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Boundary contraction and extension are two types of scene transformations that occur in memory. In extension, viewers extrapolate information beyond the edges of the image, whereas in contraction, viewers forget information near the edges. Recent work suggests that image composition influences the direction and magnitude of boundary transformation. We hypothesize that selective attention at encoding is an important driver of boundary transformation effects, selective attention to specific objects at encoding leading to boundary contraction. In this study, one group of participants (N = 36) memorized 15 scenes while searching for targets, while a separate group (N = 36) just memorized the scenes. Both groups then drew the scenes from memory with as much object and spatial detail as they could remember. We asked online workers to provide ratings of boundary transformations in the drawings, as well as how many objects they contained and the precision of remembered object size and location. We found that search condition drawings showed significantly greater boundary contraction than drawings of the same scenes in the memorize condition. Search drawings were significantly more likely to contain target objects, and the likelihood to recall other objects in the scene decreased as a function of their distance from the target. These findings suggest that selective attention to a specific object due to a search task at encoding will lead to significant boundary contraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many casinos diffuse a pleasant ambient scent into their facilities as a customer experience management practice, but the ethics of this scenting process is questionable. Although the effect of a pleasant scent on cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses has been well-documented, its effect on attention during gambling has yet to be explored. Grounded in the tenets of the top-down control of attention and cross-modal correspondence between vision and olfaction, we conduct two eye-tracking experiments that involve different electronic casino games including video slots and live Cussec. The findings consistently show that pleasant ambient scent prolongs attention and induces more frequent attention to the win/loss areas on the video screen. The findings add to the implications related to responsible gambling by inspiring the stakeholders to consider the use of ambient scent in the gambling environment. Theoretically, the findings offer insights into scent as the catalyst that directs attention to goal-related information, while scent and goal do not need to be congruent in traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the effects of the Jetpul mind game, that developed by researchers, on attention deficit and hyperactivity symptoms in primary and secondary school students. Utilizing a causal-comparative research method, the study assesses the potential impacts of this game on children exhibiting ADHD symptoms and its feasibility as a complementary method in education. Methodologically, a pre-test- post-test matched control group experimental design was employed, involving a total of 100 students from primary and secondary education levels as the sample group. D2 Attention Test was used as a data collection tool in the study. The findings indicate that the Jetpul intelligence game positively influences students' attention levels, psychomotor speed, selective attention, and concentration abilities. Furthermore, this research highlights the potential of the Jetpul intelligence game as a supportive tool in the treatment of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the role of intelligence and brain games in education and their positive effects on students with specific needs like ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of categories is known to distort perceptual space: representations are pushed away from category boundaries and pulled toward categorical prototypes. This phenomenon has been studied with artificially constructed objects, whose feature dimensions are easily defined and manipulated. How such category-induced perceptual distortions arise for complex, real-world scenes, however, remains largely unknown due to the technical challenge of measuring and controlling scene features. We address this question by generating realistic scene images from a high-dimensional continuous space using generative adversarial networks and using the images as stimuli in a novel learning task. Participants learned to categorize the scene images along arbitrary category boundaries and later reconstructed the same scenes from memory. Systematic biases in reconstruction errors closely tracked each participant's subjective category boundaries. These findings suggest that the perception of global scene properties is warped to align with a newly learned category structure after only a brief learning experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perceptual system must integrate information from various points in time and space to interpret continuous sensory input into meaningful units, such as visual objects or events. To explore the relationship between the perception of spatial objects and temporal events, we modified the missing element task, a typical temporal integration task, by inserting a simple spatial object. The aim was to determine whether the perceptual processing of the object would have an impact on the frequency of temporal integration and segregation. Temporal integration was most successful when the missing element was located within the object, less successful when there was no object, and least successful when the missing element appeared outside the object. The advantage of the location of the missing element within the object was observed at display durations from 30 ms to 150 ms. Interestingly, the object provided the same benefit for integration and segregation despite their opposing perceptual demands. This study demonstrates the relationship that exists between the processing of temporal events and spatial objects, and shows how such spatial information can facilitate temporal integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilingual speakers can find speech recognition in everyday environments like restaurants and open-plan offices particularly challenging. In a world where speaking multiple languages is increasingly common, effective clinical and educational interventions will require a better understanding of how factors like multilingual contexts and listeners' language proficiency interact with adverse listening environments. For example, word and phrase recognition is facilitated when competing voices speak different languages. Is this due to a "release from masking" from lower-level acoustic differences between languages and talkers, or higher-level cognitive and linguistic factors? To address this question, we created a "one-man bilingual cocktail party" selective attention task using English and Mandarin speech from one bilingual talker to reduce low-level acoustic cues. In Experiment 1, 58 listeners more accurately recognized English targets when distracting speech was Mandarin compared to English. Bilingual Mandarin–English listeners experienced significantly more interference and intrusions from the Mandarin distractor than did English listeners, exacerbated by challenging target-to-masker ratios. In Experiment 2, 29 Mandarin–English bilingual listeners exhibited linguistic release from masking in both languages. Bilinguals experienced greater release from masking when attending to English, confirming an influence of linguistic knowledge on the "cocktail party" paradigm that is separate from primarily energetic masking effects. Effects of higher-order language processing and expertise emerge only in the most demanding target-to-masker contexts. The "one-man bilingual cocktail party" establishes a useful tool for future investigations and characterization of communication challenges in the large and growing worldwide community of Mandarin–English bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans are able to pay selective attention to music or speech in the presence of multiple sounds. It has been reported that in the speech domain, selective attention enhances the cross-correlation between the envelope of speech and electroencephalogram (EEG) while also affecting the spatial modulation of the alpha band. However, when multiple music pieces are performed at the same time, it is unclear how selective attention affects neural entrainment and spatial modulation. In this paper, we hypothesized that the entrainment to the attended music differs from that to the unattended music and that spatial modulation in the alpha band occurs in conjunction with attention. We conducted experiments in which we presented musical excerpts to 15 participants, each listening to two excerpts simultaneously but paying attention to one of the two. The results showed that the cross-correlation function between the EEG signal and the envelope of the unattended melody had a more prominent peak than that of the attended melody, contrary to the findings for speech. In addition, the spatial modulation in the alpha band was found with a data-driven approach called the common spatial pattern method. Classification of the EEG signal with a support vector machine identified attended melodies and achieved an accuracy of 100% for 11 of the 15 participants. These results suggest that selective attention to music suppresses entrainment to the melody and that spatial modulation of the alpha band occurs in conjunction with attention. