Vigilance-avoidance and disengagement are differentially associated with fear and avoidant behaviors in social anxiety.

Science.gov (United States)

Evans, Travis C; Walukevich, Katherine A; Britton, Jennifer C

2016-07-15

Individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) often exhibit preferential attention for social threat, demonstrating abnormal orientation to threat (i.e., vigilance-avoidance) and/or difficulty disengaging from threat. However, no research has compared the relationship between attention indices (i.e., vigilance-avoidance, difficulty disengaging from threat) and characteristic features of the disorder such as fear during social situations (social fear) and avoidant behaviors (social avoidance). To address this issue, seventy adults (19.29±1.47 years, 33 females) were separated into low (n=37) or high (n=33) socially anxious groups using clinical cutoff scores on the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS). Participants in both groups completed a dot-probe task with congruent, incongruent, and neutral trials to obtain measures of vigilance-avoidance and difficulty disengaging. Using linear regression, we examined the associations each attention index shared with self-reported social fear and social avoidance. Exclusively in the high anxious group, greater vigilance towards threat was associated with higher self-reported social fear, but not with social avoidance. However, difficulty disengaging was not associated with either social measure. In the low anxiety group, no relationships between attention indices and either social measure emerged. Future research with clinical samples is necessary to replicate and extend these findings. The small sample size studied may have limited our ability to detect other smaller effects. Indices of attention bias may contribute differently to the etiology and maintenance of SAD, which offers important implications for novel treatments that target attention. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

How violent video games communicate violence: A literature review and content analysis of moral disengagement factors

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hartmann, T.; Krakowiak, M.; Tsay-Vogel, M.

2014-01-01

Mechanisms of moral disengagement in violent video game play have recently received considerable attention among communication scholars. To date, however, no study has analyzed the prevalence of moral disengagement factors in violent video games. To fill this research gap, the present approach

Predictors of Moral Disengagement in Sport.

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Shields, David Light; Funk, Christopher D; Bredemeier, Brenda Light

2015-12-01

Researchers have made productive use of Bandura's (1991) construct of moral disengagement (MD) to help explain why sport participants deviate from ethical ideals. In this study of intercollegiate athletes from diverse sports (N = 713), we examined MD in relation to other character-related variables: empathy, moral identity, moral attentiveness, and contesting orientations. We also examined whether moral attentiveness conforms to the pattern of "bracketed morality" found in moral reasoning (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995) and moral behavior (Kavussanu, Boardley, Sagar, & Ring, 2013). Results indicated that MD correlated positively with perceptual moral attentiveness and war contesting orientation; MD correlated negatively with empathy, moral identity, reflective moral attentiveness, and partnership contesting orientation. Results of hierarchical regression demonstrated that gender, contesting orientations, moral identity, and one form of moral attentiveness were significant predictors of MD. Finally, sport participants were found to be less morally attentive in sport than in everyday life.

Disengagement from Ideologically-Based and Violent Organizations: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Steven Windisch

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Research on disengagement from violent extremism is an emerging field of inquiry. As compared to the related field of radicalization, there have been fewer studies of disengagement. Further, little effort has been made to conduct a large scale, systematic review of what is currently known about disengagement from violent extremism. This type of meta-literature assessment can play an important role in terms of informing strategies and programs designed to facilitate exit. To help fill this gap, our project systematically examines the disengagement literature to determine the range and frequency of various exit factors identified in previous studies. We also rely on parallel literatures such as exit from street gangs, mainstream religious groups, cults, and nonviolent social movements to build a robust sample of studies that assess the extent to which group exit factors may generalize across different populations.

Attentional disengagement is modulated by the offset of unpleasant pictures: a saccadic reaction time study.

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Machado-Pinheiro, Walter; Faria, Aydamari; Braga, Filipe; Guerra, Pedro; Perakakis, Pandelis; Caldas, Ariane Leão; Mocaiber, Izabela; Oliveira, Letícia; Pereira, Mirtes Garcia; Volchan, Eliane; Vila, Jaime

2013-12-01

We studied the influence of passively viewing a picture on saccade latencies to peripheral targets. Thirty-two volunteers were instructed to look at a central picture, wait for the onset of a peripheral target, and execute a saccade toward it as quickly as possible - saccadic reaction time (SRT). The central picture (neutral or unpleasant) could be turned off simultaneously with target onset (the no-gap condition) or 200ms prior to target onset (the gap-200 condition). We found that saccade latencies were influenced by emotional valence and condition. In the no-gap condition, SRTs were longer after viewing unpleasant pictures. In the gap-200 condition, the pattern was reversed, and unpleasant pictures induced shorter SRTs in relation to neutral pictures. Furthermore, the influence of unpleasant pictures gradually decreased when images were re-exposed to the participants - affective habituation. The results are discussed in terms of attentional avoidance and disengagement from unpleasant emotional pictures. © 2013.

Enhanced facilitation of spatial attention in schizophrenia.

Science.gov (United States)

Spencer, Kevin M; Nestor, Paul G; Valdman, Olga; Niznikiewicz, Margaret A; Shenton, Martha E; McCarley, Robert W

2011-01-01

While attentional functions are usually found to be impaired in schizophrenia, a review of the literature on the orienting of spatial attention in schizophrenia suggested that voluntary attentional orienting in response to a valid cue might be paradoxically enhanced. We tested this hypothesis with orienting tasks involving the cued detection of a laterally presented target stimulus. Subjects were chronic schizophrenia patients (SZ) and matched healthy control subjects (HC). In Experiment 1 (15 SZ, 16 HC), cues were endogenous (arrows) and could be valid (100% predictive) or neutral with respect to the subsequent target position. In Experiment 2 (16 SZ, 16 HC), subjects performed a standard orienting task with unpredictive exogenous cues (brightening of the target boxes). In Experiment 1, SZ showed a larger attentional facilitation effect on reaction time than HC. In Experiment 2, no clear sign of enhanced attentional facilitation was found in SZ. The voluntary, facilitatory shifting of spatial attention may be relatively enhanced in individuals with schizophrenia in comparison to healthy individuals. This effect bears resemblance to other relative enhancements of information processing in schizophrenia such as saccade speed and semantic priming. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

The effect of the augmentation of cholinergic neurotransmission by nicotine on EEG indices of visuospatial attention.

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Logemann, H N A; Böcker, K B E; Deschamps, P K H; Kemner, C; Kenemans, J L

2014-03-01

The cholinergic system has been implicated in visuospatial attention but the exact role remains unclear. In visuospatial attention, bias refers to neuronal signals that modulate the sensitivity of sensory cortex, while disengagement refers to the decoupling of attention making reorienting possible. In the current study we investigated the effect of facilitating cholinergic neurotransmission by nicotine (Nicorette Freshmint 2mg, polacrilex chewing gum) on behavioral and electrophysiological indices of bias and disengagement. Sixteen non-smoking participants performed in a Visual Spatial Cueing (VSC) task while EEG was recorded. A randomized, single-blind, crossover design was implemented. Based on the scarce literature, it was expected that nicotine would specifically augment disengagement related processing, especially manifest as an increase of the modulation of the Late Positive Deflection (LPD) by validity of cueing. No effect was expected on bias related components (cue-locked: EDAN, LDAP; target-locked: P1 and N1 modulations). Results show weak indications for a reduction of the reaction time validity effect by nicotine, but only for half of the sample in which the validity effect on the pretest was largest. Nicotine reduced the result of bias as indexed by a reduced P1 modulation by validity, especially in subjects with strong peripheral responses to nicotine. Nicotine did not affect ERP manifestations of the directing of bias (EDAN, LDAP) or disengagement (LPD). Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of perceived descriptive norms on corrupt intention: The mediating role of moral disengagement.

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Zhao, Huanhuan; Zhang, Heyun; Xu, Yan

2017-01-31

The present study attempts to examine the effect of perceived descriptive norms on corrupt intention (e.g., bribe-taking intention) and then further explore the psychological mechanism underlying this effect. Based on social cognitive theory, we established a mediation model in which moral disengagement partially mediated the link between perceived descriptive norms and corrupt intention. In Study 1, participants (N = 690) completed a series of questionnaires, and the results demonstrated that, while perceived descriptive norms were positively associated with corrupt intention, it was partially mediated by moral disengagement. In Study 2, we conducted a priming experiment (N = 161) to test the causal relationship and psychological mechanism between perceived descriptive norms and corrupt intention. The results revealed that perceived descriptive norms triggered the propensity of individuals to morally disengage, which in turn, partially increased their corrupt intention. This study not only extends previous research by providing evidence that moral disengagement may be one of the reasons why perceived descriptive norms facilitate corrupt intention, but also suggests that reshaping normative beliefs and preventing the moral disengagement of individuals may be the effective ways to curb corrupt behaviours. © 2017 International Union of Psychological Science.

Mechanisms of attentional selection bias for threatening emotions of anger and disgust in individuals with high-trait anxiety.

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Xia, Luyao; Cui, Lixia; Zhang, Qin; Dong, Xiaofei; Shi, Guangyuan

2018-03-07

There are still some controversies that attentional bias to negative emotions in individuals with high-trait anxiety (HTA), as compare with those with low-trait anxiety (LTA), occurs in the engagement or disengagement facet of attentional selectivity and whether this attentional bias is affected by negative emotional types. In this study, we explored the different attentional selectivity mechanisms for threatening emotions of anger and disgust between individuals with HTA and LTA using the variant attentional-probe paradigm. The results showed that under the engagement condition, the HTA group's attentional bias index of the anger mood was negative and was significantly less than the disgusting mood (positive) and that the P1 was smaller with angry faces as compared with neutral faces, which was separate from the results of the disgusted faces, having a significant difference with neutral faces on P1 component. In the LTA group, under the disengagement condition, the attentional bias index of the disgusting mood was significantly bigger than the attentional bias index of the anger mood. Moreover, the P1 of the disgusted faces was significantly bigger than the P1 of the angry faces. The topographical maps were also made to reveal the different neural underpinnings. The results suggested that there were different mechanisms of selective attentional bias for threatening emotions of anger and disgust in individuals with HTA. HTA individuals were characterized by facilitated attentional engagement with angry faces and impaired attentional engagement with disgusted faces. LTA individuals had different neural underpinnings and had impaired attentional disengagement with disgusted faces.

Cascading effects of attention disengagement and sensory seeking on social symptoms in a community sample of infants at-risk for a future diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder

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Grace T. Baranek

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Recent work suggests sensory seeking predicts later social symptomatology through reduced social orienting in infants who are at high-risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD based on their status as younger siblings of children diagnosed with ASD. We drew on extant longitudinal data from a community sample of at-risk infants who were identified at 12 months using the First Year Inventory, and followed to 3–5 years. We replicate findings of Damiano et al. (in this issue that a high-risk infants who go on to be diagnosed with ASD show heightened sensory seeking in the second year of life relative to those who do not receive a diagnosis, and b increased sensory seeking indirectly relates to later social symptomatology via reduced social orienting. We extend previous findings to show that sensory seeking has more clinical utility later in the second year of life (20–24 months than earlier (13–15 months. Further, this study suggests that diminished attention disengagement at 12–15 months may precede and predict increased sensory seeking at 20–24 months. Findings add support for the notion that sensory features produce cascading effects on social development in infants at risk for ASD, and suggest that reduced attention disengagement early in life may set off this cascade. Keywords: Sensory features, Autism, Infants, Social, Longitudinal, Attention, Risk markers

Moral disengagement in the corporate world.

Science.gov (United States)

White, Jenny; Bandura, Albert; Bero, Lisa A

2009-01-01

We analyze mechanisms of moral disengagement used to eliminate moral consequences by industries whose products or production practices are harmful to human health. Moral disengagement removes the restraint of self-censure from harmful practices. Moral self-sanctions can be selectively disengaged from harmful activities by investing them with socially worthy purposes, sanitizing and exonerating them, displacing and diffusing responsibility, minimizing or disputing harmful consequences, making advantageous comparisons, and disparaging and blaming critics and victims. Internal industry documents and public statements related to the research activities of these industries were coded for modes of moral disengagement by the tobacco, lead, vinyl chloride (VC), and silicosis-producing industries. All but one of the modes of moral disengagement were used by each of these industries. We present possible safeguards designed to protect the integrity of research.

A facilitative effect of negative affective valence on working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Gotoh, Fumiko; Kikuchi, Tadashi; Olofsson, Ulrich

2010-06-01

Previous studies have shown that negatively valenced information impaired working memory performance due to an attention-capturing effect. The present study examined whether negative valence could also facilitate working memory. Affective words (negative, neutral, positive) were used as retro-cues in a working memory task that required participants to remember colors at different spatial locations on a computer screen. Following the cue, a target detection task was used to either shift attention to a different location or keep attention at the same location as the retro-cue. Finally, participants were required to discriminate the cued color from a set of distractors. It was found that negative cues yielded shorter response times (RTs) in the attention-shift condition and longer RTs in the attention-stay condition, compared with neutral and positive cues. The results suggest that negative affective valence may enhance working memory performance (RTs), provided that attention can be disengaged.

The effect of self-control on attentional bias for alcohol cues in male heavy drinkers.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Teunissen, H.A.; Spijkerman, R.; Schoenmakers, T.M.; Vohs, K.D.; Engels, R.C.M.

2012-01-01

Attentional bias for alcohol cues increases craving and subsequent alcohol consumption. Override processes can be used to disengage attention from alcohol cues. This requires self-control and implies that depletion of self-control would impair the ability to disengage attention from alcohol cues.

Very early disengagement and subsequent re-engagement in primary care Office Based Opioid Treatment (OBOT) with buprenorphine.

Science.gov (United States)

Hui, David; Weinstein, Zoe M; Cheng, Debbie M; Quinn, Emily; Kim, Hyunjoong; Labelle, Colleen; Samet, Jeffrey H

2017-08-01

be associated with higher odds of treatment disengagement and these patients may warrant additional support. Re-engagement was uncommon, suggesting the need for a more formal explicit system to encourage and facilitate re-engagement among patients who disengage. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cascading effects of attention disengagement and sensory seeking on social symptoms in a community sample of infants at-risk for a future diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Baranek, Grace T; Woynaroski, Tiffany G; Nowell, Sallie; Turner-Brown, Lauren; DuBay, Michaela; Crais, Elizabeth R; Watson, Linda R

2018-01-01

Recent work suggests sensory seeking predicts later social symptomatology through reduced social orienting in infants who are at high-risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) based on their status as younger siblings of children diagnosed with ASD. We drew on extant longitudinal data from a community sample of at-risk infants who were identified at 12 months using the First Year Inventory, and followed to 3-5 years. We replicate findings of Damiano et al. (in this issue) that a) high-risk infants who go on to be diagnosed with ASD show heightened sensory seeking in the second year of life relative to those who do not receive a diagnosis, and b) increased sensory seeking indirectly relates to later social symptomatology via reduced social orienting. We extend previous findings to show that sensory seeking has more clinical utility later in the second year of life (20-24 months) than earlier (13-15 months). Further, this study suggests that diminished attention disengagement at 12-15 months may precede and predict increased sensory seeking at 20-24 months. Findings add support for the notion that sensory features produce cascading effects on social development in infants at risk for ASD, and suggest that reduced attention disengagement early in life may set off this cascade. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Re-evaluating the Disengagement Process: the Case of Fatah

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Gordon Clubb

2010-11-01

Full Text Available Recently, a number of studies have looked at the disengagement/de-radicalisation of terrorist groups and individuals. This article critically assesses part of this literature in relation to the process of voluntary collective disengagement, using the case of the Palestinian Fatah organization as an example. It questions the specific focus of most de-radicalisation studies upon solely ending the use of the terrorist tactic, arguing that the disengagement process should be studied in conjunction with groups ceasing to use other forms of political violence as well. Although the article favours an objective definition of terrorism, it also recognises the salience of the term's normative power and argues that both perspectives can play a role in the disengagement process. This process can be divided into a number of stages: (i declarative disengagement, (ii behavioural disengagement, (iii organisational disengagement, and (iv de-radicalisation. Fatah's disengagement process demonstrates that the process can be conditional, reversible, and selective. Consequently, a number of problems arise in terms of defining when an organisation has actually ceased to use terrorism and other forms of political violence. The article argues that Fatah represents a case of mixed disengagement; it was selective, conditional and mostly only behavioural. However, despite the disengagement process only being partially successful during the Oslo period - and reversed considerably during the al-Aqsa Intifada - it has had some lasting effects on the organisation, making it less likely to re-engage in terrorism.

The pharmacology of visuospatial attention and inhibition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Logemann, H.N.A.

2013-01-01

Attention and inhibition are of vital importance in everyday functioning. Problems of attention and inhibition are central to disorders such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Both bias and disengagement key components of visuospatial attention. Bias refers to neuronal signals that

Longitudinal Relationships between Bullying and Moral Disengagement among Adolescents.

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Wang, Cixin; Ryoo, Ji Hoon; Swearer, Susan M; Turner, Rhonda; Goldberg, Taryn S

2017-06-01

Moral disengagement is a series of cognitive processes used to disengage moral standards to achieve absolved guilt and permit immoral conduct and has been found to be an important connection to bullying and aggressive behaviors among adolescents. This study examined the longitudinal relationship between moral disengagement and bullying behavior among a group of adolescents from fifth grade to ninth grade (n = 1180, mean age = 12.2, SD = 1.29, 46.5 % female, 80.2 % Caucasian/White, 7.1 % Black/African American, 5.4 % Latino/Hispanic, 2.4 % Asian American, and 1.7 % other) over three semesters. The objectives were to investigate (a) whether moral disengagement was a precursor to bullying behavior, vice versa, or whether the relationship was reciprocal and (b) whether gender and grade predicted moral disengagement and bullying behavior. The results showed that moral disengagement predicted bullying perpetration 6 months later. Also, older students and males utilized more moral disengagement than younger students and females and younger students and males engaged in greater bullying perpetration. Indirect paths linking gender and grade to bullying via moral disengagement at previous time points were identified and implications for bullying prevention are discussed. The findings underscore the importance of examining moral disengagement when studying bullying and across gender and development.

“It Was Only Harmless Banter!” The development and preliminary validation of the moral disengagement in sexual harassment scale.

OpenAIRE

Page, Thomas, E.; Pina, Afroditi; Giner-Sorolla, Roger

2015-01-01

Sexual harassment represents aggressive behavior that is often enacted instrumentally, in response to a threatened sense of masculinity and male identity. To date, however, theoretical attention to the social cognitive processes that regulate workplace harassment is scant. This article presents the development and preliminary validation of the Moral Disengagement in Sexual Harassment Scale (MDiSH); a self-report measure of moral disengagement in the context of hostile work environment harassm...

Moral Disengagement Among Bystanders to School Bullying

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Obermann, Marie-Louise

2011-01-01

This study examined the use of moral disengagement among children indirectly involved in bullying (bystanders). A sample of Danish adolescents (N = 660, M age 12.6 years) were divided into four groups depending on their bystander status: (a) outsiders, who did not experience bullying among...... their peers; (b) defenders, who were likely to help the victims in bullying episodes; (c) guilty bystanders, who did nothing to help bullied peers but felt guilty about it; and (d) unconcerned bystanders, who witnessed peers being bullied, without feeling responsible. Results indicated that, besides from...... active personal involvement in bullying others, being an unconcerned bystander to bullying also associates with moral disengagement. Unconcerned bystanders had significantly higher moral disengagement than guilty bystanders and defenders. Outsiders also showed significant higher disengagement than...

Attention Bias of Avoidant Individuals to Attachment Emotion Pictures.

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Liu, Ying; Ding, Yi; Lu, Luluzi; Chen, Xu

2017-01-27

How attachment style affects emotion processing is tightly connected with individuals' attention bias. This experiment explored avoidant individuals' attentional engagement and attentional disengagement using a cue-target paradigm in fMRI. The experimental group consisted of 17 avoidant participants, while the control group consisted of 16 secure participants; these were identified by the Experiences in Close Relationships inventory and the Relationship Questionnaire. Each reacted to pictures of positive parent-child attachment, negative parent-child attachment, positive romantic attachment, negative romantic attachment, and neutral non-attachment. Behaviorally, avoidant individuals were slower than secure individuals in responding to emotions and their attentional disengagement effect for negative parent-child emotions was stronger than positive ones. fMRI results showed that avoidant compared to secure individuals activated more strongly in the right superior temporal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, and the left medial frontal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, supplementary motor area, and cingulate gyrus. They also showed stronger activation in disengaging from positive than negative emotions in the bilateral fusiform and middle occipital gyri. In conclusion, avoidant individuals could detect emotions as effective as secure individuals in attentioal engaging stages. They can disengage from positive emotions with effective cognitive resources and were harder to get rid of negative emotions with insufficient resource.

Deradicalization or Disengagement : A Framework for Encouraging Jihad Abandonment

Science.gov (United States)

2016-06-10

resulted in entire group disengagement, while the German HAYAT Program and Saudi Counseling Program seek individual de-radicalization/disengagement... Counseling Y Optional N/A Y Y Family Counseling N Y N Y Y Practical Support Measures Y Y Y Y Y Disengage Guarantee – Type Y - Family N Y – Group N...disengagement. The U.S. could easily support religious counseling in de-radicalization programs in partner nations overseas. Group or Individual Programs

Affective expressions in groups and inferences about members' relational well-being: The effects of socially engaging and disengaging emotions.

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Rothman, Naomi B; Magee, Joe C

2016-01-01

Our findings draw attention to the interpersonal communication function of a relatively unexplored dimension of emotions-the level of social engagement versus disengagement. In four experiments, regardless of valence and target group gender, observers infer greater relational well-being (more cohesiveness and less conflict) between group members from socially engaging (sadness and appreciation) versus disengaging (anger and pride) emotion expressions. Supporting our argument that social (dis)engagement is a critical dimension communicated by these emotions, we demonstrate (1) that inferences about group members' self-interest mediate the effect of socially engaging emotions on cohesiveness and (2) that the influence of socially disengaging emotion expressions on inferences of conflict is attenuated when groups have collectivistic norms (i.e., members value a high level of social engagement). Furthermore, we show an important downstream consequence of these inferences of relational well-being: Groups that seem less cohesive because of their members' proud (versus appreciative) expressions are also expected to have worse task performance.

Threat-related selective attention predicts treatment success in childhood anxiety disorders.

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Legerstee, Jeroen S; Tulen, Joke H M; Kallen, Victor L; Dieleman, Gwen C; Treffers, Philip D A; Verhulst, Frank C; Utens, Elisabeth M W J

2009-02-01

The present study examined whether threat-related selective attention was predictive of treatment success in children with anxiety disorders and whether age moderated this association. Specific components of selective attention were examined in treatment responders and nonresponders. Participants consisted of 131 children with anxiety disorders (aged 8-16 years), who received standardized cognitive-behavioral therapy. At pretreatment, a pictorial dot-probe task was administered to assess selective attention. Both at pretreatment and posttreatment, diagnostic status of the children was evaluated with a semistructured clinical interview (the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for Children). Selective attention for severely threatening pictures at pretreatment assessment was predictive of treatment success. Examination of the specific components of selective attention revealed that nonresponders showed difficulties to disengage their attention away from severe threat. Treatment responders showed a tendency not to engage their attention toward severe threat. Age was not associated with selective attention and treatment success. Threat-related selective attention is a significant predictor of treatment success in children with anxiety disorders. Clinically anxious children with difficulties disengaging their attention away from severe threat profit less from cognitive-behavioral therapy. For these children, additional training focused on learning to disengage attention away from anxiety-arousing stimuli may be beneficial.

Attentional bias towards and away from fearful faces is modulated by developmental amygdala damage.

Science.gov (United States)

Pishnamazi, Morteza; Tafakhori, Abbas; Loloee, Sogol; Modabbernia, Amirhossein; Aghamollaii, Vajiheh; Bahrami, Bahador; Winston, Joel S

2016-08-01

The amygdala is believed to play a major role in orienting attention towards threat-related stimuli. However, behavioral studies on amygdala-damaged patients have given inconsistent results-variously reporting decreased, persisted, and increased attention towards threat. Here we aimed to characterize the impact of developmental amygdala damage on emotion perception and the nature and time-course of spatial attentional bias towards fearful faces. We investigated SF, a 14-year-old with selective bilateral amygdala damage due to Urbach-Wiethe disease (UWD), and ten healthy controls. Participants completed a fear sensitivity questionnaire, facial expression classification task, and dot-probe task with fearful or neutral faces for spatial cueing. Three cue durations were used to assess the time-course of attentional bias. SF expressed significantly lower fear sensitivity, and showed a selective impairment in classifying fearful facial expressions. Despite this impairment in fear recognition, very brief (100 msec) fearful cues could orient SF's spatial attention. In healthy controls, the attentional bias emerged later and persisted longer. SF's attentional bias was due solely to facilitated engagement to fear, while controls showed the typical phenomenon of difficulty in disengaging from fear. Our study is the first to demonstrate the separable effects of amygdala damage on engagement and disengagement of spatial attention. The findings indicate that multiple mechanisms contribute in biasing attention towards fear, which vary in their timing and dependence on amygdala integrity. It seems that the amygdala is not essential for rapid attention to emotion, but probably has a role in assessment of biological relevance. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Attention and emotion: an ERP analysis of facilitated emotional stimulus processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Schupp, Harald T; Junghöfer, Markus; Weike, Almut I; Hamm, Alfons O

2003-06-11

Recent event-related potential studies observed an early posterior negativity (EPN) reflecting facilitated processing of emotional images. The present study explored if the facilitated processing of emotional pictures is sustained while subjects perform an explicit non-emotional attention task. EEG was recorded from 129 channels while subjects viewed a rapid continuous stream of images containing emotional pictures as well as task-related checkerboard images. As expected, explicit selective attention to target images elicited large P3 waves. Interestingly, emotional stimuli guided stimulus-driven selective encoding as reflected by augmented EPN amplitudes to emotional stimuli, in particular to stimuli of evolutionary significance (erotic contents, mutilations, and threat). These data demonstrate the selective encoding of emotional stimuli while top-down attentional control was directed towards non-emotional target stimuli.

The interrelationship between APC/C and Plk1 activities in centriole disengagement

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Toshiyuki Hatano

2012-09-01

Mother–daughter centriole disengagement, the necessary first step in centriole duplication, involves Plk1 activity in early mitosis and separase activity after APC/C activity mediates securin degradation. Plk1 activity is thought to be essential and sufficient for centriole disengagement with separase activity playing a supporting but non-essential role. In separase null cells, however, centriole disengagement is substantially delayed. The ability of APC/C activity alone to mediate centriole disengagement has not been directly tested. We investigate the interrelationship between Plk1 and APC/C activities in disengaging centrioles in S or G2 HeLa and RPE1 cells, cell types that do not reduplicate centrioles when arrested in S phase. Knockdown of the interphase APC/C inhibitor Emi1 leads to centriole disengagement and reduplication of the mother centrioles, though this is slow. Strong inhibition of Plk1 activity, if any, during S does not block centriole disengagement and mother centriole reduplication in Emi1 depleted cells. Centriole disengagement depends on APC/C–Cdh1 activity, not APC/C–Cdc20 activity. Also, Plk1 and APC/C–Cdh1 activities can independently promote centriole disengagement in G2 arrested cells. Thus, Plk1 and APC/C–Cdh1 activities are independent but slow pathways for centriole disengagement. By having two slow mechanisms for disengagement working together, the cell ensures that centrioles will not prematurely separate in late G2 or early mitosis, thereby risking multipolar spindle assembly, but rather disengage in a timely fashion only late in mitosis.

Adaptive disengagement buffers self-esteem from negative social feedback.

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Leitner, Jordan B; Hehman, Eric; Deegan, Matthew P; Jones, James M

2014-11-01

The degree to which self-esteem hinges on feedback in a domain is known as a contingency of self-worth, or engagement. Although previous research has conceptualized engagement as stable, it would be advantageous for individuals to dynamically regulate engagement. The current research examined whether the tendency to disengage from negative feedback accounts for variability in self-esteem. We created the Adaptive Disengagement Scale (ADS) to capture individual differences in the tendency to disengage self-esteem from negative outcomes. Results demonstrated that the ADS is reliable and valid (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, in response to negative social feedback, higher scores on the ADS predicted greater state self-esteem (Study 3), and this relationship was mediated by disengagement (Study 4). These findings demonstrate that adaptive disengagement protects self-esteem from negative outcomes and that the ADS is a valid measure of individual differences in the implementation of this process. © 2014 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Autonomous Vehicles: Disengagements, Accidents and Reaction Times.

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Vinayak V Dixit

Full Text Available Autonomous vehicles are being viewed with scepticism in their ability to improve safety and the driving experience. A critical issue with automated driving at this stage of its development is that it is not yet reliable and safe. When automated driving fails, or is limited, the autonomous mode disengages and the drivers are expected to resume manual driving. For this transition to occur safely, it is imperative that drivers react in an appropriate and timely manner. Recent data released from the California trials provide compelling insights into the current factors influencing disengagements of autonomous mode. Here we show that the number of accidents observed has a significantly high correlation with the autonomous miles travelled. The reaction times to take control of the vehicle in the event of a disengagement was found to have a stable distribution across different companies at 0.83 seconds on average. However, there were differences observed in reaction times based on the type of disengagements, type of roadway and autonomous miles travelled. Lack of trust caused by the exposure to automated disengagements was found to increase the likelihood to take control of the vehicle manually. Further, with increased vehicle miles travelled the reaction times were found to increase, which suggests an increased level of trust with more vehicle miles travelled. We believe that this research would provide insurers, planners, traffic management officials and engineers fundamental insights into trust and reaction times that would help them design and engineer their systems.

Autonomous Vehicles: Disengagements, Accidents and Reaction Times.

Science.gov (United States)

Dixit, Vinayak V; Chand, Sai; Nair, Divya J

2016-01-01

Autonomous vehicles are being viewed with scepticism in their ability to improve safety and the driving experience. A critical issue with automated driving at this stage of its development is that it is not yet reliable and safe. When automated driving fails, or is limited, the autonomous mode disengages and the drivers are expected to resume manual driving. For this transition to occur safely, it is imperative that drivers react in an appropriate and timely manner. Recent data released from the California trials provide compelling insights into the current factors influencing disengagements of autonomous mode. Here we show that the number of accidents observed has a significantly high correlation with the autonomous miles travelled. The reaction times to take control of the vehicle in the event of a disengagement was found to have a stable distribution across different companies at 0.83 seconds on average. However, there were differences observed in reaction times based on the type of disengagements, type of roadway and autonomous miles travelled. Lack of trust caused by the exposure to automated disengagements was found to increase the likelihood to take control of the vehicle manually. Further, with increased vehicle miles travelled the reaction times were found to increase, which suggests an increased level of trust with more vehicle miles travelled. We believe that this research would provide insurers, planners, traffic management officials and engineers fundamental insights into trust and reaction times that would help them design and engineer their systems.

Autonomous Vehicles: Disengagements, Accidents and Reaction Times

Science.gov (United States)

Dixit, Vinayak V.; Chand, Sai; Nair, Divya J.

2016-01-01

Autonomous vehicles are being viewed with scepticism in their ability to improve safety and the driving experience. A critical issue with automated driving at this stage of its development is that it is not yet reliable and safe. When automated driving fails, or is limited, the autonomous mode disengages and the drivers are expected to resume manual driving. For this transition to occur safely, it is imperative that drivers react in an appropriate and timely manner. Recent data released from the California trials provide compelling insights into the current factors influencing disengagements of autonomous mode. Here we show that the number of accidents observed has a significantly high correlation with the autonomous miles travelled. The reaction times to take control of the vehicle in the event of a disengagement was found to have a stable distribution across different companies at 0.83 seconds on average. However, there were differences observed in reaction times based on the type of disengagements, type of roadway and autonomous miles travelled. Lack of trust caused by the exposure to automated disengagements was found to increase the likelihood to take control of the vehicle manually. Further, with increased vehicle miles travelled the reaction times were found to increase, which suggests an increased level of trust with more vehicle miles travelled. We believe that this research would provide insurers, planners, traffic management officials and engineers fundamental insights into trust and reaction times that would help them design and engineer their systems. PMID:27997566

Moral disengagement in self-reported and peer-nominated school bullying

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Obermann, Marie-Louise

2011-01-01

. Discrepancies between self-reported and peer-nominated bullying involvement indicates that a person’s social reputation has a stronger association with moral disengagement than so far expected. Implications are discussed, highlighting the importance of further research and theory development.......This study examined the relation between moral disengagement and different self-reported and peer-nominated positions in school bullying. The aims of this study were to (1) investigate moral disengagement among children for whom self-reported and peernominated bully status diverged and (2) compare...... levels of disengagement among self-reported and peer-nominated pure bullies, pure victims, bully–victims, and children not involved in bullying. A sample of 739 Danish sixth grade and seventh grade children (mean age 12.6) was included in the study. Moral disengagement was measured using a Danish version...

Managing consumer disengagement through green advertising strategies

OpenAIRE

Loh, E-Jian

2017-01-01

A discord is apparent between consumers’ concerns and their actual green behaviour – a surfacing issue that has obstructed effective green messages by advertisers. Four distinct consumer disengagement issues, including consumer backlash, environmental exhaustion, motivational challenges and social pressures were identified. This thesis explored cultural discourses surrounding green marketing and proposes green advertising strategies that address consumer disengagement. Using the Grounded Theo...

Autonomous vehicles' disengagements: Trends, triggers, and regulatory limitations.

Science.gov (United States)

Favarò, Francesca; Eurich, Sky; Nader, Nazanin

2018-01-01

Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology is quickly becoming a reality on US roads. Testing on public roads is currently undergoing, with many AV makers located and testing in Silicon Valley, California. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (CA DMV) currently mandates that any vehicle tested on California public roads be retrofitted to account for a back-up human driver, and that data related to disengagements of the AV technology be publicly available. Disengagements data is analyzed in this work, given the safety-critical role of AV disengagements, which require the control of the vehicle to be handed back to the human driver in a safe and timely manner. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the fragmented data obtained from AV manufacturers testing on California public roads from 2014 to 2017. Trends of disengagement reporting, associated frequencies, average mileage driven before failure, and an analysis of triggers and contributory factors are here presented. The analysis of the disengagements data also highlights several shortcomings of the current regulations. The results presented thus constitute an important starting point for improvements on the current drafts of the testing and deployment regulations for autonomous vehicles on public roads. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Anger and selective attention to reward and punishment in children.

Science.gov (United States)

He, Jie; Jin, Xinyi; Zhang, Meng; Huang, Xiang; Shui, Rende; Shen, Mowei

2013-07-01

Anger is a negative emotion associated with approach motivation and may influence children's attention preference. Three experiments examined the effect of anger on the attentional biases accompanying reward versus punishment cues in Chinese 5- and 6-year-olds. Experiment 1 tested children who were prone to report angry feelings in an unfair game. Experiment 2 measured children who were rated by parents and teachers for temperamental anger. Experiment 3 explored children who reported angry feelings in a frustrating attention task with rigged and noncontingent feedback after controlling for temperament anger. Results suggested that both the angry and anger-prone children were faster to engage attention toward the reward cues than toward the punishment cues in the three experiments. Furthermore, the angry children in the frustrating attention task (and those with poor attention focusing by parental report) were slower in disengaging attention away from the reward versus punishment cues (especially after negative feedback). Results support the approach motivation of anger, which can facilitate children's attention toward the appetitive approach-related information. The findings are discussed in terms of the adaptive and maladaptive function of anger. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Counselling for Facilitating Learning for the Attention – Deficit ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The study investigated the extent of counsellor's identification of the symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and the counselling strategies the counsellors use to facilitate learning for such learners. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The design of the study was survey. The area of the ...

Differences between nicotine-abstinent smokers and non-smokers in terms of visuospatial attention and inhibition before and after single-blind nicotine administration

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Logemann, H. N A; Böcker, K. B E; Deschamps, P. K H; Kemner, C.; Kenemans, J. L.

