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Purpose: Attention and language are hypothesized to interact in bilingual children and in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). In children who are bilingual, attentional control may be enhanced by repeated experience regulating 2 languages. In children with DLD, subtle weaknesses in sustained attention may relate to impaired language processing. This study measured attentional control and sustained attention in monolingual and bilingual children with and without DLD in order to examine the potential influences of bilingualism and DLD, as well as their intersection, on attention. Method: Monolingual English-only and bilingual Spanish-English children aged 6-8 years were categorized into participant groups based on eligibility testing and parent interviews. Parent interviews included standardized assessment of language environment and parent concern regarding language. Participants completed 2 nonlinguistic computerized assessments: a flanker task to measure attentional control and a continuous performance task to measure sustained attention. Results: One hundred nine children met all eligibility criteria for inclusion in a participant group. Regression models predicting performance on the attention tasks were similar for both sustained attention and attentional control. For both tasks, DLD was a significant predictor, and bilingualism was not. Measuring bilingualism continuously using parent-reported exposure did not alter results. Conclusions: This study found no evidence of a 'bilingual cognitive advantage' on 2 types of attention among sequential Spanish-English bilingual children but also found a negative effect of DLD that was consistent across both types of attention and both bilingual and monolingual children. Results are consistent with the broader literature on subtle nonlinguistic deficits in children with DLD and suggest these deficits are minimally affected by diverse linguistic experience., Language and attention represent two crucial cognitive processes in developing children. The relationship between these two cognitive processes has led to discussion in recent literature devoted both to typical development [...]

Research on sustained attention regularly reports declines in task performance as a function of time on task, a phenomenon commonly called the vigilance decrement. Therefore, previous work from theoretical and applied fields has focused on attenuating this performance decrement. Recently, aspects of social facilitation have been used to attain this goal. Social facilitation, or improving task performance through the social presence of an individual, has been found to improve performance on sustained attention tasks. However, the extent to which the forms of social facilitation can mitigate performance are unclear. Thus, the impetus of the present research was to explore the effects of two prevalent forms of social facilitation (i.e., mere presence and evaluative presence) on a sustained attention (i.e., vigilance) task. In sum, 132 observers completed a 24-min cognitive-based vigilance task. The results indicated that an evaluative presence produced the strongest effects on performance, such that the proportion of false alarms was significantly reduced relative to no social presence. Moreover, the mere presence of an individual did not significantly improve vigilance task performance. The results of the present experiment suggest that an evaluative context may be necessary for social presence to improve detection performance on tasks that require sustained attention.KEYWORDS: evaluation apprehension, vigilance, social facilitation, mere presence, Sustained attention is a prevalent component in the average person's daily life (Langner & Eickhoff, 2013). For instance, the U.S. Department of Transportation (2014) has reported that nearly 87% of [...]

The goal of this paper is to examine the psychometric properties of a live-coded behavioral measure of joint attention, the Attention-Following and Initiating Joint Attention Protocol (JA Protocol), in order to assist researchers and clinicians in identifying when this measure may meet their joint attention assessment needs. Data from 260 children with autism spectrum disorder, developmental delay, or typical development between the ages of 2 and 12 years were used to evaluate this measure using quality standards for measurement. Overall, the JA Protocol demonstrated good psychometric properties. Recommendations and limitations for use of this measure based on psychometric analysis results are reported., Author(s): Sallie W. Nowell [sup.1] [sup.3] , Linda R. Watson [sup.1] , Richard A. Faldowski [sup.1] , Grace T. Baranek [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000000122483208, grid.10698.36, Department of Allied Health [...]

Research on visual local and global perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is incomplete in young children. We investigated 35 three-year-old siblings of children with ASD, either diagnosed (n = 12) or not diagnosed (n = 23) with ASD as well as 14 controls with typical development and with no family history of ASD. Data from the local tasks Children's Embedded Figures Test, Hidden Pictures, Figure-Ground and the global tasks Closure and Fragmented Picture Test were collected. Enhanced performance on the local task Hidden Pictures differentiated children with ASD from the other groups. Implications of these results are discussed., Author(s): Elisabeth Nilsson Jobs [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Terje Falck-Ytter [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Sven Bölte [sup.2] [sup.3] [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000 0004 1936 9457, grid.8993.b, Uppsala Child and [...]