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report to detect attended music consisting of several types of music notes only with EEG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiorespiratory fitness is known to protect against cognitive decline in older adults. Specifically, it has been shown that physical activity and fitness are beneficial for executive functions that are crucial for independent living up to old age. In this study, 115 individuals aged 80 years and older underwent a cardiorespiratory fitness assessment using the two-minute step test and had their electroencephalogram recorded during a colored flanker task in order to measure executive function performance. Cardiorespiratory fitness was related to quicker responses during the flanker task. A mediation analysis was carried out to determine whether these positive effects were mediated through event-related potentials (N1, N2, or P3) or motor-related cortical potentials (MRCP). Cardiorespiratory fitness was related to better visual discriminative processing as indicated by larger occipital N1 amplitudes. In addition, fitness was associated with larger MRCP amplitudes, which are a correlate of the response generation process. Fitness was not found to have a significant effect on fronto-central N2 or parietal P3, which are thought to capture cognitive control processes such as conflict detection and response inhibition. Moreover, all effects reported were present in all three flanker trial conditions (congruent, neutral, and incongruent). Thus, these results indicate that the quicker response times in fitter people were related to visual processing and motor response generation rather than cognitive control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate whether attentional suppression is merely a byproduct of target facilitation or a result of independent mechanisms for distractor suppression, the present study examined whether attentional suppression takes place when target facilitation hardly occurs using a spatial cueing paradigm. Participants searched for target letters that were not red, i.e., a negative color. On each trial, a target color was randomly chosen among 12 colors to prevent establishing attentional control for target colors and to reduce intertrial priming for target colors. Immediately before a target display, a noninformative spatial cue was presented at one of the possible target locations. The cue was rendered in a negative color, which was to be ignored, to detect targets or the reference color, which was never presented for target and non-target letters. Experiment 1 showed that negative color cues captured attention less than reference color cues, suggesting feature-based attentional suppression. The suppression effect was replicated when the temporal interval between the onsets of the cue and target displays was reduced in Experiments 2 and 3, suggesting proactive suppression. Experiment 3 directly confirmed no attentional control settings for target colors and intertrial priming. These findings suggest that distractor features can guide attention at the pre-attentive stage when target features are not used to attend to targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schizophrenia patients have been reported to have impairments in attention. In this study, we investigated their selective attention and tested whether they have difficulties in segmenting cues from the context. Twenty-one patients with schizophrenia and twenty-one healthy controls performed an arrow Flanker task, in which a potential cue was presented above the middle stimulus in the target display. Both groups had an accuracy of over 97%. In early trials, healthy controls demonstrated flanker interference on incongruent trials (RTIncongruent > RTNeutral) and facilitation on congruent trials (RTCongruent < RTNeutral), which aligns with previous research. They exhibited sustained flanker interference on incongruent trials and a decreased or non-significant effect on congruent trials in later trials. Patients with schizophrenia, on the other hand, did not show any temporal effects or attentional adjustments. Instead, they displayed flanker interference on incongruent trials and an inverse disadvantage effect on congruent trials both early and later in the experiment. Furthermore, compared to healthy controls, patients experienced a more pronounced flanker interference effect. These findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have impairments in both information selection and attentional adjustment. This study extends prior research by demonstrating that the impairments of attention in schizophrenia extend beyond executive control and manifest in earlier stages of bottom-up processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective attention refers to the ability to focus on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information. In a multisensory context, how do people selectively attend to multiple inputs when making categorical decisions? Here, we examined the role of selective attention in cross-modal categorization in two experiments. In a speed categorization task, participants were asked to attend to visual or auditory targets and categorize them while ignoring other irrelevant stimuli. A response-time extended multinomial processing tree (RT-MPT) model was implemented to estimate the contribution of attentional focusing on task-relevant information and attentional filtering of distractors. The results indicated that the role of selective attention was modality-specific, with differences found in attentional focusing and filtering between visual and auditory modalities. Visual information could be focused on or filtered out more effectively, whereas auditory information was more difficult to filter out, causing greater interference with task-relevant performance. The findings suggest that selective attention plays a critical and differential role across modalities, which provides a novel and promising approach to understanding multisensory processing and attentional focusing and filtering mechanisms of categorical decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical learning – the ability to extract distributional regularities from input – is suggested to be key to language acquisition. Yet, evidence for the human capacity for statistical learning comes mainly from studies conducted in carefully controlled settings without auditory distraction. While such conditions permit careful examination of learning, they do not reflect the naturalistic language learning experience, which is replete with auditory distraction – including competing talkers. Here, we examine how statistical language learning proceeds in a virtual cocktail party environment, where the to-be-learned input is presented alongside a competing speech stream with its own distributional regularities. During exposure, participants in the Dual Talker group concurrently heard two novel languages, one produced by a female talker and one by a male talker, with each talker virtually positioned at opposite sides of the listener (left/right) using binaural acoustic manipulations. Selective attention was manipulated by instructing participants to attend to only one of the two talkers. At test, participants were asked to distinguish words from part-words for both the attended and the unattended languages. Results indicated that participants' accuracy was significantly higher for trials from the attended vs. unattended language. Further, the performance of this Dual Talker group was no different compared to a control group who heard only one language from a single talker (Single Talker group). We thus conclude that statistical learning is modulated by selective attention, being relatively robust against the additional cognitive load provided by competing speech, emphasizing its efficiency in naturalistic language learning situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auditory categorization requires listeners to integrate acoustic information from multiple dimensions. Attentional theories suggest that acoustic dimensions that are informative attract attention and therefore receive greater perceptual weight during categorization. However, the acoustic environment is often noisy, with multiple sound sources competing for listeners' attention. Amid these adverse conditions, attentional theories predict that listeners will distribute attention more evenly across multiple dimensions. Here we test this prediction using an informational masking paradigm. In two experiments, listeners completed suprasegmental (focus) and segmental (voicing) speech categorization tasks in quiet or in the presence of competing speech. In both experiments, the target speech consisted of short words or phrases that varied in the extent to which fundamental frequency (F0) and durational information signalled category identity. To isolate effects of informational masking, target and competing speech were presented in opposite ears. Across both experiments, there was substantial individual variability in the relative weighting of the two dimensions. These individual differences were consistent across listening conditions, suggesting that they reflect stable perceptual strategies. Consistent with attentional theories of auditory categorization, listeners who relied on a single primary dimension in quiet shifted towards integrating across multiple dimensions in the presence of competing speech. These findings demonstrate that listeners make greater use of the redundancy present in speech when attentional resources are limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Document-level Relation Extraction (DocRE) aims to extract relations from multiple sentences simultaneously. Existing graph-based methods adopt static graphs to represent the document structure, which is unable to capture complex interactions. Besides, they take all sentences in the document as the scope of relation extraction (RE) while introducing noise by irrelevant sentences. Furthermore, they do not explicitly model the reasoning chain, leading to a lack of explainability in the reasoning results. These limitations may significantly hinder their performance in practical applications. In this paper, we propose a model based on selective attention and path reasoning for DocRE. Firstly, we adopt hierarchical heterogeneous graph neural networks and recurrent neural networks to realize document modeling and capture complex interactions in the document. Secondly, we adopt selective attention to select sentences related to the entity pair to generate document subgraphs as the scope of RE. Lastly, we adopt path reasoning to explicitly model the reasoning chain between multiple entities in the document subgraph, infer the relations between entities and provide corresponding supporting evidence. Extensive