2014-01-01

The cholinergic system is implicated in visuospatial attention and inhibition, however the exact role is still unclear. Two key mechanisms in visuospatial attention are bias and disengagement. Bias refers to neuronal signals that enhance the sensitivity of the sensory cortex, disengagement is the

Engaging and Disengaging with Political News

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ørmen, Jacob; Linaa Jensen, Jakob

(most notably by Prior, 2007; Stromback, Djerf-Pierre, & Shehata, 2012) that this development also can lead to an increase in the number of people who utilize this enhanced media choice to skip news altogether. One area that merits special attention in this context is political news. Critical engagement......, 1992) and 'performance of identity' (Madianou, 2009) that take place throughout people's everyday life. To further understand these processes it is important to attend to how users engage – or disengage – with political news. To do this we present a typology of news users based on an exploratory...... and conversing face-to-face) that users engage in for political discussion, and compare these across demographics as well as relevant media use patterns. The findings from the survey will be supplemented by results from a series of qualitative interviews that shed light on the motivations users have for engaging...

Moral disengagement in ethical decision making: a study of antecedents and outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Detert, James R; Treviño, Linda Klebe; Sweitzer, Vicki L

2008-03-01

This article advances understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of moral disengagement by testing hypotheses with 3 waves of survey data from 307 business and education undergraduate students. The authors theorize that 6 individual differences will either increase or decrease moral disengagement, defined as a set of cognitive mechanisms that deactivate moral self-regulatory processes and thereby help to explain why individuals often make unethical decisions without apparent guilt or self-censure (Bandura, 1986). Results support 4 individual difference hypotheses, specifically, that empathy and moral identity are negatively related to moral disengagement, while trait cynicism and chance locus of control orientation are positively related to moral disengagement. Two additional locus of control orientations are not significantly related to moral disengagement. The authors also hypothesize and find that moral disengagement is positively related to unethical decision making. Finally, the authors hypothesize that moral disengagement plays a mediating role between the individual differences they studied and unethical decisions. Their results offer partial support for these mediating hypotheses. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research and for practice. Copyright 2008 APA

Psychopathic Traits and Moral Disengagement Interact to Predict Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Orue, Izaskun; Calvete, Esther

2016-07-01

The aim of this study was to test a model in which psychopathic traits (callous-unemotional, grandiose-manipulative, and impulsive-irresponsible) and moral disengagement individually and interactively predict two types of bullying (traditional and cyberbullying) in a community sample of adolescents. A total of 765 adolescents (464 girls and 301 boys) completed measures of moral disengagement and psychopathic traits at Time 1, and measures of bullying and cyberbullying at Time 1 and 1 year later, at Time 2. The results showed that callous-unemotional traits predicted both traditional bullying and cyberbullying, grandiose-manipulative and impulsive-irresponsible traits only predicted traditional bullying, and moral disengagement only predicted cyberbullying. Callous-Unemotional Traits × Moral Disengagement and Grandiose-Manipulative × Moral Disengagement were significantly correlated with the residual change in cyberbullying. Callous-unemotional traits were positively related to cyberbullying at high levels of moral disengagement but not when moral disengagement was low. In contrast, grandiose-manipulative traits were positively related to cyberbullying at low levels of moral disengagement but not when moral disengagement was high. These findings have implications for both prevention and intervention. Integrative approaches that promote moral growth are needed, including a deeper understanding of why bullying is morally wrong and ways to stimulate personality traits that counteract psychopathic traits.

Attentional and evaluative biases help people maintain relationships by avoiding infidelity.

Science.gov (United States)

McNulty, James K; Meltzer, Andrea L; Makhanova, Anastasia; Maner, Jon K

2018-02-12

Two longitudinal studies of 233 newlywed couples suggest that automatic attentional and evaluative biases regarding attractive relationship alternatives can help people maintain relationships by avoiding infidelity. Both studies assessed participants' tendency to automatically disengage attention from photos of attractive, opposite sex individuals; one study assessed participants' tendency to devalue those individuals by comparing their attractiveness evaluations to evaluations made by single people, and both studies assessed infidelity and relationship status multiple times for approximately three years. Several sources of devaluation emerged, but only participants' history of short-term sex predicted both biases; having more short-term sexual partners was associated with being slower to disengage attention from attractive alternatives, and, among men, evaluating such individuals more positively. In turn, both processes exerted indirect effects on relationship dissolution by predicting infidelity; being 100 ms faster to disengage attention from attractive alternatives or rating them 2 scale points lower in attractiveness was associated with a decrease in the odds of infidelity of approximately 50%; the effect of devaluation on infidelity was stronger among participants who evidenced steeper declines in marital satisfaction. These associations emerged because unfaithful individuals took longer to disengage attention from attractive alternatives compared with other social targets and did not differ from singles in their evaluations of those alternatives. Among several other predictors of infidelity, partner attractiveness was associated with a decrease in the odds of infidelity among men but not women. These findings suggest a role for basic psychological processes in predicting infidelity, highlight the critical role of automatic processes in relationship functioning, and suggest novel ways to promote relationship success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA

Selective attention and avoidance on a pictorial cueing task during stress in clinically anxious and depressed participants.

Science.gov (United States)

Ellenbogen, Mark A; Schwartzman, Alex E

2009-02-01

Although it is well established that attentional biases exist in anxious populations, the specific components of visual orienting towards and away from emotional stimuli are not well delineated. The present study was designed to examine these processes. We used a modified spatial cueing task to assess the speed of engagement and disengagement from supraliminal and masked pictorial cues depicting threat, dysphoria, or neutral content in 36 clinically anxious, 41 depressed and 41 control participants. Participants were randomly assigned to a stress or neutral condition. During stress, anxious participants were slow to disengage from masked left hemifield pictures depicting threat or dysphoria, but were quick to disengage from supraliminal threat pictures. Information processing in anxious participants during stress was characterized by early selective attention of emotional stimuli, occurring prior to full conscious awareness, followed by effortful avoidance of threat. Depressed participants were distinct from the anxious group, displaying selective attention for stimuli depicting dysphoria, but not threat, during the neutral condition. In sum, attentional biases in clinical populations are associated with difficulties in the disengagement component of visual orienting. Further, a vigilant-avoidant pattern of attentional bias may represent a strategic attempt to compensate for the early activation of a fear response.

Attention and emotion : An ERP analysis of facilitated emotional stimulus processing

OpenAIRE

Schupp, Harald Thomas; Junghöfer, Markus; Weike, Almut I.; Hamm, Alfons

2003-01-01

Recent event-related potential studies observed an early posterior negativity (EPN) reflecting facilitated processing of emotional images. The present study explored if the facilitated processing of emotional pictures is sustained while subjects perform an explicit non-emotional attention task. EEG was recorded from 129 channels while subjects viewed a rapid continuous stream of images containing emotional pictures as well as task-related checkerboard images. As expected, explicit selective a...

A LONGITUDINAL EXAMINATION OF TODDLERS’ BEHAVIORAL CUES AS A FUNCTION OF SUBSTANCE-ABUSING MOTHERS’ DISENGAGEMENT

Science.gov (United States)

Rasmussen, Hannah F.; Borelli, Jessica L.; Decoste, Cindy; Suchman, Nancy E.

2016-01-01

As a group, substance-abusing parents are at risk for maladaptive parenting. The association between substance abuse and parenting may result, in part, from parents’ emotional disengagement from the parent–child relationship, which makes perceiving and responding to children’s cues more challenging. In this study, we examined whether substance-abusing mothers’ levels of disengagement from their relationship with their children (ages 2–44 months), operationalized in two different ways using parenting narratives (representational and linguistic disengagement), prospectively predicted children’s engagement and disengagement cues during a structured mother–child interaction. Within a sample of 29 mothers, we tested the hypotheses that greater maternal disengagement at Time 1 would predict a decrease in children’s engagement and an increase in children’s disengagement at Time 2. Results indicated that representational disengagement predicted a decrease in children’s engagement cues whereas linguistic disengagement predicted an increase in children’s disengagement cues. Results provide partial support for a reciprocal, iterative process in which mothers and children mutually adjust their emotional and behavioral disengagement with one another. PMID:26938485

[Development and factorial validity of a moral disengagement in Sport Short Scale].

Science.gov (United States)

Corrion, K; Scoffier, S; Gernigon, C; Cury, F; d'Arripe-Longueville, F

2010-12-01

.01/0.05). These results confirmed the bifactorial structure of the instrument, as well as its partial invariance across genders at the most complex level (i.e., strict) of its factorial structure. These statistical analyses demonstrated the excellent internal consistency and very good construct validity of the SFQDMS. STUDY 3: The third study examined the temporal stability of the SFQDMS and its theoretical validity with a sample of 221 French students (M(age)=21.00; SD=2.05). Our results were found to be stable over time. From a theoretical standpoint, the SFQDMS was related to existing instruments that measure individuals' affective self-regulatory efficacy and prosocial behavior. These results demonstrated the external validity of the instrument. The overall results presented in these studies confirmed the good psychometric properties of the SFQDMS. This questionnaire consists of two subscales of three items measuring two groups of moral disengagement. The first involves projecting the fault for one's own transgressions onto others or sharing of responsibility (e.g., "It's not my fault if I behave badly [cheating or aggression] because it's my opponent who started it"). The second subscale involves the minimization of transgressions and their consequences (e.g., "It's not serious if I behave badly [cheating or aggression] because I do it to keep the advantage"). This instrument is a reliable tool that could be fruitfully used in future research addressing the moral disengagement of French adolescents or adults in sport. A deeper understanding of the processes involved in moral disengagement would facilitate the development of strategies to prevent or remediate transgressive behavior in the sport domain. Copyright © 2010 L'Encéphale, Paris. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Social Cognitions that Normalise Sexual Harassment of Women at Work: The Role of Moral Disengagement

OpenAIRE

Page, Thomas Edward

2015-01-01

Sexual harassment against women represents aggressive behaviour that is often enacted instrumentally, in response to a threatened sense of masculinity and male identity (cf. Maass & Cadinu, 2006). To date, however, empirical and theoretical attention to the social-cognitive processes that regulate workplace harassment is scant. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986), the current thesis utilises the theoretical concept of moral disengagement in order to address this important gap i...

Attentional Biases toward Attractive Alternatives and Rivals: Mechanisms Involved in Relationship Maintenance among Chinese Women.

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Yidan; Zhao, Guang; Tu, Shen; Zheng, Yong

2015-01-01

A long-term romantic relationship can offer many benefits to committed individuals. Thus, humans possess relationship maintenance mechanisms to protect against threats from those who serve as attractive alternatives or intrasexual rivals. Many studies have indicated that romantic love can act as a commitment device to activate these mechanisms. To examine the attentional bias associated with relationship maintenance among 108 college students (49 single and 59 committed females) in China, we used a semantic priming procedure to activate mental representations associated with romantic love and then asked participants to complete a dot-probe task for the purpose of making a distinction between the engage and disengage components of attention. No significant engaging effects toward attractive faces were observed among committed females, but the following significant disengaging effects were found: when primed with romantic love, single females showed increased attention toward and difficulty in disengaging from attractive male faces, whereas females already in a committed relationship did not alter their attention, remaining as inattentive to attractive alternatives as they were in the baseline condition. In addition, committed females responded to love priming by exhibiting difficulty in disengaging from attractive rivals. The present findings provide evidence in the Chinese cultural context for the existence of early-stage attentional processes in the domain of relationship maintenance that committed Chinese females protected an ongoing relationship by not only being inattentive to attractive males who could serve as attractive alternatives, but also being more attentive to attractive females who could be potential rivals when mental representations associated with romantic love were primed.

Attentional Biases toward Attractive Alternatives and Rivals: Mechanisms Involved in Relationship Maintenance among Chinese Women.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yidan Ma

Full Text Available A long-term romantic relationship can offer many benefits to committed individuals. Thus, humans possess relationship maintenance mechanisms to protect against threats from those who serve as attractive alternatives or intrasexual rivals. Many studies have indicated that romantic love can act as a commitment device to activate these mechanisms. To examine the attentional bias associated with relationship maintenance among 108 college students (49 single and 59 committed females in China, we used a semantic priming procedure to activate mental representations associated with romantic love and then asked participants to complete a dot-probe task for the purpose of making a distinction between the engage and disengage components of attention. No significant engaging effects toward attractive faces were observed among committed females, but the following significant disengaging effects were found: when primed with romantic love, single females showed increased attention toward and difficulty in disengaging from attractive male faces, whereas females already in a committed relationship did not alter their attention, remaining as inattentive to attractive alternatives as they were in the baseline condition. In addition, committed females responded to love priming by exhibiting difficulty in disengaging from attractive rivals. The present findings provide evidence in the Chinese cultural context for the existence of early-stage attentional processes in the domain of relationship maintenance that committed Chinese females protected an ongoing relationship by not only being inattentive to attractive males who could serve as attractive alternatives, but also being more attentive to attractive females who could be potential rivals when mental representations associated with romantic love were primed.

Attentional Biases toward Attractive Alternatives and Rivals: Mechanisms Involved in Relationship Maintenance among Chinese Women

Science.gov (United States)

Ma, Yidan; Zhao, Guang; Tu, Shen; Zheng, Yong

2015-01-01

A long-term romantic relationship can offer many benefits to committed individuals. Thus, humans possess relationship maintenance mechanisms to protect against threats from those who serve as attractive alternatives or intrasexual rivals. Many studies have indicated that romantic love can act as a commitment device to activate these mechanisms. To examine the attentional bias associated with relationship maintenance among 108 college students (49 single and 59 committed females) in China, we used a semantic priming procedure to activate mental representations associated with romantic love and then asked participants to complete a dot-probe task for the purpose of making a distinction between the engage and disengage components of attention. No significant engaging effects toward attractive faces were observed among committed females, but the following significant disengaging effects were found: when primed with romantic love, single females showed increased attention toward and difficulty in disengaging from attractive male faces, whereas females already in a committed relationship did not alter their attention, remaining as inattentive to attractive alternatives as they were in the baseline condition. In addition, committed females responded to love priming by exhibiting difficulty in disengaging from attractive rivals. The present findings provide evidence in the Chinese cultural context for the existence of early-stage attentional processes in the domain of relationship maintenance that committed Chinese females protected an ongoing relationship by not only being inattentive to attractive males who could serve as attractive alternatives, but also being more attentive to attractive females who could be potential rivals when mental representations associated with romantic love were primed. PMID:26309232

The influence of attention biases and adult attachment style on treatment outcome for adults with social anxiety disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Byrow, Yulisha; Peters, Lorna

2017-08-01

Attention biases figure prominently in CBT models of social anxiety and are thought to maintain symptoms of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Studies have shown that individual differences in pre-treatment attention biases predict cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) outcome. However, these findings have been inconsistent as to whether vigilance towards threat predicts better or poorer treatment outcome. Adult attachment style is an individual characteristic that may influence the relationship between attention bias and SAD. This study investigates the relationship between attention biases and CBT treatment outcome for SAD. Furthermore, we examined the influence of adult attachment style on this relationship. Participants with a primary diagnosis of SAD completed a passive viewing (measuring vigilance towards threat) and a novel difficulty to disengage (measuring difficulty to disengage attention) eye-tracking task prior to attending 12 CBT group sessions targeting SAD. Symptom severity was measured at pre- and post-treatment. Regression analyses were conducted on a sample of 50 participants. Greater vigilance for threat than avoidance of threat at pre-treatment predicted poorer treatment outcomes. Greater difficulty disengaging from happy faces, compared to neutral faces, predicted poorer treatment outcomes. Attachment style did not moderate these relationships. The associations between attention biases and specific components of CBT treatment were not examined. The novel findings regarding difficulty to disengage attention require replication. The findings have implications for the theoretical models of SAD and for the treatment of SAD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Explaining socio-demographic differences in disengagement from sports in adolescence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Prins, R.G.; Kamphuis, C.B.M.; van Empelen, P.; Beenackers, M.A.; Brug, J.; Mackenbach, J.P.; Oenema, A.

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this longitudinal study is to identify risk groups for disengagement from sports during adolescence. In addition, it will be explored whether cognitive and environmental factors can explain socio-demographic differences in disengagement from sports. Methods: Data were

Explaining socio-demographic differences in disengagement from sports in adolescence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Prins, R.G.; Kamphuis, C.B.M.; Empelen, P. van; Beenackers, M.A.; Brug, J.; Mackenbach, J.P.; Oenema, A.

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this longitudinal study is to identify risk groups for disengagement from sports during adolescence. In addition, it will be explored whether cognitive and environmental factors can explain socio-demographic differences in disengagement from sports. METHODS: Data were

Contemporary disengagement from antiretroviral therapy in Khayelitsha, South Africa: A cohort study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Samantha R Kaplan

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Retention in care is an essential component of meeting the UNAIDS "90-90-90" HIV treatment targets. In Khayelitsha township (population ~500,000 in Cape Town, South Africa, more than 50,000 patients have received antiretroviral therapy (ART since the inception of this public-sector program in 2001. Disengagement from care remains an important challenge. We sought to determine the incidence of and risk factors associated with disengagement from care during 2013-2014 and outcomes for those who disengaged.We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all patients ≥10 years of age who visited 1 of the 13 Khayelitsha ART clinics from 2013-2014 regardless of the date they initiated ART. We described the cumulative incidence of first disengagement (>180 days not attending clinic between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2014 using competing risks methods, enabling us to estimate disengagement incidence up to 10 years after ART initiation. We also described risk factors for disengagement based on a Cox proportional hazards model, using multiple imputation for missing data. We ascertained outcomes (death, return to care, hospital admission, other hospital contact, alive but not in care, no information after disengagement until 30 June 2015 using province-wide health databases and the National Death Registry. Of 39,884 patients meeting our eligibility criteria, the median time on ART to 31 December 2014 was 33.6 months (IQR 12.4-63.2. Of the total study cohort, 592 (1.5% died in the study period, 1,231 (3.1% formally transferred out, 987 (2.5% were silent transfers and visited another Western Cape province clinic within 180 days, 9,005 (22.6% disengaged, and 28,069 (70.4% remained in care. Cumulative incidence of disengagement from care was estimated to be 25.1% by 2 years and 50.3% by 5 years on ART. Key factors associated with disengagement (age, male sex, pregnancy at ART start [HR 1.58, 95% CI 1.47-1.69], most recent CD4 count and retention (ART club

Contemporary disengagement from antiretroviral therapy in Khayelitsha, South Africa: A cohort study.

Science.gov (United States)

Kaplan, Samantha R; Oosthuizen, Christa; Stinson, Kathryn; Little, Francesca; Euvrard, Jonathan; Schomaker, Michael; Osler, Meg; Hilderbrand, Katherine; Boulle, Andrew; Meintjes, Graeme

2017-11-01

Retention in care is an essential component of meeting the UNAIDS "90-90-90" HIV treatment targets. In Khayelitsha township (population ~500,000) in Cape Town, South Africa, more than 50,000 patients have received antiretroviral therapy (ART) since the inception of this public-sector program in 2001. Disengagement from care remains an important challenge. We sought to determine the incidence of and risk factors associated with disengagement from care during 2013-2014 and outcomes for those who disengaged. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all patients ≥10 years of age who visited 1 of the 13 Khayelitsha ART clinics from 2013-2014 regardless of the date they initiated ART. We described the cumulative incidence of first disengagement (>180 days not attending clinic) between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2014 using competing risks methods, enabling us to estimate disengagement incidence up to 10 years after ART initiation. We also described risk factors for disengagement based on a Cox proportional hazards model, using multiple imputation for missing data. We ascertained outcomes (death, return to care, hospital admission, other hospital contact, alive but not in care, no information) after disengagement until 30 June 2015 using province-wide health databases and the National Death Registry. Of 39,884 patients meeting our eligibility criteria, the median time on ART to 31 December 2014 was 33.6 months (IQR 12.4-63.2). Of the total study cohort, 592 (1.5%) died in the study period, 1,231 (3.1%) formally transferred out, 987 (2.5%) were silent transfers and visited another Western Cape province clinic within 180 days, 9,005 (22.6%) disengaged, and 28,069 (70.4%) remained in care. Cumulative incidence of disengagement from care was estimated to be 25.1% by 2 years and 50.3% by 5 years on ART. Key factors associated with disengagement (age, male sex, pregnancy at ART start [HR 1.58, 95% CI 1.47-1.69], most recent CD4 count) and retention (ART club membership

Exploring the function of selective attention and hypervigilance for threat in anxiety.

Science.gov (United States)

Richards, Helen J; Benson, Valerie; Donnelly, Nick; Hadwin, Julie A

2014-02-01

Theoretical frameworks of anxiety propose that attentional biases to threat-related stimuli cause or maintain anxious states. The current paper draws on theoretical frameworks and key empirical studies to outline the distinctive attentional processes highlighted as being important in understanding anxiety. We develop a conceptual framework to make a distinction between two attentional biases: selective attention to threat and hypervigilance for threat. We suggest that these biases each have a different purpose and can account for the typical patterns of facilitated and impaired attention evident in anxious individuals. The framework is novel in its specification of the eye movement behavior associated with these attentional biases. We highlight that selective attention involves narrowing overt attention onto threat to ensure that these stimuli receive processing priority, leading to rapid engagement with task-relevant threat and delayed disengagement from task-irrelevant threat. We show that hypervigilance operates in the presence and absence of threat and involves monitoring for potential dangers via attentional broadening or excessive scanning of the environment with numerous eye movements, leading to improved threat detection and increased distraction from task-irrelevant threat. We conclude that future research could usefully employ eye movement measures to more clearly understand the diverse roles of attention in anxiety. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A vacuum disengager for tritium removal from HYLIFE-II Reactor Flibe

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dolan, T.J.; Longhurst, G.R.; Garcia-Otero, E.

1992-01-01

We have designed a vacuum disengager system to remove tritium from the Flibe (Li 2 BeF 4 ) molten salt coolant of the HYLIFE-II fusion reactor. There is a two-stage vacuum disengager in each of three intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) loops. Each stage consists of a vacuum chamber 4 m in diameter and 7 m tall. As 0.2 mm diameter molten salt droplets fall vertically downward into the vacuum, most of the tritium diffuses out of the droplets and is pumped away. A fraction Φ ∼10 -5 of the 8.6 MCi/day tritium source (from breeding in the Flibe and from unburned fuel) remains in the Flibe as it leaves the vacuum disengagers, and about 21% of that permeates into the intermediate coolant loop, so about 20 Ci/day leak into the steam system. With Flibe primary coolant and a vacuum disengager, it appears that an intermediate coolant loop is not needed to prevent tritium from leaking into the steam system. An experiment is needed to demonstrate Flibe vacuum disengager operation

The Role of Moral Disengagement and Self-Efficacy in Cyberbullying

Science.gov (United States)

Bussey, Kay; Fitzpatrick, Sally; Raman, Amrutha

2015-01-01

This study examines the association between moral disengagement and cyberbullying using a measure of moral disengagement tailored to cyberbullying. It also examines adolescents' self-beliefs in their competence to engage in cyberbullying (cyberbullying self-efficacy beliefs) and how these beliefs may moderate the relation between moral…

Moral Identity Predicts Doping Likelihood via Moral Disengagement and Anticipated Guilt.

Science.gov (United States)

Kavussanu, Maria; Ring, Christopher

2017-08-01

In this study, we integrated elements of social cognitive theory of moral thought and action and the social cognitive model of moral identity to better understand doping likelihood in athletes. Participants (N = 398) recruited from a variety of team sports completed measures of moral identity, moral disengagement, anticipated guilt, and doping likelihood. Moral identity predicted doping likelihood indirectly via moral disengagement and anticipated guilt. Anticipated guilt about potential doping mediated the relationship between moral disengagement and doping likelihood. Our findings provide novel evidence to suggest that athletes, who feel that being a moral person is central to their self-concept, are less likely to use banned substances due to their lower tendency to morally disengage and the more intense feelings of guilt they expect to experience for using banned substances.

Moral Disengagement in Science and Business Students: An Exploratory Study

Science.gov (United States)

Cory, Suzanne N.

2015-01-01

Cases of unethical business practices and technical failures have been extensively reported. It seems that actions are often taken by individuals with little apparent concern for those affected by their negative outcomes, which can be described as moral disengagement. This study investigates levels of moral disengagement demonstrated by business…

Moral Disengagement in Business and Humanities Majors: An Exploratory Study

Science.gov (United States)

Cory, Suzanne N.; Hernandez, Abigail R.

2014-01-01

This study measures moral disengagement of undergraduate business and humanities students with a focus on differences in moral disengagement between genders. Students completed a survey that consisted of 32 statements and were asked to determine the degree to which they agreed with each, using a 7-point Likert scale. The questions measured moral…

Experiences of mental health services for 'black' men with schizophrenia and a history of disengagement: A qualitative study.

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Wagstaff, Christopher; Graham, Hermine; Farrell, Derek; Larkin, Michael; Nettle, Mary

2018-02-01

Whilst mental disorders can be disabling they are also treatable, yet engagement with services is often poor and disengagement from treatment is a major concern for mental health nurses. Participants were service users typically perceived as the most disengaged from mental health services, yet they were willing to engage in the research interviews. The seven participants were all male with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a history of disengagement from mental health services and described their ethnicity as 'black'. Participants were under the care of Assertive Outreach Teams and were recruited after the researcher was introduced to them by clinicians who were working with them. After ethical approval, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were used to elicit the experiences of participants. Through interpretative phenomenological analysis, themes were developed. Interpretative Phenomenological analysis generated four themes: (i) "People just keep hounding me", (ii) Antipathy to Medication, (iii) Choice and the value of services, (iv) Stigmatisation and identity. By rigorously examining how service users with schizophrenia make sense of their experience of their relationship with mental health services, there is potential to give voice to the experiences of the recipients of mental health services. This study uncovered the complex nature of disengagement and in view of this there may never be a straightforward mechanism developed to engage all people with schizophrenia with mental health services. When the participants' experiences are considered in a broader social context it may be possible to reflect on how services can be adapted to facilitate better engagement. © 2016 Australian College of Mental Health Nurses Inc.

Virtual Reality-Based Attention Bias Modification Training for Social Anxiety: A Feasibility and Proof of Concept Study.

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Urech, Antoine; Krieger, Tobias; Chesham, Alvin; Mast, Fred W; Berger, Thomas

2015-01-01

Attention bias modification (ABM) programs have been considered as a promising new approach for the treatment of various disorders, including social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, previous studies yielded ambiguous results regarding the efficacy of ABM in SAD. The present proof-of-concept study investigates the feasibility of a newly developed virtual reality (VR)-based dot-probe training paradigm. It was designed to facilitate attentional disengagement from threatening stimuli in socially anxious individuals (N = 15). The following outcomes were examined: (a) self-reports of enjoyment, motivation, flow, and presence; (b) attentional bias for social stimuli; and (c) social anxiety symptoms. Results showed that ABM training is associated with high scores in enjoyment, motivation, flow, and presence. Furthermore, significant improvements in terms of attention bias and social anxiety symptoms were observed from pre- to follow-up assessment. The study suggests that VR is a feasible and presumably a promising new medium for ABM trainings. Controlled studies will need to be carried out.

Virtual Reality-Based Attention Bias Modification Training for Social Anxiety: A Feasibility and Proof of Concept Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Antoine eUrech

2015-10-01

Full Text Available Attention bias modification (ABM programs have been considered as a promising new approach for the treatment of various disorders, including social anxiety disorder (SAD. However, previous studies yielded ambiguous results regarding the efficacy of ABM in SAD. The present proof-of-concept study investigates the feasibility of a newly developed virtual reality (VR-based dot-probe training paradigm. It was designed to facilitate attentional disengagement from threatening stimuli in socially anxious individuals (N=15. The following outcomes were examined: (a self-reports of enjoyment, motivation, flow and presence, (b attentional bias for social stimuli, and (c social anxiety symptoms. Results showed that ABM training is associated with high scores in enjoyment, motivation, flow and presence. Furthermore, significant improvements in terms of attention bias and social anxiety symptoms were observed from pre- to follow-up assessment. The study suggests that VR is a feasible and presumably a promising new medium for ABM trainings. Controlled studies will need to be carried out.

Differential Selection or Differential Socialization? Examining the Effects of Part-Time Work on School Disengagement Behaviors among South Korean Adolescents

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Lee, Moosung; Ju, Eunsu

2016-01-01

Reflecting on the fast-growing number of adolescents involved in part-time work in South Korea, we pay special attention to the effects of part-time work on school disengagement in this age group. While research on this issue in Korea is still scarce, a handful of existing studies have documented the undesirable effects of part-time work on…

Moral Disengagement Processes in Bullying

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Hymel, Shelley; Bonanno, Rina A.

2014-01-01

Bullying is the most common form of interpersonal violence facing youth in schools, and recent school-based intervention efforts have shown only limited success in reducing such behavior. Accordingly, this article considers the utility of Albert Bandura's theory of moral disengagement in understanding bullying behavior among children and…

The effect of the augmentation of cholinergic neurotransmission by nicotine on EEG indices of visuospatial attention

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Logemann, H.N.A.; Bocker, K.B.E.; Deschamps, P.K.H.; Kemner, C.; Kenemans, J.L.

2014-01-01

The cholinergic system has been implicated in visuospatial attention but the exact role remains unclear. In visuospatial attention, bias refers to neuronal signals that modulate the sensitivity of sensory cortex, while disengagement refers to the decoupling of attention making reorienting possible.

Social anxiety, disengagement coping, and alcohol use behaviors among adolescents

Science.gov (United States)

Blumenthal, Heidemarie; Ham, Lindsay S.; Cloutier, Renee M.; Bacon, Amy K.; Douglas, Megan E.

2015-01-01

Background and Objectives Although research indicates that social anxiety (SA) is associated with problematic drinking, few studies have examined these relations among adolescents, and all alcohol-related assessments have been retrospective. Socially anxious youth may be at risk to drink in an effort to manage negative affectivity, and a proclivity towards disengagement coping (e.g., avoidance of aversive stimuli) may enhance the desire to drink and learning of coping-related use. Design Adding to research addressing adolescent SA and alcohol use, the current study examined (1) proportional drinking motives (subscale scores divided by the sum of all subscales), (2) current desire to drink in a socially-relevant environment (introduction to research laboratory), and (3) the indirect effect of retrospectively-reported disengagement in social stress contexts on proportional coping motives and desire to drink. Method Participants were 70 community-recruited adolescents who reported recent alcohol use. Level of SA, disengagement coping, drinking motives, and desire to drink following laboratory introduction were assessed. Results Proclivity toward disengagement in prior socially-stressful contexts accounted for significant variance in the positive relations between SA and both proportional coping motives and current desire to drink. Conclusions These data complement existing work. Continued efforts in building developmentally-sensitive models of alcohol use are needed. PMID:26235528

Social anxiety, disengagement coping, and alcohol-use behaviors among adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Blumenthal, Heidemarie; Ham, Lindsay S; Cloutier, Renee M; Bacon, Amy K; Douglas, Megan E

2016-07-01

Although research indicates that social anxiety (SA) is associated with problematic drinking, few studies have examined these relations among adolescents, and all alcohol-related assessments have been retrospective. Socially anxious youth may be at risk to drink in an effort to manage negative affectivity, and a proclivity toward disengagement coping (e.g. avoidance of aversive stimuli) may enhance the desire to drink and learning of coping-related use. Adding to research addressing adolescent SA and alcohol use, the current study examined (1) proportional drinking motives (subscale scores divided by the sum of all subscales), (2) current desire to drink in a socially relevant environment (introduction to research laboratory), and (3) the indirect effect of retrospectively reported disengagement in social stress contexts on proportional coping motives and desire to drink. Participants were 70 community-recruited adolescents who reported recent alcohol use. Level of SA, disengagement coping, drinking motives, and desire to drink following laboratory introduction were assessed. Proclivity toward disengagement in prior socially stressful contexts accounted for significant variance in the positive relations between SA and both proportional coping motives and current desire to drink. These data complement existing work. Continued efforts in building developmentally sensitive models of alcohol use are needed.

A Question of Participation – Disengagement from the Extremist Right

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, Tina Wilchen

as the thesis adds insight into individuals’ disengagement and deradicalisation processes, by investigating the ways in which participation and social interaction embedded in the Swedish exit programme cause individuals to alter their identity. It thus provides a detailed analysis of the demanding psychological...... versions of the dissertations produced in the PhD program “Social Psychology of Everyday Life”. The series presents the PhD projects of the candidates of the program. The PhD program Social Psychology of Everyday Life is engaged in critical and interdisciplinary research on psychological processes...... of the particular group he or she is involved in. This causes some to need support after they disengage in order to deradicalise and develop new social skills and identities. The complex process that follows their disengagement into the development of an alternative identity is the subject of this thesis. Several...

Attentional bias in problematic drinkers with and without mild to borderline intellectual disability

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Duijvenbode, N. van; Didden, H.C.M.; Korzilius, H.P.L.M.; Engels, R.C.M.E.

2017-01-01

Background: Problematic drinkers favour the processing of alcohol-related stimuli at the cost of other stimuli and also find it difficult to disengage their attention from these stimuli. This is indicative of an attentional bias towards alcohol. The goal of this study was to examine this bias in

Prism Adaptation Alters Electrophysiological Markers of Attentional Processes in the Healthy Brain.

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Martín-Arévalo, Elisa; Laube, Inga; Koun, Eric; Farnè, Alessandro; Reilly, Karen T; Pisella, Laure

2016-01-20

Neglect patients typically show a rightward attentional orienting bias and a strong disengagement deficit, such that they are especially slow in responding to left-sided targets after right-sided cues (Posner et al., 1984). Prism adaptation (PA) can reduce diverse debilitating neglect symptoms and it has been hypothesized that PA's effects are so generalized that they might be mediated by attentional mechanisms (Pisella et al., 2006; Redding and Wallace, 2006). In neglect patients, performance on spatial attention tasks improves after rightward-deviating PA (Jacquin-Courtois et al., 2013). In contrast, in healthy subjects, although there is evidence that leftward-deviating PA induces neglect-like performance on some visuospatial tasks, behavioral studies of spatial attention tasks have mostly yielded negative results (Morris et al., 2004; Bultitude et al., 2013). We hypothesized that these negative behavioral findings might reflect the limitations of behavioral measures in healthy subjects. Here we exploited the sensitivity of event-related potentials to test the hypothesis that electrophysiological markers of attentional processes in the healthy human brain are affected by PA. Leftward-deviating PA generated asymmetries in attentional orienting (reflected in the cue-locked N1) and in attentional disengagement for invalidly cued left targets (reflected in the target-locked P1). This is the first electrophysiological demonstration that leftward-deviating PA in healthy subjects mimics attentional patterns typically seen in neglect patients. Significance statement: Prism adaptation (PA) is a promising tool for ameliorating many deficits in neglect patients and inducing neglect-like behavior in healthy subjects. The mechanisms underlying PA's effects are poorly understood but one hypothesis suggests that it acts by modulating attention. To date, however, there has been no successful demonstration of attentional modulation in healthy subjects. We provide the first

Explaining socio-demographic differences in disengagement from sports in adolescence.

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Prins, Richard G; Kamphuis, Carlijn B M; van Empelen, Pepijn; Beenackers, Mariëlle A; Brug, Johannes; Mackenbach, Johan P; Oenema, Anke

2013-10-01

The purpose of this longitudinal study is to identify risk groups for disengagement from sports during adolescence. In addition, it will be explored whether cognitive and environmental factors can explain socio-demographic differences in disengagement from sports. Data were obtained from the Environmental Determinants of Obesity in Rotterdam Schoolchildren study, and 357 adolescents were eligible for analysis. Socio-demographics (gender, ethnicity, education), individual cognitions and neighbourhood perceptions were assessed at baseline (2005/2006), and sports participation at baseline and at follow-up (2007/2008). Two dichotomous outcome variables were constructed: (i) disengagement from sports (yes/no) and (ii) ceased compliance with the fitnorm (i.e. cease engaging in sports ≥3 times/wk) (yes/no). In logistic regression and mediation analyses, we identified socio-demographic differences in the two outcomes. Subsequently, we applied mediation analyses to identify the contribution of cognitive and environmental explanatory factors of the socio-demographic differences. Girls [odds ratio (OR): 2.5, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.5-4.5] were more likely than boys to disengage from sports. Girls (OR: 2.5, 95% CI: 1.4-4.2), adolescents of non-Western background (OR: 1.8, 95% CI: 1.0-3.0) and those in lower educational levels (OR: 1.7, 95% CI: 1.0-2.9) were more likely to cease compliance with the fitnorm. Perceived neighbourhood safety partly explained gender differences in disengagement from sports (8%). Intention partly explained ethnical (32%) and educational differences (37%) in ceasing compliance with the fitnorm. Girls, lower-educated adolescents and those with a non-Western background showed more pronounced reductions in sports participation and compliance with the fitnorm. Intention and perceived neighbourhood safety could partially explain these differences.