We examined the relationship between chronic procrastination, hoarding, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and a computer measure of continuous performance with 84 adult patients evaluated for diagnoses. Patients were administered the General Procrastination Inventory, the Saving Inventory-Revised, the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale and the IVA + Plus Continuous Performance Test. Procrastination scores correlated negatively with auditory attention scores, while self-reported hoarding tendencies correlated negatively with visual attention. Measures of procrastiation, hoarding, and ADHD were positively correlated. Implications and limitations of findings are discussed as well as directions for futher research., Author(s): Burt Ashworth [sup.1] , William McCown [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000 0000 8750 2599, grid.266622.4, College of Business and Social Sciences, Strauss Hall 306, University of Louisiana at Monroe, [...]

Christie and Klein (2008) recommended using the 7 key conditions used by Neumann and De-Schepper (1991) and Stadler and Hogan (1996) to investigate the full range of effects produced by recently rejected distractors (negative priming) and recently attended targets (positive priming) in selective attention tasks. They suggested that incorporating all seven conditions should help to overcome the current muddle of possible explanations for positive and negative priming effects. Crucially, although the overall patterns of results reported by Neumann and DeSchepper and Stadler and Hogan were identical, some of the conditions in Stadler and Hogan's experiment produced much larger effects, particularly in the attended repetition (positive priming) conditions, compared with those of Neumann and DeSchepper. Here we use statistical support provided by an analytic approach known as predicted pattern testing (Levin & Neumann, 1999) to argue that asymmetric transfer produced by participant expectancy effects could account for the magnitude of Stadler and Hogan's positive priming outcomes, rather than the commonly accepted assumption made by Christie and Klein, and others, that prime-probe congruencies involving targets should affect performance (responses to probe targets) more than prime-probe congruencies involving distractors. KEYWORDS: priming, selective attention, inhibition, negative priming, transfer, At any given waking moment, numerous visual objects compete for our attention. Some form of attentional selection is needed to regulate this continuous flux of visual information in everyday life. [...]

Although the positive cognitive and emotional effects of mindfulness-based interventions are widely accepted, the differential effect of the visual and auditory components of this therapy is currently unknown. In this study, 50 healthy volunteer participants were randomized to two equivalent brief mindfulness-based interventions, one using visual stimuli and the other auditory. For the first group, we used a 30-min computer presentation showing different images organized into colors, mandalas and landscapes (15 images x 2 min). For the second group, we created an audio track divided into the same categories as the visual group and with the same timing (15 sounds x 2 min). The results show that regardless of the condition (visual or auditory), the scores in auditory and visual memory and attention improved after meditation. Also regardless of condition, positive emotions decreased after mindfulness meditation. However, following the intervention, negative emotions decreased more sharply in the auditory group than in the visual group. These results suggest that mindfulness concentration and attention techniques presented in an auditory verbal format are more immediately effective at the emotional level than when presented in visual format., Author(s): E. Campillo [sup.1] , J. J. Ricarte [sup.1] [sup.2] , L. Ros [sup.1] [sup.2] , M. Nieto [sup.1] [sup.2] , J. M. Latorre [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000 [...]

Purpose: This research note explores the potential role of attention in mediating previously reported associations between language outcomes and prematurity. Method: As a follow-up investigation to Mahurin Smith, DeThorne, Logan, Channell, and Petrill (2014), we employed multilevel modeling to analyze longitudinal data on language and attention collected when children were, on average, ages of 7, 8, and 10 years. The sample of 114 children taken from the Western Reserve Reading and Math Project was selected to oversample children with a history of prematurity while also controlling for differences in confounding influences such as age, gender, parental education, and race. Results: As predicted, attention differentially predicted language outcomes based on form of measurement. Specifically, parent and examiner ratings of attention were significantly associated with standardized test performance at all 3 time points ([R.sup.2] = 15.2%-20%). Associations between attention and language sample measures were less consistent across home visits and tended to be smaller in effect size. Conclusion: Attention abilities are associated with children's language performance even in the absence of an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis. Clinical implications, particularly as related to assessment, are discussed., Nearly 10% of babies born in the United States arrive prematurely or more than 3 weeks before their due dates (Hamilton, Martin, & Osterman, 2016). Prematurity can have far-reaching effects, [...]