experiment results on three benchmark datasets show that the proposed framework is effective and achieves superior performance compared to most methods. Further analysis demonstrates that selective attention and path reasoning can discover more accurate inter-sentence relations and supporting evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dealing with task interruptions requires the flexible use of working memory and attentional control mechanisms, which are prone to age-related changes. We investigated effects of age on dealing with task interruptions and potential advantages of anticipating an interruption using EEG and a retrospective cueing (retro-cue) paradigm. Thirty-two young (18–30 years) and 28 older (55–70 years) participants performed a visual working memory task, where they had to report the orientation of a target following a retro-cue. Within blocks of 10 trials, they were always, never, or randomly interrupted with an arithmetic task before the onset of the retro-cue. The interruption-induced decline in primary task performance was more pronounced in older participants, while only these benefited from anticipation. The EEG analysis revealed reduced theta and alpha/beta response to the retro-cue following interruptions, especially for the older participants. In both groups, anticipated interruptions were associated with increased theta and alpha/beta power prior and during the interruption, and stronger beta suppression to the retro-cue. The results indicate that interruptions impede the refocusing of attention on the task-relevant representation of the primary task, especially in older people, while anticipation facilitates preparation for the interruption task and resumption of the primary task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of computer vision, object detection has attracted wide attention and achieved exciting results in most situations. However, facing underwater environments, object detection's performance degrades severely due to multiple ineluctable factors, including poor underwater imaging quality, underwater objects with protective colors, etc. These lead to strong interference of underwater backgrounds and the weak discriminability of underwater object features, which make underwater object detection become an extremely challenging task and cry out for reliable solutions. In order to reduce the underwater background interference and improve underwater object perception, we first propose the criss-cross global interaction strategy (CGIS). CGIS consists of two criss-cross structures, where feature decomposition and feature extraction are performed sequentially according to different criss-cross shapes in each structure. For information interaction, our strategy simultaneously avoids the destruction of direct information correspondence and the lack of global information interaction. According to different parameter allocation strategies, CGIS is further divided into standard criss-cross global interaction strategy (SCGIS) and efficient criss-cross global interaction strategy (ECGIS). We then design the criss-cross global interaction-based selective attention in different target dimensions. Our selective attention efficiently perceives global underwater information and rationally allocates precious computing resources to important underwater regions. We finally combine the designed selective attention with YOLO detectors, where attention modules are added to both ends of the feature fusion. The experimental results show that our work makes important progress in achieving efficient underwater object detection. Our selective attention shows good robustness in various YOLO detectors and exhibits ideal generalization in different detection tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing concern for the issues and problems associated with static testing, dynamic assessment (DA) has been recently receiving increased attention as an alternative in educational settings. The present single case study attempted to investigate the potential of interactionist dynamic assessment in developing an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) L2 learner's reading competence and selective attention. A 13-year-old female EFL learner with the combined type of ADHD voluntarily participated in this study. During the DA sessions, the learner read some short passages and answered the questions through mediations emerging from the interactions between the mediator and the learner. The qualitative analysis of DA protocols led to the development of an inventory of different forms of implicit and explicit mediations. Moreover, the quantitative analysis of the data showed that DA contributed to the learner's reading comprehension and some congruent parameters of selective attention. The results of the present study call for teachers', policymakers', and material developers' increasing attention to the mediations required to assist ADHD L2 learner's independence from the mediator, which demonstrates self-regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In rich visual environments, humans have to adjust their attentional control settings in various ways, depending on the task. Especially if the environment changes dynamically, it remains unclear how observers adapt to these changes. In two experiments (online and lab-based versions of the same task), we investigated how observers adapt their target choices while searching for color singletons among shape distractor contexts that changed over trials. The two equally colored targets had shapes that differed from each other and matched a varying number of distractors. Participants were free to select either target. The results show that participants adjusted target choices to the shape ratio of distractors: even though the task could be finished by focusing on color only, participants showed a tendency to choose targets matching with fewer distractors in shape. The time course of this adaptation showed that the regularities in the changing environment were taken into account. A Bayesian modeling approach was used to provide a fine-grained picture of how observers adapted their behavior to the changing shape ratio with three parameters: the strength of adaptation, its delay relative to the objective distractor shape ratio, and a general bias toward specific shapes. Overall, our findings highlight that systematic changes in shape, even when it is not a target-defining feature, influence how searchers adjust their attentional control settings. Furthermore, our comparison between lab-based and online assessments with this paradigm suggests that shape is a good choice as a feature dimension in adaptive choice online experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with left-sided neglect dyslexia often omit whole words positioned on the left, termed whole-word errors, or commit errors on the left-sided letters of words, termed unilateral paralexias. In addition, the errors have been shown to be exacerbated by simultaneously presented distractors, which has been interpreted as a failure of selective attention. In two experiments, we examined the dependency of these error types on parafoveal versus foveal viewing. The first experiment used a paradigm with parafoveal targets and distractors; the second a paradigm with foveal targets and parafoveal distractors. This enabled a separate evaluation of the influences of stimulus position within an egocentric frame, a two-word allocentric frame, and a within-word allocentric frame. First, regarding whole-word errors, we found the expected spatial and distractor effects with parafoveal targets and distractors. With foveal targets and parafoveal distractors, however, the spatial effect was effectively eliminated. Surprisingly, intrusions from the distractor word were common in distractor conditions. This is consistent with an egocentric account and not a two-word allocentric account. Second, we found that unilateral paralexias remained largely consistent regardless of spatial position or the presence of a distractor. Thus, there is a contrast in spatial and distractor effects between whole-word errors and unilateral paralexias. These results are consistent with three distinct deficits: an egocentric deficit across space resulting in whole-word errors, a failure of selective attention that results in whole-word intrusion errors, and a within-word allocentric deficit resulting in unilateral paralexias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: The purpose was to examine the relationship between dietary creatine intake obtained in food and selective attention and inhibitory control processes in older adults. Methods: Forty-five (n = 11 males; n = 34 females) participants over 60 years of age volunteered. Participants completed a 5-day dietary recall survey to estimate creatine intake and a cognitive assessment which included an adaptation of the Eriksen flanker task and a mini-mental state examination (MMSE). Cohorts for two groups were derived based on higher (HCr) versus lower (LCr) median creatine intake. To compare the groups, an unpaired Mann-Whitney U test was performed. In addition, Spearman's correlation analysis was used to test a potential association between the daily amount of creatine with selective attention and inhibitory processing task results. Results: There were significant differences between the groups in the flanker task. In the incongruent condition, HCr responded on average about 646 ms faster than LCr (p =.005). HCr also responded about 25% more accurately than LCr in the incongruent condition (p <.001). Response time to incongruent stimuli (Spearman's -0.424) and per cent correct (Spearman's rho 0.565) showed moderate correlations with daily creatine intake. Conclusions: Creatine intake from food is positively associated with selective attention and inhibitory processing in older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an essential component of the human attention system, the effect of phasic alertness refers to the change of performance with the presence of a preceding warning signal. Weinbach and Henik (Cognition, 133 (2), 414-419, 2014) argued that phasic alertness is an adaptive mechanism that diverts attention to salient events. This mechanism enhances