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PubMed1992

Auditory attention in early Parkinson's disease: an impairment in focused attention.

Focused attention in the auditory modality was studied in a group of Parkinson patients and compared to matched controls using a Dichotic monitoring task. Parkinson patients detected more phonemic distractors on the unattended input than the normal controls, despite a high level of ipsilateral responses for target detection and target discrimination. This impairment in focused attention may be attributed to degenerative changes in the ascending monoamine pathways which have been implicated in the role of auditory attention.

Attention↗
PubMed2006

The attentional blink reveals sluggish attentional shifting in adolescents with specific language impairment.

Rapid processing deficits have been the subject of much debate in the literature on specific language impairment (SLI). Hari and Renvall (2001) [Hari, R. & Renvall, H. (2001). Impaired processing of rapid stimulus sequences in dyslexia. Trends in cognitive sciences, 5, 525-532.] proposed that the source of this deficit can be attributed to sluggish attentional shifting abilities. That is, more time is required to shift attention between stimuli. To test this claim, 26 adolescents with SLI (divided into two subgroups to control for differences in non-verbal intelligence) and 14 controls were presented with a rapid serial visual presentation task. In this task participants were asked to detect two visual targets presented serially with distracter items with varying inter-target intervals (i.e., time difference between targets). This task was designed to elicit an attentional blink (AB). The AB describes the phenomenon whereby non-impaired individuals are less likely to report the second of two targets presented within 200-500ms of each other. After controlling for group differences in non-verbal intelligence, the SLI group was found to be significantly less accurate than the control group at successfully reporting the second target at inter-target intervals of 100, 200, 300, 400 and 800ms. The results were interpreted to suggest that adolescents with language impairments have an AB which differs from non-impaired individuals in both magnitude and duration.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Cognitive control of attention in the human brain: insights from orienting attention to mental representations.

In this review, we summarize a new line of experimentation showing that attentional orienting can bias information processing in the working memory domain as well as in the perceptual domain to optimize goal-directed behavior. A new experimental paradigm was developed, which revealed that spatial orienting cues that appear after perceptual events (retro-cues), when these have been internalized into working memory representations, can retrospectively enhance performance to a similar degree as spatial precues appearing before perceptual events. As part of their facilitatory action, retro-cues diminish the costs of retrieving items from increasing loads within working memory. Hemodynamic and electrophysiological brain imaging experiments show a high degree of overlap between brain areas and dynamics involved in spatial orienting in the working memory domain compared to the perceptual domain. In addition, functional magnetic resonance imaging points to the selective involvement of frontal areas during spatial orienting in the working memory domain. The roles of different frontal areas remain to be clarified but may include both early roles in guiding spatial shifts occurring within a mnemonic context as well as selection of memorized targets amidst distracting stimuli. Experiments have also begun to reveal the ability to orient attention selectively to object-based representations in working memory and suggest that the neural representations of objects in working memory can be directly modulated by this process. The findings bolster contemporary notions of a strong theoretical relationship between attentional orienting and working memory, suggesting that these two cognitive functions interact in more ways and directions than previously considered.

Attention↗
PubMed2005

Pre-attentive and attentive processing of temporal and frequency characteristics within long sounds.

Attention effects on the processing of deviations in the duration and the frequency dimension of a long sound were investigated in three conditions: (1) when auditory stimuli were ignored, (2) when they were attended and frequency dimension was task-relevant, and (3) when they were attended and duration dimension was task-relevant. The mismatch negativity (MMN) of the event-related potential (ERP) to infrequent shortenings of a sound (600 ms vs. 1000 ms) and to infrequent frequency modulations at one of nine possible intervals within the sound (change from 440 Hz to 480 Hz and back to 440 Hz, e.g. in the 600-650 ms interval) was measured. Duration MMN was slightly enhanced when directing attention towards the frequency dimension but notably enhanced when attention was focused on duration. The early phase of frequency-modulated MMN was of equal amplitude in all three conditions, and the late phase was equally enlarged in both attend conditions. Interestingly, MMN to frequency-modulated deviants decreased the later the deviation occurred within the sound; there was no indication for an MMN being present in Ignore condition when frequency modulations occurred 400 ms after sound onset or later. Thus, with increasing temporal distance between the onset of a sound and the onset of a deviation within the sound (e.g. frequency modulation or sound offset), MMN for frequency modulations and duration shortenings decreases. This suggests that the initial part of a sound ( approximately 300 ms) contributes more to the unitary sound representation underlying MMN than the later parts.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2005

