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A classical model of human attention holds that independent neural networks realize stimulus-driven reorienting and executive control of attention. Questioning full independence, the two functions do, however, engage overlapping networks with activations in cingulo-opercular regions such as anterior insula (AI) and a reverse pattern of activation (stimulus-driven reorienting), and deactivation (executive control) in temporoparietal junction (TPJ). To test for independent versus shared neural mechanisms underlying stimulus-driven and executive control of attention, we used fMRI and a task that isolates individual from concurrent demands in both functions. Results revealed super-additive increases of left AI activity and behavioral response costs under concurrent demands, suggesting a common bottleneck for stimulus-driven reorienting and executive control of attention. These increases were mirrored by non-additive decreases of activity in the default mode network (DMN), including posterior TPJ, regions where activity increased with off-task processes. The deactivations in posterior TPJ were spatially separated from stimulus-driven reorienting related activation in anterior TPJ, a differentiation that replicated in task-free resting state. Furthermore, functional connectivity indicated inhibitory coupling between posterior TPJ and AI during concurrent attention demands. These results demonstrate a role of AI in stimulus-driven and executive control of attention that involves down-regulation of internally directed processes in DMN., (© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Infant visual attention develops rapidly over the first year of life, significantly altering the way infants respond to peripheral visual events. Here we present data from 5-, 7- and 10-month-old infants using the Infant Orienting With Attention (IOWA) task, designed to capture developmental changes in visual spatial attention and saccade planning. Results indicate rapid development of spatial attention and visual response competition between 5 and 10 months. We use a dynamic neural field (DNF) model to link behavioral findings to neural population activity, providing a possible mechanistic explanation for observed developmental changes. Together, the behavioral and model simulation results provide new insights into the specific mechanisms that underlie spatial cueing effects, visual competition, and visual interference in infancy.

It is widely accepted that the presentation of a printed word "automatically" triggers processing that ends with full semantic activation. This processing, among other characteristics, is held to occur without intention, and cannot be stopped. The results of the present experiment show that this account is problematic in the context of a variant of the Stroop paradigm. Subjects named the print color of words that were either neutral or semantically related to color. When the letters were all colored, all spatially cued, and the spaces between letters were filled with characters from the top of the keyboard (i.e., 4, #, 5, %, 6, and *), color naming yielded a semantically based Stroop effect and a semantically based negative priming effect. In contrast, the same items yielded neither a semantic Stroop effect nor a negative priming effect when a single target letter was uniquely colored and spatially cued. These findings (a) undermine the widespread view that lexical-semantic activation in word reading is automatic in the sense that it occurs without intention and cannot be derailed, and (b) strengthens the case that both implicit and explicit forms of visual word recognition require spatial attention as a necessary preliminary to lexical-semantic processing.

Top-down guidance of visual attention has classically been thought to operate in a feature-specific manner. However, recent studies have shown that top-down visual attention can also be guided by information about target-nontarget feature relations (e.g., larger, redder, brighter). Here we recommend a minimal set of cues for differentiating between relational and feature-specific attentional guidance and examine contrasting predictions for the guidance of attention by size and color stimuli in a spatial cueing paradigm. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that in search for size, when both feature-specific and relational strategies are available, participants adopt a relational search strategy. Experiment 2 shows that when feature-specific information is the only reliable information to guide attention to the target, participants are able to adopt a feature-specific set for size information. Finally, in Experiment 3 we extend our paradigm to differentiate between feature-specific and relational strategies in search for color. Together, these experiments help to clarify the conditions under which different attentional guidance strategies will be employed, and demonstrate a useful minimum cue requirement for differentiating between these two forms of top-down guidance. Implications for current theories of attention are discussed.

We studied the effects of selective attention on metacontrast masking with 3 different cueing experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 compared central symbolic and peripheral spatial cues. For symbolic cues, we observed small attentional costs, that is, reduced visibility when the target appeared at an unexpected location, and attentional costs as well as benefits for peripheral cues. All these effects occurred exclusively at the late, ascending branch of the U-shaped metacontrast masking function, although the possibility exists that cueing effects at the early branch were obscured by a ceiling effect due to almost perfect visibility at short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In Experiment 3, we presented temporal cues that indicated when the target was likely to appear, not where. Here, we also observed cueing effects in the form of higher visibility when the target appeared at the expected point in time compared to when it appeared too early. However, these effects were not restricted to the late branch of the masking function, but enhanced visibility over the complete range of the masking function. Given these results we discuss a common effect for different types of spatial selective attention on metacontrast masking involving neural subsystems that are different from those involved in temporal attention.