selective attention when the critical event is more salient than others. When selective attention to less salient details is required, phasic alertness can lead to more interference from task-irrelevant information. The experiment on which this saliency-based account of phasic alertness is based has not been replicated. In two experiments, the present study attempted to replicate the alertness-related findings of Weinbach and Henik. Although we used a similar design, the results did not reveal evidence for an interaction between phasic alertness and response congruency in the global/local processing task. Our results do not support the saliency-based account of phasic alertness. We argue that more systematic investigation is needed for this phasic alertness account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attentional control balances the competing drives of performance maximization and effort minimization. One way the attention system minimizes effort is through a bias to persist in the use of attentional control strategies that have been useful in the past. In the present study, we asked whether such selection history can result in the persistence of an attentional control strategy that is counterproductive, effectively competing with a more optimal strategy. Participants first completed a training in which one color target was encountered more frequently than another, and then completed a test phase in which they could search for one of two targets on any given trial, one of which would be more optimal to search for given the distribution of color stimuli. An attentional bias for the more frequent target color was observed in the training phase and the choice of which target to report was robustly optimal in the test phase, reflecting performance maximization. Importantly, participants also exhibited a tendency to report the target rendered in the previously more frequent target color in the test phase, even when the distribution of non-target colors made it suboptimal to do so. Our findings shed light on the fundamental question of why attentional control is sometimes suboptimal, demonstrating a role for selection history in the perseveration of previously employed attentional strategies even when such strategies produce suboptimal performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When focusing attention on some objects and ignoring others, people often fail to notice the presence of an additional, unexpected object (inattentional blindness). In general, people are more likely to notice when the unexpected object is similar to the attended items and dissimilar from the ignored ones. Perhaps surprisingly, current evidence suggests that this similarity effect results almost entirely from dissimilarity to the ignored items, and it remains unclear whether similarity to the attended items affects noticing. Other aspects of similarity have not been examined at all, including whether the similarity of the attended and ignored items to each other affects noticing of a distinct unexpected object. We used a sustained inattentional blindness task to examine all three aspects of similarity. Experiment 1 (n = 813) found no evidence that increasing the similarity of the attended and ignored items to each other affected noticing of an unexpected object. Experiment 2 (n = 610) provided some of the first compelling evidence that similarity to the attended items – in addition to the ignored items – affects noticing. Experiment 3 (n = 1,044) replicated that pattern and showed that noticing rates varied with the degree of similarity to the ignored shapes but not to the attended shapes, suggesting that suppression of ignored items functions differently from the enhancement of attended items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention can be biased towards previously reward-associated stimuli even when they are task-irrelevant and physically non-salient, although studies of reward-modulated attention have been largely limited to primate (including human and nonhuman) models. Birds have been shown to have the capacity to discriminate reward and spatial cues in a manner similar to primates, but whether reward history involuntarily affects their attention in the same way remains unclear. We adapted a spatial cueing paradigm with differential rewards to investigate how reward modulates the allocation of attention in peafowl (Pavo cristatus). The birds were required to locate and peck a target on a computer screen that was preceded by a high-value or low-value color cue that was uninformative with respect to the location of the upcoming target. All birds exhibited a validity effect (performance enhanced on valid compared to invalid cue), and an interaction effect between value and validity was evident at the group level, being particularly pronounced in the birds with the greatest amount of reward training. The time course of reward learning was conspicuously incremental, phenomenologically slower compared to primates. Our findings suggest a similar influence of reward history on attention across phylogeny despite a significant difference in neuroanatomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a longstanding debate about whether lexical and semantic processing of words is serial or parallel. We addressed this debate using partially valid cueing, where one of two words is cued. The cue was valid on 80% and invalid on the other 20% of the trials. The task was semantic categorization, and performance was measured by accuracy. The new feature was to limit attentional switching using a postmask of consonants that closely followed the presentation of words. We found a large effect of cueing and, most importantly, performance for the uncued word was at chance. This chance performance was consistent with serial processing, but not with typical parallel processing. This result adds to the evidence from other recent studies that the lexical and semantic processing of words is serial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has suggested that humans can assert control over the precision of working memory (WM) items. However, the mechanisms that enable this control are unclear. While some studies suggest that internal attention improves precision, it may not be the only factor, as previous work also demonstrated that WM storage is disentangled from attention. To test whether there is a precision control mechanism beyond internal attention, we contrasted internal attention and precision requirements within the same trial in three experiments. In every trial, participants memorized two items briefly. Before the test, a retro-cue indicated which item would be tested first, thus should be attended. Importantly, we encouraged participants to store the unattended item with higher precision by testing it using more similar lure colors at the probe display. Accuracy was analyzed on a small proportion of trials where the target-lure similarity, hence the task difficulty, was equal for attended and unattended items. Experiments 2 and 3 controlled for output interference by the first test and involuntary precision boost by the retro-cue, respectively. In all experiments, the unattended item had lower accuracy than the attended item, suggesting that individuals were not able to remember it more precisely than the attended item. Thus, we conclude that there is no precision control mechanism beyond internal attention, highlighting the close relationship between attentional and qualitative prioritization within WM. We discuss the important implications of these findings for our understanding of the fundamentals of WM and WM-driven behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The flanker task is a common measure of selective attention and response competition across populations, age groups, and experiential contexts. Adapting it for different uses often involves changing methodological features that are rarely empirically compared with the previous design. This paper presents an example of how typical methodological changes can differentially elicit congruency effects across age groups. We compared two flanker tasks, using direction stimuli on a laptop versus color stimuli on a tablet, in young children (2–7 years; Experiment 1), older children (6–10 years; Experiment 2a), and adults (19–23 years; Experiment 2b). Young children showed the expected congruency effects in the direction task, and one year later a subset of the sample completed the color task, also showing congruency effects. Longitudinal comparisons showed no difference in the congruency effect across tasks, but nearly half of the sample was excluded due to high error rates. To avoid excluding children with few correct trials, we modified a new measure, signed residual time, to incorporate correctness and reaction time per trial. With the larger sample, this measure showed no difference in congruency effects across tasks. To compare these tasks when completed within the same session, we tested older children and young adults in both tasks and found congruency effects in the direction task but not the color task. These results raise concern that tasks adapted for young children may not perform comparably in other samples, and we caution researchers to anticipate this possibility when modifying cognitive tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have demonstrated the impairment of sustained attention due to total sleep deprivation (TSD). However, it remains unclear whether and how TSD affects the processing of visual selective attention. In the current study, 24 volunteers performed a visual search task before and after TSD over a period of 36 h while undergoing spontaneous electroencephalography. Paired-sample t-tests of behavioral performance revealed that, compared with baseline values, the participants showed lower accuracy and higher variance in response time in visual search tasks performed after TSD. Analysis of the event-related potentials (ERPs) showed that the mean amplitude of the N2-posterior-contralateral (N2pc) difference wave after TSD was less negative than that at baseline and the mean amplitude of P3 after TSD was more positive than that at baseline. Our findings suggest that TSD significantly attenuates attentional direction/orientation