注意机制的一个关键因素.未来的研究应关注头部朝向与眼睛注视指向共同影响注意转移的作用机制,并且从功能整合的角度开展神经机制研究.     

注意的跨文化研究及意义

Nisbett提出东西方文化差异可能导致了注意的差异,但是并没有对这种现象的原因和机制提出直接的证据.最近几年来,文化对注意过程的影响有了新的研究和发现,证实了Nisbett最初的观点是正确的.文化与注意的行为研究包括在整体与局部加工、场依存与场独立、变化盲等方面的研究.对于注意文化差异的潜在原因和机制,研究者们主要从发展性研究、ERP和FMRI研究等方面进行探讨.未来研究需要进一步探索文化对其它注意指标的影响、文化与注意的脑机制以及文化与注意的应用研究等等.     

社交焦虑障碍中的注意偏差三成分研究述评

社交焦虑障碍表现为对一种或多种社交情境存在显著并持续的害怕,并表现出对社交刺激具有注意偏差,即注意增强、注意固着和注意回避,这三个成分交互作用促使社交焦虑持续发展.目前主要采用视觉搜索任务、点探测任务、空间线索任务,并结合眼动技术对此进行研究,但三成分之间的关系仍然存在疑惑,三者是否具有时间进程,如何衔接转换,仍需进一步检验.     

Cultural differences in attention: Eye movement evidence from a comparative visual search task

Individual differences in visual attention have been linked to thinking style: analytic thinking (common in individualistic cultures) is thought to promote attention to detail and focus on the most important part of a scene, whereas holistic thinking (common in collectivist cultures) promotes attention to the global structure of a scene and the relationship between its parts. However, this theory is primarily based on relatively simple judgement tasks. We compared groups from Great Britain (an individualist culture) and Saudi Arabia (a collectivist culture) on a more complex comparative visual search task, using simple natural scenes. A higher overall number of fixations for Saudi participants, along with longer search times, indicated less efficient search behaviour than British participants. Furthermore, intra-group comparisons of scan-path for Saudi participants revealed less similarity than within the British group. Together, these findings suggest that there is a positive relationship between an analytic cognitive style and controlled attention.     

Subliminal primes for global or local processing influence judgments of vehicular traffic

Previous studies on semantic priming show that briefly presented words can unconsciously manipulate subjects’ mental states, behaviors, and attitudes. Here we evaluated whether semantic primes can also manipulate the breadth of subjects’ visual attention. We primed participants with briefly presented words that indicate either broadness or narrowness; each prime was followed by either a large or a small picture of a street intersection with vehicles, and participants had to indicate in which order the vehicles were legally allowed to pass the intersection. Participants responded to large pictures faster when primed with words denoting broadness, and to small pictures faster when primed with words denoting narrowness. From this we concluded that semantic priming can be effectively applied to manipulate the breadth of attention, which could be exploited in real-world scenarios.     

Source Handler telephone interactions with covert human intelligence sources: An exploration of question types and intelligence yield

Law Enforcement Agencies gather intelligence in order to prevent criminal activity and pursue criminals. In the context of human intelligence collection, intelligence elicitation relies heavily upon the deployment of appropriate evidence-based interviewing techniques (a topic rarely covered in the extant research literature). The present research gained unprecedented access to audio recorded telephone interactions (N = 105) between Source Handlers and Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) from England and Wales. The research explored the mean use of various question types per interaction and across all questions asked in the sample, as well as comparing the intelligence yield for appropriate and inappropriate questions. Source Handlers were found to utilise vastly more appropriate questions than inappropriate questions, though they rarely used open-ended questions. Across the total interactions, appropriate questions (by far) were associated with the gathering of much of the total intelligence yield. Implications for practise are discussed.     

Fluctuations in pre-trial attentional state and their influence on goal neglect

Fluctuations in attentional state and their relation to goal neglect were examined in the current study. Participants performed a variant of the Stroop task in which attentional state ratings were given prior to each trial. It was found that pre-trial attentional state ratings predicted subsequent trial performance, such that when participants rated their current attentional state as highly focused on the current task, performance tended to be high compared to when participants reported their current attentional state as being unfocused on the current task. This effect was larger for incongruent than congruent trials leading to differences in the magnitude of the Stroop effect as a function of pre-trial attentional state. Furthermore, variability in attentional state was correlated with overall levels of performance, and when attentional state was covaried out, the Stroop effect was greatly reduced. These results suggest a link between fluctuations in pre-trial attentional state and goal neglect.     

Parietal theta burst TMS: Functional fractionation observed during bistable perception not evident in attention tasks

When visual input is ambiguous, perception spontaneously alternates between interpretations: bistable perception. Studies have identified two distinct sites near the right intraparietal sulcus where inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) affects the frequency of occurrence of these alternations, but strikingly with opposite directions of effect for the two sites. Lesion and TMS studies on spatial and sustained attention have also indicated a parcellation of right parietal cortex, into areas serving distinct attentional functions. We used the exact TMS procedure previously employed to affect bistable perception, yet measured its effect on spatial and sustained attention tasks. Although there was a trend for TMS to affect performance, trends were consistently similar for both parietal sites, with no indication of opposite effects. We interpret this as signifying that the previously observed parietal fractionation of function regarding the perception of ambiguous stimuli is not due to TMS-induced modification of spatial or sustained attention.