Mindful attention predicts greater recovery from negative emotions, but not reduced reactivity.

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Cho, Sinhae; Lee, Hyejeen; Oh, Kyung Ja; Soto, José A

2017-09-01

This study investigated the role of dispositional mindful attention in immediate reactivity to, and subsequent recovery from, laboratory-induced negative emotion. One hundred and fourteen undergraduates viewed blocks of negative pictures followed by neutral pictures. Participants' emotional responses to negative pictures and subsequent neutral pictures were assessed via self-reported ratings. Participants' emotional response to negative pictures was used to index level of emotional reactivity to unpleasant stimuli; emotional response to neutral pictures presented immediately after the negative pictures was used to index level of emotional recovery from pre-induced negative emotion (residual negativity). Results indicated that mindful attention was not associated with the emotional response to negative pictures, but it was associated with reduced negative emotion in response to the neutral pictures presented immediately after the negative pictures, suggesting better recovery as opposed to reduced reactivity. This effect was especially pronounced in later experimental blocks when the accumulation of negative stimuli produced greater negative emotion from which participants had to recover. The current study extends previous findings on the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and reduced negative emotion by demonstrating that mindful attention may facilitate better recovery from negative emotion, possibly through more effective disengagement from previous stimuli.

Disengagement from tasks as a function of cognitive load and depressive symptom severity.

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Bowie, Christopher R; Milanovic, Melissa; Tran, Tanya; Cassidy, Sarah

2017-01-01

Depression is associated with impairment in cognition and everyday functioning. Mechanisms of cognitive dysfunction in depression and the factors that influence strategic deployment of cognitive abilities in complex environments remain elusive. In this study we investigated whether depression symptom severity is associated with disengagement from a working memory task (Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task; PASAT) with parametric adjustment of task difficulty. 235 participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory, low and high cognitive load conditions of the PASAT, and quality of life. Cognitive disengagement was the sum of consecutive items in which participants did not proffer a response to the trial. Individuals with higher depression severity showed more cognitive disengagement on the high but not low cognitive load trial of the PASAT; they did not differ in number of correct responses. Increased disengagement from the low to high cognitive load was associated with more impaired quality of life. Depression severity is associated with increased disengagement from tasks as difficulty increases. These findings suggest the importance of measuring how cognitive skills are avoided in complex environments in addition to considering performance accuracy. Individuals with depressive symptoms might preferentially avoid cognitive tasks that are perceived as more complex in spite of intact ability.

Oil terrorism-militancy link: Mediating role of moral disengagement in emergency and crisis management.

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Mafimisebi, Oluwasoye Patrick; Thorne, Sara

2015-01-01

The controversial issues of terrorism and militancy have generated contemporary interests and different interpretations have emerged on how to combat and manage these dangerous events. This study widens understanding of moral disengagement mechanism application in the perpetuation of inhumanities within the context of oil terrorist and militant behaviors. The research findings and model are explicit on how people form moral evaluations of agents who are forced to make morally relevant decisions over times in context of crisis situations. Quite crucially, understanding the context of terrorism and militancy provides policymakers, emergency and crisis managers better analysis and response to such events. The research fundamental purpose was to investigate the mediating role of moral disengagement on delinquency of oil terrorism and militancy; and considered implications for emergency and crisis management practices. The study found that situational-induced crises such as oil terrorism and militancy were sufficient to account for an individual's misdeeds and unethical or inhumane decisions made under frustration and agitation may be perceived as less indicative of one's fundamental character. Findings suggest that more repugnant delinquencies could have been committed in the name of justice than in the name of injustice, avenues for future research. In context, the result of the moral disengagement scale shows that morality of delinquency (oil terrorism and militancy) is accomplished by cognitively redefining the morality of such acts. The main finding is that people in resistance movements are rational actors making rational choices. The authors argue that theorists, policymakers, and practitioners must give meaningful attention to understanding the multidimensional nature of emergency, crisis and disaster management for better strength of synthesis between theory and practice. The research is concluded by thorough examination of the implication and limitations for

Link between DNA damage and centriole disengagement/reduplication in untransformed human cells.

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Douthwright, Stephen; Sluder, Greenfield

2014-10-01

The radiation and radiomimetic drugs used to treat human tumors damage DNA in both cancer cells and normal proliferating cells. Centrosome amplification after DNA damage is well established for transformed cell types but is sparsely reported and not fully understood in untransformed cells. We characterize centriole behavior after DNA damage in synchronized untransformed human cells. One hour treatment of S phase cells with the radiomimetic drug, Doxorubicin, prolongs G2 by at least 72 h, though 14% of the cells eventually go through mitosis in that time. By 72 h after DNA damage we observe a 52% incidence of centriole disengagement plus a 10% incidence of extra centrioles. We find that either APC/C or Plk activities can disengage centrioles after DNA damage, though they normally work in concert. All disengaged centrioles are associated with γ-tubulin and maturation markers and thus, should in principle be capable of reduplicating and organizing spindle poles. The low incidence of reduplication of disengaged centrioles during G2 is due to the p53-dependent expression of p21 and the consequent loss of Cdk2 activity. We find that 26% of the cells going through mitosis after DNA damage contain disengaged or extra centrioles. This could produce genomic instability through transient or persistent spindle multipolarity. Thus, for cancer patients the use of DNA damaging therapies raises the chances of genomic instability and evolution of transformed characteristics in proliferating normal cell populations. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Evaluation of Attention Training and Metacognitive Facilitation to Improve Reading Comprehension in Aphasia

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Lee, Jaime B.; Sohlberg, McKay Moore

2013-01-01

Purpose: This pilot study investigated the impact of direct attention training combined with metacognitive facilitation on reading comprehension in individuals with aphasia. Method: A single-subject, multiple baseline design was employed across 4 participants to evaluate potential changes in reading comprehension resulting from an 8-week…

Moral disengagement, self-efficacy and bullying: the framework of coexistence studies

OpenAIRE

Luciene Tognetta; José María Avilés; Pedro Rosário; Natividad Alonso

2015-01-01

This article discusses the relationship between bullying and moral disengagements. In a research study conducted with 2,600 adolescents, between 14 and 16 years old, an attempt to verify their involvement in bullying, their self-efficacy beliefs regarding their academic performance and their possible moral disengagements was undertaken. A correlation between being bullying by others and the "dehumanization of the victim" was found. The participation in the bullying situation as authors, victi...

Exploring the Nature of Joint Attention Impairments in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Associated Social and Cognitive Skills

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Schietecatte, Inge; Roeyers, Herbert; Warreyn, Petra

2012-01-01

It is generally accepted that joint attention skills are impaired in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this study, social preference, attention disengagement and intention understanding, assumed to be associated with the development of joint attention, are explored in relation to joint attention skills in children with ASD at the…

Moral Disengagement in media and Moral Identity activation: their interactive effect on support of war

OpenAIRE

Liebnitzky, Jan

2015-01-01

People can disengage from their internalized moral standards and self-regulation in order to perform immoral behaviour by using different Moral Disengagement mechanisms. These mechanisms within media have a positive effect on immoral behaviour. However, Moral Identity activation is said to counter arguments of Moral Disengagement. In this study, both concepts are applied to the context of war. An additional assumption took into account in how far participants’ internalized moral standards con...

Assessing attentional systems in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Casagrande, Maria; Martella, Diana; Ruggiero, Maria Cleonice; Maccari, Lisa; Paloscia, Claudio; Rosa, Caterina; Pasini, Augusto

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency and interactions of attentional systems in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by considering the effects of reinforcement and auditory warning on each component of attention. Thirty-six drug-naïve children (18 children with ADHD/18 typically developing children) performed two revised versions of the Attentional Network Test, which assess the efficiency of alerting, orienting, and executive systems. In feedback trials, children received feedback about their accuracy, whereas in the no-feedback trials, feedback was not given. In both conditions, children with ADHD performed more slowly than did typically developing children. They also showed impairments in the ability to disengage attention and in executive functioning, which improved when alertness was increased by administering the auditory warning. The performance of the attentional networks appeared to be modulated by the absence or the presence of reinforcement. We suggest that the observed executive system deficit in children with ADHD could depend on their low level of arousal rather than being an independent disorder. © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Attentional Control and Fear Extinction in Subclinical Fear: An Exploratory Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eduard Forcadell

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Attentional control (AC and fear extinction learning are known to be involved in pathological anxiety. In this study we explored whether individual differences in non-emotional AC were associated with individual differences in the magnitude and gradient of fear extinction (learning and recall. In 50 individuals with fear of spiders, we collected measures of non-emotional AC by means of self-report and by assessing the functioning of the major attention networks (executive control, orienting, and alerting. The participants then underwent a paradigm assessing fear extinction learning and extinction recall. The two components of the orienting network functioning (costs and benefits were significantly associated with fear extinction gradient over and above the effects of trait anxiety. Specifically, participants with enhanced orienting costs (i.e., difficulties in disengaging attention from cues not relevant for the task showed faster extinction learning, while those with enhanced orienting benefits (i.e., attention facilitated by valid cues exhibited faster extinction recall as measured by fear-potentiated startle and Unconditioned Stimulus expectancies, respectively. Our findings suggest that, in non-emotional conditions, the orienting component of attention may be predictive of fear extinction. They also show that the use of fear extinction gradients and the exploration of individual differences in non-emotional AC (using performance-based measures of attentional network functioning can provide a better understanding of individual differences in fear learning. Our findings also may help to understand differences in exposure therapy outcomes.

Deviance and exit: The organizational costs of job insecurity and moral disengagement.

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Huang, Guo-Hua; Wellman, Ned; Ashford, Susan J; Lee, Cynthia; Wang, Li

2017-01-01

This study examines why and when employees might respond to job insecurity by engaging in workplace deviance and developing intentions to leave-2 activities that are costly for organizations. Drawing on social exchange theory and the theory of moral disengagement, we propose that job insecurity increases workplace deviance and intentions to leave by encouraging employees to morally disengage. We further propose that the strength of the positive association between job insecurity, moral disengagement, and these outcomes is contingent upon 2 aspects of the situation-employees' perceived employment opportunities outside the organization and the quality of the exchange relationship they have developed with their supervisors (leader-member exchange, or LMX). Two time-lagged studies of Chinese workers provide support for the hypothesized 1st-stage moderated mediation model. Specifically, the indirect effect of job insecurity on organizational and interpersonal deviance and intentions to leave via moral disengagement was positive and significant when individuals had more employment opportunities or when LMX was lower but not when they had fewer employment opportunities or when LMX was higher. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

The psychological disengagement model among women in science, engineering, and technology.

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Beaton, Ann M; Tougas, Francine; Rinfret, Natalie; Monger, Tanya

2015-09-01

Psychological responses to personal relative deprivation based on self/outgroup comparisons (named self/outgroup PRD) were explored among women in science, engineering, and technology according to the Psychological Disengagement Model. Three studies revealed that the experience of self/outgroup PRD increased women's likelihood of discounting the feedback they received at work. In turn, discounting led them to devalue their profession. Each study further documented the damaging effect of both psychological disengagement mechanisms. Study 1 (N = 93) revealed that discounting and devaluing were associated with decreased self-esteem. These results were replicated in Studies 2 and 3. Study 2 (N = 163) demonstrated that discounting and devaluing were also associated with reduced self-esteem stability. Study 3 (N = 187) further showed that psychological disengagement was also associated with women's occupational commitment. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are considered. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Psychological mechanisms underlying doping attitudes in sport: motivation and moral disengagement.

Science.gov (United States)

Hodge, Ken; Hargreaves, Elaine A; Gerrard, David; Lonsdale, Chris

2013-08-01

We examined whether constructs outlined in self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2002), namely, autonomy-supportive and controlling motivational climates and autonomous and controlled motivation, were related to attitudes toward performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sport and drug-taking susceptibility. We also investigated moral disengagement as a potential mediator. We surveyed a sample of 224 competitive athletes (59% female; M age = 20.3 years; M = 10.2 years of experience participating in their sport), including 81 elite athletes. Using structural equation modeling analyses, our hypothesis proposing positive relationships with controlling climates, controlled motivation, and PEDs attitudes and susceptibility was largely supported, whereas our hypothesis proposing negative relationships among autonomous climate, autonomous motivation, and PEDs attitudes and susceptibility was not supported. Moral disengagement was a strong predictor of positive attitudes toward PEDs, which, in turn, was a strong predictor of PEDs susceptibility. These findings are discussed from both motivational and moral disengagement viewpoints.

Medial parietal cortex activation related to attention control involving alcohol cues

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gladwin, Thomas E.; ter Mors-Schulte, Mieke H. J.; Ridderinkhof, K. Richard; Wiers, Reinout W.

2013-01-01

Automatic attentional engagement toward and disengagement from alcohol cues play a role in alcohol use and dependence. In the current study, social drinkers performed a spatial cueing task designed to evoke conflict between such automatic processes and task instructions, a potentially important task

Designing Online Assessment Tools for Disengaged Youth

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Brader, Andy; Luke, Allan; Klenowski, Val; Connolly, Stephen; Behzadpour, Adib

2014-01-01

This article reports on the development of online assessment tools for disengaged youth in flexible learning environments. Sociocultural theories of learning and assessment and Bourdieu's sociological concepts of capital and exchange were used to design a purpose-built content management system. This design experiment engaged participants in…

Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control.

Science.gov (United States)

Bandura, Albert

1990-01-01

Analyzes psychological mechanisms by which moral control is selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct in ordinary and unusual circumstances. Explores the symptoms of moral exclusion as described in the literature. Presents categories that unify theory on moral exclusion and contribute practical classifications for use in empirical studies. (JS)

Interactive Effects of Guilt and Moral Disengagement on Bullying, Defending and Outsider Behavior

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Mazzone, Angela; Camodeca, Marina; Salmivalli, Christina

2016-01-01

We examined the moderating effect of guilt on the associations between moral disengagement and bullying, defending and outsider behaviors in a sample of 404 students (203 boys; M[subscript age] = 11.09 years; SD = 1.48). Bullying, defending and outsider behavior were assessed through peer nominations, whereas guilt and moral disengagement were…

Factors influencing phase-disengagement rates in solvent-extraction systems employing tertiary amine extractants

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Moyer, B.A.; McDowell, W.J.

1981-01-01

The primary purpose of the present investigation was to examine the effects of amine size and structure on phase disengagement. Nine commercial tertiary amines were tested together with four laboratory-quality amines for uranium extraction and both organic-continuous (OC) and aqueous-continuous (AC) phase disengagement under Amex-type conditions. Synthetic acid sulfate solutions with and without added colloidal silica and actual ore leach solutions were used as the aqueous phases. Phase disengagement results were correlated with amine size and branching and solution wetting behavior on a silicate (glass) surface. The results suggest that the performance of some Amex systems may be improved by using branched chain tertiary amine extractants of higher molecular weight than are now normally used

Differential effects of 10-Hz and 40-Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on endogenous versus exogenous attention.

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Hopfinger, Joseph B; Parsons, Jonathan; Fröhlich, Flavio

2017-04-01

Previous electrophysiological studies implicate both alpha (8-12 Hz) and gamma (>30 Hz) neural oscillations in the mechanisms of selective attention. Here, participants preformed two separate visual attention tasks, one endogenous and one exogenous, while transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), at 10 Hz, 40 Hz, or sham, was applied to the right parietal lobe. Our results provide new evidence for the roles of gamma and alpha oscillations in voluntary versus involuntary shifts of attention. Gamma (40 Hz) stimulation resulted in improved disengagement from invalidly cued targets in the endogenous attention task, whereas alpha stimulation (10 Hz) had no effect on endogenous attention, but increased the exogenous cuing effect. These findings agree with previous studies suggesting that right inferior parietal regions may be especially important for the disengagement of attention, and go further to provide details about the specific type of oscillatory neural activity within that brain region that is differentially involved in endogenous versus exogenous attention. Our results also have potential implications for the plasticity and training of attention systems.

Trust, attachment, and mindfulness influence intimacy and disengagement during newlyweds' discussions of relationship transgressions.

Science.gov (United States)

Khalifian, Chandra E; Barry, Robin A

2016-08-01

Discussions of relationship transgressions-violations of relationship norms-are often difficult for couples to successfully navigate. Nevertheless, engaging in and resolving these discussions should promote intimacy. Drawing on the risk regulation model, individuals' experiences of disengagement and intimacy during transgression discussions should depend on their trust in their partner regarding the transgression and how they regulate distress related to lower trust. Attachment style represents individual differences in emotion regulation in close relationship contexts and is indicated by the risk regulation model. In contrast, mindfulness also improves interpersonal emotion regulation but is not reflected in the model. The present study proposed that the effect of trust on the experience of intimacy and disengagement during transgression discussions would depend on individuals' attachment style or mindfulness. Hypotheses were tested in a sample of 81 heterosexual newlywed couples. Trust was positively associated with intimacy for individuals with higher attachment avoidance, but not for individuals with lower attachment avoidance. Trust was negatively associated with disengagement for individuals with either lower mindfulness or higher attachment avoidance. Trust was not associated with disengagement for individuals with higher mindfulness or lower attachment avoidance. Implications for theory and clinical interventions focused on increasing intimacy and decreasing disengagement in couple relationships are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Evaluation of attention training and metacognitive facilitation to improve reading comprehension in aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Jaime B; Moore Sohlberg, McKay

2013-05-01

This pilot study investigated the impact of direct attention training combined with metacognitive facilitation on reading comprehension in individuals with aphasia. A single-subject, multiple baseline design was employed across 4 participants to evaluate potential changes in reading comprehension resulting from an 8-week intervention using Attention Process Training-3 (APT-3). The primary outcome measure was a maze reading task. Pre- and posttesting included attention and reading comprehension measures. Visual inspection of graphed performance data across conditions was used as the primary method of analysis. Treatment effect sizes were calculated for changes in reading comprehension probes from baseline to maintenance phases. Two of the study's 4 participants demonstrated improvements in maze reading, with corresponding effect sizes that were small in magnitude according to benchmarks for aphasia treatment research. All 4 participants made improvements on select standardized measures of attention. Interventions that include a metacognitive component with direct attention training may elicit improvements in participants' attention and allocation of resources. Maze passage reading is a repeated measure that appears sensitive to treatment-related changes in reading comprehension. Issues for future research related to measurement, candidacy, and clinical delivery are discussed.

Attentional cueing by cross-modal congruency produces both facilitation and inhibition on short-term visual recognition.

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Makovac, Elena; Kwok, Sze Chai; Gerbino, Walter

2014-10-01

The attentional modulation of performance in a memory task, comparable to the one obtained in a perceptual task, is at the focus of contemporary research. We hypothesized that a biphasic effect (namely, facilitation followed by inhibition) can be obtained in visual working memory when attention is cued towards one item of the memorandum and participants must recognize a delayed probe as being identical to any item of the memorandum. In every trial, a delayed spiky/curvy probe appeared centrally, to be matched with the same-category shape maintained in visual working memory which could be either physically identical (positive trials) or only categorically similar (negative trials). To orient the participant's attention towards a selected portion of a two-item memorandum, a (tzk/wow) sound was played simultaneously with two lateral visual shapes (one spiky and one curved). Our results indicate that an exogenous attentional shift during perception of the memorandum, induced by a congruent audio-visual pairing, first facilitates and then inhibits the recognition of a cued item (but not of a non-cued item) stored in visual working memory. A coherent pattern of individual differences emerged, indicating that the amount of early facilitation in congruent-sound trials was negatively correlated with recognition sensitivity in no-sound trials (suggesting that the inverse effectiveness rule may also apply to memory) and positively correlated with later inhibition, as well as with the self-reported susceptibility to memory failures. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Disengaging from Workplace Relationships. A Research Note

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Sias, Patricia M.; Perry, Tara

2004-01-01

A randomly-selected sample of 306 adults employed full-time rated how likely individuals would be to use various communication strategies (cost escalation, depersonalization, and state-of-the-relationship talk) to disengage from a workplace relationship (with the target of the deteriorations being a supervisor, a peer coworker, or a subordinate…

Bystander Behavior in Bullying Situations: Basic Moral Sensitivity, Moral Disengagement and Defender Self-Efficacy

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Thornberg, Robert; Jungert, Tomas

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate how basic moral sensitivity in bullying, moral disengagement in bullying and defender self-efficacy were related to different bystander behaviors in bullying. Therefore, we examined pathways that linked students' basic moral sensitivity, moral disengagement, and defender self-efficacy to different…

Spoken Word Recognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Role of Visual Disengagement

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Venker, Courtney E.

2017-01-01

Deficits in visual disengagement are one of the earliest emerging differences in infants who are later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Although researchers have speculated that deficits in visual disengagement could have negative effects on the development of children with autism spectrum disorder, we do not know which skills are…

The Role of Moral Disengagement in the Associations between Children's Social Goals and Aggression

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Visconti, Kari Jeanne; Ladd, Gary W.; Kochenderfer-Ladd, Becky

2015-01-01

The construct of moral disengagement has increasingly been used by researchers to account for the asymmetry between children's moral reasoning and their moral behavior. According to this theory, moral disengagement occurs most aptly when children are motivated to violate their moral beliefs, such as when they hold antisocial goals during social…

The Effect of Moral Disengagement on Bullying: Testing the Moderating Role of Personal and Social Factors.

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Travlos, Antonios K; Tsorbatzoudis, Haralambos; Barkoukis, Vassilis; Douma, Irene

2018-03-01

Bullying is a subset of aggressive behavior that has severe consequences in children's psychosocial development. Bullying behaviors can be influenced by personal and social factors, such as gender, age, school type, and sport participation, as well as psychological constructs, such as moral disengagement. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of moral disengagement on bullying behaviors and the moderating role of personal and social factors. In this study, 2,252 students ( M = 13.57, SD = 1.17; 1,125 girls, and 1,127 boys) attending the sixth grade of primary school and secondary education have participated. Participants completed the revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire and Bandura's Moral Disengagement Questionnaire along with general questions about their demographic characteristics. The results of the analyses demonstrated moderation effects of gender on the moral disengagement-physical bullying relationship and of age on the moral disengagement-verbal bullying relationship. No significant moderating effect emerged for school type and sport participation. The findings of the present study provide valuable information about the role of personal and social factors on bullying behavior.

Attention Diversion Improves Response Inhibition of Immediate Reward, But Only When it Is Beneficial: An fMRI Study

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Scalzo, Franco; O’Connor, David A.; Orr, Catherine; Murphy, Kevin; Hester, Robert

2016-01-01

Deficits of self-control are associated with a number of mental state disorders. The ability to direct attention away from an alluring stimulus appears to aid inhibition of an impulsive response. However, further functional imaging research is required to assess the impact of shifts in attention on self-regulating processes. We varied the level of attentional disengagement in an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-based Go/No-go task to probe whether diversion of attention away from alluring stimuli facilitates response inhibition. We used the attention-grabbing characteristic of faces to exogenously direct attention away from stimuli and investigated the relative importance of attention and response inhibition mechanisms under different delayed reward scenarios [i.e., where forgoing an immediate reward ($1) led to a higher ($10) or no payoff in the future]. We found that diverting attention improved response inhibition performance, but only when resistance to an alluring stimulus led to delayed reward. Region of interest analyses indicated significant increased activity in posterior right inferior frontal gyrus during successful No-go trials for delayed reward trials compared to no delayed reward trials, and significant reduction in activity in the superior temporal gyri and left caudate in contexts of high attentional diversion. Our findings imply that strategies that increase the perceived benefits of response inhibition might assist individuals in abstaining from problematic impulsive behaviors. PMID:27616988

The “Moral Disengagement in Violent Videogames” model

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Hartmann, T.

2017-01-01

How do violent videogames, as entertainment products, communicate violence in the context of warfare and in other settings? Also, why do users enjoy virtual violence? The present article introduces the Moral Disengagement in Violent Videogames model to tackle these important questions. The model

Best friends and better coping: Facilitating psychological resilience through boys' and girls' closest friendships.

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Graber, Rebecca; Turner, Rhiannon; Madill, Anna

2016-05-01

This is a novel investigation of whether, and how, a single close supportive friendship may facilitate psychological resilience in socio-economically vulnerable British adolescents. A total of 409 adolescents (160 boys, 245 girls, four unknown), aged between 11 and 19 years, completed self-report measures of close friendship quality, psychological resilience, social support, and other resources. Findings revealed a significant positive association between perceived friendship quality and resilience. This relationship was facilitated through inter-related mechanisms of developing a constructive coping style (comprised of support-seeking and active coping), effort, a supportive friendship network, and reduced disengaged and externalising coping. While protective processes were encouragingly significantly present across genders, boys were more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of disengaged and externalizing coping than girls. We suggest that individual close friendships are an important potential protective mechanism accessible to most adolescents. We discuss implications of the resulting Adolescent Friendship and Resilience Model for resilience theories and integration into practice. © 2015 The British Psychological Society.

Linking attentional processes and conceptual problem solving: visual cues facilitate the automaticity of extracting relevant information from diagrams.

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Rouinfar, Amy; Agra, Elise; Larson, Adam M; Rebello, N Sanjay; Loschky, Lester C

2014-01-01

This study investigated links between visual attention processes and conceptual problem solving. This was done by overlaying visual cues on conceptual physics problem diagrams to direct participants' attention to relevant areas to facilitate problem solving. Participants (N = 80) individually worked through four problem sets, each containing a diagram, while their eye movements were recorded. Each diagram contained regions that were relevant to solving the problem correctly and separate regions related to common incorrect responses. Problem sets contained an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued condition saw visual cues overlaid on the training problems. Participants' verbal responses were used to determine their accuracy. This study produced two major findings. First, short duration visual cues which draw attention to solution-relevant information and aid in the organizing and integrating of it, facilitate both immediate problem solving and generalization of that ability to new problems. Thus, visual cues can facilitate re-representing a problem and overcoming impasse, enabling a correct solution. Importantly, these cueing effects on problem solving did not involve the solvers' attention necessarily embodying the solution to the problem, but were instead caused by solvers attending to and integrating relevant information in the problems into a solution path. Second, this study demonstrates that when such cues are used across multiple problems, solvers can automatize the extraction of problem-relevant information extraction. These results suggest that low-level attentional selection processes provide a necessary gateway for relevant information to be used in problem solving, but are generally not sufficient for correct problem solving. Instead, factors that lead a solver to an impasse and to organize and integrate problem information also greatly facilitate arriving at correct solutions.

The Meaning of Student Engagement and Disengagement in the Classroom Context: Lessons from Organisational Behaviour

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Balwant, Paul T.

2018-01-01

Despite the popularity of student engagement and, by association, student disengagement, the academic literature is unclear about the meaning of these terms. This review extends existing conceptual studies of student engagement by offering clear definitions and conceptualisations of both student engagement and disengagement in the classroom…

Attentional Bias to Beauty with Evolutionary Benefits: Evidence from Aesthetic Appraisal of Landscape Architecture

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Zhang, Wei; Tang, Xiaoxiang; He, Xianyou; Lai, Shuxian

2018-01-01

Substantial evidence suggests that beauty is associated with the survival and reproduction of organisms. Landscape architecture is composed of a series of natural elements that have significant evolutionary implications. The present study used one pilot material ratings and three experiments to examine the mechanisms of aesthetic appraisals of landscape architecture. The results confirmed that landscape architecture elicited a sense of beauty and captured visual attention more easily than other types of architecture during explicit aesthetic rating task (Experiment 1) and implicit aesthetic perception task (dot-probe paradigm, Experiment 2). Furthermore, the spatial cueing paradigm revealed that response latencies were significantly faster for landscape architecture than non-landscape architecture on valid trials, but there was no significant difference in this contrast on invalid trials at 150-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA, Experiment 3a). At 500-ms SOA (Experiment 3b), participants responded significantly faster for landscape architecture on valid trials, but reacted significantly slower for landscape architecture on invalid trials. The findings indicated that the beauty of landscape architecture can be perceived implicitly, and only faster orienting of attention, but not delayed disengagement of attention was generated at early stages of the processing of landscape architecture. However, the attentional bias at later stages of attentional processes may be resulted from both faster orienting of attention and delayed disengagement of attention from landscape architecture photographs. PMID:29467696

Attentional Bias to Beauty with Evolutionary Benefits: Evidence from Aesthetic Appraisal of Landscape Architecture.

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Zhang, Wei; Tang, Xiaoxiang; He, Xianyou; Lai, Shuxian

2018-01-01

Substantial evidence suggests that beauty is associated with the survival and reproduction of organisms. Landscape architecture is composed of a series of natural elements that have significant evolutionary implications. The present study used one pilot material ratings and three experiments to examine the mechanisms of aesthetic appraisals of landscape architecture. The results confirmed that landscape architecture elicited a sense of beauty and captured visual attention more easily than other types of architecture during explicit aesthetic rating task (Experiment 1) and implicit aesthetic perception task (dot-probe paradigm, Experiment 2). Furthermore, the spatial cueing paradigm revealed that response latencies were significantly faster for landscape architecture than non-landscape architecture on valid trials, but there was no significant difference in this contrast on invalid trials at 150-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA, Experiment 3a). At 500-ms SOA (Experiment 3b), participants responded significantly faster for landscape architecture on valid trials, but reacted significantly slower for landscape architecture on invalid trials. The findings indicated that the beauty of landscape architecture can be perceived implicitly, and only faster orienting of attention, but not delayed disengagement of attention was generated at early stages of the processing of landscape architecture. However, the attentional bias at later stages of attentional processes may be resulted from both faster orienting of attention and delayed disengagement of attention from landscape architecture photographs.

Does Therapists' Disengaged Feelings Influence the Effect of Transference Work? A Study on Countertransference.

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Dahl, Hanne-Sofie Johnsen; Høglend, Per; Ulberg, Randi; Amlo, Svein; Gabbard, Glen O; Perry, John Christopher; Christoph, Paul Crits

2017-03-01

Exploration of the patient-therapist relationship (transference work) is considered a core active ingredient in dynamic psychotherapy. However, there are contradictory findings as for whom and under what circumstances these interventions are beneficial. This study investigates long-term effects of transference work in the context of patients' quality of object relations (QOR) and therapists' self-reported disengaged feelings. Therapists' disengaged feelings may negatively influence the therapeutic process, especially while working explicitly with the transference since discussing feelings that are present in the session is an essential aspect of transference work. One hundred outpatients seeking psychotherapy for depression, anxiety and personality disorders were randomly assigned to one year of dynamic psychotherapy with transference work or to the same type and duration of treatment, but without transference work. Patients' QOR-lifelong pattern was evaluated before treatment and therapists' feelings were assessed using the Feeling Word Checklist-58 after each session. Outcome was measured with self-reports and interviews at pre-treatment, mid-treatment, post-treatment, one year and three years after treatment termination. A significant interaction of treatment group (transference work versus no transference work) by QOR by disengaged therapist feelings was present, indicating that disengaged feelings, even small amounts, were associated with negative long-term effects of transference work, depending on QOR Scale scores. The strengths of the negative association increased significantly with lower levels of QOR. The negative association between even a small increase in disengaged therapist feelings and long-term effects of transference interpretation was substantial for patients with poor QOR, but small among patients with good QOR. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Therapists' emotional reactions to their patients (countertransference) seem to have a

Health anxiety and attentional bias: the time course of vigilance and avoidance in light of pictorial illness information.

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Jasper, Fabian; Witthöft, Michael

2011-12-01

Cognitive-behavioral models of health anxiety stress the importance of selective attention not only towards internal but also towards external health threat related stimuli. Yet, little is known about the time course of this attentional bias. The current study investigates threat related attentional bias in participants with varying degrees of health anxiety. Attentional bias was assessed using a visual dot-probe task with health-threat and neutral pictures at two exposure durations, 175ms and 500ms. A baseline condition was added to the dot-probe task to dissociate indices of vigilance towards threat and difficulties to disengage from threat. Substantial positive correlations of health anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and absorption with difficulties to disengage from threat were detected at 500ms exposure time. At an early stage (i.e., at 175ms exposure time), we found significant positive correlations of health anxiety and absorption with orientation towards threat. Results suggest a vigilance avoidance pattern of selective attention associated with pictorial illness related stimuli in health anxiety. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cultural affordances and emotional experience: socially engaging and disengaging emotions in Japan and the United States.

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Kitayama, Shinobu; Mesquita, Batja; Karasawa, Mayumi

2006-11-01

The authors hypothesized that whereas Japanese culture encourages socially engaging emotions (e.g., friendly feelings and guilt), North American culture fosters socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride and anger). In two cross-cultural studies, the authors measured engaging and disengaging emotions repeatedly over different social situations and found support for this hypothesis. As predicted, Japanese showed a pervasive tendency to reportedly experience engaging emotions more strongly than they experienced disengaging emotions, but Americans showed a reversed tendency. Moreover, as also predicted, Japanese subjective well-being (i.e., the experience of general positive feelings) was more closely associated with the experience of engaging positive emotions than with that of disengaging emotions. Americans tended to show the reversed pattern. The established cultural differences in the patterns of emotion suggest the consistent and systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time.

Therapeutic Responses to "At Risk" Disengaged Early School Leavers in a Rural Alternative Education Programme

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Fish, Tim

2017-01-01

The identification of disengaged early school leavers as young people "at risk" can lead to a deficit-based framing of how educational institutions respond to them. A rural secondary school in Victoria, Australia established an alternative education programme to cater for local disengaged young people. A critical ethnographic study was…

Meditation increases the depth of information processing and improves the allocation of attention in space

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Sara evan Leeuwen

2012-05-01

Full Text Available During meditation, practitioners are required to center their attention on a specific object for extended periods of time. When their thoughts get diverted, they learn to quickly disengage from the distracter. We hypothesized that learning to respond to the dual demand of engaging attention on specific objects and disengaging quickly from distracters enhances the efficiency by which meditation practitioners can allocate attention. We tested this hypothesis in a global-to-local task while measuring electroencephalographic activity from a group of eight highly trained Buddhist monks and nuns and a group of eight age and education matched controls with no previous meditation experience. Specifically, we investigated the effect of attentional training on the global precedence effect, i.e., faster detection of targets on a global than on a local level. We expected to find a reduced global precedence effect in meditation practitioners but not in controls, reflecting that meditators can more quickly disengage their attention from the dominant global level. Analysis of reaction times confirmed this prediction. To investigate the underlying changes in brain activity and their time course, we analyzed event-related potentials. Meditators showed an enhanced ability to select the respective target level, as reflected by enhanced processing of target level information. In contrast with control group, which showed a local target selection effect only in the P1 and a global target selection effect in the P3 component, meditators showed effects of local information processing in the P1, N2 and P3 and of global processing for the N1, N2 and P3. Thus, meditators seem to display enhanced depth of processing. In addition, meditation altered the uptake of information such that meditators selected target level information earlier in the processing sequence than controls. In a longitudinal experiment, we could replicate the behavioral effects, suggesting that

Friendship selection and influence in bullying and defending: effects of moral disengagement.