Inattentional blindness refers to the failure to detect the salient unexpected stimuli in one's visual field when performing an attention-demanding task. The present study examined the detection of threats in a static inattentional blindness paradigm. And the detection rates of evolutionary and ontogenetic threats were compared. Participants counted the number of color words from among three (low load) or six (high load) items presented in a circular array. On the last of six trials, an unexpected threatening/neutral illustration was presented in the center of the array along with the task stimuli. Participants detection of the illustration were thus measured and analyzed. The results suggested that: (1) the threatening stimuli, both evolutionary and ontogenetic, were detected more frequently than non-threatening stimuli; (2) the unexpected illustrations were identified more frequently under low-load condition than under high-load condition; (3) even under high-load situation, the threatening illustrations were more frequently identified than neutral ones. Threats are more likely to be detected under inattentional blindness and perceptual load., Author(s): Hua Gao [sup.1] , Zhuowang Jia [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Fujian Normal University (Qishan Area), 0000 0000 9271 2478, grid.411503.2, , Fuzhou, Fujian, China Introduction Visual attention plays a [...]

Mindfulness practice is becoming an accepted psychological intervention used in clinical settings to help enhance attention. To date however relatively few randomised control trial (RCT) studies have investigated the effect of mindfulness training on attentional skills in novice practitioners. This study examined the effect of daily mindfulness practice on changes in attention skills; alerting, orienting and executive control in novice practitioners. Forty six university students from Perth, Western Australia were randomly assigned to one of two groups (mindfulness or waitlist control). Baseline analyses of psychological wellbeing indicated that the two groups initially were comparable in this domain. Pre- and post-test assessments using the Attention Network Test (ANT) were conducted to measure attention skills. Repeated measures ANOVA were used to examine the effect of intervention. Significant improvement in orienting and executive control skills following the mindfulness intervention was noted, however, no changes in alerting attentional skills were detected. Mindfulness practice impacted on the fundamental processes of the selective (orienting) and executive attention (executive control) networks which may in turn have additional beneficial effects in a variety of domains and situations. These findings add to existing literature that supports the positive and beneficial effect of regular mindfulness practice for the enhancement of attentional skills and its potential application to clinical populations., Author(s): Rodrigo Becerra [sup.1] , Coralyn Dandrade [sup.1] , Craig Harms [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) School of Psychology and Social Science, Faculty of Computing, Health and Science Edith Cowan University, [...]

Purpose: In this study pupillometry was used to investigate the allocation of attentional resources associated with sentence comprehension in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Eighteen children with SLI (age: M = 6.4 years) and 18 typically developing (TD) children (age: M = 6.3 years) participated in the study. A sentence comprehension task was presented that comprised items designated as easy or hard. Easy sentences contained 4 or 5 words, and hard sentences contained 6 or 7 words. Results: For the TD group, pupil size was significantly larger when comprehending hard sentences compared with easy sentences. There was no effect of sentence difficulty on pupil size in the SLI group. Comparisons between groups revealed pupil sizes for the SLI group were significantly larger than those for the TD group for easy sentences. There were no group differences for the hard sentences. Conclusion: In TD children, pupillometry was sensitive to the attentional demands associated with sentence comprehension. Between-subjects comparisons indicated that the TD group allocated less attention than did the children with SLI for the easy sentences but not for the hard sentences. This study provides evidence of attentional differences between children with SLI and TD children under conditions of low processing demands., Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have below age-appropriate language skills in the absence of an identifiable cause (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; World Health Organization, 1992). The spoken language of [...]

Young and older adults searched for a target character in a 3-item display. On each trial, both a symbolic cue (arrow at fixation) and a spatial cue (abrupt onset of one item) could indicate the target's position. Participants were told to use the central arrow cue on all trials because it had 75% validity. The onset cue also had 75% validity for half the participants and 25% validity for the other half. Both age groups showed about the same cost and benefit effects for the central arrow cues, but the abrupt onsets had much larger cuing effects for older adults. Young adults were able to suppress at least partially an automatic attentional response to an abrupt onset item when the arrow cue preceded the onset and had a higher validity than the onset cue. Older adults appeared to be less able to inhibit their responses to abrupt onsets and to disengage their attention from invalid onset cues than were the young adults.