Attentional training in elderly subjects affects voluntarily oriented, but not automatic attention: a neurophysiological study.

OBJECTIVES: Our study aimed at investigating the effect of repetitive recordings on somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) related to spatial attention in a population of healthy elderly subjects. METHODS: Fifteen healthy elderly subjects were tested for six consecutive days using a somatosensory oddball paradigm, in which target stimuli were applied above the elbow and the non-target stimuli on the ipsilateral shoulder. Brain electrical activity was recorded from six scalp electrodes (Fz, Cz, F3, F4, T3 and T4). RESULTS: The N140 response to target stimuli showed a significantly decreased amplitude across the sessions with the lowest value during the fourth day of recording and with a partial recovery at the sixth day. On the contrary, the amplitude of the N140 response to non-target stimuli and that of the P300 potential to target stimuli were not significantly modified. CONCLUSIONS: The significant amplitude reduction of the N140 potential in target, but not in non-target recordings across sessions, suggests that the voluntarily oriented attention is reduced by stimulus repetition, while the automatic attention is not.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Attentional bias to threat in social phobia: facilitated processing of threat or difficulty disengaging attention from threat?

There is a growing body of research pointing to the possibility that anxious individuals may have difficulty disengaging their attention from threat-relevant information when this information is task irrelevant (e.g., Amir, N., & Elias, J. (2002). Allocation of attention to threat in social phobia: difficulty in disengaging from task irrelevant cues, Manuscript under review; The Quarterly J. Expo. Psycho. 54A (2001) 665). In the current paper, we report a direct test of this hypothesis in individuals with social phobia. Participants performed a variation of the Posner paradigm (Quart. J. Exp. Psycho. 32 (1980) 3). Social threat, neutral, or positive words cued one of two locations on the computer screen. After the cue disappeared, participants had to detect a probe ("(*)") that appeared in one of the two locations. On some trials the cue was valid (i.e., the probe appeared in the same location as the cue). On other trials the cue was invalid (the probe appeared in a different location than the cue). Yet, on other trials, no cue was presented. All participants were slower in detecting probes following invalid cues than probes following valid cues. Furthermore, individuals with social phobia showed significantly longer response latencies when detecting invalidly cued targets than did controls, but only when the probe followed a social threat word. These results suggest that individuals with social phobia may have difficulty disengaging their attention from socially threatening material.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Socialization and attentional deficits under focusing and divided attention conditions.

We conducted two studies to test and refine the hypothesis that, when undersocialized individuals focus on events of immediate interest, they allocate too large a proportion of their processing resources to those events and have little attention available for processing other important events. College students who completed the Socialization (So) scale (Gough, 1960) performed visual and auditory tasks simultaneously under conditions favoring the visual task, an equal division of processing resources between the tasks, or both. In both studies, low-So Ss performed relatively poorly on the auditory task under focusing conditions but displayed no primary task advantage and no significant performance deficits under divided attention conditions. These data support the utility of theories relating antisocial behavior to individual differences in allocation of attention. Low-So Ss' unresponsiveness to secondary events is not a simple function of the reallocation of resources to the primary task or a speed-accuracy trade-off. Moreover, under certain conditions, this deficit may disappear, given substantial practice.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Shifting visual attention and selecting motor responses: distinct attentional mechanisms.