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Sijtsema, Jelle J; Rambaran, J Ashwin; Caravita, Simona C S; Gini, Gianluca

2014-08-01

The current study examined the development of bullying and defending over a 1-year period as related to friends' influence and individual and friends' moral disengagement (i.e., self-justification mechanisms that allow one to avoid moral self-censure of transgressive actions) in children and young adolescents. Via longitudinal social network analysis (RSiena), it was tested whether similarity between friends in bullying and defending developed over time due to friends' influence, while controlling for friendship selection processes, and whether there were differences in these processes between children (age 9-10 years; n = 133; 42.9% girls) and young adolescents (age 11-14 years; n = 236; 40.6% girls). Results showed that individuals selected peers as friends who were similar in bullying and became more similar to friends in bullying over time, but only in early adolescence. Moreover, there was marginal support that friends' influence was stronger in young adolescents with higher moral disengagement. In early adolescence, bullying was also indirectly influenced through friends' moral disengagement, with different effects for boys and girls. With regard to defending, young adolescents maintained friendships with peers who were similar in defending, and became more similar to friends in terms of defending over time. These findings suggest important differences between late childhood and early adolescence in socialization processes and indicate that in early adolescence, friends' influence on the development of bullying is partially affected by moral disengagement. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Perceived Police Injustice, Moral Disengagement, and Aggression Among Juvenile Offenders: Utilizing the General Strain Theory Model.

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Zapolski, Tamika C B; Banks, Devin E; Lau, Katherine S L; Aalsma, Matthew C

2018-04-01

Although many juvenile offenders report experiencing police injustice, few studies have examined how this source of strain may impact youths' behavioral outcomes, including risk for future recidivism. This study begins to address that gap in the literature. We applied the general strain theory as our theoretical framework to examine the interactive effect of perceived police injustice and moral disengagement on juvenile aggressive behavior. Our sample included 95 juvenile offenders who completed questionnaires on measures of perceived police injustice and moral disengagement. Results supported our hypothesis, such that moral disengagement predicted past month aggression among juvenile offenders, but only by youth who reported mean and high levels of perceived police injustice. While more research is needed in this area, this study's findings underscore the need to address both perceived police engagement and moral disengagement among youth at-risk of engaging in delinquent behaviors. Implications for intervention programs are also presented.

Modality-specific alpha modulations facilitate long-term memory encoding in the presence of distracters.

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Jiang, Haiteng; van Gerven, Marcel A J; Jensen, Ole

2015-03-01

It has been proposed that long-term memory encoding is not only dependent on engaging task-relevant regions but also on disengaging task-irrelevant regions. In particular, oscillatory alpha activity has been shown to be involved in shaping the functional architecture of the working brain because it reflects the functional disengagement of specific regions in attention and memory tasks. We here ask if such allocation of resources by alpha oscillations generalizes to long-term memory encoding in a cross-modal setting in which we acquired the ongoing brain activity using magnetoencephalography. Participants were asked to encode pictures while ignoring simultaneously presented words and vice versa. We quantified the brain activity during rehearsal reflecting subsequent memory in the different attention conditions. The key finding was that successful long-term memory encoding is reflected by alpha power decreases in the sensory region of the to-be-attended modality and increases in the sensory region of the to-be-ignored modality to suppress distraction during rehearsal period. Our results corroborate related findings from attention studies by demonstrating that alpha activity is also important for the allocation of resources during long-term memory encoding in the presence of distracters.

Pay Attention!: Sluggish Multisensory Attentional Shifting as a Core Deficit in Developmental Dyslexia.

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Krause, Margaret B

2015-11-01

The aim of this review is to provide a background on the neurocognitive aspects of the reading process and review neuroscientific studies of individuals with developmental dyslexia, which provide evidence for amodal processing deficits. Hari, Renvall, and Tanskanen (2001) propose amodal sluggish attentional shifting (SAS) as a causal factor for temporal processing deficits in dyslexia. Undergirding this theory is the notion that when dyslexics are faced with rapid sequences of stimuli, their automatic attentional systems fail to disengage efficiently, which leads to difficulty when moving from one item to the next (Lallier et al., ). This results in atypical perception of rapid stimulus sequences. Until recently, the SAS theory, particularly the examination of amodal attentional deficits, was studied solely through the use of behavioural measures (Facoetti et al., ; Facoetti, Lorusso, Cattaneo, Galli, & Molteni, ). This paper examines evidence within the literature that provides a basis for further exploration of amodal SAS as an underlying deficit in developmental dyslexia. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introducing a new scale for the measurement of moral disengagement in peace and conflict research

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Lydia Eckstein Jackson

2005-10-01

Full Text Available As part of his Social Cognitive Theory, Albert Bandura (e.g. 1986 introduces a process called moral disengagement. Eight different mechanisms are described through which behavior can be disengaged from moral self-control, thus enabling inhumane conduct without negative consequences for the person's self. These mechanisms will be briefly reviewed and the development of a new scale for measuring moral disengagement will be described. An existing measurement of moral disengagement developed by Grussendorf et al. (2002 and McAlister (2000, 2001 will be introduced and criticized. The necessity for the construction of a new scale, its development, psychometric properties and possible weaknesses will be discussed. As a related but conceptually different construct militarism-pacifism is introduced and first results regarding the relationship between the newly developed scale and the militarism-pacifism scale from Cohrs et al. (2002 are reported. First applications of the scale in two different studies will be outlined mainly in reference to properties of the new scale. Finally, critical questions about the construct will be raised and proposals for further research will be given.

Attentional bias for craving-related (chocolate) food cues.

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Kemps, Eva; Tiggemann, Marika

2009-12-01

In this study, we investigated attentional biases for craving-related food cues. A pictorial dot probe task was used to assess selective attentional processing of one particular highly desired food, namely chocolate, relative to that of other highly desired foods. In Experiment 1, we examined biased processing of chocolate cues in habitual (trait) chocolate cravers, whereas in Experiment 2 we investigated the effect of experimentally induced (state) chocolate cravings on such processing. As predicted, habitual chocolate cravers (Experiment 1) and individuals in whom a craving for chocolate was temporarily induced (Experiment 2) showed speeded detection of probes replacing chocolate-related pictures, demonstrating an attentional bias for chocolate cues. Subsequent examination indicated that in both experiments the observed attentional biases stemmed from difficulty in disengaging attention from chocolate cues rather than from a shift of attention toward such cues. The findings have important theoretical and practical implications.

Parental attachment and Chinese adolescents' delinquency: The mediating role of moral disengagement.

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Bao, Zhenzhou; Zhang, Wei; Lai, Xuefen; Sun, Wenqiang; Wang, Yanhui

2015-10-01

There is substantial literature documenting the negative association between secure parental attachment and lower adolescent delinquency, but little is known about the mediating mechanisms (i.e., how does parental attachment relate to delinquency?) underlying this relation. The present study examined whether secure parental attachment would be indirectly related to lower adolescent delinquency through lower adolescent moral disengagement. A total of 1766 adolescents (44% male; mean age = 14.25 years, SD = 1.54) living in an urban area of southern China completed anonymous questionnaires regarding parental attachment, moral disengagement and delinquency. After controlling for gender, age, socioeconomic status, and school variable, it was found that secure parental attachment was negatively associated with adolescent delinquency and this negative association was fully mediated by the extent of adolescent moral disengagement. These findings contribute to an understanding of the mechanisms underlying the development of adolescent delinquency and have important implications for intervention. Copyright © 2015 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Moral Disengagement about Cyberbullying and Parental Monitoring: Effects on Traditional Bullying and Victimization via Cyberbullying Involvement

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Meter, Diana J.; Bauman, Sheri

2018-01-01

The indirect effects of moral disengagement about cyberbullying and parental monitoring on traditional victimization and bullying via cyberbullying involvement were examined in a diverse sample of 800 youth in Grades 3 to 8. After controlling for grade and gender, moral disengagement about cyberbullying and parental monitoring had an indirect…

Relationships Among Attention Networks and Physiological Responding to Threat

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Sarapas, Casey; Weinberg, Anna; Langenecker, Scott A.

2016-01-01

Although researchers have long hypothesized a relationship between attention and anxiety, theoretical and empirical accounts of this relationship have conflicted. We attempted to resolve these conflicts by examining relationships of attentional abilities with responding to predictable and unpredictable threat, related but distinct motivational process implicated in a number of anxiety disorders. Eighty-one individuals completed a behavioral task assessing efficiency of three components of attention – alerting, orienting, and executive control (Attention Network Test - Revised). We also assessed startle responding during anticipation of both predictable, imminent threat (of mild electric shock) and unpredictable contextual threat. Faster alerting and slower disengaging from non-emotional attention cues were related to heightened responding to unpredictable threat, whereas poorer executive control of attention was related to heightened responding to predictable threat. This double dissociation helps to integrate models of attention and anxiety and may be informative for treatment development. PMID:27816781

Moral disengagement and callous-unemotional traits: A longitudinal study of Italian adolescents with a disruptive behaviour disorder.

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Muratori, Pietro; Paciello, Marinella; Buonanno, Carlo; Milone, Annarita; Ruglioni, Laura; Lochman, John E; Masi, Gabriele

2017-12-01

Callous-unemotional traits have been proposed as risk factors for a poorer prognosis in young people with disruptive behaviour disorders. Identification of factors that may cause or maintain elevated levels of such traits could help in developing targeted therapeutic interventions. Some previous studies have investigated the role of moral cognitive mechanisms, such as moral disengagement, but these previous studies focused primarily on normal or 'at-risk' samples. We aimed to evaluate associations and possible interactions between moral disengagement as a cognitive dimension and callous-unemotional traits as an affective dimension in adolescents with disruptive behaviour disorders. We recruited 55 adolescents with a disruptive behaviour disorder from a community care hospital in Pisa. They were evaluated at baseline and after one year with measures that included a moral disengagement scale, the Antisocial Process Screening Device, to assess callous traits, and the Youth Self-Report, to explore externalising behaviour problems. Structural equation modelling showed that higher initial moral disengagement scores were associated with later higher levels of callous-unemotional traits in adolescents and vice versa, even after, respectively, controlling for previous levels of callous traits and moral disengagement. As impairments in either cognitive or affective traits may predispose to problematic development of the other, our findings would suggest that screening at the earliest opportunity possible for both moral disengagement and callous-unemotional traits among children with disruptive behaviour disorders could help to map natural outcome pathways and thus tailor more accurate interventions for prevention of antisocial or criminal behaviour. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

"It was only harmless banter!" The development and preliminary validation of the moral disengagement in sexual harassment scale.

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Page, Thomas E; Pina, Afroditi; Giner-Sorolla, Roger

2016-01-01

Sexual harassment represents aggressive behavior that is often enacted instrumentally, in response to a threatened sense of masculinity and male identity. To date, however, theoretical attention to the social cognitive processes that regulate workplace harassment is scant. This article presents the development and preliminary validation of the Moral Disengagement in Sexual Harassment Scale (MDiSH); a self-report measure of moral disengagement in the context of hostile work environment harassment. Three studies (total n = 797) document the excellent psychometric properties of this new scale. Male U.K. university students (Study 1: n = 322) and U.S. working males (Studies 2 and 3: n = 475) completed the MDiSH and an array of measures for construct validation. The MDiSH exhibited positive correlations with sexual harassment myth acceptance, male gender identification, and hostile sexism. In Study 3, participants were exposed to a fictitious case of hostile work environment harassment. The MDiSH attenuated moral judgment, negative emotions (guilt, shame, and anger), sympathy, and endorsement of prosocial behavioral intentions (support for restitution) associated with the harassment case. Conversely, the MDiSH increased positive affect (happiness) about the harassment and attribution of blame to the female complainant. Implications for practice and future research avenues are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Individual Differences in Recovery Time From Attentional Capture

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Fukuda, Keisuke; Vogel, Edward K.

2015-01-01

Working memory capacity reflects a core ability of the individual that affects performance on many cognitive tasks. Recent work has suggested that an important covariate of memory capacity is attentional control, and specifically that low-capacity individuals are more susceptible to attentional capture by distractors than high-capacity individuals are, with the latter being able to resist capture. Here, we tested an alternative account according to which all individuals are equally susceptible to attentional capture, but high-capacity individuals recover more quickly than low-capacity individuals. Using psychophysical and electrophysiological methods, we measured recovery time from attentional capture. In two experiments, we found that high- and low-capacity individuals showed equivalent attentional capture effects in the initial moments following capture, but that low-capacity individuals took much longer to recover than high-capacity individuals did. These results suggest that the poor attentional control associated with low capacity is due to slow disengagement from distractors. PMID:21310945

Visual attentional bias for food in adolescents with binge-eating disorder.

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Schmidt, Ricarda; Lüthold, Patrick; Kittel, Rebekka; Tetzlaff, Anne; Hilbert, Anja

2016-09-01

Evidence suggests that adults with binge-eating disorder (BED) are prone of having their attention interfered by food cues, and that food-related attentional biases are associated with calorie intake and eating disorder psychopathology. For adolescents with BED experimental evidence on attentional processing of food cues is lacking. Using eye-tracking and a visual search task, the present study examined visual orienting and disengagement processes of food in youth with BED. Eye-movement data and reaction times were recorded in 25 adolescents (12-20 years) with BED and 25 controls (CG) individually matched for sex, age, body mass index, and socio-economic status. During a free exploration paradigm, the BED group showed a greater gaze duration bias for food images than the CG. Groups did not differ in gaze direction biases. In a visual search task, the BED group showed a greater detection bias for food targets than the CG. Group differences were more pronounced for personally attractive than unattractive food images. Regarding clinical associations, only in the BED group the gaze duration bias for food was associated with increased hunger and lower body mass index, and the detection bias for food targets was associated with greater reward sensitivity. The study provided first evidence of an attentional bias to food in adolescents with BED. However, more research is needed for further specifying disengagement and orienting processes in adolescent BED, including overt and covert attention, and their prospective associations with binge-eating behaviors and associated psychopathology. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Goal Disengagement Capacities and Severity of Disease across Older Adulthood: The Sample Case of the Common Cold

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Jobin, Joelle; Wrosch, Carsten

2016-01-01

This study examined age-related associations between goal disengagement capacities, emotional distress, and disease severity across older adulthood. Given that an age-related increase in the experience of stressors might render important goals unattainable, it is expected that goal disengagement capacities would predict a decrease in the severity…

The Influence of Moral Disengagement, Morally Based Self-Esteem, Age, and Gender on Traditional Bullying and Cyberbullying

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Robson, Claire; Witenberg, Rivka T.

2013-01-01

The current study investigated moral disengagement, morally based self-esteem, age, and gender as predictors of traditional bullying and cyberbullying. The participants were 210 Australian school students aged 12 to 15, evenly split between males and females. Salient predictors of traditional bullying were overall moral disengagement, and the…

Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency.

Science.gov (United States)

Bandura, Albert

2002-01-01

Addresses the issue of selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Argues that moral functioning is governed by self-reactive selfhood rather than by dispassionate abstract reasoning. Concludes that the massive threats to human welfare stem mainly from deliberate acts of principle rather than from unrestrained acts of impulse.…

Classroom Collective Moral Disengagement Scale: Validation in Czech adolescents

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Kollerová, Lenka; Soukup, P.; Gini, G.

2018-01-01

Roč. 15, č. 2 (2018), s. 184-191 ISSN 1740-5629 R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA15-00682S Institutional support: RVO:68081740 Keywords : aggressive behavior * bullying * defending * moral disengagement * victimization Subject RIV: AN - Psychology OBOR OECD: Psychology (including human - machine relations) Impact factor: 1.302, year: 2016

The design of disengaging mechanism of radix pseudostellariae and soil

Science.gov (United States)

Xiao, Shungen; Song, Mengmeng; Chen, Chanwei

2017-12-01

With the continuous development of the scale of the cultivation of the radix pseudostellariae, the traditional separation mode cannot adapt to the mass production of the crown prince, and the existing manual separation mode is of great labor intensity and low degree of mechanization. Therefore, it is necessary to design a disengaging mechanism of radix pseudostellariae and soil on the basis of the design principle of modern agricultural machinery. According to the physical characteristics and growing environment of radix pseudostellariae, a drum-type separating component is presented, and the drum screen separating mechanism and vibration mechanism of the disengaging mechanism are designed. In this paper, the movement rule and time of the mixture of radix pseudostellariae and soil are determined in the drum screen. Rotation speed of the drum screen is calculated, and the operation rules of the eccentric wheel in the vibration mechanism are summarized.

Moral disengagement, self-efficacy and bullying: the framework of coexistence studies

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Luciene Tognetta

2015-07-01

Full Text Available This article discusses the relationship between bullying and moral disengagements. In a research study conducted with 2,600 adolescents, between 14 and 16 years old, an attempt to verify their involvement in bullying, their self-efficacy beliefs regarding their academic performance and their possible moral disengagements was undertaken. A correlation between being bullying by others and the "dehumanization of the victim" was found. The participation in the bullying situation as authors, victims and spectators was also associated with "victim-blaming", showing the fragile profile of bullying victims and their diminished value. The results of this study allows for the understanding of the psychological mechanisms present in bullying, so that the school may re-think interventions and preventative measures that can be taken such that life is valued.

Age trends for failures of sustained attention.

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Carriere, Jonathan S A; Cheyne, J Allan; Solman, Grayden J F; Smilek, Daniel

2010-09-01

Recent research has revealed an age-related reduction in errors in a sustained attention task, suggesting that sustained attention abilities improve with age. Such results seem paradoxical in light of the well-documented age-related declines in cognitive performance. In the present study, performance on the sustained attention to response task (SART) was assessed in a supplemented archival sample of 638 individuals between 14 and 77 years old. SART errors and response speed appeared to decline in a linear fashion as a function of age throughout the age span studied. In contrast, other measures of sustained attention (reaction time coefficient of variation), anticipation, and omissions) showed a decrease early in life and then remained unchanged for the rest of the life span. Thus, sustained attention shows improvements with maturation in early adulthood but then does not change with aging in older adults. On the other hand, aging across the entire life span leads to a more strategic (i.e., slower) response style that reduces the overt and critical consequences (i.e., SART errors) of momentary task disengagement. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Abusive supervision, leader-member exchange and moral disengagement: a moderated-mediation model of organizational deviance.

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Valle, Matthew; Kacmar, K Michele; Zivnuska, Suzanne; Harting, Troy

2018-04-20

This paper draws from social exchange theory and social cognitive theory to explore moral disengagement as a potential mediator of the relationship between abusive supervision and organizational deviance. We also explore the moderating effect of leader-member exchange (LMX) on this mediated relationship. Results indicate that employees with abusive supervisors engaged in moral disengagement strategies and subsequently in organizational deviance behaviors. Additionally, this relationship was stronger for those higher in LMX. Important implications for management research and practice are discussed.

Early cortical facilitation for emotionally arousing targets during the attentional blink

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Ihssen Niklas

2006-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The present study aimed to investigate the time course of electrocortical facilitation for affectively arousing written words during the so-called 'attentional blink' (AB period in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP task. The AB refers to a period of reduced awareness for second-target stimuli following a first target by an interval of about 200–500 ms. Pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant written verbs were used as second targets in an 8.6-Hz RSVP paradigm that contained affectively neutral words as distractors. Replicating and extending behavioral studies, we expected that emotional second targets would be associated with better identification accuracy and greater electrocortical activity, compared with neutral targets. Results The steady-state visual evoked potential was recorded using 129 scalp electrodes. The time-varying energy at the presentation frequency of 8.6 Hz was extracted as a continuous measure of electrocortical activity related to the RSVP stream. Behavioral data showed that at an inter-target interval of 232 ms, the report for emotionally arousing (pleasant and unpleasant words was more accurate than for neutral control words. This result was mirrored by the electrocortical response at posterior sensors, which showed rapid amplitude enhancement (120–270 ms after T2 onset for pleasant and unpleasant targets specifically. Conclusion The present data suggest that identification facilitation for emotionally arousing target words in the AB is related to rapid enhancement of sensory processing. Affectively arousing information is preferentially selected at the level of early perceptual analysis, leading to facilitation at later stages of processing, including consolidation in working memory and visual awareness.

Bully University? The Cost of Workplace Bullying and Employee Disengagement in American Higher Education

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Leah P. Hollis

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Workplace bullying has a detrimental effect on employees, yet few studies have examined its impact on personnel in American higher education administration. Therefore, two central research questions guided this study: (a What is the extent of workplace bullying in higher education administration? and (b What is the cost of workplace bullying specifically to higher education administration? Participants from 175 four-year colleges and universities were surveyed to reveal that 62% of higher education administrators had experienced or witnessed workplace bullying in the 18 months prior to the study. Race and gender were not parameters considered in the sample. A total of 401 (n = 401 higher education respondents completed the instrument from various departments on a campus: academic affairs, student affairs, athletics, development/advancement, admissions/financial aid, information technology, arts faculty, sciences faculty, and executives. Employment disengagement served as the theoretical lens to analyze the financial cost to higher education when employees mentally disengage from organizational missions and objectives. With this lens, the study examined staff hours lost through employee disengagement and the associated costs.

Relationship of sociocultural factors and academic self-esteem to school grades and school disengagement in North African French adolescents.

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Régner, Isabelle; Loose, Florence

2006-12-01

The present study was designed to provide an integrated understanding of school grades and psychological disengagement among ethnic minority students. For that purpose, perceived parental involvement, acculturation orientations, and ethnic identity were simultaneously investigated in order to discover their respective contribution to grades among these students. Additionally, it was tested whether academic self-esteem mediated the relationship between grades and psychological disengagement. North African French junior high-school students completed a questionnaire assessing their ethnic identity, acculturation orientations, perceptions of parental involvement, academic self-esteem and trend toward the devaluing and discounting facets of psychological disengagement. Their grades in the main courses were obtained from the school records. Although perceived parental involvement displayed the strongest contribution to grades, acculturation orientations and ethnic identity still predicted grades, after controlling for parental involvement. Academic self-esteem mediated the influence of grades on both facets of disengagement, while this pattern was less clear for the devaluing process.

Patterns of Disengagement from Violent Extremism: A Stocktaking of Current Knowledge and Implications for Counterterrorism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dalgaard-Nielsen, Anja

2018-01-01

This chapter takes stock of what we do and do not know from primary sources about individuals’ disengagement from violent extremism. It points to three broad patterns: doubts related to the binary nature of the extremist world view, disappointment with peers or leaders, and changing personal...... priorities. The chapter shows how, for example, first-hand exposure to extremist violence or being condemned by mainstream society can either reinforce radicalization or expedite disengagement and argues that one-size-fits-all counterterrorism measures should be supplanted by a differentiated approach...

Deradicalization or Disengagement : A Framework for Encouraging Jihad Abandonment

Science.gov (United States)

2016-06-10

antithetical to its ruggedly individualistic culture . Family accountability in maintaining disengagement of a former radical is a remarkable method...terrorist organization seeking national self-determination may be satisfied with a local political settlement granting more autonomy or some other sort...prisoner, once released, does not return to violence. Saudi culture places high value on family responsibility, as evident by concepts of family honor.36

[Counterproductive behaviors and moral disengagement of nurses as potential consequences of stress-related work: validity and reliability of measurement scales].

Science.gov (United States)

Sili, Alessandro; Fida, Roberta; Zaghini, F; Tramontano, C; Paciello, Marinella

2014-07-15

Several studies, but no one in the nursing, have shown that work stress can facilitate the adoption of specific behaviors that the literature identifies as Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWB). Individuals, however, not giving up to their moral principles, may transgress social, organizational, moral and ethical norms, through the adoption of moral disengagement (MD). The purpose of this study is to validate two specific scales of deviant behaviors and MD in nursing: the Nursing Counterproductive Work Behaviours Scale (Nursing CWBS) and Nursing Moral Disengagement Scale (Nursing MDS). 460 nurses participated in the study. After the adaptation of the Counterproductive Work Behavior Checklist by Spector and Fox to Nursing context (Nursing CWBS) and the ex novo development of the Nursing MDS, the psychometric properties of the two scales were tested. Also, the two scales were correlated. Through a cross-validation approach and based on the results of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), we have shown that the scales have good psychometric properties. Furthermore, the results, attest that the nurse with high levels of MD implements more CWB in the workplace. The Nursing CWBS and Nursing MDS represent a valid starting point for the study of such phenomena in this specific context where stress among nursing staff is sometimes of considerable extent, especially in specific contexts of clinical care.

Disengaging from Unattainable Career Goals and Reengaging in More Achievable Ones

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Creed, Peter A.; Hood, Michelle

2014-01-01

Participants were 181 university students who completed measures of career development (self-efficacy, perceived barriers, distress, planning, and exploration) and goal adjustment capacity (disengagement and reengagement). We expected (a) that when contemplating unachievable goals, those with a higher capacity to adjust their goals (i.e., to…

Procedural justice, legitimacy beliefs, and moral disengagement in emerging adulthood: Explaining continuity and desistance in the moral model of criminal lifestyle development.

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Walters, Glenn D

2018-02-01

Research has shown that procedural justice reliably predicts future offending behavior, although there is some indication that this may be more a function of legitimacy beliefs than of procedural justice per se. The current study sought to explain continuity and desistance in the moral model of criminal lifestyle development by comparing legitimacy beliefs, procedural justice, and moral disengagement as initiators and mediators of pathways leading to early adult offending. It was hypothesized that low legitimacy beliefs but not perceived procedural (in)justice or moral disengagement would initiate, and that moral disengagement but not low legitimacy beliefs or procedural injustice would mediate, the effect of low legitimacy beliefs on subsequent offending behavior. This hypothesis was tested in a group of 1,142 young adult males (age range = 18 to 20) from the Pathways to Desistance study (Mulvey, 2012). Results showed that as predicted, the target pathway (legitimacy → moral disengagement → offending) but none of the control pathways achieved a significant indirect effect. Hence, 1 way legitimacy beliefs reduce future offending and lead to desistance is by inhibiting moral disengagement. Besides the theoretical implications of these results, there is also the suggestion that legitimacy beliefs and moral disengagement should be considered for inclusion in secondary prevention and criminal justice intervention programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Resilience and distress: Israelis respond to the disengagement from Gaza and the second Lebanese war.

Science.gov (United States)

Ben-Zur, Hasida; Gilbar, Ora

2011-10-01

Resilience and distress in Israeli society were assessed at three points in time: before and after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, and after the second Lebanese war. A random sample of 366 Israelis was assessed for nation-related anxiety and hostility, personal resources and post-traumatic symptoms. The lowest levels of anxiety were observed at the second time point, after the disengagement. Respondents with high-resilience profiles showed lower levels of post-traumatic symptoms and higher levels of personal resources. The findings underscore Israelis' resilience and the importance of personal resources in ongoing nationally stressful situations.

Attention bias towards negative emotional information and its relationship with daily worry in the context of acute stress: An eye-tracking study.

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Macatee, Richard J; Albanese, Brian J; Schmidt, Norman B; Cougle, Jesse R

2017-03-01

Cognitive theories of anxiety psychopathology cite biased attention towards threat as a central vulnerability and maintaining factor. However, many studies have found threat bias indices to have poor reliability and have failed to observe the theorized relationship between threat bias and anxiety symptoms; this may be due to the non-unitary nature of threat bias and the influence of state-level variables on its expression. Accumulating data suggests that state anxious mood is important for the robust expression of threat bias and for relations to emerge between threat bias and symptoms, though this possibility has not been experimentally tested. Eye-tracking was used to assess multiple forms of threat bias (i.e., early vigilance, sustained attention, facilitated engagement, delayed disengagement) thought to be related to anxiety. A non-clinical sample (N = 165) was recruited to test the hypothesis that biased attention towards threat, but not dysphoric or positive emotional stimuli, during an anxious mood induction, but not at a pre-stress baseline, would prospectively predict greater worry symptoms on days in which more naturalistic stressors occurred. Results revealed the hypothesized moderation effect for sustained attention towards threat after the mood induction but not at baseline, though sustained attention towards dysphoric stimuli also moderated the effect of stressors on worry. Worry-relevant sustained attention towards negative emotional stimuli may be a partially mood-context dependent phenomenon. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Preventing Student Disengagement and Keeping Students on the Graduation Path in Urban Middle-Grades Schools: Early Identification and Effective Interventions

Science.gov (United States)

Balfanz, Robert; Herzog, Liza; Iver, Douglas J. Mac

2007-01-01

This article considers the practical, conceptual, and empirical foundations of an early identification and intervention system for middle-grades schools to combat student disengagement and increase graduation rates in our nation's cities. Many students in urban schools become disengaged at the start of the middle grades, which greatly reduces the…

Engaging the Disengaged Father in the Treatment of Eating Disordered Adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Maine, Margo D.

Although the mental health field tends to underestimate the father's role in the psychological development of the child, eating disordered women reveal a consistent pattern of paternal distance and disengagement that is fundamental to their developmental problems. To examine how the father's emotional and/or physical absence contributed to the…

Chronic Pain and Selective Attention to Pain Arousing Daily Activity Pictures: Evidence From an Eye Tracking Study

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Masoumeh Mahmoodi-Aghdam

2017-11-01

Conclusion: Although these results did not provide unequivocal support for the vigilance-avoidance hypothesis, they are generally consistent with the results of studies using eye tracking technology. Furthermore, our findings put a question over characterization of attentional biases in patients with chronic pain by simply relating that to difficulty in disengaging from pain-related stimuli.

Nicotine-induced enhancement of attention in the five-choice serial reaction time task: the influence of task demands.

Science.gov (United States)

Hahn, B; Shoaib, M; Stolerman, I P

2002-07-01

Beneficial effects of nicotine on cognitive processes including attention have potential therapeutic uses and have been proposed as incentives for tobacco smoking. To establish task conditions under which the effects of nicotine on attention are obtained reliably and to characterise such effects further. Rats were trained in a modified version of the five-choice serial reaction time task (5-CSRTT) to detect 1-s light stimuli with greater than 70% accuracy and fewer than 20% omission errors. Nicotine was tested under different task requirements by varying signal event rate, stimulus duration and stimulus predictability, and by introducing white-noise distractors. Nicotine (0.05-0.2 mg/kg, s.c.) repeatedly improved accuracy and reduced omission errors and reaction times, leading to increases in numbers of reinforcers earned. Anticipatory responding was increased. Parametric modifications intended to increase demands on sustained attention did not affect performance in a manner suggesting that this subtype of attention was being taxed, and the effects of nicotine were not more marked under such conditions. Shorter stimulus durations impaired performance, but this manipulation weakened the effect of nicotine on accuracy. In contrast, the presence of noise distractors facilitated the effects of nicotine to the extent that distractor-induced impairments were abolished by the drug. The 5-CSRTT can provide a sensitive rodent model for the attention-enhancing effects of nicotine. Changes made to the procedure may have increased its sensitivity to nicotine, particularly with respect to accuracy. There were indications that the effects of nicotine were largest on processes of selective attention or on disengaging attention from irrelevant events and shifting it to behaviourally significant stimuli.

Semantic and Affective Salience: The Role of Meaning and Preference in Attentional Capture and Disengagement

Science.gov (United States)

Biggs, Adam T.; Kreager, Ryan D.; Gibson, Bradley S.; Villano, Michael; Crowell, Charles R.

2012-01-01

Emotion appears to have a substantial impact on a wide variety of attentional functions. However, stimuli that elicit affective responses also tend to be meaningful. Here we attempted to disentangle the effects of meaning from the effects of affect on attentional capture by irrelevant distractors. Experiment 1 used a previously unfamiliar…

Attentional bias towards emotional facial expressions in survivors of dating violence.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Jeong-Ha; Lee, Jang-Han

2014-01-01

This study identified components of attentional bias (e.g. attentional vigilance, attentional avoidance and difficulty with disengagement) that are critical characteristics of survivors of dating violence (DV). Eye movements were recorded to obtain accurate and continuous information regarding attention. DV survivors with high post-traumatic stress symptoms (DV-High PTSS group; n = 20) and low post-traumatic stress symptoms (DV-Low PTSS group; n = 22) and participants who had never experienced DV (NDV group; n = 21) were shown screens displaying emotional (angry, fearful and happy) faces paired with neutral faces and negative (angry and fearful) faces paired with happy faces for 10 s. The results indicate that the DV-High PTSS group spent longer dwelling on angry faces over time compared with the DV-Low PTSS and NDV groups. This result implies that the DV-High PTSS group focused on specific trauma-related stimuli but does not provide evidence of an attentional bias towards threatening stimuli in general.

Using eye tracking to test for individual differences in attention to attractive faces.

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Valuch, Christian; Pflüger, Lena S; Wallner, Bernard; Laeng, Bruno; Ansorge, Ulrich

2015-01-01

We assessed individual differences in visual attention toward faces in relation to their attractiveness via saccadic reaction times. Motivated by the aim to understand individual differences in attention to faces, we tested three hypotheses: (a) Attractive faces hold or capture attention more effectively than less attractive faces; (b) men show a stronger bias toward attractive opposite-sex faces than women; and (c) blue-eyed men show a stronger bias toward blue-eyed than brown-eyed feminine faces. The latter test was included because prior research suggested a high effect size. Our data supported hypotheses (a) and (b) but not (c). By conducting separate tests for disengagement of attention and attention capture, we found that individual differences exist at distinct stages of attentional processing but these differences are of varying robustness and importance. In our conclusion, we also advocate the use of linear mixed effects models as the most appropriate statistical approach for studying inter-individual differences in visual attention with naturalistic stimuli.

Using eye tracking to test for individual differences in attention to attractive faces

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Christian eValuch

2015-02-01

Full Text Available We assessed individual differences in visual attention toward faces in relation to their attractiveness via saccadic reaction times (SRTs. Motivated by the aim to understand individual differences in attention to faces, we tested three hypotheses: (a Attractive faces hold or capture attention more effectively than less attractive faces; (b men show a stronger bias toward attractive opposite-sex faces than women; and (c blue-eyed men show a stronger bias toward blue-eyed than brown-eyed feminine faces. The latter test was included because prior research suggested a high effect size. Our data supported hypotheses (a and (b but not (c. By conducting separate tests for disengagement of attention and attention capture, we found that individual differences exist at distinct stages of attentional processing but these differences are of varying robustness and importance. In our conclusion, we also advocate the use of linear mixed effects models as the most appropriate statistical approach toward studying inter-individual differences in visual attention with naturalistic stimuli.

Employee (Dis)Engagement: Learning from Nurses Who Left Organizational Jobs for Independent Practice.

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Stahlke Wall, Sarah

2015-09-01

Employee engagement is of growing interest in healthcare organizations. Engaged employees give an extra measure of effort to contribute to organization goals, whereas disengaged employees withdraw, have lower performance and are more likely to leave their jobs. The aim of this ethnographic study was, in part, to explore the reasons why high-calibre nurses became disengaged from their work and opted to leave their hospital-based employment in favour of independent practice, as well as to consider the organizational conditions that influenced their desire to leave. The findings revealed that nurses left their hospital-based jobs because of health system change, job characteristics, working conditions and lack of respect, which relate closely to the antecedents of employee engagement. Employee engagement can be fostered through organizational support, trust-building management behaviour and transformational leadership. Copyright © 2015 Longwoods Publishing.

The role of controlled attention on recall in major depression.

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Ellis, Alissa J; Wells, Tony T; Vanderlind, W Michael; Beevers, Christopher G

2014-04-01

Information processing biases are hallmark features of major depressive disorder (MDD). Depressed individuals display biased memory and attention for negative material. Given that memory is highly dependent on attention for initial encoding, understanding the interplay of these processes may provide important insight into mechanisms that produce memory biases in depression. In particular, attentional control-the ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information by both inhibiting the processing of irrelevant information and disengaging attention from irrelevant material-may be one area of impairment in MDD. In the current study, clinically depressed (MDD: n = 15) and never depressed (non-MDD: n = 22) participants' line of visual gaze was assessed while participants viewed positive and negative word pairs. For each word pair, participants were instructed to attend to one word (target) and ignore one word (distracter). Free recall of study stimuli was then assessed. Depressed individuals displayed greater recall of negatively valenced target words following the task. Although there were no group differences in attentional control in the context of negative words, attention to negative targets mediated the relationship between depression status and recall of negative words. Results suggest a stronger link between attention and memory for negative material in MDD.