The ability of 3 capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to use experimenter-given cues to solve an object-choice task was assessed. The monkeys learned to use explicit gestural and postural cues and then progressed to using eye-gaze-only cues to solve the task, that is, to choose the baited 1 of 2 objects and thus obtain a food reward. Increasing cue-stimulus distance and introducing movement of the eyes impeded the establishment of effective eye-gaze reading. One monkey showed positive but imperfect transfer of use of eye gaze when a novel experimenter presented the cue. When head and eye orientation cues were presented simultaneously and in conflict, the monkeys showed greater responsiveness to head orientation cues. The results show that capuchin monkeys can learn to use eye gaze as a discriminative cue, but there was no evidence for any underlying awareness of eye gaze as a cue to direction of attention.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of two types of background television programs on students' performance on easy and difficult homework assignments. In both experiments, students in Grade 8 (Experiment 1: N = 90; Experiment 2: N = 144) were matched on reading proficiency. Subsequently, the participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions in which they did homework with (a) a Dutch-language soap opera, (b) English-language music videos, or (c) no television in the background. The execution of homework was hindered only when it was combined with watching a soap opera. The distraction effect of the soap opera was expressed either in a performance decrement (Experiment 1) or in an extension of performance time (Experiment 2).

Individuals often use stereotypes to make judgments about their social environment and adjust their behavior. The effects of stereotype activation can be reduced by focusing conscious attention on this behavior.

The interference effects of non-relevant objects on reach-to-grasp movements has been investigated. The influence of different features of the distractor, such as size, position, and orientation, was studied.

Evidence was found for cross-modal orienting in a series of experiments on exogenous visual and auditory spatial attention. No inhibition of return occurred in cross-modal conditions, suggesting the presence of interacting modality-specific channels for exogenous attention shifts.

The validity of M. Behrmann, R. Zemel, and M. Mozer's (1998) finding that object-based attention can be directed toward occluded objects is examined in 3 experiments. In M. Behrmann et al.'s (1998) original study, participants made speeded judgments of whether the numbers of bumps attached to 2 arms of an X shape were the same or different. The 2 sets of bumps belonged either to a single object, 2 different objects, or 2 separated parts of an occluded object. Unfortunately, this objecthood manipulation was confounded by the symmetry of the stimuli. Experiment 1 replicated M. Behrmann et al.'s main results using identical stimuli. Experiments 2a and 2b dissociated objecthood from symmetry. The results suggest that the effects of object-based attention found by M. Behrmann et al. are largely due to symmetry. The stimuli used in M. Behrmann et al. are not appropriate for examining the relation between object-based attention and occlusion.

Selective attention to 1 of 2 overlapping objects was assessed in a cuing paradigm. Participants detected or identified targets that appeared in 1 of 6 possible target locations (3 on each object). Significant cuing effects for the simple detection of such targets using both reaction time and sensitivity measures of performance were found. Cuing effects were consistently greater when the participants were required to identify some aspect of the target even when the tasks (detection vs. identification) were equated for overall performance level. These differences in cuing effects between tasks were much reduced if the target locations were no longer grouped into 2 objects. It is suggested that identical stimuli can elicit differing attentional mechanisms depending on task type (rather than task difficulty) and that these mechanisms differ in the nature of the representation of the visual world.

Four experiments were conducted using a flanker task with 1 distractor appearing either on the left or right side of a central target. Responses were made on a keyboard aligned parallel to the displays. A larger flanker effect was obtained when the distractor was on the same side as the response. Two factors account for this asymmetry. First, when the flanker and target are identical, the 2 form a group that is assigned a spatial tag, creating a form of the Simon effect on the basis of the compatibility between the response keys and the group. Second, preparation of a lateralized response appears to entail a shift of visual attention in the corresponding direction, thus enhancing processing of the flanker on the response side. Consistent with the 2nd hypothesis, participants were more likely to correctly recognize letters that were briefly presented at the distractor position on the same side as the response.