Does shifting visual attention require the same central mechanism as that required for selecting overt motor responses? In Experiment 1, Ss performed 2 tasks: a speeded manual response to a tone and an unspeeded report of a cued target letter in a brief masked array. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between tone and array was varied. If the attention shift to the target was delayed by the first task, then there should be more second-task errors at short SOAs and on trials with slow first-task responses. In fact, SOA effects and dependencies were minimal. Results were unchanged in further experiments in which the relation between cue and target was symbolic, spatially "unnatural," or based on the color of the target. Two additional experiments validated key assumptions of the method. The results confirm that although selection of motor responses constitutes a processing bottleneck, the control of visual attention operates independently of this bottleneck.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Does auditory streaming require attention? Evidence from attentional selectivity in short-term memory.

R. P. Carlyon, R. Cusack, J. M. Foxton, and I. H. Robertson (2001) have argued that attention is crucial for auditory streaming. The authors review R. P. Carlyon et al.'s (2001) arguments and suggest that a pertinent literature, the irrelevant sound paradigm--demonstrating preattentive auditory streaming--has been overlooked. In illustration of this alternative approach, the authors include a novel single experiment demonstrating the impact of preattentive auditory streaming on short-term serial memory. It is concluded that R. P. Carlyon et al.'s (2001) results do not definitively demonstrate that auditory streaming processes are dependent on attention; indeed, they are compatible with alternative accounts of the relationship between perceptual organization and attention.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2005

Delayed attentional engagement in the attentional blink.

Observers often miss the 2nd of 2 visual targets (first target [T1] and second target [T2]) when these targets are presented closely in time; the attentional blink (AB). The authors hypothesized that the AB occurs because the attentional response to T2 is delayed by T1 processing, causing T2 to lose a competition for attention to the item that follows it. The authors investigated this hypothesis by determining whether the AB is attenuated when T2 is precued. The results from 4 experiments showed that the duration and magnitude of the AB were substantially reduced when T2 was precued. The observed improvement in T2 report did not occur at the expense of T1 report, suggesting that processing of T1 was already completed or was at least protected when the cue was presented. The authors conclude that, during the AB, there is a delay between detection and the selection of target candidates for consolidation in short-term memory.

Attention↗
PubMed1998

Is there a "subcortical" profile of attentional dysfunction? A comparison of patients with Huntington's and Parkinson's diseases on a global-local focused attention task.

This study investigated focused attention in two subcortical degenerative disorders by examining the performance of patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) on a task utilizing global-local stimuli. Participants were presented with global-local figures and were instructed to focus their attention on either the global or local level. Stimuli were either "consistent", with the same form at the global and local levels, or "inconsistent", with different forms at the global and local levels. It was found that response times (RTs) of patients with PD were comparable to those of similarly-aged controls regardless of stimulus consistency. In contrast, patients with HD demonstrated disproportionately longer RTs to inconsistent stimuli relative to their age-matched control group. Difference scores between RTs for inconsistent versus consistent stimuli were not correlated with overall level of dementia or disease severity for either the HD or PD group. These results provide further evidence for the heterogeneity of attentional dysfunction among subcortical degenerative illnesses.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Focus of attention in groups: a self-attention perspective.

In three studies, we examined the hypothesis, derived from self-attention theory, that the focus of attention of individuals in groups varies as a function of group composition. In naturally occurring, nonlaboratory settings, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated a decrease in first-person singular pronoun usage as the proportionate number of discussants in a group increased. In a laboratory setting, Study 3 demonstrated an increase in self-reported self-focus as the number of subjects decreased relative to the number of experimenters. These results support the conceptualization of self-focused attention as a mediator of group composition effects.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Vision and attention. I: Current models of visual attention.

