A demonstration of gaze following in 3- to 6-month-olds

An adult, with a puppet held at shoulder height on either side (within the infant's visual field), interacted with 3- to-6-month-olds, turning her head intermittently to talk to a puppet. Seventy- three percent of infants' first eye-turns were in the direction of the adult head-turn.     

VIRTUE, EMOTION, AND ATTENTION

Abstract: The perceptual model of emotions maintains that emotions involve, or are at least analogous to, perceptions of value. On this account, emotions purport to tell us about the evaluative realm, in much the same way that sensory perceptions inform us about the sensible world. An important development of this position, prominent in recent work by Peter Goldie amongst others, concerns the essential role that virtuous habits of attention play in enabling us to gain perceptual and evaluative knowledge. I think that there are good reasons to be sceptical about this picture of virtue. In this essay I set out these reasons, and explain the consequences this scepticism has for our understanding of the relation between virtue, emotion, and attention. In particular, I argue that our primary capacity for recognizing value is in fact a non-emotional capacity.     

视觉选择过程中眼跳与注意关系的理论进展

视觉选择的过程包含两种途径:眼跳行动和注意转移,两者对于视觉选择目标物的加工都有促进作用。鉴于此,视觉研究领域产生大量关于二者关联如何的实验研究,大部分研究者认为眼跳和注意转移存在密切联系。该文将关于两者关系的重要理论进行了综合阐述和简要比较,主要介绍五种理论假说:眼动准备假说、动前假说、顺序注意模型、视觉注意模型和竞争整合模型。     

Acute caffeine consumption enhances the executive control of visual attention in habitual consumers

Recent work suggests that a dose of 200–400 mg caffeine can enhance both vigilance and the executive control of visual attention in individuals with low caffeine consumption profiles. The present study seeks to determine whether individuals with relatively high caffeine consumption profiles would show similar advantages. To this end, we examined the effects of four caffeine doses (0 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg, 400 mg) on low- and high-level visual attention in individuals with high consumption profiles (n = 36), in a double-blind study using a repeated measures design. Results from the Attention Network Test indicated that caffeine enhanced both vigilance and the executive control of visual attention, but only at the highest administered dose (400 mg). We demonstrate that in habitual consumers high doses of caffeine can produce beneficial changes in visual attention. These results carry implications for the theorized interactions between caffeine, adenosine and dopamine in brain regions mediating visual attention.     

Investigating joint attention mechanisms through spoken human-robot interaction

Referential gaze during situated language production and comprehension is tightly coupled with the unfolding speech stream ( [Griffin, 2001] , [Meyer et al., 1998] and [Tanenhaus et al., 1995] ). In a shared environment, utterance comprehension may further be facilitated when the listener can exploit the speaker’s focus of (visual) attention to anticipate, ground, and disambiguate spoken references. To investigate the dynamics of such gaze-following and its influence on utterance comprehension in a controlled manner, we use a human–robot interaction setting. Specifically, we hypothesize that referential gaze is interpreted as a cue to the speaker’s referential intentions which facilitates or disrupts reference resolution. Moreover, the use of a dynamic and yet extremely controlled gaze cue enables us to shed light on the simultaneous and incremental integration of the unfolding speech and gaze movement.We report evidence from two eye-tracking experiments in which participants saw videos of a robot looking at and describing objects in a scene. The results reveal a quantified benefit-disruption spectrum of gaze on utterance comprehension and, further, show that gaze is used, even during the initial movement phase, to restrict the spatial domain of potential referents. These findings more broadly suggest that people treat artificial agents similar to human agents and, thus, validate such a setting for further explorations of joint attention mechanisms.     

Object-centered representations support flexible exogenous visual attention across translation and reflection