processing and triggers a compensatory effect in the parietal brain to partially offset the impairments. These findings provide new evidence and improve our understanding of the effects of sleep loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review analyzes studies addressing second-order visual filters as a mechanism for preattentive grouping of local visual information received from the outputs of striatal neurons (first-order filters). The development of concepts for possible mechanisms combining primary visual features is analyzed, with the emphasis on studies of the properties of second-order filters. The questions of their spatial organization and the principles of interaction of first- and second-order filters are considered. Results indicating the multichannel nature of the grouping mechanism and the possible relationship between the frequency and orientation tunings of first- and second-order filters are described. A model for the organization of second-order filters is presented. Possible neurophysiological correlates of these mechanisms are analyzed. The possible role of second-order mechanisms in visual perception is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Executive functioning (EF) is an umbrella term for various cognitive functions that play a role in monitoring and planning to effectuate goal-directed behavior. The 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), the most common microdeletion syndrome, is associated with a multitude of both somatic and cognitive symptoms, including EF impairments in school-age and adolescence. However, results vary across different EF domains and studies with preschool children are scarce. As EF is critically associated with later psychopathology and adaptive functioning, our first aim was to study EF in preschool children with 22q11DS. Our second aim was to explore the effect of a congenital heart defects (CHD) on EF abilities, as CHD are common in 22q11DS and have been implicated in EF impairment in individuals with CHD without a syndromic origin. Methods: All children with 22q11DS (n = 44) and typically developing (TD) children (n = 81) were 3.0 to 6.5 years old and participated in a larger prospective study. We administered tasks measuring visual selective attention, visual working memory, and a task gauging broad EF abilities. The presence of CHD was determined by a pediatric cardiologist based on medical records. Results: Analyses showed that children with 22q11DS were outperformed by TD peers on the selective attention task and the working memory task. As many children were unable to complete the broad EF task, we did not run statistical analyses, but provide a qualitative description of the results. There were no differences in EF abilities between children with 22q11DS with and without CHDs. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first study measuring EF in a relatively large sample of young children with 22q11DS. Our results show that EF impairments are already present in early childhood in children with 22q11DS. In line with previous studies with older children with 22q11DS, CHDs do not appear to have an effect on EF performance. These findings might have important implications for early intervention and support the improvement of prognostic accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to extend previous findings on selective attention over a lifetime using machine learning procedures. By decoding group membership and stimulus type, we aimed to study differences in the neural representation of inhibitory control across age groups at a single-trial level. We re-analyzed data from 211 subjects from six age groups between 8 and 83 years of age. Based on single-trial EEG recordings during a flanker task, we used support vector machines to predict the age group as well as to determine the presented stimulus type (i.e., congruent, or incongruent stimulus). The classification of group membership was highly above chance level (accuracy: 55%, chance level: 17%). Early EEG responses were found to play an important role, and a grouped pattern of classification performance emerged corresponding to age structure. There was a clear cluster of individuals after retirement, i.e., misclassifications mostly occurred within this cluster. The stimulus type could be classified above chance level in ~ 95% of subjects. We identified time windows relevant for classification performance that are discussed in the context of early visual attention and conflict processing. In children and older adults, a high variability and latency of these time windows were found. We were able to demonstrate differences in neuronal dynamics at the level of individual trials. Our analysis was sensitive to mapping gross changes, e.g., at retirement age, and to differentiating components of visual attention across age groups, adding value for the diagnosis of cognitive status across the lifespan. Overall, the results highlight the use of machine learning in the study of brain activity over a lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of deaf and hard-of-hearing (henceforth, deaf) children tend to make comparisons with typically hearing children for the purpose of either identifying deficits to be remediated or understanding the impact of auditory deprivation on visual or domain general processing. Here, we eschew these clinical and theoretical aims, seeking instead to understand factors that explain variability in cognitive function within deaf children. A total of 108 bilingual deaf children ages 7–13 years who use both English and American Sign Language (ASL) participated in a longitudinal study of executive function (EF) development. We report longitudinal data from a visual continuous performance task that measured sustained selective attention and response inhibition. Results show that the impact of deafness on these processes is negligible, but that language skills have a positive relationship with both: better English abilities were associated with better selective sustained attention, and better ASL abilities with better response inhibition. The relationship between sustained selective attention and English abilities may reflect the cognitive demands of spoken language acquisition for deaf children, whereas better ASL abilities may promote an "inner voice," associated with improved response inhibition. The current study cannot conclusively demonstrate causality or directionality of effects. However, these data highlight the importance of studies that focus on atypical individuals, for whom the relationships between language and cognition may be different from those observed in typically developing populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention, as it is now defined as a process matching data from the environment to the needs of the organism, is one of the main aspects of human cognitive processes. There are several aspects to attention including tonic alertness (a process of intrinsic arousal that varies by minutes to hours), phasic alertness (a process that causes a quick change in attention as a result of a brief stimulus), selective attention (a process differentiating multiple stimuli), and sustained attention (a process maintaining persistence of response and continuous effort over an extended period). Attention dysfunction is associated with multiple disorders; therefore, there has been much effort in assessing attention and its domains, resulting in a battery of tests evaluating one or several attentional domains; instances of which are the Stroop color-word test, Test of Everyday Attention, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, and Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. These tests vary in terms of utilities, range of age, and domains. The role of attention in human life and the importance of assessing it merits an inclusive review of the efforts made to assess attention and the resulting tests; Here we highlight all the necessary data regarding neurophysiological tests which assess human attentive function and investigates the evolution of attention tests over time. Also, the ways of assessing the attention in untestable patients who have difficulty in reading or using a computer, along with the lack of ability to comprehend verbal instructions and executive tasks, are discussed. This review can be of help as a platform for designing new studies to researchers who are interested in working on attention and conditions causing deficits in this aspect of body function, by collecting and organizing information on its assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that feature search is efficient, whereas conjunction search is usually inefficient. However, prior studies have shown that some conjunction search could become very efficient through perceptual learning, behaving like a traditional feature search. An unanswered question is whether a new feature is learned when an inefficient conjunction search become efficient after extensive training. A popular view is that the trained conjunction has been successfully unitized into a new feature and thus could pop out from neighboring distractors. Here, by using stimulus specificity and transfer of perceptual learning as an approach, we investigate whether a new feature is learned when an initially inefficient conjunction search becomes highly efficient after extensive training. In two experiments, we consistently found that long-term perceptual learning over days could induce an inefficient-to-efficient pattern change in a color-orientation conjunction search. Moreover, the learning effect of the conjunction target could partly transfer to a new target that shared a same color or a same orientation with the trained target. Remarkably, the total amount of the learning effect was approximately equal to the sum of the transfer effects of individual features. Such additive learning pattern could last for at least several months, although the learning of separate features showed different patterns of persistence. These results do not support that the trained conjunction is unitized into a new and inseparable feature after learning. Instead, our findings point to a feature-based attention enhancement mechanism underlying long-term perceptual