Moral Disengagement and Children's Propensity to Tell Coached Lies

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Doyle, Frances Lee; Bussey, Kay

2018-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between children's proneness to endorse moral disengagement mechanisms and their anticipated antisocial lie telling. Participants were 107 predominantly white Australian children in Grade 1 (27 boys, 27 girls; M[subscript age] = 6.69 years) and Grade 4 (24 boys, 29 girls; M[subscript age] = 9.69 years).…

Disengagement Operations: Context, Violence, and Spoilers in a New Phase IV Construct

Science.gov (United States)

2010-05-21

disengagement from Operation 4 Robert M. Gates, “Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace,” The New York Times, February 23, 2010; and Noam Chomsky ...September 2009. Chomsky , Noam. Failed States. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. Citino, Robert M. Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of

The efficacy of teachers' responses to incidents of bullying and victimization: The mediational role of moral disengagement for bullying.

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Campaert, Kristel; Nocentini, Annalaura; Menesini, Ersilia

2017-09-01

Teachers respond differently to bullying and victimization. Socio-cognitive and moral domain theory suggest that students process teachers' behavior cognitively and that teachers' responses to incidents of bullying and victimization could affect students' level of moral disengagement. We examined the mediating effect of students' moral disengagement between types of teachers' responses to situations of bullying and victimization and individual bullying using multilevel mediation modelling. Participants were 609 students (50% boys, age M = 11.47, SD = 1.14) of central Italy, nested in 34 classes. Students rated the frequency of self-reported bullying and of teachers' responses to incidents of bullying and victimization on a 5-point Likert scale. Teachers' responses to bullying included non-intervention, mediation, group discussion, and sanctions. Teachers' responses to victimization included non-intervention, mediation, group discussion, and victim support. Results indicated that in the teachers' responses to incidents of bullying model, a significant indirect effect of non-intervention (β = .03; 95%CI [.01, .05]) and of sanctions (β = -.02; 95%CI [-.04, -.01]) on bullying through moral disengagement was found at the individual level. Similarly, in the model on teachers' responses toward victims there was a significant indirect effect through moral disengagement of non-intervention (β = .03; 95%CI [.02, .04]) and victim support (β = -.01; 95%CI [-.02, -.001]). At the class level there were no significant indirect effects. In sum, results indicated that moral disengagement is an important mediator at the individual level and suggest including teachers in anti-bullying interventions with a specific focus on their role for moral development. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Estimating the Cost of Youth Disengagement in New Zealand

OpenAIRE

Gail Pacheco; Jessica Dye

2013-01-01

Youth exclusion, disengagement, and overall underutilisation in the labour market has short term costs to the economy, as well as long term impacts on society. In this research we project the loss to productivity, measured in foregone wages, and the expected cost to public finances for NZ and Auckland youth aged 15-24 not in employment, education, or training (collectively known as NEET). We estimate the expected per capita cost of each NEET youth in NZ is approximately $26,847 over the next ...

Moral disengagement in the legitimation and realization of aggressive behavior in soccer and ice hockey.

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Traclet, Alan; Moret, Orlan; Ohl, Fabien; Clémence, Alain

2015-03-01

The aim of the present study was to verify that the level of tolerance for aggression is higher in a collective context than in an individual context (polarization effect), and to test the association between moral disengagement, team and self-attitudes toward aggression, and tolerance and realization of aggressive acts in Swiss male soccer and ice hockey. In individual or collective answering conditions, 104 soccer and 98 ice hockey players viewed videotaped aggressive acts and completed a questionnaire, including measures of the perceived legitimacy of videotaped aggression, of the teammates, coach, and self attitudes toward transgressions (modified TNQ), of the moral disengagement in sport (modified MDSS-S), and of self-reported aggressive behavior. A multilevel analysis confirmed a strong polarization effect on the perception of instrumental aggression, the videotaped aggressive acts appearing more tolerated in the collective than in the individual answering condition. Using a structural equation modeling, we found that the moral disengagement, which mediates the effects of perceived coach and ego attitudes toward transgressions, correlates positively with the tolerance of hostile aggression within teams, and with the level of aggressive acts reported by the participants. Aggr. Behav. Aggr. Behav. 42:123-133, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Evidence for a dissociation between the control of oculomotor capture and disengagement

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Born, S.A.; Kerzel, D.; Theeuwes, J.

2011-01-01

The current study investigated whether capture of the eyes by a salient onset distractor and the disengagement of the eyes from that distractor are driven by the same or by different underlying control modes. A variant of the classic oculomotor capture task was used. Observers had to make a saccade

The role of fear of movement and injury in selective attentional processing in patients with chronic low back pain: a dot-probe evaluation.

Science.gov (United States)

Roelofs, Jeffrey; Peters, Madelon L; Fassaert, Thijs; Vlaeyen, Johan W S

2005-05-01

The present study sought to investigate to what extent patients with chronic low back pain and pain-free control subjects selectively attend to pain-related stimuli as measured with 2 dot-probe tasks with word stimuli and pictorial stimuli. Selective attentional processing was measured by means of 3 indices: the bias index, a congruency effect, and an incongruency effect. Pain-related fear as a trait measure (Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia [TSK]) was expected to be positively associated with all indices of selective attentional processing of pain stimuli. Results were analyzed with repeated-measures analysis of variance. An incongruency effect was found for patients and to a significantly less degree for pain-free control subjects on the dot-probe task with pictorial stimuli, indicating that pain patients have difficulty disengaging from threat pictures. Pain-related fear as a trait measure (TSK) was not associated with selective attentional processing of word and pictorial stimuli in either pain patients or control subjects. Results from the present study are discussed, and directions for future research are provided. Demonstrating difficulty to disengage from threat might be clinically relevant because patients might pay less attention to fear-disconfirming information and remain engaged in avoidance, which might eventually lead to prolonged anxiety states.

Switch-attention (aka switch-reference in South-American temporal clauses: facilitating oral transmission

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rik van Gijn

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Cultures without a written tradition depend entirely on the oral channel to transmit sometimes highly complex information. It is therefore not surprising that in the languages of such cultures linguistic devices evolve that enhance textual coherence, and thus comprehension. These devices should ideally also be economical in terms of morphosyntactic complexity in order to facilitate both production and comprehension. In this paper, I will argue that switch-attention (a term preferred over the traditional switch-reference systems in temporal clauses fulfill these requirements of cohesion and complexity reduction, making them particularly apt for orally transmitting texts. Moreover, switch-reference systems seem to diffuse relatively easily. These features taken together are suggested to be (partly responsible for the widely attested phenomenon in areas without a lengthy written tradition.

It’s okay to shoot a character. Moral disengagement in violent video games

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hartmann, T.; Vorderer, P.A.

2010-01-01

What makes virtual violence enjoyable rather than aversive? Two 2×2 experiments tested the assumption that moral disengagement cues provided by a violent video game's narrative and game play lessen users' guilt and negative affect, which would otherwise undermine players' enjoyment of the game.

Verbal makes it positive, spatial makes it negative: working memory biases judgments, attention, and moods.

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Storbeck, Justin; Watson, Philip

2014-12-01

Prior research has suggested that emotion and working memory domains are integrated, such that positive affect enhances verbal working memory, whereas negative affect enhances spatial working memory (Gray, 2004; Storbeck, 2012). Simon (1967) postulated that one feature of emotion and cognition integration would be reciprocal connectedness (i.e., emotion influences cognition and cognition influences emotion). We explored whether affective judgments and attention to affective qualities are biased by the activation of verbal and spatial working memory mind-sets. For all experiments, participants completed a 2-back verbal or spatial working memory task followed by an endorsement task (Experiments 1 & 2), word-pair selection task (Exp. 3), or attentional dot-probe task (Exp. 4). Participants who had an activated verbal, compared with spatial, working memory mind-set were more likely to endorse pictures (Exp. 1) and words (Exp. 2) as being more positive and to select the more positive word pair out of a set of word pairs that went 'together best' (Exp. 3). Additionally, people who completed the verbal working memory task took longer to disengage from positive stimuli, whereas those who completed the spatial working memory task took longer to disengage from negative stimuli (Exp. 4). Interestingly, across the 4 experiments, we observed higher levels of self-reported negative affect for people who completed the spatial working memory task, which was consistent with their endorsement and attentional bias toward negative stimuli. Therefore, emotion and working memory may have a reciprocal connectedness allowing for bidirectional influence.

Distraction by emotion in early adolescence: affective facilitation and interference during the attentional blink

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Sabine eHeim

2013-09-01

Full Text Available This study examined the extent to which early adolescents (aged 10 to 13 years differ from adults in their sensitivity to attention capture by affective stimuli during rapid processing. A rapid serial visual presentation paradigm (RSVP was implemented as a dual task, requiring the report of two green target stimuli embedded in a stream of distractors. Known as the attentional blink (AB, task performance is typically impaired when the first and second targets (T1 and T2, respectively are separated by at least one distractor and about 200 ms of time. Here we used written verbs of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant content as T1 items, while affectively neutral exemplars served as T2 and distractor events. The temporal distance between T1 and T2 was manipulated to contain either one distractor (intertarget interval 232 ms or five distractors (intertarget interval 696 ms. Students reported pleasant T1 words more accurately, compared to neutral and unpleasant words, indicating facilitation of appetitive content on performance during RSVP. Emotional relevance of T1 was at the expense of T2 accuracy: At an intertarget interval of 232 ms (i.e., during the AB period, identification of (neutral T2 words was impaired when preceded by pleasant and unpleasant T1s. No interference across targets was observed, however, beyond the blink period, in which T1 and T2 were separated by 696 ms. Thus, emotionally relevant events capture and hold attentional resources, at the cost of attentive processing in subsequent episodes. Contrary to our findings in adults, these capture effects were most obvious when the available capacity was limited, i.e., during the critical interval of the AB. The findings are discussed in light of the use of alternative cognitive strategies as development proceeds beyond early adolescence into adulthood.

Measurement and Analysis of Student (Disengagement in Higher Education: A Preliminary Study

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Akihiro Saito

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Higher education is attracting more participation from an increasingly diverse student body. This diversity invites concerns on effective instructional delivery as the extent of students’ engagement in learning now varies widely. Anecdotes on students’ “undesirable” dispositions in course participation are not uncommon in higher education settings. This project set out to develop a questionnaire, developed for higher education in the Japanese context, on a range of student dispositions. The scale was a five-point Likert instrument designed to interpret learners’ disengagement as an attitudinal disposition. The paper discusses the conceptual contours of disengagement as a student disposition that provided the basis for the context-specific scale items. It reports the procedures taken to obtain the factor structures of the dataset. The questionnaire was administered to 145 engineering students in Japan. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a five-factor solution – lack of commitment, distractedness, lack of preparedness, anti-social orientation, and lack of focus. Avenues for further research are suggested, and implications for practice are discussed.

The Disengaged Noncustodial Father: Implications for Social Work Practice with the Divorced Family.

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Kruk, Edward

1994-01-01

Canadian and British study examined impact of divorce on noncustodial fathers' disengagement. Results from 80 noncustodial fathers generated two distinct profiles of noncustodial fathers and marked discontinuity between pre- and postdivorce father-child relationships. Findings suggest transition period from point of divorce to 6-12 months after…

Brief Report: Does Exposure to Violent Video Games Increase Moral Disengagement among Adolescents?

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Gabbiadini, Alessandro; Andrighetto, Luca; Volpato, Chiara

2012-01-01

Several studies have repeatedly shown that violent/action video games increase aggressive tendencies. The present study provides preliminary evidence that exposure to these games also affects the process of moral disengagement. High school students (N = 385) were recruited, and the impact of both recency and frequency of their exposure to the…

The role of self-regulatory efficacy, moral disengagement and guilt on doping likelihood: A social cognitive theory perspective.

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Ring, Christopher; Kavussanu, Maria

2018-03-01

Given the concern over doping in sport, researchers have begun to explore the role played by self-regulatory processes in the decision whether to use banned performance-enhancing substances. Grounded on Bandura's (1991) theory of moral thought and action, this study examined the role of self-regulatory efficacy, moral disengagement and anticipated guilt on the likelihood to use a banned substance among college athletes. Doping self-regulatory efficacy was associated with doping likelihood both directly (b = -.16, P self-regulatory efficacy influences the likelihood to use banned performance-enhancing substances both directly and indirectly via moral disengagement.

Developmental Precursors of Moral Disengagement and the Role of Moral Disengagement in the Development of Antisocial Behavior

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Shaw, Daniel S.; Moilanen, Kristin L.

2010-01-01

The purpose of the study was to advance our understanding of the developmental precursors of Moral Disengagement (MD) and the role of MD in the development of antisocial behavior from early risk among an ethnically diverse sample of 187 low-income boys followed prospectively from ages 1.5 to 17. Results indicated associations between early rejecting parenting, neighborhood impoverishment, and child empathy and later MD. The link between some of these early constructs and later antisocial behavior was mediated by MD. Finally, in an exploratory path model both MD and biases in social information processing were found to mediate separate paths from early risk factors to later antisocial behavior. Results were partially consistent with the notion that adolescent MD was predicted by a combination of early family, neighborhood, and child risk factors, and that MD may be a mechanism underlying some boys' risk of antisocial behavior. PMID:19777337

Attentional Bias in Patients with Decompensated Tinnitus: Prima Facie Evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

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Li, Zhicheng; Gu, Ruolei; Zeng, Xiangli; Zhong, Weifang; Qi, Min; Cen, Jintian

2016-01-01

Tinnitus refers to the auditory perception of sound in the absence of external sound or electric stimuli. The influence of tinnitus on cognitive processing is at the cutting edge of ongoing tinnitus research. In this study, we adopted an objective indicator of attentional processing, i.e. the mismatch negativity (MMN), to assess the attentional bias in patients with decompensated tinnitus. Three kinds of pure tones, D1 (8,000 Hz), S (8,500 Hz) and D2 (9,000 Hz), were used to induce event-related potentials (ERPs) in the normal ear. Employing the oddball paradigm, the task was divided into two blocks in which D1 and D2 were set as deviation stimuli, respectively. Only D2 induced a significant MMN in the tinnitus group, while neither D1 nor D2 was able to induce MMN in the control group. In addition, the ERPs in the left hemisphere, which were recorded within the time window of 90-150 ms (ERP 90-150 ms), were significantly higher than those in the right hemisphere in the tinnitus group, while no significant difference was observed in the control group. Lastly, the amplitude of ERP 90-150 ms in the tinnitus group was significantly higher than that in the control group. These findings suggest that patients with decompensated tinnitus showed automatic processing of acoustic stimuli, thereby indicating that these patients allocated more cognitive resources to acoustic stimulus processing. We suggest that the difficulty in disengaging or facilitated attention of patients might underlie this phenomenon. The limitations of the current study are discussed. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

道德推脱对员工道德决策的影响：德行领导的调节作用%Moral Disengagement and Employees＇ Ethical Decision Making： The Moderating Effects of Ethical Leadership

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

杨继平; 王兴超

2012-01-01

and moral recognition, and moral judgment. Nevertheless, ethical leadership did not have a moderating effect on the relation between moral disengagement and moral intent. But ethical leadership had a significant negative influence on moral intent. The present study clearly indicates that moral disengagement has a signification effect on ethical decision making, that is, employees with high moral disengagement will be more likely to make unethical decisions. However, the effect can be moderated by ethical leadership. This implicates that managers should pay more attention to ethical leadership for employees in order to reduce their moral disengagement and unethical decision making.%运用问卷调查的方法，以819名员工为研究被试，探讨了德行领导在道德推脱影响道德决策过程中的调节作用。采用层次回归分析的方法研究发现：德行领导对道德推脱与道德识别、道德判断之间的关系具有调节作用；但德行领导不会对道德推脱与道德意图之间的关系产生调节作用，而会对道德意图产生显著的直接影响。

Evolving Theories of Student Disengagement: A New Job for Durkheim's Children?

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Slee, Roger

2014-01-01

This paper uses John Furlong's analysis of student disaffection written over 20 years ago as a basis for building new analyses in changing contexts for schooling. Specifically, Furlong's observation of the dominance of psychological based explanations for student disruption and disengagement in education policy making holds--albeit an…

Effects of single parenthood on educational aspiration and student disengagement in Korea

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hyunjoon Park

2008-05-01

Full Text Available The recent rapid increase in divorce, along with its distinctive cultural and welfare environments for single-parent families, makes Korea an interesting case for examining effects of single parenthood on children's education. Using data from Korean 9th and 12th graders, I compare the levels of educational aspiration and student disengagement between students with two parents and those with a single parent, distinguishing divorced single fathers, widowed single fathers, divorced single mothers, and widowed single mothers. Logistic regression analyses show that students with a divorced single parent, regardless of gender of the parent, are much less likely to aspire to four-year university education and more likely to be disengaged than their counterparts with two parents. The effects of widowhood disappear once control variables are held constant. Lower household income among single-parent families explains in part the poorer educational outcomes of their children. Parent-child interaction is another important mediating factor for the effect of single fatherhood but not for single motherhood. The relevance of the extended family system and distinctive features of post-divorce living arrangements in Korea is discussed to understand the effects of single parenthood.

Sibling bullying perpetration: associations with gender, grade, peer perpetration, trait anger, and moral disengagement.

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Tanrikulu, Ibrahim; Campbell, Marilyn A

2015-03-01

This study investigated bullying among siblings in both traditional and cyber forms, and the associations of gender, grade, peer bullying perpetration, trait anger, and moral disengagement. The participants were 455 children in Grades 5 to 12 (262 girls and 177 boys with 16 unknown gender) who had a sibling. As the number of siblings who only bullied by technology was low, these associations were not able to be calculated. However, the findings showed that the percentage of sibling traditional bullying perpetration (31.6%) was higher than peer bullying perpetration (9.8%). Sibling bullies reported engaging in complex behaviors of perpetration and victimization in both the physical and in cyber settings, although the number was small. Gender, trait anger, moral disengagement, and bullying peers at school (but not grade) were all significantly associated with sibling traditional bullying perpetration. The implications of the findings are discussed for bullying intervention and prevention programs to understand childhood bullying in diverse contexts. © The Author(s) 2014.

Scars of disengagement: perspectives on community leadership and youth engagement in rural South Africa.

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Majee, Wilson; Jooste, Karien; Aziato, Lydia; Anakwe, Adaobi

2017-08-01

Given the emerging global youth disengagement epidemic, anticipated population growth, and the threat of continued rural-urban migration among young adults, recent research has focused on community leadership practice and the factors that influence youth engagement at the local level. Studying these practices and factors can elicit interventions that can improve youth engagement and youth health. This study engaged South African rural community leaders in interviews to collect perceptions and experiences on community leadership and factors that influence youth engagement and their health behaviors. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Emergent themes are categorized into four domains: conceptualizations of leadership, current youth behaviors, barriers to youth engagement, and youth leadership opportunities and potential solutions. Findings demonstrate a clear grasp of the concept of community leadership among community leaders, and an awareness of the complex interplay of social, economic and environmental factors on youth disengagement and the potential interventions to promote more youth participation.

Moral Disengagement, Normative Beliefs of Peer Group, and Attitudes Regarding Roles in Bullying

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Almeida, Ana; Correia, Isabel; Marinho, Sylvie

2010-01-01

This article examines how moral disengagement, empathy, belief in a just world, and peer group normative beliefs regarding the roles of bully and defender of the victim are associated with attitudes regarding the roles of the bully and the defender of the victim. Two hundred ninety-two students from grades 6-9 participated. Results showed that…

Stigma, Facility Constraints, and Personal Disbelief: Why Women Disengage from HIV Care During and After Pregnancy in Morogoro Region, Tanzania.

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McMahon, Shannon A; Kennedy, Caitlin E; Winch, Peter J; Kombe, Miriam; Killewo, Japhet; Kilewo, Charles

2017-01-01

Millions of children are living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and the primary mode of these childhood infections is mother-to-child transmission. While existing interventions can virtually eliminate such transmission, in low- and middle-income settings, only 63 % of pregnant women living with HIV accessed medicines necessary to prevent transmission. In Tanzania, HIV prevalence among pregnant women is 3.2 %. Understanding why HIV-positive women disengage from care during and after pregnancy can inform efforts to reduce the impact of HIV on mothers and young children. Informed by the tenets of Grounded Theory, we conducted qualitative interviews with 40 seropositive postpartum women who had disengaged from care to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT). Nearly all women described antiretroviral treatment (ART) as ultimately beneficial but effectively inaccessible given concerns related to stigma. Many women also described how their feelings of health and vitality coupled with concerns about side effects underscored a desire to forgo ART until they deemed it immediately necessary. Relatively fewer women described not knowing or forgetting that they needed to continue their treatment regimens. We present a theory of PMTCT disengagement outlining primary and ancillary barriers. This study is among the first to examine disengagement by interviewing women who had actually discontinued care. We urge that a combination of intervention approaches such as mother-to-mother support groups, electronic medical records with same-day tracing, task shifting, and mobile technology be adapted, implemented, and evaluated within the Tanzanian setting.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Attentional Disengagement from Visually Unique and Unexpected Items at Fixation

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Brockmole, James R.; Boot, Walter R.

2009-01-01

Distinctive aspects of a scene can capture attention even when they are irrelevant to one's goals. The authors address whether visually unique, unexpected, but task-irrelevant features also tend to hold attention. Observers searched through displays in which the color of each item was irrelevant. At the start of search, all objects changed color.…

Moral disengagement moderates the effect of violent video games on self-control, cheating and aggression

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gabbiadini, A.; Riva, P.; Andrighetto, L.; Volpato, C.; Bushman, B.J.

2014-01-01

Violent video games glorify and reward immoral behaviors (e.g., murder, assault, rape, robbery, arson, motor vehicle theft). Based on the moral disengagement theory, we predicted that violent games would increase multiple immoral behaviors (i.e., lack of self-control, cheating, aggression),

Exposure to arousal-inducing sounds facilitates visual search.

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Asutay, Erkin; Västfjäll, Daniel

2017-09-04

Exposure to affective stimuli could enhance perception and facilitate attention via increasing alertness, vigilance, and by decreasing attentional thresholds. However, evidence on the impact of affective sounds on perception and attention is scant. Here, a novel aspect of affective facilitation of attention is studied: whether arousal induced by task-irrelevant auditory stimuli could modulate attention in a visual search. In two experiments, participants performed a visual search task with and without auditory-cues that preceded the search. Participants were faster in locating high-salient targets compared to low-salient targets. Critically, search times and search slopes decreased with increasing auditory-induced arousal while searching for low-salient targets. Taken together, these findings suggest that arousal induced by sounds can facilitate attention in a subsequent visual search. This novel finding provides support for the alerting function of the auditory system by showing an auditory-phasic alerting effect in visual attention. The results also indicate that stimulus arousal modulates the alerting effect. Attention and perception are our everyday tools to navigate our surrounding world and the current findings showing that affective sounds could influence visual attention provide evidence that we make use of affective information during perceptual processing.

Interactive Links between Relational Aggression, Theory of Mind, and Moral Disengagement among Early Adolescents

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Kokkinos, Constantinos M.; Voulgaridou, Ioanna; Mandrali, Marianna; Parousidou, Chrysoula

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate possible interactive links between theory of mind (ToM), moral disengagement and relational aggression, using a moderated mediation analysis, with gender as a moderator, in a sample of 120 Greek preadolescents. Results indicated that relational aggression was significantly positively associated with moral…

Grabbing attention without knowing: Automatic capture of attention by subliminal cues.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mulckhuijse, M.G.J.; Talsma, D.; Theeuwes, J.

2007-01-01

The present study shows that an abrupt onset cue that is not consciously perceived can cause attentional facilitation followed by inhibition at the cued location. The observation of this classic biphasic effect of facilitation followed by inhibition of return (IOR) suggests that the subliminal cue

Attentional sensitivity and asymmetries of vertical saccade generation in monkey

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Zhou, Wu; King, W. M.; Shelhamer, M. J. (Principal Investigator)

2002-01-01

The first goal of this study was to systematically document asymmetries in vertical saccade generation. We found that visually guided upward saccades have not only shorter latencies, but higher peak velocities, shorter durations and smaller errors. The second goal was to identify possible mechanisms underlying the asymmetry in vertical saccade latencies. Based on a recent model of saccade generation, three stages of saccade generation were investigated using specific behavioral paradigms: attention shift to a visual target (CUED paradigm), initiation of saccade generation (GAP paradigm) and release of the motor command to execute the saccade (DELAY paradigm). Our results suggest that initiation of a saccade (or "ocular disengagement") and its motor release contribute little to the asymmetry in vertical saccade latency. However, analysis of saccades made in the CUED paradigm indicated that it took less time to shift attention to a target in the upper visual field than to a target in the lower visual field. These data suggest that higher attentional sensitivity to targets in the upper visual field may contribute to shorter latencies of upward saccades.

The Effect of Social Problem Solving Skills in the Relationship between Traumatic Stress and Moral Disengagement among Inner-City African American High School Students

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Coker, Kendell L.; Ikpe, Uduakobong N.; Brooks, Jeannie S.; Page, Brian; Sobell, Mark B.

2014-01-01

This study examined the relationship between traumatic stress, social problem solving, and moral disengagement among African American inner-city high school students. Participants consisted of 45 (25 males and 20 females) African American students enrolled in grades 10 through 12. Mediation was assessed by testing for the indirect effect using the confidence interval derived from 10,000 bootstrapped resamples. The results revealed that social problem-solving skills have an indirect effect on the relationship between traumatic stress and moral disengagement. The findings suggest that African American youth that are negatively impacted by trauma evidence deficits in their social problem solving skills and are likely to be at an increased risk to morally disengage. Implications for culturally sensitive and trauma-based intervention programs are also provided. PMID:25071874

The Effect of Social Problem Solving Skills in the Relationship between Traumatic Stress and Moral Disengagement among Inner-City African American High School Students.

Science.gov (United States)

Coker, Kendell L; Ikpe, Uduakobong N; Brooks, Jeannie S; Page, Brian; Sobell, Mark B

2014-06-01

This study examined the relationship between traumatic stress, social problem solving, and moral disengagement among African American inner-city high school students. Participants consisted of 45 (25 males and 20 females) African American students enrolled in grades 10 through 12. Mediation was assessed by testing for the indirect effect using the confidence interval derived from 10,000 bootstrapped resamples. The results revealed that social problem-solving skills have an indirect effect on the relationship between traumatic stress and moral disengagement. The findings suggest that African American youth that are negatively impacted by trauma evidence deficits in their social problem solving skills and are likely to be at an increased risk to morally disengage. Implications for culturally sensitive and trauma-based intervention programs are also provided.

Morally disengaged and unempathic: do cyberbullies fit these definitions? An exploratory study.

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Renati, Roberta; Berrone, Carlo; Zanetti, Maria Assunta

2012-08-01

In recent years, the phenomenon of cyberbullying has been gaining scholars' growing interest under various aspects, including its overlap with face-to-face bullying. Nevertheless, its relationships with cognitive and affective empathy, proactive and reactive aggression, and moral disengagement, constructs that proved to be crucial in distinguishing aggressive subjects from their targets and nonaggressive peers in traditional bullying, still represent, to some extent, an unexplored domain. The main purpose of the present exploratory study was to investigate the associations between cyberbullying and the mentioned constructs among Italian adolescents. 819 high-school students (mean age 16.08) were administered a battery of standardized tools, along with Cyberties, a new instrument created to assess the prevalence of (and the type of involvement in) different forms of electronic assaults. Analyses of variance were conducted to compare four roles ("pure" bullies, "pure" victims, bully victims, and noninvolved subjects). Participants who identified themselves as cyberbullies or cyberbully victims showed significantly higher levels of overall moral disengagement and of both types of aggression. Cyberbullies also displayed a lack of affective empathy. Our findings are in line with the ones in extant literature about correlates of traditional and electronic forms of bullying. Implications for prevention strategies are discussed.

Threat engagement, disengagement, and sensitivity bias in worry-prone individuals as measured by an emotional go/no-go task.

Science.gov (United States)

Gole, Markus; Köchel, Angelika; Schäfer, Axel; Schienle, Anne

2012-03-01

The goal of the present study was to investigate a threat engagement, disengagement, and sensitivity bias in individuals suffering from pathological worry. Twenty participants high in worry proneness and 16 control participants low in worry proneness completed an emotional go/no-go task with worry-related threat words and neutral words. Shorter reaction times (i.e., threat engagement bias), smaller omission error rates (i.e., threat sensitivity bias), and larger commission error rates (i.e., threat disengagement bias) emerged only in the high worry group when worry-related words constituted the go-stimuli and neutral words the no-go stimuli. Also, smaller omission error rates as well as larger commission error rates were observed in the high worry group relative to the low worry group when worry-related go stimuli and neutral no-go stimuli were used. The obtained results await further replication within a generalized anxiety disorder sample. Also, further samples should include men as well. Our data suggest that worry-prone individuals are threat-sensitive, engage more rapidly with aversion, and disengage harder. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Functional Heterogeneity in Posterior Parietal Cortex Across Attention and Episodic Memory Retrieval

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Hutchinson, J. Benjamin; Uncapher, Melina R.; Weiner, Kevin S.; Bressler, David W.; Silver, Michael A.; Preston, Alison R.; Wagner, Anthony D.

2014-01-01

While attention is critical for event memory, debate has arisen regarding the extent to which posterior parietal cortex (PPC) activation during episodic retrieval reflects engagement of PPC-mediated mechanisms of attention. Here, we directly examined the relationship between attention and memory, within and across subjects, using functional magnetic resonance imaging attention-mapping and episodic retrieval paradigms. During retrieval, 4 functionally dissociable PPC regions were identified. Specifically, 2 PPC regions positively tracked retrieval outcomes: lateral intraparietal sulcus (latIPS) indexed graded item memory strength, whereas angular gyrus (AnG) tracked recollection. By contrast, 2 other PPC regions demonstrated nonmonotonic relationships with retrieval: superior parietal lobule (SPL) tracked retrieval reaction time, consistent with a graded engagement of top-down attention, whereas temporoparietal junction displayed a complex pattern of below-baseline retrieval activity, perhaps reflecting disengagement of bottom-up attention. Analyses of retrieval effects in PPC topographic spatial attention maps (IPS0-IPS5; SPL1) revealed that IPS5 and SPL1 exhibited a nonmonotonic relationship with retrieval outcomes resembling that in the SPL region, further suggesting that SPL activation during retrieval reflects top-down attention. While demands on PPC attention mechanisms vary during retrieval attempts, the present functional parcellation of PPC indicates that 2 additional mechanisms (mediated by latIPS and AnG) positively track retrieval outcomes. PMID:23019246

Functional connectivity between prefrontal and parietal cortex drives visuo-spatial attention shifts.

Science.gov (United States)

Heinen, Klaartje; Feredoes, Eva; Ruff, Christian C; Driver, Jon

2017-05-01

It is well established that the frontal eye-fields (FEF) in the dorsal attention network (DAN) guide top-down selective attention. In addition, converging evidence implies a causal role for the FEF in attention shifting, which is also known to recruit the ventral attention network (VAN) and fronto-striatal regions. To investigate the causal influence of the FEF as (part of) a central hub between these networks, we applied thetaburst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TBS) off-line, combined with functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) during a cued visuo-spatial attention shifting paradigm. We found that TBS over the right FEF impaired performance on a visual discrimination task in both hemifields following attention shifts, while only left hemifield performance was affected when participants were cued to maintain the focus of attention. These effects recovered ca. 20min post stimulation. Furthermore, particularly following attention shifts, TBS suppressed the neural signal in bilateral FEF, right inferior and superior parietal lobule (IPL/SPL) and bilateral supramarginal gyri (SMG). Immediately post stimulation, functional connectivity was impaired between right FEF and right SMG as well as right putamen. Importantly, the extent of decreased connectivity between right FEF and right SMG correlated with behavioural impairment following attention shifts. The main finding of this study demonstrates that influences from right FEF on SMG in the ventral attention network causally underly attention shifts, presumably by enabling disengagement from the current focus of attention. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Older people and digital disengagement: a fourth digital divide?

Science.gov (United States)

Olphert, Wendy; Damodaran, Leela

2013-01-01

Digital technologies are becoming more pervasive in all areas of society. Enabling everyone to have access and capability to use the Internet and associated digital technologies, summed up in the term 'digital inclusion', is seen to have wide-ranging benefits to the individual, to the economy and to society. For older people, being digitally included can help them to maintain their independence, social connectedness and sense of worth in the face of declining health or limited capabilities, as well as also offering new opportunities to improve their quality of life. At present however, access to the technology and to the benefits is not equally distributed either between or within nations, and older people tend to be on the 'wrong' side of what is termed the 'digital divide'. Governments globally are developing strategies to promote digital inclusion and indeed Internet uptake is increasing steadily, including amongst older people. However, such strategies have focussed on getting people online, and there appears to be an assumption that once someone is online they will remain 'digitally engaged'. In fact statistics show that some users give up using the Internet, and there is emerging evidence that older people are more vulnerable to the factors which can lead to this outcome. The authors see this phenomenon as a potential but largely unrecognised 'fourth digital divide' which has serious implications for social inclusion. The objectives of this article are (a) to raise awareness of the phenomenon of digital disengagement by considering some of the emerging evidence, (b) to explore some of the potential implications of not recognising and therefore not addressing the needs of the digitally disengaged older population, and (c) to reveal the prevailing gap in knowledge which future research should address. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Grabbing attention without knowing: Automatic capture of attention by subliminal spatial cues

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mulckhuyse, Manon; Talsma, D.; Theeuwes, Jan

2007-01-01

The present study shows that an abrupt onset cue that is not consciously perceived can cause attentional facilitation followed by inhibition at the cued location. The observation of this classic biphasic effect of facilitation followed by inhibition of return (IOR) suggests that the subliminal cue

To study the significance of social interaction for former right wing extremists wanting to disengage

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, Tina Wilchen

2013-01-01

in investigating the significance of social interaction for former participants in right wing extremist groups, who were in a disengagement process with the help from the organisation Exit in Stockholm, Sweden. As this field involved dealing with people in transition, it also meant dealing with people with very...

Dangerous animals capture and maintain attention in humans.

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Yorzinski, Jessica L; Penkunas, Michael J; Platt, Michael L; Coss, Richard G

2014-05-28

Predation is a major source of natural selection on primates and may have shaped attentional processes that allow primates to rapidly detect dangerous animals. Because ancestral humans were subjected to predation, a process that continues at very low frequencies, we examined the visual processes by which men and women detect dangerous animals (snakes and lions). We recorded the eye movements of participants as they detected images of a dangerous animal (target) among arrays of nondangerous animals (distractors) as well as detected images of a nondangerous animal (target) among arrays of dangerous animals (distractors). We found that participants were quicker to locate targets when the targets were dangerous animals compared with nondangerous animals, even when spatial frequency and luminance were controlled. The participants were slower to locate nondangerous targets because they spent more time looking at dangerous distractors, a process known as delayed disengagement, and looked at a larger number of dangerous distractors. These results indicate that dangerous animals capture and maintain attention in humans, suggesting that historical predation has shaped some facets of visual orienting and its underlying neural architecture in modern humans.

Cooperation, conflict, or disengagement? Coparenting styles and father involvement in fragile families.

Science.gov (United States)

Waller, Maureen R

2012-09-01

This paper draws on information from the Fragile Families Study (N = 2,695) to examine how different coparenting styles emerge and are related to fathers' involvement with young children in a representative sample of unmarried parents. The results show that the quantity and quality of paternal involvement is significantly higher when unmarried parents establish a cooperative as opposed to a disengaged or conflicted coparenting style. Cooperative coparenting is less likely, however, when unmarried parents have separated after the birth or were never together as a couple, when fathers are unemployed or have other risk factors, when the child has a more difficult temperament, and when parents have fewer children together. This analysis also helps clarify previously equivocal findings concerning the relationship between coparenting conflict and paternal involvement. Regression results show that paternal involvement is not significantly different among parents with cooperative and mixed coparenting styles, indicating that when unmarried parents can work together and support each other's parenting efforts, even if they argue frequently while doing so, fathers remain more involved. At the same time, conflicted coparenting leads to a larger decrease in father involvement than disengaged coparenting. In the context of poorer-quality coparenting relationships, it was conflict that mattered for fathering, not just parents' inability to cooperate. Implications of these findings for parenting education programs are discussed. © FPI, Inc.