Visual attention can be deployed to stimuli based on our willful, top-down goal (endogenous attention) or on their intrinsic saliency against the background (exogenous attention). Flexibility is thought to be a hallmark of endogenous attention, whereas decades of research show that exogenous attention is attracted to the retinotopic locations of the salient stimuli. However, to the extent that salient stimuli in the natural environment usually form specific spatial relations with the surrounding context and are dynamic, exogenous attention, to be adaptive, should embrace these structural regularities. Here we test a non-retinotopic, object-centered mechanism in exogenous attention, in which exogenous attention is dynamically attracted to a relative, object-centered location. Using a moving frame configuration, we presented two frames in succession, forming either apparent translational motion or in mirror reflection, with a completely uninformative, transient cue presented at one of the item locations in the first frame. Despite that the cue is presented in a spatially separate frame, in both translation and mirror reflection, behavioralperformance in visual search is enhanced when the target in the second frame appears at the same relative location as the cue location than at other locations. These results provide unambiguous evidence for non-retinotopic exogenous attention and further reveal an object-centered mechanism supporting flexible exogenous attention. Moreover, attentional generalization across mirror reflection may constitute an attentional correlate of perceptual generalization across lateral mirror images, supporting an adaptive, functional account of mirror images confusion.     

An account of the relationship between fluid intelligence and complex learning in considering storage capacity and executive attention

Although fluid intelligence and complex learning are conceptualized differently and assessed by apparently different measures, both theoretical accounts and empirical evidence suggest a relationship between the two constructs. In this study, major working memory aspects including the storage capacity and executive attention were proposed to account for the relationship between fluid intelligence and complex learning. A sample of 184 participants completed fluid intelligence and complex learning scales, as well as working memory measures that each included two or three treatment levels differing in the demands on capacity or executive control. The differences among the treatment levels provided a favorable precondition for employing fixed-links models to separate the core processes of storage capacity or executive attention from the auxiliary processes. Results indicated that both storage capacity and executive attention contributed significantly to fluid intelligence and complex learning. A further analysis showed that the two working memory aspects, particularly the storage capacity, accounted for most of the shared variance between fluid intelligence and complex learning.     

False memories in obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: evidence from the divided attention paradigm at encoding or retrieval

ABSTRACT

Patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) exhibit impaired retrieval of item-specific information, increasing their propensity to generate false recognitions. The present study investigated the effect of OSAS on false recognition, using a divided-attention paradigm to examine whether reducing the availability of attentional resources during encoding or retrieval in healthy participants mimics the effect of OSAS. We tested four groups of participants, using the Deese – Roediger – McDermott paradigm: patients with OSAS and controls, either under full attention or under divided attention at encoding or retrieval. Results showed that divided attention at retrieval, but not at encoding, mimicked the effects of OSAS on memory performance, as controls in this group exhibited a higher level of false recognition than those under full attention, but a similar level of correct recognition. Our results suggest that the greater susceptibility of patients with OSAS to false recognition may be due to a limited availability of attentional resources, which may specifically disrupt retrieval processes.     

Sex Differences in the Psychological Well-Being of Chinese Adolescents

This study assessed sex differences affecting the psychological wellbeing of Chinese adolescents. Various instruments were used to measure psychiatric symptoms and positive mental health. The results showed that female adolescents displayed significantly more psychiatric as well as somatic symptoms and scored lower on scales reflecting positive mental health. The findings are generally consistent with those found in the Western literature, but suggest that, in the Chinese culture, sex differences in mental health begin to appear in adolescents.     

Characterization of Children's Decision Making: Sensitivity to Punishment Frequency,Not Task Complexity

On a gambling task that models real-life decision making, children between ages 7 and 12 perform like patients with bilateral lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), opting for choices that yield high immediate gains in spite of higher future losses (Crone &; Van der Molen, 2004 Crone, E. A. and Van der Molen, M. W. 2004. Developmental changes in decision-making: Performance on a gambling task previously shown to rely on ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Developmental Neuropsychology, 25(3): 251–279. [PUBMED][INFOTRIEVE][CROSSREF][Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The current study set out to characterize developmental changes in decision making by varying task complexity and punishment frequency. Three age groups (7–9 years, 10–12 years, 13–15 years) performed two versions of a computerized variant of the original Iowa gambling task. Task complexity was manipulated by varying the number of choices participants could make. Punishment frequency was manipulated by varying the frequency of delayed punishment. Results showed a developmental increase in the sensitivity to future consequences, which was present only when the punishment was presented infrequently. These results could not be explained by differential sensitivity to task complexity, hypersensitivity to reward, or failure to switch response set after receiving punishment. There was a general pattern of boys outperforming girls by making more advantageous choices over the course of the task. In conclusion, 7–12-year-old children—like VMPFC patients—appear myopic about the future except when the potential for future punishment is high.