learning and its persistence of color-orientation conjunction search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual features previously associated with reward can capture attention even when task-irrelevant, a phenomenon known as value-driven attention capture (VDAC). VDAC persists without reinforcement, unlike other forms of learning, where removing reinforcement typically leads to extinction. In five experiments, factors common to many studies were manipulated to examine their impact on VDAC and its extinction. All experiments included learning and test phases. During learning, participants completed a visual search task during which one of two target colors was associated with a reward, and the other with no reward. During test, 1 week later, participants completed another visual search task in which the reward association was not reinforced. When a rewarded feature remained task-relevant (Experiment 1), VDAC was observed. When the rewarded feature was made task-irrelevant (Experiments 2–5) there was no evidence of a VDAC effect, except when the target feature was physically salient and there was a reduction in the frequency of exposure to the reward-associated feature (Experiment 5). We failed to find evidence of VDAC in Experiments 2–4, suggesting that VDAC may depend on the demands of the task resulting in vulnerability to VDAC. When VDAC was observed, extinction was also observed. This indicates that VDAC is subject to extinction as would be expected from an effect driven by reinforcement learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spondyloarthritis may contribute to deficits in cognition. The objective of this study was to compare cognitive abilities in patients with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) or psoriatic arthritis (PsA) with matched reference groups. This investigator-initiated, cross-sectional, exploratory study of adults with axSpA or PsA was conducted at two German rheumatology centres (November 2018-September 2019). All data on patient and disease characteristics and cognitive abilities were collected at a single visit. Cognitive function was assessed by the previously validated Memory and Attention Test subscores of selective attention, episodic working memory, and episodic short-term memory and compared with subscores from healthy age-, sex-, and education-matched reference subjects. The mean patient age was 51.1 and 55.8 years in the axSpA (n = 101) and PsA (n = 117) groups, respectively, and mean symptom duration was 13.7 and 10.3 years. Compared with matched reference subjects, axSpA and PsA patients showed significant impairments in selective attention (mean difference of -6.5 and -4.5, respectively, on a 45-point scale; P < 0.001 for both) and no significant differences in episodic working memory. The PsA cohort, but not the axSpA cohort, had significantly better episodic short-term memory subscores compared with matched reference subjects (mean change of 2.0 on a 15-point scale; P < 0.001). Explorative subgroup analyses were unable to identify factors influencing cognitive changes, including disease activity, pain, and function, but may have been underpowered. We conclude that impairments in selective attention may impact the ability of axSpA and PsA patients to process information. These findings warrant additional studies, including longitudinal analyses, in patients with spondyloarthritis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention helps in selection among competing stimuli, but attentional selection also biases subsequent information processing as a prior experience. Previous studies have demonstrated that intertrial repetition of target features or locations facilitates perceptual processing as selection history guides attention. In the current study, we found that eye selection history in binocular rivalry induces eye-specific attentional bias. In four experiments, participants responded to the target presented at one of the locations on either eye. The results showed that the target was detected faster when presented to the same eye as in the previous trial under binocular rivalry. However, the effect of eye repetition was not observed when the interocular conflict was reduced by presenting stimuli to only one eye on each trial. Our result indicates that eye selection history can affect eye dominance during binocular rivalry as attention amplifies selected information among competing inputs. These findings suggest that prior experience of attentional deployment modulates subsequent information processing owing to the residual effect of attentional amplification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mind wandering is ubiquitous in everyday life and has a pervasive and profound impact on task-related performance. A range of psychological processes have been proposed to underlie these performance-related decrements, including failures of executive control, volatile information processing, and shortcomings in selective attention to critical task-relevant stimuli. Despite progress in the development of such theories, existing descriptive analyses have limited capacity to discriminate between the theories. We propose a cognitive-model based analysis that simultaneously explains self-reported mind wandering and task performance. We quantitatively compare six explanations of poor performance in the presence of mind wandering. The competing theories are distinguished by whether there is an impact on executive control and, if so, how executive control acts on information processing, and whether there is an impact on volatility of information processing. Across two experiments using the sustained attention to response task, we find quantitative evidence that mind wandering is associated with two latent factors. Our strongest conclusion is that executive control is impaired: increased mind wandering is associated with reduced ability to inhibit habitual response tendencies. Our nuanced conclusion is that executive control deficits manifest in reduced ability to selectively attend to the information value of rare but task-critical events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to determine whether value-based attentional biases learned in the auditory domain can correspondingly shape visual attention. A learning phase established associations between auditory words and monetary rewards via a modified version of the dichotic listening task. In a subsequent test phase, participants performed a Stroop task including written representations of auditory words previously paired with reward and semantic associates of formerly rewarded words. Results support a semantic generalization of value-driven attention from the auditory to the visual domain. The findings provide valuable insight into a critical aspect of adaptation and the understanding of maladaptive behaviors (e.g., addiction). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring selective attention in a speeded task can provide valuable insight into the concentration ability of an individual, and can inform neuropsychological assessment of attention in aging, traumatic brain injury, and in various psychiatric disorders. There are only a few tools to measure selective attention that are freely available, psychometrically validated, and can be used flexibly both for in-person and remote assessment. To address this gap, we developed a self-administrable, mobile-based test called "UCancellation" (University of California Cancellation), which was designed to assess selective attention and concentration and has two stimulus sets: Letters and Pictures. UCancellation takes less than 7 minutes to complete, is automatically scored, has multiple forms to allow repeated testing, and is compatible with a variety of iOS and Android devices. Here we report the results of a study that examined parallel-test reliability and convergent validity of UCancellation in a sample of 104 college students. UCancellation Letters and Pictures showed adequate parallel test reliability (r =.71–.83, p < 0.01) and internal consistency (ɑ =.73–.91). It also showed convergent validity with another widely used cancellation task, d2 Test of Attention (r =.43–.59, p < 0.01), and predicted performance on a cognitive control composite (r =.34–.41, p < 0.05). These results suggest that UCancellation is a valid test of selective attention and inhibitory control, which warrants further data collection to establish norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physically salient stimuli are difficult to ignore, frequently eliciting fixations even when they are known to be task-irrelevant. A recent study demonstrated that distractor fixation-contingent auditory feedback was highly effective in reducing the frequency of fixations on such stimuli. The present study explores more specifically what it is about feedback that makes it effective in curbing oculomotor behavior. In one experiment, we removed the immediacy of the feedback by informing participants after each trial via textual feedback if they had fixated the distractor. A comparable reduction in the frequency of oculomotor capture was observed. In a second experiment, we only provided summary feedback concerning the frequency of oculomotor capture after each block of trials. Not only were the benefits of feedback again robustly comparable, but a benefit was observed even in the first block before any feedback had actually been presented. Simply knowing that the frequency of distractor fixations was being monitored was sufficient to substantially reduce the frequency of oculomotor capture. Interestingly, trial-level feedback predominantly reduced the frequency of capture by slowing oculomotor responses, reflecting a speed-accuracy tradeoff, whereas block-wise feedback resulted in a reduction in the frequency of capture with saccadic reaction time equated, reflecting a bona fide improvement in task performance. Our findings have implications for our understanding of the role of motivation, strategy, and selection history in oculomotor control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is not typically assumed in influential models of visual working memory (WM), representations in WM are systematically biased by multiple factors. Orientation representations