From psychological to digital disengagement: exploring the link between ageism and the ‘grey digital divide’

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Martine Lagacé

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The need for digital literacy is apparent in today’s workplace, driven by strong pressures for constant technological innovation. Previous studies have shown that although older workers make up (and will make up a great proportion of the workforce, there persists an age-based digital divide in the workplace; and the outcome of such divide is quite negative: at the individual level, older workers feel they’re being marginalized and as such, become dissatisfied and disengage from their workplace; at the organizational level, a pool of skills and expertise is lost as a result of the older worker’s disengagement, putting at risk effective knowledge transfer and mentoring process. Hence, the importance of a deeper understanding of the contextual factors that may feed the ‘grey digital divide’ in the workplace. The goal of this paper is to address such factors moving beyond the ageist claim that a worker’s chronological age is the driving force behind the ‘grey digital divide’.

Student Misbehavior in Physical Education: The Role of 2 X 2 Achievement Goals and Moral Disengagement

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Wei-Ting Hsu, Hsiu-Hua Li, Yi-Hsiang Pan

2017-09-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to determine whether goal orientations were related to students’ self-reported misbehaviors in physical education and to examine whether the effects were mediated by moral disengagement. A two-study project employing structural equation modeling was conducted with high school students (Study 1, n = 287; Study 2, n = 296. In Study 1, the results showed that mastery-avoidance goals were unable to predict five misbehaviors (i.e., aggressive behavior, low engagement, failure to follow directions, poor self-management, and distracting behavior. Mastery-approach goals negatively predicted low engagement, failure to follow directions, and poor self-management. Performance-approach goals positively predicted aggressive and distracting behaviors, while performance-avoidance goals positively predicted all five misbehaviors. In Study 2, the results indicated that the positive relationships between performance-approach goals and misbehaviors and between performance-avoidance goals and misbehaviors were mediated by moral disengagement. These results are discussed in terms of the model of achievement goals, and implications for physical education are also highlighted.

Self-regulation of unattainable goals in suicide attempters: the relationship between goal disengagement, goal reengagement and suicidal ideation.

LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

O'Connor, Rory C

2009-02-01

There is growing interest in models of adaptive self-regulation. Recent research suggests that goal disengagement and goal reengagement (i.e., goal adjustment) are implicated in the self-regulation of emotion. This study extends the self-regulation research to investigate the utility of goal adjustment in understanding suicidal risk. To this end, two hundred adults hospitalised following a suicidal episode completed a range of clinical and psychological measures in hospital and were followed up approximately 2.5 months after discharge (Time 2). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that goal reengagement predicted suicidal ideation at Time 2. In addition, the lack of goal reengagement was especially pernicious when reported concomitantly with high disengagement. These predictive effects were independent of baseline mood, attempt status and suicidal intent. The theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Investigation of attentional bias in obsessive compulsive disorder with and without depression in visual search.

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Sharon Morein-Zamir

Full Text Available Whether Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD is associated with an increased attentional bias to emotive stimuli remains controversial. Additionally, it is unclear whether comorbid depression modulates abnormal emotional processing in OCD. This study examined attentional bias to OC-relevant scenes using a visual search task. Controls, non-depressed and depressed OCD patients searched for their personally selected positive images amongst their negative distractors, and vice versa. Whilst the OCD groups were slower than healthy individuals in rating the images, there were no group differences in the magnitude of negative bias to concern-related scenes. A second experiment employing a common set of images replicated the results on an additional sample of OCD patients. Although there was a larger bias to negative OC-related images without pre-exposure overall, no group differences in attentional bias were observed. However, OCD patients subsequently rated the images more slowly and more negatively, again suggesting post-attentional processing abnormalities. The results argue against a robust attentional bias in OCD patients, regardless of their depression status and speak to generalized difficulties disengaging from negative valence stimuli. Rather, post-attentional processing abnormalities may account for differences in emotional processing in OCD.

Narcissism dimensions differentially moderate selective attention to evaluative stimuli in incarcerated offenders.

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Krusemark, Elizabeth A; Lee, Christopher; Newman, Joseph P

2015-01-01

Narcissistic personality disorder is associated with distinguishing traits including self-enhancement, arrogance, and intense reactivity to ego threat. Theoretical accounts of narcissism suggest these heterogeneous behaviors reflect a defensive motivational style that functions to both uphold and protect the self-concept. However, the notion that narcissism can be characterized by grandiose and vulnerable dimensions raises the possibility that these diverse behaviors represent distinct expressions of narcissistic defensiveness. The present study examined whether both dimensions exhibit a general defensive style marked by selective attention to evaluative stimuli or are differentially associated with selective attention to positive and negative information, respectively. Using a dot probe task consisting of valenced and neutral trait adjectives, we evaluated these hypotheses in a group of male offenders. Results indicated that vulnerable narcissism was associated with attention biases for both positive and negative stimuli, though the dimension was further distinguished by disengagement difficulties and a greater recognition memory bias in response to negative words. Conversely, grandiose narcissism was associated with increased accuracy when attending to positive stimuli and directing attention away from negative stimuli. Overall, these findings suggest narcissistic individuals share motivated selective attention in response to evaluative stimuli, while simultaneously highlighting important phenotypic differences between grandiose and vulnerable dimensions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Improving the psychometric properties of dot-probe attention measures using response-based computation.

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Evans, Travis C; Britton, Jennifer C

2018-09-01

Abnormal threat-related attention in anxiety disorders is most commonly assessed and modified using the dot-probe paradigm; however, poor psychometric properties of reaction-time measures may contribute to inconsistencies across studies. Typically, standard attention measures are derived using average reaction-times obtained in experimentally-defined conditions. However, current approaches based on experimentally-defined conditions are limited. In this study, the psychometric properties of a novel response-based computation approach to analyze dot-probe data are compared to standard measures of attention. 148 adults (19.19 ± 1.42 years, 84 women) completed a standardized dot-probe task including threatening and neutral faces. We generated both standard and response-based measures of attention bias, attentional orientation, and attentional disengagement. We compared overall internal consistency, number of trials necessary to reach internal consistency, test-retest reliability (n = 72), and criterion validity obtained using each approach. Compared to standard attention measures, response-based measures demonstrated uniformly high levels of internal consistency with relatively few trials and varying improvements in test-retest reliability. Additionally, response-based measures demonstrated specific evidence of anxiety-related associations above and beyond both standard attention measures and other confounds. Future studies are necessary to validate this approach in clinical samples. Response-based attention measures demonstrate superior psychometric properties compared to standard attention measures, which may improve the detection of anxiety-related associations and treatment-related changes in clinical samples. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

fMRI correlates of object-based attentional facilitation versus suppression of irrelevant stimuli, dependent on global grouping and endogenous cueing.

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Elliot D Freeman

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Theories of object-based attention often make two assumptions: that attentional resources are facilitatory, and that they spread automatically within grouped objects. Consistent with this, ignored visual stimuli can be easier to process, or more distracting, when perceptually grouped with an attended target stimulus. But in past studies, the ignored stimuli often shared potentially relevant features or locations with the target. In this fMRI study, we measured the effects of attention and grouping on Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD responses in the human brain to entirely task-irrelevant events.Two checkerboards were displayed each in opposite hemifields, while participants responded to check-size changes in one pre-cued hemifield, which varied between blocks. Grouping (or segmentation between hemifields was manipulated between blocks, using common (versus distinct motion cues. Task-irrelevant transient events were introduced by randomly changing the colour of either checkerboard, attended or ignored, at unpredictable intervals. The above assumptions predict heightened BOLD signals for irrelevant events in attended versus ignored hemifields for ungrouped contexts, but less such attentional modulation under grouping, due to automatic spreading of facilitation across hemifields. We found the opposite pattern, in primary visual cortex. For ungrouped stimuli, BOLD signals associated with task-irrelevant changes were lower, not higher, in the attended versus ignored hemifield; furthermore, attentional modulation was not reduced but actually inverted under grouping, with higher signals for events in the attended versus ignored hemifield.

Prosocial and antisocial behavior in sport: the role of coaching style, autonomous vs. controlled motivation, and moral disengagement.

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Hodge, Ken; Lonsdale, Chris

2011-08-01

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the relationships between contextual factors (i.e., autonomy-supportive vs. controlling coaching style) and person factors (i.e., autonomous vs. controlled motivation) outlined in self-determination theory (SDT) were related to prosocial and antisocial behaviors in sport. We also investigated moral disengagement as a mediator of these relationships. Athletes' (n = 292, M = 19.53 years) responses largely supported our SDT-derived hypotheses. Results indicated that an autonomy-supportive coaching style was associated with prosocial behavior toward teammates; this relationship was mediated by autonomous motivation. Controlled motivation was associated with antisocial behavior toward teammates and antisocial behavior toward opponents, and these two relationships were mediated by moral disengagement. The results provide support for research investigating the effect of autonomy-supportive coaching interventions on athletes' prosocial and antisocial behavior.

Avoiding math on a rapid timescale: Emotional responsivity and anxious attention in math anxiety.

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Pizzie, Rachel G; Kraemer, David J M

2017-11-01

Math anxiety (MA) is characterized by negative feelings towards mathematics, resulting in avoidance of math classes and of careers that rely on mathematical skills. Focused on a long timescale, this research may miss important cognitive and affective processes that operate moment-to-moment, changing rapid reactions even when a student simply sees a math problem. Here, using fMRI with an attentional deployment paradigm, we show that MA influences rapid spontaneous emotional and attentional responses to mathematical stimuli upon brief presentation. Critically, participants viewed but did not attempt to solve the problems. Indicating increased threat reactivity to even brief presentations of math problems, increased MA was associated with increased amygdala response during math viewing trials. Functionally and anatomically defined amygdala ROIs yielded similar results, indicating robustness of the finding. Similar to the pattern of vigilance and avoidance observed in specific phobia, behavioral results of the attentional paradigm demonstrated that MA is associated with attentional disengagement for mathematical symbols. This attentional avoidance is specific to math stimuli; when viewing negatively-valenced images, MA is correlated with attentional engagement, similar to other forms of anxiety. These results indicate that even brief exposure to mathematics triggers a neural response related to threat avoidance in highly MA individuals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Global facilitation of attended features is obligatory and restricts divided attention.

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Andersen, Søren K; Hillyard, Steven A; Müller, Matthias M

2013-11-13

In many common situations such as driving an automobile it is advantageous to attend concurrently to events at different locations (e.g., the car in front, the pedestrian to the side). While spatial attention can be divided effectively between separate locations, studies investigating attention to nonspatial features have often reported a "global effect", whereby items having the attended feature may be preferentially processed throughout the entire visual field. These findings suggest that spatial and feature-based attention may at times act in direct opposition: spatially divided foci of attention cannot be truly independent if feature attention is spatially global and thereby affects all foci equally. In two experiments, human observers attended concurrently to one of two overlapping fields of dots of different colors presented in both the left and right visual fields. When the same color or two different colors were attended on the two sides, deviant targets were detected accurately, and visual-cortical potentials elicited by attended dots were enhanced. However, when the attended color on one side matched the ignored color on the opposite side, attentional modulation of cortical potentials was abolished. This loss of feature selectivity could be attributed to enhanced processing of unattended items that shared the color of the attended items in the opposite field. Thus, while it is possible to attend to two different colors at the same time, this ability is fundamentally constrained by spatially global feature enhancement in early visual-cortical areas, which is obligatory and persists even when it explicitly conflicts with task demands.

Antisocial and Prosocial Behavior in Sport: The Role of Motivational Climate, Basic Psychological Needs, and Moral Disengagement.

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Hodge, Ken; Gucciardi, Daniel F

2015-06-01

The purpose of this investigation was to examine whether the relationships between contextual factors and basic psychological needs were related to antisocial and prosocial behavior in sport. A two-study project employing Bayesian path analysis was conducted with competitive athletes (Study 1, n = 291; Study 2, n = 272). Coach and teammate autonomy-supportive climates had meaningful direct relations with need satisfaction and prosocial behavior. Coach and teammate controlling climates had meaningful direct relations with antisocial behavior. Need satisfaction was both directly and indirectly related with both prosocial and antisocial behavior, whereas moral disengagement was directly and indirectly related with antisocial behavior. Overall, these findings reflected substantial evidence from the literature on self-determination theory that autonomy-supportive motivational climates are important environmental influences for need satisfaction, and are important correlates of prosocial behavior in sport, whereas controlling coach and teammate climates, along with moral disengagement, were important correlates of antisocial behavior in sport.

The same-location cost is unrelated to attentional settings: an object-updating account.

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Carmel, Tomer; Lamy, Dominique

2014-08-01

What mechanisms allow us to ignore salient yet irrelevant visual information has been a matter of intense debate. According to the contingent-capture hypothesis, such information is filtered out, whereas according to the salience-based account, it captures attention automatically. Several recent studies have reported a same-location cost that appears to fit neither of these accounts. These showed that responses may actually be slower when the target appears at the location just occupied by an irrelevant singleton distractor. Here, we investigated the mechanisms underlying this same-location cost. Our findings show that the same-location cost is unrelated to automatic attentional capture or strategic setting of attentional priorities, and therefore invalidate the feature-based inhibition and fast attentional disengagement accounts of this effect. In addition, we show that the cost is wiped out when the cue and target are not perceived as parts of the same object. We interpret these findings as indicating that the same-location cost has been previously misinterpreted by both bottom-up and top-down theories of attentional capture. We propose that it is better understood as a consequence of object updating, namely, as the cost of updating the information stored about an object when this object changes across time.

The control of attentional target selection in a colour/colour conjunction task.

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Berggren, Nick; Eimer, Martin

2016-11-01

To investigate the time course of attentional object selection processes in visual search tasks where targets are defined by a combination of features from the same dimension, we measured the N2pc component as an electrophysiological marker of attentional object selection during colour/colour conjunction search. In Experiment 1, participants searched for targets defined by a combination of two colours, while ignoring distractor objects that matched only one of these colours. Reliable N2pc components were triggered by targets and also by partially matching distractors, even when these distractors were accompanied by a target in the same display. The target N2pc was initially equal in size to the sum of the two N2pc components to the two different types of partially matching distractors and became superadditive from approximately 250 ms after search display onset. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the superadditivity of the target N2pc was not due to a selective disengagement of attention from task-irrelevant partially matching distractors. These results indicate that attention was initially deployed separately and in parallel to all target-matching colours, before attentional allocation processes became sensitive to the presence of both matching colours within the same object. They suggest that attention can be controlled simultaneously and independently by multiple features from the same dimension and that feature-guided attentional selection processes operate in parallel for different target-matching objects in the visual field.

Dangerous Animals Capture and Maintain Attention in Humans

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Jessica L. Yorzinski

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Predation is a major source of natural selection on primates and may have shaped attentional processes that allow primates to rapidly detect dangerous animals. Because ancestral humans were subjected to predation, a process that continues at very low frequencies, we examined the visual processes by which men and women detect dangerous animals (snakes and lions. We recorded the eye movements of participants as they detected images of a dangerous animal (target among arrays of nondangerous animals (distractors as well as detected images of a nondangerous animal (target among arrays of dangerous animals (distractors. We found that participants were quicker to locate targets when the targets were dangerous animals compared with nondangerous animals, even when spatial frequency and luminance were controlled. The participants were slower to locate nondangerous targets because they spent more time looking at dangerous distractors, a process known as delayed disengagement, and looked at a larger number of dangerous distractors. These results indicate that dangerous animals capture and maintain attention in humans, suggesting that historical predation has shaped some facets of visual orienting and its underlying neural architecture in modern humans.

Facilitation of contrast detection in near-peripheral vision.

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Giorgi, Robert G; Soong, Grace P; Woods, Russell L; Peli, Eli

2004-12-01

Foveal detection of a Gabor patch (target) is facilitated by collinear, displaced high-contrast flankers. Polat and Sagi reported that the same phenomenon occurred in the periphery, but no data were presented [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 91 (1994) 1206]. Others have found no facilitation in a limited number of conditions tested. To resolve this apparent conflict, we measured lateral facilitation in the near-periphery using a range of stimulus parameters. We found facilitation for a range of target-flanker distances for peripheral eccentricities up to 6 degrees , but the magnitude of the effect was less than found in central vision. Facilitation varied across subjects and with spatial frequency. Flanker contrast had no effect over the range evaluated (10-80%). Equal facilitation was found for two global arrangements of the stimulus pattern. Facilitation was found using a temporal, but not a spatial two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, accounting for the different results among previous studies. This finding supports previous indications of the role of attention in altering such facilitation. The value of facilitation from lateral interactions for persons with central vision impairment, who have to shift their attention to a peripheral locus constantly, needs to be examined.

Involuntary transfer of a top-down attentional set into the focus of attention: evidence from a contingent attentional capture paradigm.

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Moore, Katherine Sledge; Weissman, Daniel H

2010-08-01

In the present study, we investigated whether involuntarily directing attention to a target-colored distractor causes the corresponding attentional set to enter a limited-capacity focus of attention, thereby facilitating the identification of a subsequent target whose color matches the same attentional set. As predicted, in Experiment 1, contingent attentional capture effects from a target-colored distractor were only one half to one third as large when subsequent target identification relied on the same (vs. a different) attentional set. In Experiment 2, this effect was eliminated when all of the target colors matched the same attentional set, arguing against bottom-up perceptual priming of the distractor's color as an alternative account of our findings. In Experiment 3, this effect was reversed when a target-colored distractor appeared after the target, ruling out a feature-based interference account of our findings. We conclude that capacity limitations in working memory strongly influence contingent attentional capture when multiple attentional sets guide selection.

Mechanisms of moral disengagement and their differential use by right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation in support of war.

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Jackson, Lydia Eckstein; Gaertner, Lowell

2010-01-01

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are associated with the approval of war as a political intervention [McFarland, 2005]. We examined whether the effects of RWA and SDO on war support are mediated by moral-disengagement mechanisms [i.e., responsibility reduction, moral justification, minimizing consequences, and dehumanizing-blaming victims; Bandura, 1999] and whether the ideologies use the mechanisms differently. Our data were consistent with the possibility that minimizing consequences (Study 1) and moral justification (Study 2) mediate the effects of RWA and SDO on approval of war. Both ideologies were positively associated with all moral-disengagement mechanism though more strongly so for RWA. Comparisons within ideologies suggest that RWA was most strongly associated with moral justification and SDO was most strongly associated with dehumanizing-blaming victims. We discuss implications and limitations.

Looking for Ms. Right: Allocating Attention to Facilitate Mate Choice Decisions

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Kelly D. Suschinsky

2007-04-01

Full Text Available Through various signals, the human body provides information that may be used by receivers to make decisions about mate value. Here, we investigate whether there exists a complementary psychological system designed to selectively attend to these signals in order to choose, and direct effort toward the acquisition of, a potential mate. We presented young men with three images of the same woman (six women in total simultaneously, varying the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR of each image while holding other traits constant. While participants chose their preferred image, we monitored visual attention using an infrared eye-tracker. We found that participants focused their attention selectively on body regions known to provide reproductive information in a manner consistent with the research hypothesis: Reproductively relevant body regions, especially the head and breasts, received the most visual attention. Likewise, images with lower WHRs and reproductively relevant regions in images with lower WHRs received the most visual attention and were chosen as most attractive. Finally, irrespective of WHR size, participants fixated more often and for longer durations on the images that they selected as most attractive.

Moral Disengagement Mechanisms and Armed Violence. A Comparative Study of Paramilitaries and Guerrillas in Colombia

OpenAIRE

VILLEGAS DE POSADA, CRISTINA; FLOREZ, JORGE; ESPINEL, NICOLÁS

2018-01-01

Abstract Moral disengagement mechanisms are strategies to make immoral actions appear moral. This study explores their usage by two Colombian illegal armed groups (guerrillas and paramilitaries), as well as differences between the groups. The analysis covered 367 communiqués issued in 55 months. A deductive content analysis revealed that the most used mechanisms were: attribution of blame, euphemistic labeling, moral justification and labeling with undesirable names. Results showed difference...

Moral Disengagement Mechanisms and Armed Violence. A Comparative Study of Paramilitaries and Guerrillas in Colombia

OpenAIRE

María Cristina Villegas de Posada; Jorge Flórez; Nicolás Espinel

2018-01-01

Moral disengagement mechanisms are strategies to make immoral actions appear moral. This study explores their us-age by two Colombian illegal armed groups (guerrillas and paramilitaries), as well as differences between the groups. The analysis covered 367 communiqués issued in 55 months. A deductive content analysis revealed that the most used mechanisms were: attribution of blame, euphemistic labeling, moral justification and labeling with undesirable names. Results showed differences betwee...

The Long and Winding Road: Grades, Psychological Disengagement and Motivation among Female Students in (Non-)Traditional Career Paths

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Rinfret, Natalie; Tougas, Francine; Beaton, Ann M.; Laplante, Joelle; Ngo Manguelle, Christiane; Lagacé, Marie Claude

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the links between grades, psychological disengagement mechanisms (discounting evaluative feedback and devaluing school), and motivation among female students in traditional and non-traditional career paths. We predicted that the association between grades and discounting is affected by the importance of…

Haloperidol 2 mg impairs inhibition but not visuospatial attention.

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Logemann, H N Alexander; Böcker, Koen B E; Deschamps, Peter K H; van Harten, Peter N; Koning, Jeroen; Kemner, Chantal; Logemann-Molnár, Zsófia; Kenemans, J Leon

2017-01-01

The dopaminergic system has been implicated in visuospatial attention and inhibition, but the exact role has yet to be elucidated. Scarce literature suggests that attenuation of dopaminergic neurotransmission negatively affects attentional focusing and inhibition. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that evaluated the effect of dopaminergic antagonism on stopping performance. Dopaminergic neurotransmission was attenuated in 28 healthy male participants by using 2 mg haloperidol. A repeated-measures placebo-controlled crossover design was implemented, and performance indices of attention and inhibition were assessed in the visual spatial cueing task (VSC) and stop signal task (SST). Additionally, the effect of haloperidol on motoric parameters was assessed. It was expected that haloperidol as contrasted to placebo would result in a reduction of the "validity effect," the benefit of valid cueing as opposed to invalid cueing of a target in terms of reaction time. Furthermore, an increase in stop signal reaction time (SSRT) in the SST was expected. Results partially confirmed the hypothesis. Haloperidol negatively affected inhibitory motor control in the SST as indexed by SSRT, but there were no indications that haloperidol affected bias or disengagement in the VSC task as indicated by a lack of an effect on RTs. Pertaining to secondary parameters, motor activity increased significantly under haloperidol. Haloperidol negatively affected reaction time variability and errors in both tasks, as well as omissions in the SST, indicating a decreased sustained attention, an increase in premature responses, and an increase in lapses of attention, respectively.

Unique and Interactive Effects of Moral Emotions and Moral Disengagement on Bullying and Defending among School Children

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Thornberg, Robert; Pozzoli, Tiziana; Gianluca, Gini; Jungert, Tomas

2015-01-01

The first aim of the present study was to examine in a single model how moral disengagement and moral emotions were related to bullying and defending behavior among schoolchildren. The second aim was to test whether the two moral dimensions interacted with each other to explain behavior in bullying situations. Data were collected from 561 Swedish…

Global Facilitation of Attended Features Is Obligatory and Restricts Divided Attention

OpenAIRE

Andersen, Søren K.; Hillyard, Steven A.; Müller, Matthias M.

2013-01-01

In many common situations such as driving an automobile it is advantageous to attend concurrently to events at different locations (e.g., the car in front, the pedestrian to the side). While spatial attention can be divided effectively between separate locations, studies investigating attention to nonspatial features have often reported a “global effect”, whereby items having the attended feature may be preferentially processed throughout the entire visual field. These findings suggest that s...

Unmotivated or Motivated to Fail? A Cross-Cultural Study of Achievement Motivation, Fear of Failure, and Student Disengagement

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De Castella, Krista; Byrne, Don; Covington, Martin

2013-01-01

A classic distinction in the literature on achievement and motivation is between fear of failure and success orientations. From the perspective of self-worth theory, these motives are not bipolar constructs but dimensions that interact in ways that make some students particularly vulnerable to underachievement and disengagement from school. The…

Irrelevant stimulus processing in ADHD: catecholamine dynamics and attentional networks

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Francisco eAboitiz

2014-03-01

Full Text Available A cardinal symptom of Attenion Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD is a general distractibility where children and adults shift their attentional focus to stimuli that are irrelevant to the ongoing behavior. This has been attributed to a deficit in dopaminergic signaling in cortico-striatal networks that regulate goal-directed behavior. Furthermore, recent imaging evidence points to an impairment of large scale, antagonistic brain networks that normally contribute to attentional engagement and disengagement, such as the task-positive networks and the Default Mode Network (DMN. Related networks are the ventral attentional network (VAN involved in attentional shifting, and the salience network (SN related to task expectancy. Here we discuss the tonic-phasic dynamics of catecholaminergic signaling in the brain, and attempt to provide a link between this and the activities of the large-scale cortical networks that regulate behavior. More specifically, we propose that a disbalance of tonic catecholamine levels during task performance produce an emphasis of phasic signaling and increased excitability of the VAN, yielding distractibility symptoms. Likewise, immaturity of the SN may relate to abnormal tonic signaling and an incapacity to build up a proper executive system during task performance. We discuss different lines of evidence including pharmacology, brain imaging and electrophysiology, that are consistent with our proposal. Finally, restoring the pharmacodynamics of catecholaminergic signaling seems crucial to alleviate ADHD symptoms; however, the possibility is open to explore cognitive rehabilitation strategies to top-down modulate network dynamics compensating the pharmacological deficits.

Attention has memory: priming for the size of the attentional focus.

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Fuggetta, Giorgio; Lanfranchi, Silvia; Campana, Gianluca

2009-01-01

Repeating the same target's features or spatial position, as well as repeating the same context (e.g. distractor sets) in visual search leads to a decrease of reaction times. This modulation can occur on a trial by trial basis (the previous trial primes the following one), but can also occur across multiple trials (i.e. performance in the current trial can benefit from features, position or context seen several trials earlier), and includes inhibition of different features, position or contexts besides facilitation of the same ones. Here we asked whether a similar implicit memory mechanism exists for the size of the attentional focus. By manipulating the size of the attentional focus with the repetition of search arrays with the same vs. different size, we found both facilitation for the same array size and inhibition for a different array size, as well as a progressive improvement in performance with increasing the number of repetition of search arrays with the same size. These results show that implicit memory for the size of the attentional focus can guide visual search even in the absence of feature or position priming, or distractor's contextual effects.

Engaging In Rather than Disengaging From Stress: Effective Coping and Perceived Control

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Maria T.M. Dijkstra

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Being able to cope effectively with stress can help people to avoid negative consequences for their psychological well-being. The purpose of this study was to find out why some coping strategies are effective in reducing the negative effect of stressors on well-being and some are not. We argue that the degree to which such coping strategies engage or disengage people from stressful incidents is related to their perceived control of the situation that, in turn, is positively associated with their psychological well-being. We thus propose that the relationship between coping and psychological well-being is mediated by the extent of perceived sense of control. We collected cross-sectional data from a large heterogeneous sample (N = 543 in the Netherlands. We assessed seven different coping strategies, perceived control, and psychological well-being. Our results indeed revealed that strategies reflecting more engaged coping such as active confronting and reassuring thoughts, were associated with more sense of control and therefore to psychological well-being. In contrast, strategies reflecting disengagement coping, such as passive reaction pattern, palliative reaction, and avoidance, were associated with less perceived control, which in turn was negatively associated with psychological well-being. Results regarding the coping strategies expressing emotions and seeking social support were less straightforward, with the former being negatively associated with perceived control and psychological well-being, even though this strategy has stress engaging elements, and the latter only showing a positive indirect effect on psychological well-being via perceived control, but no positive main effect on well-being. These findings are discussed from the perspective of stress being an environment-perception-response process.

Memory-Guided Attention: Independent Contributions of the Hippocampus and Striatum.

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Goldfarb, Elizabeth V; Chun, Marvin M; Phelps, Elizabeth A

2016-01-20

Memory can strongly influence how attention is deployed in future encounters. Though memory dependent on the medial temporal lobes has been shown to drive attention, how other memory systems could concurrently and comparably enhance attention is less clear. Here, we demonstrate that both reinforcement learning and context memory facilitate attention in a visual search task. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we dissociate the mechanisms by which these memories guide attention: trial by trial, the hippocampus (not the striatum) predicted attention benefits from context memory, while the striatum (not the hippocampus) predicted facilitation from rewarded stimulus-response associations. Responses in these regions were also distinctly correlated with individual differences in each type of memory-guided attention. This study provides novel evidence for the role of the striatum in guiding attention, dissociable from hippocampus-dependent context memory.

Training of attention functions in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

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Tucha, Oliver; Tucha, Lara; Kaumann, Gesa; König, Sebastian; Lange, Katharina M; Stasik, Dorota; Streather, Zoe; Engelschalk, Tobias; Lange, Klaus W

2011-09-01

Pharmacological treatment of children with ADHD has been shown to be successful; however, medication may not normalize attention functions. The present study was based on a neuropsychological model of attention and assessed the effect of an attention training program on attentional functioning of children with ADHD. Thirty-two children with ADHD and 16 healthy children participated in the study. Children with ADHD were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions, i.e., an attention training program which trained aspects of vigilance, selective attention and divided attention, or a visual perception training which trained perceptual skills, such as perception of figure and ground, form constancy and position in space. The training programs were applied in individual sessions, twice a week, for a period of four consecutive weeks. Healthy children did not receive any training. Alertness, vigilance, selective attention, divided attention, and flexibility were examined prior to and following the interventions. Children with ADHD were assessed and trained while on ADHD medications. Data analysis revealed that the attention training used in the present study led to significant improvements of various aspects of attention, including vigilance, divided attention, and flexibility, while the visual perception training had no specific effects. The findings indicate that attention training programs have the potential to facilitate attentional functioning in children with ADHD treated with ADHD drugs.

Additive effects of emotional content and spatial selective attention on electrocortical facilitation.

Science.gov (United States)

Keil, Andreas; Moratti, Stephan; Sabatinelli, Dean; Bradley, Margaret M; Lang, Peter J

2005-08-01

Affectively arousing visual stimuli have been suggested to automatically attract attentional resources in order to optimize sensory processing. The present study crosses the factors of spatial selective attention and affective content, and examines the relationship between instructed (spatial) and automatic attention to affective stimuli. In addition to response times and error rate, electroencephalographic data from 129 electrodes were recorded during a covert spatial attention task. This task required silent counting of random-dot targets embedded in a 10 Hz flicker of colored pictures presented to both hemifields. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) were obtained to determine amplitude and phase of electrocortical responses to pictures. An increase of ssVEP amplitude was observed as an additive function of spatial attention and emotional content. Statistical parametric mapping of this effect indicated occipito-temporal and parietal cortex activation contralateral to the attended visual hemifield in ssVEP amplitude modulation. This difference was most pronounced during selection of the left visual hemifield, at right temporal electrodes. In line with this finding, phase information revealed accelerated processing of aversive arousing, compared to affectively neutral pictures. The data suggest that affective stimulus properties modulate the spatiotemporal process along the ventral stream, encompassing amplitude amplification and timing changes of posterior and temporal cortex.

Do I Have My Attention? Speed of Processing Advantages for the Self-Face Are Not Driven by Automatic Attention Capture

Science.gov (United States)

Keyes, Helen; Dlugokencka, Aleksandra

2014-01-01

We respond more quickly to our own face than to other faces, but there is debate over whether this is connected to attention-grabbing properties of the self-face. In two experiments, we investigate whether the self-face selectively captures attention, and the attentional conditions under which this might occur. In both experiments, we examined whether different types of face (self, friend, stranger) provide differential levels of distraction when processing self, friend and stranger names. In Experiment 1, an image of a distractor face appeared centrally – inside the focus of attention – behind a target name, with the faces either upright or inverted. In Experiment 2, distractor faces appeared peripherally – outside the focus of attention – in the left or right visual field, or bilaterally. In both experiments, self-name recognition was faster than other name recognition, suggesting a self-referential processing advantage. The presence of the self-face did not cause more distraction in the naming task compared to other types of face, either when presented inside (Experiment 1) or outside (Experiment 2) the focus of attention. Distractor faces had different effects across the two experiments: when presented inside the focus of attention (Experiment 1), self and friend images facilitated self and friend naming, respectively. This was not true for stranger stimuli, suggesting that faces must be robustly represented to facilitate name recognition. When presented outside the focus of attention (Experiment 2), no facilitation occurred. Instead, we report an interesting distraction effect caused by friend faces when processing strangers’ names. We interpret this as a “social importance” effect, whereby we may be tuned to pick out and pay attention to familiar friend faces in a crowd. We conclude that any speed of processing advantages observed in the self-face processing literature are not driven by automatic attention capture. PMID:25338170

Concurrent Working Memory Load Can Facilitate Selective Attention: Evidence for Specialized Load

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Soojin; Kim, Min-Shik; Chun, Marvin M.

2007-01-01

Load theory predicts that concurrent working memory load impairs selective attention and increases distractor interference (N. Lavie, A. Hirst, J. W. de Fockert, & E. Viding, see record 2004-17825-003). Here, the authors present new evidence that the type of concurrent working memory load determines whether load impairs selective attention or not.…

Recognizing Textual Entailment with Attentive Reading and Writing Operations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Liu, Liang; Huo, Huan; Liu, Xiufeng

2018-01-01

-range dependency. In this paper, we propose to facilitate the conventional attentive reading operations with two sophisticated writing operations - forget and update. Instead of utilizing a single vector that accommodates the attention history, we write the past attention information directly into the sentence...

Attention bias modification training under working memory load increases the magnitude of change in attentional bias.

Science.gov (United States)

Clarke, Patrick J F; Branson, Sonya; Chen, Nigel T M; Van Bockstaele, Bram; Salemink, Elske; MacLeod, Colin; Notebaert, Lies

2017-12-01

Attention bias modification (ABM) procedures have shown promise as a therapeutic intervention, however current ABM procedures have proven inconsistent in their ability to reliably achieve the requisite change in attentional bias needed to produce emotional benefits. This highlights the need to better understand the precise task conditions that facilitate the intended change in attention bias in order to realise the therapeutic potential of ABM procedures. Based on the observation that change in attentional bias occurs largely outside conscious awareness, the aim of the current study was to determine if an ABM procedure delivered under conditions likely to preclude explicit awareness of the experimental contingency, via the addition of a working memory load, would contribute to greater change in attentional bias. Bias change was assessed among 122 participants in response to one of four ABM tasks given by the two experimental factors of ABM training procedure delivered either with or without working memory load, and training direction of either attend-negative or avoid-negative. Findings revealed that avoid-negative ABM procedure under working memory load resulted in significantly greater reductions in attentional bias compared to the equivalent no-load condition. The current findings will require replication with clinical samples to determine the utility of the current task for achieving emotional benefits. These present findings are consistent with the position that the addition of a working memory load may facilitate change in attentional bias in response to an ABM training procedure. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deadly Attraction - Attentional Bias toward Preferred Cigarette Brand in Smokers.

Science.gov (United States)

Domaradzka, Ewa; Bielecki, Maksymilian

2017-01-01

Numerous studies have shown that biases in visual attention might be evoked by affective and personally relevant stimuli, for example addiction-related objects. Despite the fact that addiction is often linked to specific products and systematic purchase behaviors, no studies focused directly on the existence of bias evoked by brands. Smokers are characterized by high levels of brand loyalty and everyday contact with cigarette packaging. Using the incentive-salience mechanism as a theoretical framework, we hypothesized that this group might exhibit a bias toward the preferred cigarette brand. In our study, a group of smokers ( N = 40) performed a dot probe task while their eye movements were recorded. In every trial a pair of pictures was presented - each of them showed a single cigarette pack. The visual properties of stimuli were carefully controlled, so branding information was the key factor affecting subjects' reactions. For each participant, we compared gaze behavior related to the preferred vs. other brands. The analyses revealed no attentional bias in the early, orienting phase of the stimulus processing and strong differences in maintenance and disengagement. Participants spent more time looking at the preferred cigarettes and saccades starting at the preferred brand location had longer latencies. In sum, our data shows that attentional bias toward brands might be found in situations not involving choice or decision making. These results provide important insights into the mechanisms of formation and maintenance of attentional biases to stimuli of personal relevance and might serve as a first step toward developing new attitude measurement techniques.