Attention to feared stimuli is believed to facilitate the process of exposure-based fear reduction. However, researchers have disagreed about the importance of cognitive focus during exposure and empirical investigations have yielded inconsistent results. This study was an attempt to clarify the role of visual and cognitive attention to feared stimuli during exposure. Seventy-two spider-fearful participants focused visually on either a fear-relevant or irrelevant stimulus, while also focusing cognitively on either of these stimuli during a brief exposure session. Participants who processed fear-relevant information visually and cognitively showed the most efficient and greatest reduction on behavioral approach task ratings than the other three groups, whose patterns of reduction were highly similar. The group that focused on fear-relevant information in both modalities also reported a significantly greater degree of perceived fear reduction than the other three groups.

Background. This study used a dual task design to examine the effect of sensory context on postural stability during the concurrent performance of an attentionally demanding cognitive task in young and older adults with and without a history of imbalance and falls. Methods. A choice reaction time auditory task was used to produce changes in attention during quiet stance in six different sensory conditions that changed the availability of accurate visual and somatosensory cues for postural control. Postural stability was quantified by using forceplate measures of center of pressure in 18 young adults, 18 healthy older adults, and 18 older adults with balance impairments and a history of recent falls. Reaction time and accuracy of verbal response to the auditory task were quantified by using a repeated measures analysis of variance. Results. In young adults the auditory task did not affect postural stability in any of the sensory conditions. However, in the older adults the effect of the auditory task depended on sensory context. For healthy older adults, the addition of an auditory tone task significantly affected sway only when both visual and somatosensory cues for postural control were removed. In the balance-impaired older adults, the addition of the auditory task significantly affected postural stability in all sensory conditions. In addition, as sensory conditions became more difficult, older adults who had been able to maintain stability in a single task context lost balance when performing a secondary task. Conclusion. Results suggest that with aging, attentional demands for postural control increase as sensory information decreases. In addition, the inability to allocate sufficient attention to postural control under multitask conditions may be a contributing factor to imbalance and falls in some older adults.

Personally and emotionally meaningful information (e.g., one's own name) has shown to capture attention. The question we studied was whether an image of a familiar face draws attention even though it is not expected, and it appears when the focus of attention is directed to other stimuli. Observers' task was to compare two faces and report whether they were identical or left-right reversed. In addition to these faces, a matrix of 'background' faces was displayed. On noncritical trials, the matrix consisted of unfamiliar faces. On critical trials (in about every eighth trial) either an observer's own face or President Ahtisaari's face was displayed. Reaction time was nearly identical on the critical and uncritical trials. On the recognition test about half of the observers were certain that they had seen their own faces in the first part of the experiment. When explicitly asked, however, only three of 26 observers reported that they had recognized their own faces during the comparison task.

Previous studies have shown that divided attention (DA) during retrieval has little effect on recall of episodic memories, although DA during encoding has a large detrimental effect. One possible reason for this asymmetry is that stimulus presentation at encoding is under experimenter control, whereas retrieval operations and responses are under participant control. This experiment tested this possibility by presenting paired-associate word lists for learning and recall, either at a fixed 4-s rate or at a rate controlled by the participant. The results showed that the higher recall levels for DA at retrieval than for DA at encoding held under all combinations of experimenter and participant control. The implications of these results for a fuller understanding of encoding and retrieval processes are discussed.

Memory for context, in comparison to memory for items, is a more demanding task and requires more attentional resources. We examined differences between item and context memory using divided attention at encoding and retrieval. Participants were presented with word lists and were instructed to learn the items (i.e., words), the intrinsic context (i.e., the colour of the cards on which each word was presented), and the extrinsic context (i.e., the temporal order of the words). Among 72 young adults, in comparison to conditions of full attention, divided attention applied at encoding only or retrieval only resulted in equally lower performance on all memory tasks; in contrast, divided attention applied at both encoding and retrieval resulted in lower performance only on memory for temporal order. The findings support the idea that memory for temporal order requires greater attentional resources and strategic processing than memory for items.

Experiments that have examined inhibition of return (IOR,) have typically used trial sequences in which attention is reoriented to a central fixation location between the presentation of the peripheral cue(s) and the target. In examining the role of the fixation location in IOR, three experiments were conducted in which an exogenous cue was used to reorient attention following a peripheral cue and before the appearance of a target. However, this cue occurred at either the traditional central fixation location or a nonfixated location. The results indicate that reorienting attention to a fixated location results in a significant reduction in the inhibitory effect. The results from the study suggest that IOR could serve as a mechanism that improves the efficiency of visual searches.