are biased away from the cardinal axis (i.e., cardinal bias) and they are biased away from or toward the other orientation simultaneously held in WM (i.e., interitem interaction). The present study investigated the extent to which these two bias mechanisms interact in WM. In Experiment 1, participants remembered two sequentially presented orientations and reproduced both orientations after a short delay. Cardinal biases were assessed separately for the trials where the two mechanisms produce biases in the same direction (i.e., congruent trials) and the trials where they produce biases in the opposite direction (i.e., incongruent trials). Whereas congruent trials exhibited a typical cardinal bias, incongruent trials exhibited no cardinal bias, demonstrating that the cardinal bias was canceled out by the interitem interaction. Follow-up experiments extended these results by manipulating attentional priority for the two orientations by means of precue (Experiment 2) and postcue (Experiment 3). In both experiments, attentionally prioritized items exhibited a typical cardinal bias irrespective of the congruency whereas attentionally unprioritized items exhibited a reversal of the cardinal bias in the incongruent trials, demonstrating that selective attention modulates the influence of the interitem interaction. Together, these results suggest that WM leverages information about specific stimuli and their relationship to support a given behavioral goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Stroop interference effect—the slower response to color in an incongruent Stroop stimulus (e.g.,) relative to a neutral Stroop stimulus (e.g.,) is usually highly robust. The present study investigated the role of selective attention in the Stroop task by priming the distractor word. Replicating previous studies using the verbal (color-naming) task, priming the distractor word produced a substantial speedup of response to the color in a Stroop stimulus in our manual Stroop task. Importantly, priming the distractor completely eliminated the Stroop interference effect (Incongruent = Neutral, e.g.,), and brought about a sizable facilitation effect (Congruent < Neutral, e.g.,) that was absent in the standard (control-primed) Stroop trials. RT distribution analysis showed that the pattern of facilitation and interference effects was changed radically by priming the distractor: In the standard Stroop task, the Stroop interference effect increased across quantiles, and the facilitation effect was absent throughout the quantiles; in contrast, in the distractor-primed Stroop task, the interference effect was eliminated, and the large facilitation effect that emerged remained constant across the quantiles. We interpret these results in terms of a “Trojan horse” account that suggests that in a Stroop stimulus, color and word form are integrated into an object; hence, when object-based attention is deployed to attend to the color, the word form “sneaks in.” Priming the distractor breaks this integration, allowing attention to disengage from the irrelevant word dimension and eliminating Stroop interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans can rapidly and accurately extract statistical information about features of the visual environment, an ability referred to as ensemble perception. However, little is known about how ensemble estimates are affected when task-irrelevant and distracting feature information is present. Here, we tested how effectively feature-based attention—when tuned to a specific color—can select a single item set out of two intermixed ensembles of colored lines. Participants were instructed to report the average orientation of a target-colored item set, while ignoring a second differently colored set. To assess how representational overlap between the two sets impacts color-based selection, we systematically varied the orientation similarity between the relevant and irrelevant items. Our results showed that participants’ orientation reports were reliably biased towards the irrelevant items, but interestingly, these biases were only observed when the item sets overlapped in orientation space. In a second experiment, using a visual mask to disrupt access to color information at different time points, we found that these biases were stronger when less time was available to process the stimuli. Together, these results suggest that ensemble representations are rapidly formed based on all available information in the relevant feature dimension, regardless of task relevance, and that selective attention weights and separates these ensemble representations at a relatively later processing stage. This selection appears highly effective when the underlying population activity generated by the two sets is separable along the to-be-estimated feature dimension, but is dampened when relevant and irrelevant ensemble representations overlap in feature space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: The effect of caffeine mouth rinsing (CAF-MR) on cognitive performance has not been thoroughly investigated.To evaluate the effects of different concentrations of CAF-MR on selective attention in relation to perceived taste intensity.A total of 30 healthy and recreationally active male subjects were included in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Interventions included MR for 20 s at rest with three different caffeine solutions (0.24% [60 mg/25 mL], 0.6% [150 mg/25 mL], and 1.2% [300 mg/25 mL]), MR with 25 mL water (placebo), and no MR (control). Data on Victoria Stroop Test (VST) and the perceived taste intensity were recorded at five sessions.CAF-MR-300 mg intervention significantly decreased completion time (from 62.93 ± 19.07 to 57.01 ± 16.74 s, p = 0.002 in Part D), while CAF-MR-150 mg intervention significantly decreased number of errors in Part D (7.00 ± 6.21 vs. 5.63 ± 5.76, p = 0.04) and Part C (8.77 ± 8.80 vs. 7.10 ± 7.11, p = 0.02). Perceived difficulty was significantly decreased both after CAF-MR with 150 mg (5.57 ± 1.65 vs. 4.77 ± 1.98, p = 0.006) and 300 mg (5.95 ± 1.77vs. 4.67 ± 1.96, p < 0.001). Perceived taste intensity for 300 mg of caffeine was negatively correlated with completion time (r: ranged, 0.37 to 0.46, p ranged, 0.045 to 0.009) after 300 mg, 150 mg (p ranged, 0.04 to 0.005) and placebo (p ranged 0.044 to 0.03) interventions.This study is the first to demonstrate that CAF-MR shows dose-dependent effects on selective attention in healthy recreational males, such as improved speed (for 300 mg caffeine), reduced error rate (for 150 mg caffeine) and decrease in perceived difficulty (for 150 and 300 mg caffeine).Objectives: The effect of caffeine mouth rinsing (CAF-MR) on cognitive performance has not been thoroughly investigated.To evaluate the effects of different concentrations of CAF-MR on selective attention in relation to perceived taste intensity.A total of 30 healthy and recreationally active male subjects were included in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Interventions included MR for 20 s at rest with three different caffeine solutions (0.24% [60 mg/25 mL], 0.6% [150 mg/25 mL], and 1.2% [300 mg/25 mL]), MR with 25 mL water (placebo), and no MR (control). Data on Victoria Stroop Test (VST) and the perceived taste intensity were recorded at five sessions.CAF-MR-300 mg intervention significantly decreased completion time (from 62.93 ± 19.07 to 57.01 ± 16.74 s, p = 0.002 in Part D), while CAF-MR-150 mg intervention significantly decreased number of errors in Part D (7.00 ± 6.21 vs. 5.63 ± 5.76, p = 0.04) and Part C (8.77 ± 8.80 vs. 7.10 ± 7.11, p = 0.02). Perceived difficulty was significantly decreased both after CAF-MR with 150 mg (5.57 ± 1.65 vs. 4.77 ± 1.98, p = 0.006) and 300 mg (5.95 ± 1.77vs. 4.67 ± 1.96, p < 0.001). Perceived taste intensity for 300 mg of caffeine was negatively correlated with completion time (r: ranged, 0.37 to 0.46, p ranged, 0.045 to 0.009) after 300 mg, 150 mg (p ranged, 0.04 to 0.005) and placebo (p ranged 0.044 to 0.03) interventions.This study is the first to demonstrate that CAF-MR shows dose-dependent effects on selective attention in healthy recreational males, such as improved speed (for 300 mg caffeine), reduced error rate (for 150 mg caffeine) and decrease in perceived difficulty (for 150 and 300 mg caffeine).Methods: The effect of caffeine mouth rinsing (CAF-MR) on cognitive performance has not been thoroughly investigated.To evaluate the effects of different concentrations of CAF-MR on selective attention in relation to perceived taste intensity.A total of 30 healthy and recreationally active male subjects were included in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Interventions included MR for 20 s at rest with three different caffeine solutions (0.24% [60 mg/25 mL], 0.6% [150 mg/25 mL], and 1.2% [300 mg/25 mL]), MR with 25 mL water (placebo), and no MR (control). Data on Victoria Stroop Test (VST) and the perceived taste intensity were recorded at five sessions.CAF-MR-300 mg intervention significantly decreased completion time (from 62.93 ± 19.07 to 57.01 ± 16.74 s, p = 0.002 in Part D), while CAF-MR-150 mg intervention significantly decreased number of errors in Part D (7.00 ± 6.21 vs. 5.63 ± 5.76, p = 0.04) and Part C (8.77 ± 8.80 vs. 7.10 ± 7.11, p = 0.02). Perceived difficulty was significantly decreased both after CAF-MR with 150 mg (5.57 ± 1.65 vs. 4.77 ± 1.98, p = 0.006) and 300 mg (5.95 ± 1.77vs. 4.67 ± 1.96, p < 0.001). Perceived taste intensity for 300 mg of caffeine was negatively correlated with completion time (r: ranged, 0.37 to 0.46, p ranged, 0.045 to 0.009) after 300 mg, 150 mg (p ranged, 0.04 to 0.005) and placebo (p ranged 0.044 to 0.03) interventions.This study is the first to demonstrate that CAF-MR shows dose-dependent effects on selective attention in healthy recreational males, such as improved speed (for 300 mg caffeine), reduced error rate (for 150 mg caffeine) and decrease in perceived difficulty (for 150 and 300 mg caffeine).Results: The effect of caffeine mouth rinsing (CAF-MR) on cognitive performance has not been thoroughly investigated.To evaluate the effects of different concentrations of CAF-MR on selective attention in relation to perceived taste intensity.A total of 30 healthy and