Auditory Selective Attention: an introduction and evidence for distinct facilitation and inhibition mechanisms

OpenAIRE

Mikyska, Constanze Elisabeth Anna

2012-01-01

Objective Auditory selective attention is a complex brain function that is still not completely understood. The classic example is the so-called “cocktail party effect” (Cherry, 1953), which describes the impressive ability to focus one’s attention on a single voice from a multitude of voices. This means that particular stimuli in the environment are enhanced in contrast to other ones of lower priority that are ignored. To be able to understand how attention can influence the perception and p...

Prior expectations facilitate metacognition for perceptual decision.

Science.gov (United States)

Sherman, M T; Seth, A K; Barrett, A B; Kanai, R

2015-09-01

The influential framework of 'predictive processing' suggests that prior probabilistic expectations influence, or even constitute, perceptual contents. This notion is evidenced by the facilitation of low-level perceptual processing by expectations. However, whether expectations can facilitate high-level components of perception remains unclear. We addressed this question by considering the influence of expectations on perceptual metacognition. To isolate the effects of expectation from those of attention we used a novel factorial design: expectation was manipulated by changing the probability that a Gabor target would be presented; attention was manipulated by instructing participants to perform or ignore a concurrent visual search task. We found that, independently of attention, metacognition improved when yes/no responses were congruent with expectations of target presence/absence. Results were modeled under a novel Bayesian signal detection theoretic framework which integrates bottom-up signal propagation with top-down influences, to provide a unified description of the mechanisms underlying perceptual decision and metacognition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The mediating role of rumination in the relation between attentional bias towards thin female bodies and eating disorder symptomatology.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Laura Dondzilo

Full Text Available The present study sought to investigate the association between selective attentional processing of body images, rumination, and eating disorder symptoms in young women. Seventy-three undergraduate female students (ages 17-24 completed a modified dot-probe task to assess whether young women showed a differential attentional bias pattern towards thin and non-thin female bodies. Participants also completed self-report measures of eating disorder pathology. It was found that increased reports of dietary restraint and body dissatisfaction were associated with both greater attentional bias towards thin bodies and avoidance of non-thin bodies (as compared to neutral images, although the former relationship was stronger than the latter. The results suggest attentional vigilance to thin-ideal images plays a greater role in the potential development and/or maintenance of eating disorder symptoms, at least in a university sample of young women. Results also revealed that eating disorder-specific rumination mediated the relationship between attentional bias to thin ideal images and eating disorder symptoms. These findings build on existing research and theories, for example the impaired disengagement model of rumination, and have potential clinical applications such as specifically targeting ruminative and/or attentional processes in the prevention and/or treatment of eating disorder symptoms.

Sex differences in event-related potentials and attentional biases to emotional facial stimuli.

Science.gov (United States)

Pfabigan, Daniela M; Lamplmayr-Kragl, Elisabeth; Pintzinger, Nina M; Sailer, Uta; Tran, Ulrich S

2014-01-01

Attentional processes play an important role in the processing of emotional information. Previous research reported attentional biases during stimulus processing in anxiety and depression. However, sex differences in the processing of emotional stimuli and higher prevalence rates of anxiety disorders among women, compared to men, suggest that attentional biases may also differ between the two sexes. The present study used a modified version of the dot probe task with happy, angry, and neutral facial stimuli to investigate the time course of attentional biases in healthy volunteers. Moreover, associations of attentional biases with alexithymia were examined on the behavioral and physiological level. Event-related potentials were measured while 21 participants (11 women) performed the task, utilizing also for the first time a difference wave approach in the analysis to highlight emotion-specific aspects. Women showed overall enhanced probe P1 amplitudes compared to men, in particular after rewarding facial stimuli. Using the difference wave approach, probe P1 amplitudes appeared specifically enhanced with regard to congruently presented happy facial stimuli among women, compared to men. Both methods yielded enhanced probe P1 amplitudes after presentation of the emotional stimulus in the left compared to the right visual hemifield. Probe P1 amplitudes correlated negatively with self-reported alexithymia, most of these correlations were only observable in women. Our results suggest that women orient their attention to a greater extent to facial stimuli than men and corroborate that alexithymia is a correlate of reduced emotional reactivity on a neuronal level. We recommend using a difference wave approach when addressing attentional processes of orientation and disengagement also in future studies.

Sex differences in event-related potentials and attentional biases to emotional facial stimuli

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniela M. Pfabigan

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Attentional processes play an important role in the processing of emotional information. Previous research reported attentional biases during stimulus processing in anxiety and depression. However, sex differences in the processing of emotional stimuli and higher prevalence rates of anxiety disorders among women, compared to men, suggest that attentional biases may also differ between the two sexes. The present study used a modified version of the dot probe task with happy, angry, and neutral facial stimuli to investigate the time course of attentional biases in healthy volunteers. Moreover, associations of attentional biases with alexithymia were examined on the behavioral and physiological level. Event-related potentials were measured while 21 participants (11 women performed the task, utilizing also for the first time a difference wave approach in the analysis to highlight emotion-specific aspects. Women showed overall enhanced probe P1 amplitudes compared to men, in particular after rewarding facial stimuli. Under the difference wave approach, probe P1 amplitudes appeared specifically enhanced with regard to congruently presented happy facial stimuli among women, compared to men. Both methods yielded enhanced probe P1 amplitudes after presentation of the emotional stimulus in the left compared to the right visual hemifield. Probe P1 amplitudes correlated negatively with self-reported alexithymia, most of these correlations were only observable in women. Our results suggest that women orient their attention to a greater extent to facial stimuli than men and corroborate that alexithymia is a correlate of reduced emotional reactivity on a neuronal level. We recommend using a difference wave approach when addressing attentional processes of orientation and disengagement also in future studies.

Spatial attention in written word perception.

Science.gov (United States)

Montani, Veronica; Facoetti, Andrea; Zorzi, Marco

2014-01-01

The role of attention in visual word recognition and reading aloud is a long debated issue. Studies of both developmental and acquired reading disorders provide growing evidence that spatial attention is critically involved in word reading, in particular for the phonological decoding of unfamiliar letter strings. However, studies on healthy participants have produced contrasting results. The aim of this study was to investigate how the allocation of spatial attention may influence the perception of letter strings in skilled readers. High frequency words (HFWs), low frequency words and pseudowords were briefly and parafoveally presented either in the left or the right visual field. Attentional allocation was modulated by the presentation of a spatial cue before the target string. Accuracy in reporting the target string was modulated by the spatial cue but this effect varied with the type of string. For unfamiliar strings, processing was facilitated when attention was focused on the string location and hindered when it was diverted from the target. This finding is consistent the assumptions of the CDP+ model of reading aloud, as well as with familiarity sensitivity models that argue for a flexible use of attention according with the specific requirements of the string. Moreover, we found that processing of HFWs was facilitated by an extra-large focus of attention. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that a broad distribution of attention is the default mode during reading of familiar words because it might optimally engage the broad receptive fields of the highest detectors in the hierarchical system for visual word recognition.

Spatial attention in written word perception

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Veronica eMontani

2014-02-01

Full Text Available The role of attention in visual word recognition and reading aloud is a long debated issue. Studies of both developmental and acquired reading disorders provide growing evidence that spatial attention is critically involved in word reading, in particular for the phonological decoding of unfamiliar letter strings. However, studies on healthy participants have produced contrasting results. The aim of this study was to investigate how the allocation of spatial attention may influence the perception of letter strings in skilled readers. High frequency words, low frequency words and pseudowords were briefly and parafoveally presented either in the left or the right visual field. Attentional allocation was modulated by the presentation of a spatial cue before the target string. Accuracy in reporting the target string was modulated by the spatial cue but this effect varied with the type of string. For unfamiliar strings, processing was facilitated when attention was focused on the string location and hindered when it was diverted from the target. This finding is consistent the assumptions of the CDP+ model of reading aloud, as well as with familiarity sensitivity models that argue for a flexible use of attention according with the specific requirements of the string. Moreover, we found that processing of high-frequency words was facilitated by an extra-large focus of attention. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that a broad distribution of attention is the default mode during reading of familiar words because it might optimally engage the broad receptive fields of the highest detectors in the hierarchical system for visual word recognition.

Facilitating conditions for boundary-spanning behavior in governance networks

OpenAIRE

Meerkerk, Ingmar; Edelenbos, Jurian

2017-01-01

textabstractThis article examines the impact of two facilitating conditions for boundary-spanning behaviour in urban governance networks. While research on boundary spanning is growing, there is little attention for antecedents. Combining governance network literature on project management and organizational literature on facilitative and servant leadership, we examine two potential conditions: a facilitative project management style and executive support. We conducted survey research among p...

Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability

Science.gov (United States)

Willemse, Cesco; Marchesi, Serena; Wykowska, Agnieszka

2018-01-01

Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive–affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot’s characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human–human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants’ gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings. PMID:29459842

Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cesco Willemse

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive–affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot’s characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition. Based on the literature in human–human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants’ gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings.

Robot Faces that Follow Gaze Facilitate Attentional Engagement and Increase Their Likeability.

Science.gov (United States)

Willemse, Cesco; Marchesi, Serena; Wykowska, Agnieszka

2018-01-01

Gaze behavior of humanoid robots is an efficient mechanism for cueing our spatial orienting, but less is known about the cognitive-affective consequences of robots responding to human directional cues. Here, we examined how the extent to which a humanoid robot (iCub) avatar directed its gaze to the same objects as our participants affected engagement with the robot, subsequent gaze-cueing, and subjective ratings of the robot's characteristic traits. In a gaze-contingent eyetracking task, participants were asked to indicate a preference for one of two objects with their gaze while an iCub avatar was presented between the object photographs. In one condition, the iCub then shifted its gaze toward the object chosen by a participant in 80% of the trials (joint condition) and in the other condition it looked at the opposite object 80% of the time (disjoint condition). Based on the literature in human-human social cognition, we took the speed with which the participants looked back at the robot as a measure of facilitated reorienting and robot-preference, and found these return saccade onset times to be quicker in the joint condition than in the disjoint condition. As indicated by results from a subsequent gaze-cueing tasks, the gaze-following behavior of the robot had little effect on how our participants responded to gaze cues. Nevertheless, subjective reports suggested that our participants preferred the iCub following participants' gaze to the one with a disjoint attention behavior, rated it as more human-like and as more likeable. Taken together, our findings show a preference for robots who follow our gaze. Importantly, such subtle differences in gaze behavior are sufficient to influence our perception of humanoid agents, which clearly provides hints about the design of behavioral characteristics of humanoid robots in more naturalistic settings.

Modulation of alpha and gamma oscillations related to retrospectively orienting attention within working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Poch, Claudia; Campo, Pablo; Barnes, Gareth R

2014-07-01

Selective attention mechanisms allow us to focus on information that is relevant to the current behavior and, equally important, ignore irrelevant information. An influential model proposes that oscillatory neural activity in the alpha band serves as an active functional inhibitory mechanism. Recent studies have shown that, in the same way that attention can be selectively oriented to bias sensory processing in favor of relevant stimuli in perceptual tasks, it is also possible to retrospectively orient attention to internal representations held in working memory. However, these studies have not explored the associated oscillatory phenomena. In the current study, we analysed the patterns of neural oscillatory activity recorded with magnetoencephalography while participants performed a change detection task, in which a spatial retro-cue was presented during the maintenance period, indicating which item or items were relevant for subsequent retrieval. Participants benefited from retro-cues in terms of accuracy and reaction time. Retro-cues also modulated oscillatory activity in the alpha and gamma frequency bands. We observed greater alpha activity in a ventral visual region ipsilateral to the attended hemifield, thus supporting its suppressive role, i.e., a functional disengagement of task-irrelevant regions. Accompanying this modulation, we found an increase in gamma activity contralateral to the attended hemifield, which could reflect attentional orienting and selective processing. These findings suggest that the oscillatory mechanisms underlying attentional orienting to representations held in working memory are similar to those engaged when attention is oriented in the perceptual space. © 2014 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience published by Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Deadly Attraction – Attentional Bias toward Preferred Cigarette Brand in Smokers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ewa Domaradzka

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Numerous studies have shown that biases in visual attention might be evoked by affective and personally relevant stimuli, for example addiction-related objects. Despite the fact that addiction is often linked to specific products and systematic purchase behaviors, no studies focused directly on the existence of bias evoked by brands. Smokers are characterized by high levels of brand loyalty and everyday contact with cigarette packaging. Using the incentive-salience mechanism as a theoretical framework, we hypothesized that this group might exhibit a bias toward the preferred cigarette brand. In our study, a group of smokers (N = 40 performed a dot probe task while their eye movements were recorded. In every trial a pair of pictures was presented – each of them showed a single cigarette pack. The visual properties of stimuli were carefully controlled, so branding information was the key factor affecting subjects’ reactions. For each participant, we compared gaze behavior related to the preferred vs. other brands. The analyses revealed no attentional bias in the early, orienting phase of the stimulus processing and strong differences in maintenance and disengagement. Participants spent more time looking at the preferred cigarettes and saccades starting at the preferred brand location had longer latencies. In sum, our data shows that attentional bias toward brands might be found in situations not involving choice or decision making. These results provide important insights into the mechanisms of formation and maintenance of attentional biases to stimuli of personal relevance and might serve as a first step toward developing new attitude measurement techniques.

Deadly Attraction – Attentional Bias toward Preferred Cigarette Brand in Smokers

Science.gov (United States)

Domaradzka, Ewa; Bielecki, Maksymilian

2017-01-01

Numerous studies have shown that biases in visual attention might be evoked by affective and personally relevant stimuli, for example addiction-related objects. Despite the fact that addiction is often linked to specific products and systematic purchase behaviors, no studies focused directly on the existence of bias evoked by brands. Smokers are characterized by high levels of brand loyalty and everyday contact with cigarette packaging. Using the incentive-salience mechanism as a theoretical framework, we hypothesized that this group might exhibit a bias toward the preferred cigarette brand. In our study, a group of smokers (N = 40) performed a dot probe task while their eye movements were recorded. In every trial a pair of pictures was presented – each of them showed a single cigarette pack. The visual properties of stimuli were carefully controlled, so branding information was the key factor affecting subjects’ reactions. For each participant, we compared gaze behavior related to the preferred vs. other brands. The analyses revealed no attentional bias in the early, orienting phase of the stimulus processing and strong differences in maintenance and disengagement. Participants spent more time looking at the preferred cigarettes and saccades starting at the preferred brand location had longer latencies. In sum, our data shows that attentional bias toward brands might be found in situations not involving choice or decision making. These results provide important insights into the mechanisms of formation and maintenance of attentional biases to stimuli of personal relevance and might serve as a first step toward developing new attitude measurement techniques. PMID:28848479

Social and Emotional Learning through a Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility Based After-School Program for Disengaged Middle-School Boys

Science.gov (United States)

Gordon, Barrie; Jacobs, Jenn M.; Wright, Paul M.

2016-01-01

This study examined a long-term afterschool leadership program situated in a Midwestern university town in the US. The activity-based program for boys considered to be disengaged with school and at risk for dropping out of education, was based on the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model. The program curriculum was strongly…

Working memory-driven attention improves spatial resolution: Support for perceptual enhancement.

Science.gov (United States)

Pan, Yi; Luo, Qianying; Cheng, Min

2016-08-01

Previous research has indicated that attention can be biased toward those stimuli matching the contents of working memory and thereby facilitates visual processing at the location of the memory-matching stimuli. However, whether this working memory-driven attentional modulation takes place on early perceptual processes remains unclear. Our present results showed that working memory-driven attention improved identification of a brief Landolt target presented alone in the visual field. Because the suprathreshold target appeared without any external noise added (i.e., no distractors or masks), the results suggest that working memory-driven attention enhances the target signal at early perceptual stages of visual processing. Furthermore, given that performance in the Landolt target identification task indexes spatial resolution, this attentional facilitation indicates that working memory-driven attention can boost early perceptual processing via enhancement of spatial resolution at the attended location.

Role of Resistive Self-Regulatory Efficacy and Moral Disengagement in the Relationship between Values and Aggressiveness in Athletes

OpenAIRE

Albouza Y; d'Arripe-Longueville F; Corrion K

2017-01-01

This study examined whether athletes’ values are related to aggressiveness through self-regulatory mechanisms. Athletes (N=225) completed four questionnaires to assess their values, resistive self-regulatory efficacy, moral disengagement and aggressiveness. The results of structural equation modeling showed a good fit to the data and illustrated that: (a) The status and moral values were indirectly associated with aggressiveness through the mediating roles of resistive self-regulatory efficac...

Two different mechanisms support selective attention at different phases of training.

Science.gov (United States)

Itthipuripat, Sirawaj; Cha, Kexin; Byers, Anna; Serences, John T

2017-06-01

Selective attention supports the prioritized processing of relevant sensory information to facilitate goal-directed behavior. Studies in human subjects demonstrate that attentional gain of cortical responses can sufficiently account for attention-related improvements in behavior. On the other hand, studies using highly trained nonhuman primates suggest that reductions in neural noise can better explain attentional facilitation of behavior. Given the importance of selective information processing in nearly all domains of cognition, we sought to reconcile these competing accounts by testing the hypothesis that extensive behavioral training alters the neural mechanisms that support selective attention. We tested this hypothesis using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure stimulus-evoked visual responses from human subjects while they performed a selective spatial attention task over the course of ~1 month. Early in training, spatial attention led to an increase in the gain of stimulus-evoked visual responses. Gain was apparent within ~100 ms of stimulus onset, and a quantitative model based on signal detection theory (SDT) successfully linked the magnitude of this gain modulation to attention-related improvements in behavior. However, after extensive training, this early attentional gain was eliminated even though there were still substantial attention-related improvements in behavior. Accordingly, the SDT-based model required noise reduction to account for the link between the stimulus-evoked visual responses and attentional modulations of behavior. These findings suggest that training can lead to fundamental changes in the way attention alters the early cortical responses that support selective information processing. Moreover, these data facilitate the translation of results across different species and across experimental procedures that employ different behavioral training regimes.

Two different mechanisms support selective attention at different phases of training

Science.gov (United States)

Cha, Kexin; Byers, Anna; Serences, John T.

2017-01-01

Selective attention supports the prioritized processing of relevant sensory information to facilitate goal-directed behavior. Studies in human subjects demonstrate that attentional gain of cortical responses can sufficiently account for attention-related improvements in behavior. On the other hand, studies using highly trained nonhuman primates suggest that reductions in neural noise can better explain attentional facilitation of behavior. Given the importance of selective information processing in nearly all domains of cognition, we sought to reconcile these competing accounts by testing the hypothesis that extensive behavioral training alters the neural mechanisms that support selective attention. We tested this hypothesis using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure stimulus-evoked visual responses from human subjects while they performed a selective spatial attention task over the course of ~1 month. Early in training, spatial attention led to an increase in the gain of stimulus-evoked visual responses. Gain was apparent within ~100 ms of stimulus onset, and a quantitative model based on signal detection theory (SDT) successfully linked the magnitude of this gain modulation to attention-related improvements in behavior. However, after extensive training, this early attentional gain was eliminated even though there were still substantial attention-related improvements in behavior. Accordingly, the SDT-based model required noise reduction to account for the link between the stimulus-evoked visual responses and attentional modulations of behavior. These findings suggest that training can lead to fundamental changes in the way attention alters the early cortical responses that support selective information processing. Moreover, these data facilitate the translation of results across different species and across experimental procedures that employ different behavioral training regimes. PMID:28654635

Enhanced attention amplifies face adaptation.

Science.gov (United States)

Rhodes, Gillian; Jeffery, Linda; Evangelista, Emma; Ewing, Louise; Peters, Marianne; Taylor, Libby

2011-08-15

Perceptual adaptation not only produces striking perceptual aftereffects, but also enhances coding efficiency and discrimination by calibrating coding mechanisms to prevailing inputs. Attention to simple stimuli increases adaptation, potentially enhancing its functional benefits. Here we show that attention also increases adaptation to faces. In Experiment 1, face identity aftereffects increased when attention to adapting faces was increased using a change detection task. In Experiment 2, figural (distortion) face aftereffects increased when attention was increased using a snap game (detecting immediate repeats) during adaptation. Both were large effects. Contributions of low-level adaptation were reduced using free viewing (both experiments) and a size change between adapt and test faces (Experiment 2). We suggest that attention may enhance adaptation throughout the entire cortical visual pathway, with functional benefits well beyond the immediate advantages of selective processing of potentially important stimuli. These results highlight the potential to facilitate adaptive updating of face-coding mechanisms by strategic deployment of attentional resources. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Memory-Guided Attention: Independent Contributions of the Hippocampus and Striatum

OpenAIRE

Goldfarb, Elizabeth V.; Chun, Marvin M.; Phelps, Elizabeth A.

2016-01-01

Memory can strongly influence how attention is deployed in future encounters. Though memory dependent on the medial temporal lobes has been shown to drive attention, how other memory systems could concurrently and comparably enhance attention is less clear. Here, we demonstrate that both reinforcement learning and context memory facilitate attention in a visual search task. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we dissociate the mechanisms by which these memories guide attention: trial...

Barriers and facilitators of treatment for depression in a latino community: a focus group study.

Science.gov (United States)

Uebelacker, Lisa A; Marootian, Beth A; Pirraglia, Paul A; Primack, Jennifer; Tigue, Patrick M; Haggarty, Ryan; Velazquez, Lavinia; Bowdoin, Jennifer J; Kalibatseva, Zornitsa; Miller, Ivan W

2012-02-01

We conducted focus groups with Latinos enrolled in a Medicaid health plan in order to ask about the barriers to and facilitators of depression treatment in general as well as barriers to participation in depression telephone care management. Telephone care management has been designed for and tested in primary care settings as a way of assisting physicians with caring for their depressed patients. It consists of regular brief contacts between the care manager and the patient; the care manager educates, tracks, and monitors patients with depression, coordinates care between the patient and primary care physician, and may provide short-term psychotherapy. We conducted qualitative analyses of four focus groups (n = 30 participants) composed of Latinos who endorsed having been depressed themselves or having had a close friend or family member with depression, stress, nervios, or worries. Within the area of barriers and facilitators of receiving care for depression, we identified the following themes: vulnerability, social connection and engagement, language, culture, insurance/money, stigma, disengagement, information, and family. Participants discussed attitudes toward: importance of seeking help for depression, specific types of treatments, healthcare providers, continuity and coordination of care, and phone calls. Improved understanding of barriers and facilitators of depression treatment in general and depression care management in particular for Latinos enrolled in Medicaid should lead to interventions better able to meet the needs of this particular group.

Attentional bias and emotional reactivity as predictors and moderators of behavioral treatment for social phobia.

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Niles, Andrea N; Mesri, Bita; Burklund, Lisa J; Lieberman, Matthew D; Craske, Michelle G

2013-10-01

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a well-established treatment for anxiety disorders, and evidence is accruing for the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Little is known about factors that relate to treatment outcome overall (predictors), or who will thrive in each treatment (moderators). The goal of the current project was to test attentional bias and negative emotional reactivity as moderators and predictors of treatment outcome in a randomized controlled trial comparing CBT and ACT for social phobia. Forty-six patients received 12 sessions of CBT or ACT and were assessed for self-reported and clinician-rated symptoms at baseline, post treatment, 6, and 12 months. Attentional bias significantly moderated the relationship between treatment group and outcome with patients slow to disengage from threatening stimuli showing greater clinician-rated symptom reduction in CBT than in ACT. Negative emotional reactivity, but not positive emotional reactivity, was a significant overall predictor with patients high in negative emotional reactivity showing the greatest self-reported symptom reduction. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The impact of red light running camera flashes on younger and older drivers' attention and oculomotor control.

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Wright, Timothy J; Vitale, Thomas; Boot, Walter R; Charness, Neil

2015-12-01

Recent empirical evidence has suggested that the flashes associated with red light running cameras (RLRCs) distract younger drivers, pulling attention away from the roadway and delaying processing of safety-relevant events. Considering the perceptual and attentional declines that occur with age, older drivers may be especially susceptible to the distracting effects of RLRC flashes, particularly in situations in which the flash is more salient (a bright flash at night compared with the day). The current study examined how age and situational factors potentially influence attention capture by RLRC flashes using covert (cuing effects) and overt (eye movement) indices of capture. We manipulated the salience of the flash by varying its luminance and contrast with respect to the background of the driving scene (either day or night scenes). Results of 2 experiments suggest that simulated RLRC flashes capture observers' attention, but, surprisingly, no age differences in capture were observed. However, an analysis examining early and late eye movements revealed that older adults may have been strategically delaying their eye movements in order to avoid capture. Additionally, older adults took longer to disengage attention following capture, suggesting at least 1 age-related disadvantage in capture situations. Findings have theoretical implications for understanding age differences in attention capture, especially with respect to capture in real-world scenes, and inform future work that should examine how the distracting effects of RLRC flashes influence driver behavior. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

The Influence of Selective and Divided Attention on Audiovisual Integration in Children.

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Yang, Weiping; Ren, Yanna; Yang, Dan Ou; Yuan, Xue; Wu, Jinglong

2016-01-24

This article aims to investigate whether there is a difference in audiovisual integration in school-aged children (aged 6 to 13 years; mean age = 9.9 years) between the selective attention condition and divided attention condition. We designed a visual and/or auditory detection task that included three blocks (divided attention, visual-selective attention, and auditory-selective attention). The results showed that the response to bimodal audiovisual stimuli was faster than to unimodal auditory or visual stimuli under both divided attention and auditory-selective attention conditions. However, in the visual-selective attention condition, no significant difference was found between the unimodal visual and bimodal audiovisual stimuli in response speed. Moreover, audiovisual behavioral facilitation effects were compared between divided attention and selective attention (auditory or visual attention). In doing so, we found that audiovisual behavioral facilitation was significantly difference between divided attention and selective attention. The results indicated that audiovisual integration was stronger in the divided attention condition than that in the selective attention condition in children. Our findings objectively support the notion that attention can modulate audiovisual integration in school-aged children. Our study might offer a new perspective for identifying children with conditions that are associated with sustained attention deficit, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. © The Author(s) 2016.

父母控制对初中生网络欺负的影响:道德推脱的中介作用%Effect of Parental Control on Cyber-bullying in Adolescents:The Mediating Role of Moral Disengagement

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

范翠英; 张孟; 何丹

2017-01-01

Objective:To explore the relationship between parental control,moral disengagement and cyber-bullying,as well as its inner mechanism in junior school students.Methods:538 junior school students anonymously completed the Parental Control Questionnaire,Moral Disengagement Questionnaire,and cyber-bullying Inventory.Results:①Parental behavioral control was negatively correlated with moral disengagement and cyber-bullying;while parental psychological control was positively correlated with moral disengagement and cyber-bullying.②Moral disengagement mediated the relationship between the two kinds of parental control and cyber-bullying.Conclusion:Parental behavioral control and psychological control had different effects on cyberbullying in adolescents,which were both mediated by the moral disengagement.%目的:探讨父母控制、道德推脱与初中生网络欺负之间的关系及其内在作用机制.方法:使用父母控制问卷、道德推脱问卷和网络欺负问卷对538名初中生进行施测.结果:①父母行为控制与初中生道德推脱和网络欺负呈显著负相关;父母心理控制与初中生道德推脱和网络欺负呈显著正相关;②父母行为控制和心理控制均可通过道德推脱的中介作用对初中生网络欺负产生影响.结论:虽然父母行为控制和心理控制对初中生网络欺负的影响不同,但道德推脱在其关系中均起部分中介作用.

Attention Matters: Pitch vs. Pattern Processing in Adolescence

OpenAIRE

Sussman, Elyse S.

2013-01-01

From the moment we wake up, we are flooded with more sensory inputs than we can possibly process. Selective attention mechanisms serve to limit the sensory onslaught, while facilitating the ability to perform everyday tasks. However, not much is known about the typical development of selective attention mechanisms during childhood even though impairments of attention are commonly noted in neurodevelopmental disorders. The current study focuses on a transitional time in child development, adol...

Increase in posterior alpha activity during rehearsal predicts successful long-term memory formation of word sequences.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meeuwissen, E.B.; Takashima, A.; Fernandez, G.S.E.; Jensen, O.

2011-01-01

It is becoming increasingly clear that demanding cognitive tasks rely on an extended network engaging task-relevant areas and, importantly, disengaging task-irrelevant areas. Given that alpha activity (8-12 Hz) has been shown to reflect the disengagement of task-irrelevant regions in attention and

Selective attention to emotional pictures as a function of gambling motives in problem and nonproblem gamblers.

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Hudson, Amanda; Jacques, Sophie; Stewart, Sherry H

2013-12-01

Problem gambling may reflect a maladaptive means of fulfilling specific affect-regulation motives, such as enhancing positive affect or coping with negative affect. Research with clinical populations indicates that disorders with prominent affective symptoms are characterized by attentional biases for symptom-congruent information. Thus, we assessed whether problem gamblers with enhancement motives for gambling would demonstrate attentional biases for positive emotional information, relative to other types of emotional information, and problem gamblers with coping motives for gambling would demonstrate attentional biases for negative emotional information, compared with other types of emotional information. In addition, we expected motive-congruent biases to be stronger in problem gamblers than nonproblem gamblers. To test these hypotheses, problem and nonproblem gamblers received an emotional orienting task in which neutral, negative, and positive pictorial cues appeared to one side of the computer screen, followed by target words in cued or uncued locations. In a look-away condition, participants had to shift attention away from pictures to respond to predominantly uncued targets, whereas in a look-toward condition, they had to orient to pictures to categorize predominantly cued targets. The results revealed motive-congruent orienting biases and disengagement lags for emotional pictures in problem gamblers. The link between motives and affective biases was less apparent in nonproblem gamblers. Results suggest that attentional measures may provide a useful complement to the subjective methodologies that are typically employed in studying problem gamblers. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Language policy and the disengagement of the international academic elite

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John Harbord

2018-02-01

Full Text Available This paper explores the phenomena of academic multiliteracy (the habit of writing academically in more than one language and of L2 monoliteracy (that of only writing academically in a language that is not one’s own and their impact on policy. Based on interviews and surveys conducted with 33 multiliterate and 15 L2 monoliterate scholars connected to one university in Central Europe between 2010 and 2014, I show how incentives to publish in English constructed by educational policies often push ambitious young researchers whose first language is not English away from engaging in academic and societal debates in their first language community. They may thus disengage from the national community, with negative consequences for the interaction between global and local that is essential for good governance. To overcome the difficulty young scholars encounter in writing in their native languages, they should be taught writing both in their native language and in English. Furthermore, university and state policies should reward scholars for writing not only for the international community but also for local society.

Glucose enhancement of event-related potentials associated with episodic memory and attention.

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Brown, Louise A; Riby, Leigh M

2013-04-30

Previous studies have reported that increasing glycaemia by a glucose-containing drink enhances memory functioning. The aim of the present study was to extend this literature by examining the effects of glucose on episodic memory as well as attention processes, and to investigate associated event-related potential (ERP) markers. Fifteen minutes after treatment (25 g glucose or placebo drink), 35 participants performed an old/new recognition memory task and a Stroop colour naming task. Consistent with previous research, when controlling for glucose regulation, cognitive facilitation was observed behaviourally for verbal memory, but there was also a trend towards attentional facilitation. Furthermore, across both domains, it was the most demanding task conditions that exhibited glucose sensitivity. In support of the behavioural results, the analysis of ERPs across treatment groups revealed an enhanced left-parietal old/new effect related to recollection, and also suggested modulation of attentional processes. The results suggest that glucose may facilitate attention as well as memory.

Effects of attention bias modification with short and long stimulus-duration: A randomized experiment with individuals with subclinical social anxiety.

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Liang, Chi-Wen; Hsu, Wen-Yau

2016-06-30

This study investigated the differential effects of two attention bias modification (ABM) with different stimulus durations. Seventy-two undergraduates with subclinical social anxiety were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: an ABM condition with either a 100-ms or a 500-ms stimulus duration (ABM-100/ ABM-500) or an attention placebo (AP) condition with either a 100-ms or a 500-ms stimulus duration (AP-100/ AP-500). Participants completed the pre-assessments, eight attentional training sessions, and post-assessments. A modified Posner paradigm was used to assess changes in attentional processing. After completion of attentional training, the ABM-100 group significantly speeded up their responses to 100-ms invalid trials, regardless of the word type. The ABM-100 group also exhibited significant reduced latencies to 500-ms invalid social threat trials and a marginally significant reduced latencies to 500-ms invalid neutral trials. The ABM-500 group showed significant reduced latencies to 500-ms invalid social threat trials. Both ABMs significantly reduced participants' fear of negative evaluations and interactional anxiousness relative to their comparative AP. The effects on social anxiety did not differ between the two ABMs. This study suggests that although both ABMs using short and long stimulus durations reduce some aspects of social anxiety, they influence participants' attentional disengagement in different ways. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Grasp cueing and joint attention.

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Tschentscher, Nadja; Fischer, Martin H

2008-10-01

We studied how two different hand posture cues affect joint attention in normal observers. Visual targets appeared over lateralized objects, with different delays after centrally presented hand postures. Attention was cued by either hand direction or the congruency between hand aperture and object size. Participants pressed a button when they detected a target. Direction cues alone facilitated target detection following short delays but aperture cues alone were ineffective. In contrast, when hand postures combined direction and aperture cues, aperture congruency effects without directional congruency effects emerged and persisted, but only for power grips. These results suggest that parallel parameter specification makes joint attention mechanisms exquisitely sensitive to the timing and content of contextual cues.

Independent effects of endogenous and exogenous attention in touch.

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Jones, Alexander; Forster, Bettina

2013-12-01

Endogenous and exogenous attention in touch have typically been investigated separately. Here we use a double-cueing paradigm manipulating both types of orienting in each trial. Bilateral endogenous cues induced long-lasting facilitation of endogenous attention up to 2 s. However, the exogenous cue only elicited an effect at short intervals. Our results favour a supramodal account of attention and this study provides new insight into how endogenous and exogenous attention operates in the tactile modality.

A novel approach to training attention and gaze in ASD: A feasibility and efficacy pilot study.

Science.gov (United States)

Chukoskie, Leanne; Westerfield, Marissa; Townsend, Jeanne

2018-05-01

In addition to the social, communicative and behavioral symptoms that define the disorder, individuals with ASD have difficulty re-orienting attention quickly and accurately. Similarly, fast re-orienting saccadic eye movements are also inaccurate and more variable in both endpoint and timing. Atypical gaze and attention are among the earliest symptoms observed in ASD. Disruption of these foundation skills critically affects the development of higher level cognitive and social behavior. We propose that interventions aimed at these early deficits that support social and cognitive skills will be broadly effective. We conducted a pilot clinical trial designed to demonstrate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of using gaze-contingent video games for low-cost in-home training of attention and eye movement. Eight adolescents with ASD participated in an 8-week training, with pre-, mid- and post-testing of eye movement and attention control. Six of the eight adolescents completed the 8 weeks of training and all six showed improvement in attention (orienting, disengagement) and eye movement control or both. All game systems remained intact for the duration of training and all participants could use the system independently. We delivered a robust, low-cost, gaze-contingent game system for home use that, in our pilot training sample, improved the attention orienting and eye movement performance of adolescent participants in 8 weeks of training. We are currently conducting a clinical trial to replicate these results and to examine what, if any, aspects of training transfer to more real-world tasks. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 78: 546-554, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Increase in posterior alpha activity during rehearsal predicts successful long-term memory formation of word sequences

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meeuwissen, E.B.; Takashima, A.; Fernandez, G.S.E.; Jensen, O.