Visual attention has been defined by different researchers and clinicians in a variety of ways that are sometimes conflicting or confusing. This paper will provide a unified definition of visual attention, as well as a putative neurophysiological mechanism that is consistent with this unified definition. In addition, recent data on the mechanisms of visual attention will be presented, including its spatial organization and temporal dependencies, as well as the role of parallel visual pathways in its activation.

Attention↗
PubMed2007

Attention problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in discordant and concordant monozygotic twins: evidence of environmental mediators.

OBJECTIVE: To study familial and nonfamilial environmental influences on attention problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in monozygotic twins discordant and concordant-high and low for these traits. METHOD: Ninety-five twin pairs from The Netherlands Twin Register were selected. Longitudinal survey data were collected at 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, and 12 years from parents, twins, and teachers. Mothers participated in a structured clinical interview when twins were between 10 and 17 years of age. RESULTS: Affected twins from discordant pairs scored higher than unaffected cotwins on multiple measures of attention problems, ADHD, and other behavior problems according to mother, teacher, and self. Behavioral discordance was evident at age 2 and all subsequent measurements. Compared with unaffected cotwins, affected twins had lower birth weight and delayed physical growth and motor development. Differences between discordant and concordant groups were reported for maternal smoking, sleeping in different rooms, and living with only one parent. CONCLUSIONS: Significant markers of ADHD are found in infancy and include low birth weight and delayed motor development. As the knowledge of specific genetic and environmental influences on ADHD increases, future studies may focus on their complex interplay.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The role of attention in the treatment of attention-maintained self-injurious behavior: noncontingent reinforcement and differential reinforcement of other behavior.

Because there are potentially serious limitations to differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) (which is probably the most widely used treatment procedure for behavior problems), we examined an alternative procedure--noncontingent reinforcement (NCR). Three females with developmental disabilities, all of whom engaged in severe self-injurious behavior, participated. During a pretreatment functional analysis, each subject's self-injury was shown to be differentially sensitive to social attention as a maintaining consequence. Next, each subject was exposed to a DRO treatment and an NCR treatment. During DRO, attention was delivered contingent on the absence of self-injury for prespecified intervals. During NCR, attention was delivered on a fixed-time schedule that was not influenced by the subject's behavior. Results showed that both procedures were highly effective in reducing self-injury, probably because the functional reinforcer for self-injury was used during treatment. Furthermore, there was evidence that NCR attenuated several of the limitations of DRO. These results are particularly interesting in light of the long experimental history of NCR as a control rather than as a therapeutic procedure.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Attention switching in depth using random-dot autostereograms: attention gradient asymmetries.

Random-dot autostereograms (RDASs) were used to investigate attention shifts along the sagittal plane in distractor-free tasks of high perceptual load. In three experiments using a same/different comparison task, the shape of the gradient over five different depths was examined and the conditions under which the gradient is and is not observed were compared. When the target set consisted of five similar objects, a robust asymmetric depth gradient was observed. When the target set consisted of two dissimilar objects, no gradient was observed. The results support a hypothesis of a viewer-centered asymmetric attention gradient in the depth plane that is dependent on perceptual or attentional load defined by target-set discriminability.

Attention↗
PubMed1990

Joint attention of six-month-old Down syndrome and preterm infants: I. Attention to toys and mother.

Six-month-old infants with Down syndrome (n = 14) and mental and motor-age-matched high-risk preterm infants (n = 15) were studied with respect to their use of separate attentional processes under conditions with and without their mother's direct involvement in play. As predicted, compared to preterm infants, the infants with Down syndrome spent less time involved with toys and more time looking at their mothers whether or not their mothers were actively involved. Although both infant groups showed an increase in the amount of time spent attending to toys in the mother-involved condition compared to the independent condition, only the preterm infants examined a wider range of toys when interacting with their mothers. Also, the infants with Down syndrome showed fewer shifts of attention to a toy in response to their mother's attempts to redirect their attention and, unlike the preterm infants, did not show increased positive affect when interacting with their mothers compared to playing on their own.

Affect↗