recreationally active male subjects were included in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Interventions included MR for 20 s at rest with three different caffeine solutions (0.24% [60 mg/25 mL], 0.6% [150 mg/25 mL], and 1.2% [300 mg/25 mL]), MR with 25 mL water (placebo), and no MR (control). Data on Victoria Stroop Test (VST) and the perceived taste intensity were recorded at five sessions.CAF-MR-300 mg intervention significantly decreased completion time (from 62.93 ± 19.07 to 57.01 ± 16.74 s, p = 0.002 in Part D), while CAF-MR-150 mg intervention significantly decreased number of errors in Part D (7.00 ± 6.21 vs. 5.63 ± 5.76, p = 0.04) and Part C (8.77 ± 8.80 vs. 7.10 ± 7.11, p = 0.02). Perceived difficulty was significantly decreased both after CAF-MR with 150 mg (5.57 ± 1.65 vs. 4.77 ± 1.98, p = 0.006) and 300 mg (5.95 ± 1.77vs. 4.67 ± 1.96, p < 0.001). Perceived taste intensity for 300 mg of caffeine was negatively correlated with completion time (r: ranged, 0.37 to 0.46, p ranged, 0.045 to 0.009) after 300 mg, 150 mg (p ranged, 0.04 to 0.005) and placebo (p ranged 0.044 to 0.03) interventions.This study is the first to demonstrate that CAF-MR shows dose-dependent effects on selective attention in healthy recreational males, such as improved speed (for 300 mg caffeine), reduced error rate (for 150 mg caffeine) and decrease in perceived difficulty (for 150 and 300 mg caffeine).Conclusions: The effect of caffeine mouth rinsing (CAF-MR) on cognitive performance has not been thoroughly investigated.To evaluate the effects of different concentrations of CAF-MR on selective attention in relation to perceived taste intensity.A total of 30 healthy and recreationally active male subjects were included in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. Interventions included MR for 20 s at rest with three different caffeine solutions (0.24% [60 mg/25 mL], 0.6% [150 mg/25 mL], and 1.2% [300 mg/25 mL]), MR with 25 mL water (placebo), and no MR (control). Data on Victoria Stroop Test (VST) and the perceived taste intensity were recorded at five sessions.CAF-MR-300 mg intervention significantly decreased completion time (from 62.93 ± 19.07 to 57.01 ± 16.74 s, p = 0.002 in Part D), while CAF-MR-150 mg intervention significantly decreased number of errors in Part D (7.00 ± 6.21 vs. 5.63 ± 5.76, p = 0.04) and Part C (8.77 ± 8.80 vs. 7.10 ± 7.11, p = 0.02). Perceived difficulty was significantly decreased both after CAF-MR with 150 mg (5.57 ± 1.65 vs. 4.77 ± 1.98, p = 0.006) and 300 mg (5.95 ± 1.77vs. 4.67 ± 1.96, p < 0.001). Perceived taste intensity for 300 mg of caffeine was negatively correlated with completion time (r: ranged, 0.37 to 0.46, p ranged, 0.045 to 0.009) after 300 mg, 150 mg (p ranged, 0.04 to 0.005) and placebo (p ranged 0.044 to 0.03) interventions.This study is the first to demonstrate that CAF-MR shows dose-dependent effects on selective attention in healthy recreational males, such as improved speed (for 300 mg caffeine), reduced error rate (for 150 mg caffeine) and decrease in perceived difficulty (for 150 and 300 mg caffeine). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The episodic flanker task is an episodic version of the Eriksen and Eriksen (Perception & Psychophysics, 16 (1), 143–149, 1974) perceptual flanker task, showing the same compatibility and distance effects. Subjects are presented with a list followed by a probe display in which one item is cued. The task, to indicate whether the probed letter appeared in the same position in the memory list, requires focusing attention on a single item in memory. The probe display contains flanking items to be ignored. They are same as the memory list or different. Same flankers are compatible with “yes” responses and incompatible with “no” responses. Different flankers are incompatible with “yes” responses and compatible with “no” responses. Previously, we presented multiple flankers in the probe, allowing a global matching strategy. Here, we report two episodic flanker experiments with just one flanker in the probe to encourage focusing sharply on the target. We found flanker compatibility effects in both experiments when a single flanker appeared immediately adjacent to the target. Experiment 2 varied the distance between the flanker and the target in the probe and the memory list and found the compatibility effect in response time only when the flanker was immediately adjacent to the target in both the probe and the memory list. The effect in accuracy also appeared when the flanker was two positions away in both the probe and the memory list. These results show that attention is focused sharply on elements of a memory structure during retrieval, suggesting that memory retrieval is perceptual attention turned inward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite our best intentions, physically salient but entirely task-irrelevant stimuli can sometimes capture our attention. With learning, it is possible to more efficiently ignore such stimuli, although specifically how the visual system accomplishes this remains to be clarified. Using a sample of young-adult participants, we examined the time course of eye movements to targets and distractors. We replicate a reduced frequency of eye movements to the distractor when appearing in a location at which distractors are frequently encountered. This reduction was observed even for the earliest saccades, when selection tends to be most stimulus-driven. When the distractor appeared at the high-probability location, saccadic reaction time was slowed specifically for distractor-going saccades, suggesting a slowing of priority accumulation at this location. In the event that the distractor was fixated, disengagement from the distractor was also faster when it appeared in the high-probability location. Both proactive and reactive mechanisms of distractor suppression work together to minimize attentional capture by frequently encountered distractors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present studies investigated how three core aspects of executive functioning may be influenced by the presence of depth information. Specifically, participants were assigned to one of three executive functioning tasks: working memory (i.e., a change detection task), selective attention (i.e., a visual search task), or inhibitory control (i.e., a flanker task). For all three tasks, participants completed trials where the items in the display were presented either all in one depth plane or the target item was isolated in depth. For the working memory and selective attention tasks, there was an additional condition where items were evenly distributed across two depth planes. Each task also had multiple levels of difficulty to explore if task conditions influence the effect of depth information. Results indicated that although depth information can improve both working memory and selective attention performance, this benefit is specific to the task difficulty and depth information can even hinder performance under certain circumstances. Depth information did not appear to influence inhibitory control performance. Future work is required to investigate if depth can improve inhibitory control performance, and how/what task conditions influence the benefit of depth information. Until further research is completed, researchers and designers should be cautious when implementing multidimensional (3D) displays, as it remains unclear if the performance benefits of including depth information outweigh the present costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interactions between emotion and attention are complex due to the multifaceted nature of attention. Adding to this complexity, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the emotional landscape, broadly heightening health and financial concerns. Can the heightened concerns about COVID-19 impair one or more of the components of attention? To explore the connection between heightened concerns about COVID-19 and attention, in a preregistered study, we collected survey responses from 234 participants assessing levels of concerns surrounding COVID-19, followed by four psychophysics tasks hypothesized to tap into different aspects of attention: visual search, working memory, sustained attention, and cognitive control. We also measured task-unrelated thoughts. Results showed that task-unrelated thoughts, but not survey reports of concern levels, negatively correlated with sustained attention and cognitive control, while visual search and working memory remained robust to task-unrelated thoughts and survey-indicated concern levels. As a whole, these findings suggest that being concerned about COVID-19 does not interfere with cognitive function unless the concerns are active in the form of task-unrelated thoughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background noise disrupts auditory selective attention and impairs performance on cognitive tasks, but the degree to which it is disruptive depends on the task and the individual. According to the load theory of attention and cognitive control, selective attention is influenced by both the perceptual load and the cognitive load of the primary task. Recent studies suggest that hard-to-read font in a reading task may shield attention against background noise and auditory distraction. The current study examined the disruptive effect of background noise on reading comprehension as a function of perceptual load and cognitive load. Perceptual load was manipulated by introducing task disfluency (hard-to-read or easy-to-read font), and cognitive load was manipulated by varying the type of background noise and investigating individual differences in working memory capacity. The results suggest that high perceptual load and high working memory capacity both facilitate reading comprehension. However, contrary to previous research, neither perceptual load nor capacity moderates the disruptive effect of background noise. These results failed to support the generalizability and applicability of the shield effect of perceptual disfluency against auditory distraction during reading but supported the beneficial effect of perceptual disfluency on reading comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]