2011-01-01

It is becoming increasingly clear that demanding cognitive tasks rely on an extended network engaging task-relevant areas and, importantly, disengaging task-irrelevant areas. Given that alpha activity (8–12 Hz) has been shown to reflect the disengagement of task-irrelevant regions in attention and

Cognitive processes facilitated by contextual cueing: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

Science.gov (United States)

Schankin, Andrea; Schubö, Anna

2009-05-01

Finding a target in repeated search displays is faster than finding the same target in novel ones (contextual cueing). It is assumed that the visual context (the arrangement of the distracting objects) is used to guide attention efficiently to the target location. Alternatively, other factors, e.g., facilitation in early visual processing or in response selection, may play a role as well. In a contextual cueing experiment, participant's electrophysiological brain activity was recorded. Participants identified the target faster and more accurately in repeatedly presented displays. In this condition, the N2pc, a component reflecting the allocation of visual-spatial attention, was enhanced, indicating that attention was allocated more efficiently to those targets. However, also response-related processes, reflected by the LRP, were facilitated, indicating that guidance of attention cannot account for the entire contextual cueing benefit.

The impact of social threat cues on a card sorting task with attentional-shifting demands.

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Mohlman, Jan; DeVito, Alyssa

2017-12-01

The current study investigated social anxiety and attentional control using two versions of a task designed to tap intentional shifting of attention and set switching: the standard Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST; Heaton, 1981) and a modified version that included emotionally salient pictorial stimuli, the Emotional Faces Card Sorting Test (EFCST). A Group (lower-, higher-SPS) by Condition (WCST, EFCST) by Sorting Rule (color, form, number) interaction was expected in which the higher-SPS EFCST group would have worse overall performance and make more perseverative errors than the other groups. No differences were predicted on nonperseverative errors, which are typically caused by brief attentional lapses. Participants were 80 undergraduate students who scored in the upper and lower quartile of the distribution on the Social Phobia Scale (SPS; Mattick & Clarke, 1998) were randomly assigned to complete either the WCST or EFCST. On the WCST, the higher-SPS group showed performance similar to that of the lower-SPS group. On the EFCST, the higher-SPS group evidenced more perseverative errors in the condition that depicted angry faces. Interpretations based on a non-clinical sample limit the generalisability of the conclusions. Reliability of this new measure has yet to be established. Successful completion of the WCST requires more than set-shifting processes. These results suggest that the higher-SPS group in the EFCST condition might have had trouble disengaging attention from threat-related cues, despite ongoing corrective feedback. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Effects of Psychological Attention on Pronoun Comprehension

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Arnold, Jennifer E.; Lao, Shin-Yi C.

2015-01-01

Pronoun comprehension is facilitated for referents that are focused in the discourse context. Discourse focus has been described as a function of attention, especially shared attention, but few studies have explicitly tested this idea. Two experiments used an exogenous capture cue paradigm to demonstrate that listeners’ visual attention at the onset of a story influences their preferences during pronoun resolution later in the story. In both experiments trial-initial attention modulated listeners’ transitory biases while considering referents for the pronoun, whether it was in response to the capture cue or not. These biases even had a small influence on listeners’ final interpretation of the pronoun. These results provide independently-motivated evidence that the listener’s attention influences the on-line processes of pronoun comprehension. Trial-initial attentional shifts were made on the basis of non-shared, private information, demonstrating that attentional effects on pronoun comprehension are not restricted to shared attention among interlocutors. PMID:26191533

Attention and Facilitation: Converging Information Versus Inadvertent Reading in Stroop Task Performance

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Roelofs, A.P.A.

2010-01-01

Disagreement exists about whether color-word Stroop facilitation is caused by converging information (e.g.. Cohen et al.. 1990: Roelofs, 2003) or inadvertent reading (MacLeod & MacDonald, 2000). Four experiments tested between these hypotheses by examining Stroop effects oil response time (RT) both

Attentional Control Buffers the Effect of Public Speaking Anxiety on Performance.

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Jones, Christopher R; Fazio, Russell H; Vasey, Michael W

2012-09-01

We explored dispositional differences in the ability to self-regulate attentional processes in the domain of public speaking. Participants first completed measures of speech anxiety and attentional control. In a second session, participants prepared and performed a short speech. Fear of public speaking negatively impacted performance only for those low in attentional control. Thus, attentional control appears to act as a buffer that facilitates successful self-regulation despite performance anxiety.

Sustained attention to objects' motion sharpens position representations: Attention to changing position and attention to motion are distinct.

Science.gov (United States)

Howard, Christina J; Rollings, Victoria; Hardie, Amy

2017-06-01

In tasks where people monitor moving objects, such the multiple object tracking task (MOT), observers attempt to keep track of targets as they move amongst distracters. The literature is mixed as to whether observers make use of motion information to facilitate performance. We sought to address this by two means: first by superimposing arrows on objects which varied in their informativeness about motion direction and second by asking observers to attend to motion direction. Using a position monitoring task, we calculated mean error magnitudes as a measure of the precision with which target positions are represented. We also calculated perceptual lags versus extrapolated reports, which are the times at which positions of targets best match position reports. We find that the presence of motion information in the form of superimposed arrows made no difference to position report precision nor perceptual lag. However, when we explicitly instructed observers to attend to motion, we saw facilitatory effects on position reports and in some cases reports that best matched extrapolated rather than lagging positions for small set sizes. The results indicate that attention to changing positions does not automatically recruit attention to motion, showing a dissociation between sustained attention to changing positions and attention to motion. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neural correlates of endogenous attention, exogenous attention and inhibition of return in touch.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Alexander; Forster, Bettina

2014-07-01

Selective attention helps process the myriad of information constantly touching our body. Both endogenous and exogenous mechanisms are relied upon to effectively process this information; however, it is unclear how they relate in the sense of touch. In three tasks we contrasted endogenous and exogenous event-related potential (ERP) and behavioural effects. Unilateral tactile cues were followed by a tactile target at the same or opposite hand. Clear behavioural effects showed facilitation of expected targets both when the cue predicted targets at the same (endogenous predictive task) and opposite hand (endogenous counter-predictive task), and these effects also correlated with ERP effects of endogenous attention. In an exogenous task, where the cue was non-informative, inhibition of return (IOR) was observed. The electrophysiological results demonstrated early effects of exogenous attention followed by later endogenous attention modulations. These effects were independent in both the endogenous predictive and exogenous tasks. However, voluntarily directing attention away from a cued body part influenced the early exogenous marker (N80). This suggests that the two mechanisms are interdependent, at least when the task requires more demanding shifts of attention. The early marker of exogenous tactile attention, the N80, was not directly related to IOR, which may suggest that exogenous attention and IOR are not necessarily two sides of the same coin. This study adds valuable new insight into how we process and select information presented to our body, showing both independent and interdependent effects of endogenous and exogenous attention in touch. © 2014 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Moral Disengagement Mechanisms and Armed Violence. A Comparative Study of Paramilitaries and Guerrillas in Colombia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

María Cristina Villegas de Posada

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Moral disengagement mechanisms are strategies to make immoral actions appear moral. This study explores their us-age by two Colombian illegal armed groups (guerrillas and paramilitaries, as well as differences between the groups. The analysis covered 367 communiqués issued in 55 months. A deductive content analysis revealed that the most used mechanisms were: attribution of blame, euphemistic labeling, moral justification and labeling with undesirable names. Results showed differences between groups only in the number of press releases, but not in frequency or type of the mechanisms used. The findings are analyzed in the discussion section in relation to the theory of dissonance, extreme violence and motives for joining illegal armed groups.

Attention modulates trans-saccadic integration.

Science.gov (United States)

Stewart, Emma E M; Schütz, Alexander C

2018-01-01

With every saccade, humans must reconcile the low resolution peripheral information available before a saccade, with the high resolution foveal information acquired after the saccade. While research has shown that we are able to integrate peripheral and foveal vision in a near-optimal manner, it is still unclear which mechanisms may underpin this important perceptual process. One potential mechanism that may moderate this integration process is visual attention. Pre-saccadic attention is a well documented phenomenon, whereby visual attention shifts to the location of an upcoming saccade before the saccade is executed. While it plays an important role in other peri-saccadic processes such as predictive remapping, the role of attention in the integration process is as yet unknown. This study aimed to determine whether the presentation of an attentional distractor during a saccade impaired trans-saccadic integration, and to measure the time-course of this impairment. Results showed that presenting an attentional distractor impaired integration performance both before saccade onset, and during the saccade, in selected subjects who showed integration in the absence of a distractor. This suggests that visual attention may be a mechanism that facilitates trans-saccadic integration. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Evidence for Intact Memory-Guided Attention in School-Aged Children

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Dixon, Matthew L.; Zelazo, Philip David; De Rosa, Eve

2010-01-01

Visual scenes contain many statistical regularities such as the likely identity and location of objects that are present; with experience, such regularities can be encoded and can ultimately facilitate the deployment of spatial attention to important locations. Memory-guided attention has been extensively examined in adults with the "contextual…

Attention and Facilitation: Converging Information versus Inadvertent Reading in Stroop Task Performance

Science.gov (United States)

Roelofs, Ardi

2010-01-01

Disagreement exists about whether color-word Stroop facilitation is caused by converging information (e.g., Cohen et al., 1990; Roelofs, 2003) or inadvertent reading (MacLeod & MacDonald, 2000). Four experiments tested between these hypotheses by examining Stroop effects on response time (RT) both within and between languages. Words cannot be…

A centrosome-autonomous signal that involves centriole disengagement permits centrosome duplication in G2 phase after DNA damage.

LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

2010-11-15

DNA damage can induce centrosome overduplication in a manner that requires G2-to-M checkpoint function, suggesting that genotoxic stress can decouple the centrosome and chromosome cycles. How this happens is unclear. Using live-cell imaging of cells that express fluorescently tagged NEDD1\\/GCP-WD and proliferating cell nuclear antigen, we found that ionizing radiation (IR)-induced centrosome amplification can occur outside S phase. Analysis of synchronized populations showed that significantly more centrosome amplification occurred after irradiation of G2-enriched populations compared with G1-enriched or asynchronous cells, consistent with G2 phase centrosome amplification. Irradiated and control populations of G2 cells were then fused to test whether centrosome overduplication is allowed through a diffusible stimulatory signal, or the loss of a duplication-inhibiting signal. Irradiated G2\\/irradiated G2 cell fusions showed significantly higher centrosome amplification levels than irradiated G2\\/unirradiated G2 fusions. Chicken-human cell fusions demonstrated that centrosome amplification was limited to the irradiated partner. Our finding that only the irradiated centrosome can duplicate supports a model where a centrosome-autonomous inhibitory signal is lost upon irradiation of G2 cells. We observed centriole disengagement after irradiation. Although overexpression of dominant-negative securin did not affect IR-induced centrosome amplification, Plk1 inhibition reduced radiation-induced amplification. Together, our data support centriole disengagement as a licensing signal for DNA damage-induced centrosome amplification.

Investigating the time course of tactile reflexive attention using a non-spatial discrimination task.

Science.gov (United States)

Miles, Eleanor; Poliakoff, Ellen; Brown, Richard J

2008-06-01

Peripheral cues are thought to facilitate responses to stimuli presented at the same location because they lead to exogenous attention shifts. Facilitation has been observed in numerous studies of visual and auditory attention, but there have been only four demonstrations of tactile facilitation, all in studies with potential confounds. Three studies used a spatial (finger versus thumb) discrimination task, where the cue could have provided a spatial framework that might have assisted the discrimination of subsequent targets presented on the same side as the cue. The final study circumvented this problem by using a non-spatial discrimination; however, the cues were informative and interspersed with visual cues which may have affected the attentional effects observed. In the current study, therefore, we used a non-spatial tactile frequency discrimination task following a non-informative tactile white noise cue. When the target was presented 150 ms after the cue, we observed faster discrimination responses to targets presented on the same side compared to the opposite side as the cue; by 1000 ms, responses were significantly faster to targets presented on the opposite side to the cue. Thus, we demonstrated that tactile attentional facilitation can be observed in a non-spatial discrimination task, under unimodal conditions and with entirely non-predictive cues. Furthermore, we provide the first demonstration of significant tactile facilitation and tactile inhibition of return within a single experiment.

A Primitive Memory System for Attention Deployments: Some Recent Challenges and Their Resolution

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Árni Kristjánsson

2011-05-01

Full Text Available In the past my colleagues and I have presented evidence for the existence of a primitive memory for attention deployments. This memory system orients attention to features and locations of recent behavioral importance. A large part of the proposal is that the memory system facilitates attentional selection of features in the environment such as color, orientation, etc. I will review the findings behind these proposals. The bulk of this evidence comes from studies of history effects in vision, such as priming of visual search, and implicit learning in exogenously cued attention shifts. In addition, recent challenges to this view will be discussed (in particular, arguments that the facilitation from repetition in visual search tasks occurs at a relatively late stage of perceptual processing. Our recent investigations of these proposals suggest that there is indeed evidence for higher-level priming effects in visual search under certain conditions, but those findings do not challenge the basic proposals regarding the primitive memory system, since the evidence for feature-specific facilitation is robust.

Memory-guided attention during active viewing of edited dynamic scenes.

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Valuch, Christian; König, Peter; Ansorge, Ulrich

2017-01-01

Films, TV shows, and other edited dynamic scenes contain many cuts, which are abrupt transitions from one video shot to the next. Cuts occur within or between scenes, and often join together visually and semantically related shots. Here, we tested to which degree memory for the visual features of the precut shot facilitates shifting attention to the postcut shot. We manipulated visual similarity across cuts, and measured how this affected covert attention (Experiment 1) and overt attention (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiments 1 and 2, participants actively viewed a target movie that randomly switched locations with a second, distractor movie at the time of the cuts. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were able to deploy attention more rapidly and accurately to the target movie's continuation when visual similarity was high than when it was low. Experiment 3 tested whether this could be explained by stimulus-driven (bottom-up) priming by feature similarity, using one clip at screen center that was followed by two alternative continuations to the left and right. Here, even the highest similarity across cuts did not capture attention. We conclude that following cuts of high visual similarity, memory-guided attention facilitates the deployment of attention, but this effect is (top-down) dependent on the viewer's active matching of scene content across cuts.

The effect of offset cues on saccade programming and covert attention.

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Smith, Daniel T; Casteau, Soazig

2018-02-01

Salient peripheral events trigger fast, "exogenous" covert orienting. The influential premotor theory of attention argues that covert orienting of attention depends upon planned but unexecuted eye-movements. One problem with this theory is that salient peripheral events, such as offsets, appear to summon attention when used to measure covert attention (e.g., the Posner cueing task) but appear not to elicit oculomotor preparation in tasks that require overt orienting (e.g., the remote distractor paradigm). Here, we examined the effects of peripheral offsets on covert attention and saccade preparation. Experiment 1 suggested that transient offsets summoned attention in a manual detection task without triggering motor preparation planning in a saccadic localisation task, although there were a high proportion of saccadic capture errors on "no-target" trials, where a cue was presented but no target appeared. In Experiment 2, "no-target" trials were removed. Here, transient offsets produced both attentional facilitation and faster saccadic responses on valid cue trials. A third experiment showed that the permanent disappearance of an object also elicited attentional facilitation and faster saccadic reaction times. These experiments demonstrate that offsets trigger both saccade programming and covert attentional orienting, consistent with the idea that exogenous, covert orienting is tightly coupled with oculomotor activation. The finding that no-go trials attenuates oculomotor priming effects offers a way to reconcile the current findings with previous claims of a dissociation between covert attention and oculomotor control in paradigms that utilise a high proportion of catch trials.

Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies.

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Pornari, Chrisa D; Wood, Jane

2010-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between cognitive mechanisms, applied by people to rationalize and justify harmful acts, and engagement in traditional peer and cyber aggression among school children. We examined the contribution of moral disengagement (MD), hostile attribution bias, and outcome expectancies, and we further explored the individual contribution of each MD mechanism. Our aim was to identify shared and unique cognitive factors of the two forms of aggression. Three hundred and thirty-nine secondary school children completed self-report measures that assessed MD, hostile attribution bias, outcome expectancies, and their roles and involvement in traditional and cyber aggression. We found that the MD total score positively related to both forms of peer-directed aggression. Furthermore, traditional peer aggression positively related to children's moral justification, euphemistic language, displacement of responsibility and outcome expectancies, and negatively associated with hostile attribution bias. Moral justification also related positively to cyber aggression. Cyber aggression and cyber victimization were associated with high levels of traditional peer aggression and victimization, respectively. The results suggest that MD is a common feature of both traditional and cyber peer aggression, but it seems that traditional forms of aggression demand a higher level of rationalization or justification. Moreover, the data suggest that the expectation of positive outcomes from harmful behavior facilitates engagement in traditional peer aggression. The differential contribution of specific cognitive mechanisms indicates the need for future research to elaborate on the current findings, in order to advance theory and inform existing and future school interventions tackling aggression and bullying. (c) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

A collective perspective: shared attention and the mind.

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Shteynberg, Garriy

2017-12-29

I review the recent literature on shared attention, instances in which one's personal perspective is also another's. As described by Shteynberg [6 •• ], shared attention involves the activation of a psychological perspective that is personal and plural and irreducibly collective-a perspective in which the world is experienced from 'our attention'. When shared attention is perceived, information under shared attention receives deeper cognitive processing. By updating mutual knowledge, shared attention facilitates communication and, quite possibly, the creation of shared attitudes and beliefs. In this review, I focus on the last 5 years of empirical work detailing the cognitive and affective consequences of shared attention. I also highlight empirical work on the relevance of shared attention to pragmatically important challenges, such as the polarizing effects of social and mass media consumption, as well as the cognitive mechanisms behind autism-like traits. In all, the findings underscore the possibility that shared attention is a basic psychological building block of human sociality-a capacity to act collectively with others who share one's reality. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neural correlates of endogenous attention, exogenous attention and inhibition of return in touch

OpenAIRE

Jones, A.; Forster, B.

2014-01-01

Selective attention helps process the myriad of information constantly touching our body. Both endogenous and exogenous mechanisms are relied upon to effectively process this information; however, it is unclear how they relate in the sense of touch. In three tasks we contrasted endogenous and exogenous event-related potential (ERP) and behavioural effects. Unilateral tactile cues were followed by a tactile target at the same or opposite hand. Clear behavioural effects showed facilitation of e...

Women’s disengagement from legal proceedings for intimate partner violence: Sociodemographic and psychological variables

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María Jesús Cala

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of this study is to shed light on what makes women decide whether or not to continue with legal proceedings for intimate partner violence once they have commenced. Legal professionals, members of the police force, and women in Spain were interviewed to help draft a questionnaire that was applied to a sample of 345 women who had undertaken legal proceedings against their (expartners. Socio-demographic, emotional, and psychological variables were considered as possible predictor variables and included in a logistic regression analysis. Results show that the best equation for predicting disengagement from legal procedures includes the level of support received by the victim, contact with the aggressor, thoughts about going back with the aggressor, and a feeling of guilt. The essential role of the psychological support during the legal process is emphasized in conclusions

Visual working memory simultaneously guides facilitation and inhibition during visual search.

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Dube, Blaire; Basciano, April; Emrich, Stephen M; Al-Aidroos, Naseem

2016-07-01

During visual search, visual working memory (VWM) supports the guidance of attention in two ways: It stores the identity of the search target, facilitating the selection of matching stimuli in the search array, and it maintains a record of the distractors processed during search so that they can be inhibited. In two experiments, we investigated whether the full contents of VWM can be used to support both of these abilities simultaneously. In Experiment 1, participants completed a preview search task in which (a) a subset of search distractors appeared before the remainder of the search items, affording participants the opportunity to inhibit them, and (b) the search target varied from trial to trial, requiring the search target template to be maintained in VWM. We observed the established signature of VWM-based inhibition-reduced ability to ignore previewed distractors when the number of distractors exceeds VWM's capacity-suggesting that VWM can serve this role while also representing the target template. In Experiment 2, we replicated Experiment 1, but added to the search displays a singleton distractor that sometimes matched the color (a task-irrelevant feature) of the search target, to evaluate capture. We again observed the signature of VWM-based preview inhibition along with attentional capture by (and, thus, facilitation of) singletons matching the target template. These findings indicate that more than one VWM representation can bias attention at a time, and that these representations can separately affect selection through either facilitation or inhibition, placing constraints on existing models of the VWM-based guidance of attention.

Facilitating new ways of learning in dutch higher education

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ronald Beckers; Theo van der Voordt

2013-01-01

Literature shows that ‘new ways of learning’ cause a shift in learning settings with a growing attention to facilitating autonomy, interaction and knowledge exploration anytime, anywhere. These trends show evident similarities with developments in office environments known for as ‘new ways of

Facilitating new ways of learning in Dutch higher education

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Beckers, R.; van der Voordt, D.J.M.

2013-01-01

Literature shows that ‘new ways of learning’ cause a shift in learning settings with a growing attention to facilitating autonomy, interaction and knowledge exploration anytime, anywhere. These trends show evident similarities with developments in office environments known for as ‘new ways of

Looking for Creativity: Where do we look when we look for new ideas?

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Carola eSalvi

2016-02-01

Full Text Available Recent work using the eye movement monitoring technique has demonstrated that when people are engaged in thought they tend to disengage from the external world by blinking or fixating on an empty portion of the visual field, such as a blank wall, or out the window at the sky. This ‘looking at nothing’ behavior has been observed during thinking that does not explicitly involve visual imagery (mind wandering, insight in problem solving, memory encoding and search and it is associated with reduced analysis of the external visual environment. Thus, it appears to indicate (and likely facilitate a shift of attention from external to internal stimuli that benefits creativity and problem solving by reducing the cognitive load and enhancing attention to internally evolving activation. We briefly mention some possible reasons to collect eye movement data in future studies of creativity.

Fearful, but not angry, expressions diffuse attention to peripheral targets in an attentional blink paradigm.

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Taylor, James M; Whalen, Paul J

2014-06-01

We previously demonstrated that fearful facial expressions implicitly facilitate memory for contextual events whereas angry facial expressions do not. The current study sought to more directly address the implicit effect of fearful expressions on attention for contextual events within a classic attentional paradigm (i.e., the attentional blink) in which memory is tested on a trial-by-trial basis, thereby providing subjects with a clear, explicit attentional strategy. Neutral faces of a single gender were presented via rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) while bordered by four gray pound signs. Participants were told to watch for a gender change within the sequence (T1). It is critical to note that the T1 face displayed a neutral, fearful, or angry expression. Subjects were then told to detect a color change (i.e., gray to green; T2) at one of the four peripheral pound sign locations appearing after T1. This T2 color change could appear at one of six temporal positions. Complementing previous attentional blink paradigms, participants were told to respond via button press immediately when a T2 target was detected. We found that, compared with the neutral T1 faces, fearful faces significantly increased target detection ability at four of the six temporal locations (all ps enhance environmental monitoring above and beyond explicit attentional effects related to task instructions.

Universal Internet-based prevention for alcohol and cannabis use reduces truancy, psychological distress and moral disengagement: a cluster randomised controlled trial.

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Newton, Nicola C; Andrews, Gavin; Champion, Katrina E; Teesson, Maree

2014-08-01

A universal Internet-based preventive intervention has been shown to reduce alcohol and cannabis use. The aim of this study was to examine if this program could also reduce risk-factors associated with substance use in adolescents. A cluster randomised controlled trial was conducted in Sydney, Australia in 2007-2008 to assess the effectiveness of the Internet-based Climate Schools: Alcohol and Cannabis course. The evidence-based course, aimed at reducing alcohol and cannabis use, consists of two sets of six lessons delivered approximately six months apart. A total of 764 students (mean 13.1years) from 10 secondary schools were randomly allocated to receive the preventive intervention (n=397, five schools), or their usual health classes (n=367, five schools) over the year. Participants were assessed at baseline, immediately post, and six and twelve months following the intervention on their levels of truancy, psychological distress and moral disengagement. Compared to the control group, students in the intervention group showed significant reductions in truancy, psychological distress and moral disengagement up to twelve months following completion of the intervention. These intervention effects indicate that Internet-based preventive interventions designed to prevent alcohol and cannabis use can concurrently reduce risk-factors associated with substance use in adolescents. Australian Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN: 012607000312448. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

No functional role of attention-based rehearsal in maintenance of spatial working memory representations.

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Belopolsky, Artem V; Theeuwes, Jan

2009-10-01

The present study systematically examined the role of attention in maintenance of spatial representations in working memory as proposed by the attention-based rehearsal hypothesis [Awh, E., Jonides, J., & Reuter-Lorenz, P. A. (1998). Rehearsal in spatial working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology--Human Perception and Performance, 24(3), 780-790]. Three main issues were examined. First, Experiments 1-3 demonstrated that inhibition and not facilitation of visual processing is often observed at the memorized location during the retention interval. This inhibition was caused by keeping a location in memory and not by the exogenous nature of the memory cue. Second, Experiment 4 showed that inhibition of the memorized location does not lead to any significant impairment in memory accuracy. Finally, Experiment 5 connected current results to the previous findings and demonstrated facilitation of processing at the memorized location. Importantly, facilitation of processing did not lead to more accurate memory performance. The present results challenge the functional role of attention in maintenance of spatial working memory representations.

Behavioral performance follows the time course of neural facilitation and suppression during cued shifts of feature-selective attention

OpenAIRE

Andersen, S. K.; Müller, M. M.

2010-01-01

A central question in the field of attention is whether visual processing is a strictly limited resource, which must be allocated by selective attention. If this were the case, attentional enhancement of one stimulus should invariably lead to suppression of unattended distracter stimuli. Here we examine voluntary cued shifts of feature-selective attention to either one of two superimposed red or blue random dot kinematograms (RDKs) to test whether such a reciprocal relationship between enhanc...

The effects of advertisement location and familiarity on selective attention.

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Jessen, Tanja Lund; Rodway, Paul

2010-06-01

This study comprised two experiments to examine the distracting effects of advertisement familiarity, location, and onset on the performance of a selective attention task. In Exp. 1, familiar advertisements presented in peripheral vision disrupted selective attention when the attention task was more demanding, suggesting that the distracting effect of advertisements is a product of task demands and advertisement familiarity and location. In Exp. 2, the onset of the advertisement shortly before, or after, the attention task captured attention and disrupted attentional performance. The onset of the advertisement before the attention task reduced target response time without an increase in errors and therefore facilitated performance. Despite being instructed to ignore the advertisements, the participants were able to recall a substantial proportion of the familiar advertisements. Implications for the presentation of advertisements during human-computer interaction were discussed.

Acoustic Noise Alters Selective Attention Processes as Indicated by Direct Current (DC) Brain Potential Changes

OpenAIRE

Trimmel, Karin; Schätzer, Julia; Trimmel, Michael

2014-01-01

Acoustic environmental noise, even of low to moderate intensity, is known to adversely affect information processing in animals and humans via attention mechanisms. In particular, facilitation and inhibition of information processing are basic functions of selective attention. Such mechanisms can be investigated by analyzing brain potentials under conditions of externally directed attention (intake of environmental information) versus internally directed attention (rejection of environmental ...

Long-Term Memory Biases Auditory Spatial Attention

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Zimmermann, Jacqueline F.; Moscovitch, Morris; Alain, Claude

2017-01-01

Long-term memory (LTM) has been shown to bias attention to a previously learned visual target location. Here, we examined whether memory-predicted spatial location can facilitate the detection of a faint pure tone target embedded in real world audio clips (e.g., soundtrack of a restaurant). During an initial familiarization task, participants…

Amygdala lesions in rhesus macaques decrease attention to threat

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Dal Monte, Olga; Costa, Vincent D.; Noble, Pamela L.; Murray, Elisabeth A.; Averbeck, Bruno B.

2015-01-01

Evidence from animal and human studies has suggested that the amygdala plays a role in detecting threat and in directing attention to the eyes. Nevertheless, there has been no systematic investigation of whether the amygdala specifically facilitates attention to the eyes or whether other features can also drive attention via amygdala processing. The goal of the present study was to examine the effects of amygdala lesions in rhesus monkeys on attentional capture by specific facial features, as well as gaze patterns and changes in pupil dilation during free viewing. Here we show reduced attentional capture by threat stimuli, specifically the mouth, and reduced exploration of the eyes in free viewing in monkeys with amygdala lesions. Our findings support a role for the amygdala in detecting threat signals and in directing attention to the eye region of faces when freely viewing different expressions. PMID:26658670

Emotion processing in the criminal psychopath: the role of attention in emotion-facilitated memory.

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Glass, Samantha J; Newman, Joseph P

2009-02-01

The response modulation hypothesis specifies that low-anxious psychopathic individuals have difficulty processing information outside their primary attentional focus. To evaluate the applicability of this model to affective processing, the authors had 239 offenders, classified with the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003) and the Welsh Anxiety Scale (G. Welsh, 1956), perform 1 of 3 emotion memory tasks that examined the effects of emotion on memory for primary and contextual information. Regardless of anxiety level, psychopathic and control offenders demonstrated a significant and comparable memory bias for emotional over neutral words in the primary conditions. However, psychopathic individuals showed significantly less memory bias than did controls in the contextual conditions. Results indicate that the impact of emotion on memory is moderated by attentional factors.

Predictive distractor context facilitates attentional selection of high, but not intermediate and low, salience targets.

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Töllner, Thomas; Conci, Markus; Müller, Hermann J

2015-03-01

It is well established that we can focally attend to a specific region in visual space without shifting our eyes, so as to extract action-relevant sensory information from covertly attended locations. The underlying mechanisms that determine how fast we engage our attentional spotlight in visual-search scenarios, however, remain controversial. One dominant view advocated by perceptual decision-making models holds that the times taken for focal-attentional selection are mediated by an internal template that biases perceptual coding and selection decisions exclusively through target-defining feature coding. This notion directly predicts that search times remain unaffected whether or not participants can anticipate the upcoming distractor context. Here we tested this hypothesis by employing an illusory-figure localization task that required participants to search for an invariant target amongst a variable distractor context, which gradually changed--either randomly or predictably--as a function of distractor-target similarity. We observed a graded decrease in internal focal-attentional selection times--correlated with external behavioral latencies--for distractor contexts of higher relative to lower similarity to the target. Critically, for low but not intermediate and high distractor-target similarity, these context-driven effects were cortically and behaviorally amplified when participants could reliably predict the type of distractors. This interactive pattern demonstrates that search guidance signals can integrate information about distractor, in addition to target, identities to optimize distractor-target competition for focal-attentional selection. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Grounding grammatical categories: attention bias in hand space influences grammatical congruency judgment of Chinese nominal classifiers.

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Lobben, Marit; D'Ascenzo, Stefania

2015-01-01

Embodied cognitive theories predict that linguistic conceptual representations are grounded and continually represented in real world, sensorimotor experiences. However, there is an on-going debate on whether this also holds for abstract concepts. Grammar is the archetype of abstract knowledge, and therefore constitutes a test case against embodied theories of language representation. Former studies have largely focussed on lexical-level embodied representations. In the present study we take the grounding-by-modality idea a step further by using reaction time (RT) data from the linguistic processing of nominal classifiers in Chinese. We take advantage of an independent body of research, which shows that attention in hand space is biased. Specifically, objects near the hand consistently yield shorter RTs as a function of readiness for action on graspable objects within reaching space, and the same biased attention inhibits attentional disengagement. We predicted that this attention bias would equally apply to the graspable object classifier but not to the big object classifier. Chinese speakers (N = 22) judged grammatical congruency of classifier-noun combinations in two conditions: graspable object classifier and big object classifier. We found that RTs for the graspable object classifier were significantly faster in congruent combinations, and significantly slower in incongruent combinations, than the big object classifier. There was no main effect on grammatical violations, but rather an interaction effect of classifier type. Thus, we demonstrate here grammatical category-specific effects pertaining to the semantic content and by extension the visual and tactile modality of acquisition underlying the acquisition of these categories. We conclude that abstract grammatical categories are subjected to the same mechanisms as general cognitive and neurophysiological processes and may therefore be grounded.

The Early Facilitative and Late Contextual Specific Effect of the Color Red on Attentional Processing

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Tao Xia

2018-06-01

Full Text Available Many studies have proved that color represents a variety of emotionally meaningful information. Researchers have proposed that context information endows colors with different associated meanings, and elicits corresponding behavior. Others have contended that the color red intensifies the stimulus’ existing valence or motivation tendency in the early processing step. The present study attempts to incorporate these two effects of the color red to explore their differences in a dot probe task, using event-related potential (ERP. Our ERP results indicate that the color red intensifies the initial attention to emotion-congruent conditions, as indicated by the P1 component. However, the colors red and green lead to sustained attention to the expression of anger and happiness, respectively, but not fear, as shown by the late positive complex component (all results are available at: https://osf.io/k3b8c/. This study found the different processing stages of the effect of the color red during attentional processing in a discrete emotional context, using ERPs, and may refine the Color-in-Context theory.

Effects of attention on dichotic listening: an 15O-PET study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hugdahl, K; Law, I; Kyllingsbæk, Søren

2000-01-01

The present study investigated the effect of attention on brain activation in a dichotic listening situation. Dichotic listening is a technique to study laterality effects in the auditory sensory modality. Two different stimuli were presented simultaneously, one in each ear. Twelve subjects...... areas of Broca and Wernicke. The musical instrument stimuli mainly activated areas in visual association cortex, cerebellum, and the hippocampus. An interpretation of the findings is that attention has a facilitating effect for auditory processing, causing reduced activation in the primary auditory...... cortex when attention is explicitly recruited. The observed activations in the parietal lobe during the focused attention conditions could be part of a modality non-specific "attentional network"....

Cultural-Ecological Theory of Academic Disengagement Used to Explain a Story of Race, Culture and Education.

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Ogunyemi, Boluwaji

2017-01-01

Students of African ancestry often share an experience of being a racialized minority in the context of the educational institution. Late Professor of Anthropology John Ogbu's Cultural-ecological Theory of Academic Disengagement is employed to describe the negative responses encountered by peers in the name of academic achievement. The late Nigerian-American anthropologist John Ogbu described that it is often socially disadvantageous for black youth to prosper academically in formal education. Black students are often seen as betraying their cultural identities by aspiring to academic success and scholastic achievement and are met with repugnance by black peers. The notion of "acting white" is unnecessary, impertinent should be abandoned outright as achievement should have no color. Copyright © 2017 National Medical Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Attention and competition in figure-ground perception.

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Peterson, Mary A; Salvagio, Elizabeth

2009-01-01

What are the roles of attention and competition in determining where objects lie in the visual field, a phenomenon known as figure-ground perception? In this chapter, we review evidence that attention and other high-level factors such as familiarity affect figure-ground perception, and we discuss models that implement these effects. Next, we consider the Biased Competition Model of Attention in which attention is used to resolve the competition for neural representation between two nearby stimuli; in this model the response to the stimulus that loses the competition is suppressed. In the remainder of the chapter we discuss recent behavioral evidence that figure-ground perception entails between-object competition in which the response to the shape of the losing competitor is suppressed. We also describe two experiments testing whether more attention is drawn to resolve greater figure-ground competition, as would be expected if the Biased Competition Model of Attention extends to figure-ground perception. In these experiments we find that responses to targets on the location of a losing strong competitor are slowed, consistent with the idea that the location of the losing competitor is suppressed, but responses to targets on the winning competitor are not speeded, which is inconsistent with the hypothesis that attention is used to resolve figure-ground competition. In closing, we discuss evidence that attention can operate by suppression as well as by facilitation.

Using dual-process theory and analogical transfer to explain facilitation on a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task.

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Koenig, Cynthia S; Platt, Richard D; Griggs, Richard A

2007-07-01

Using the analogical transfer paradigm, the present study investigated the competing explanations of Girotto and Legrenzi (Psychological Research 51: 129-135, 1993) and Griggs, Platt, Newstead, and Jackson (Thinking and Reasoning 4: 1-14, 1998) for facilitation on the SARS version of the THOG problem, a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task. Girotto and Legrenzi argue that facilitation is based on logical analysis of the task [System 2 reasoning in Evans's (Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7: 454-459, 2003) dual-process account of reasoning] while Griggs et al. maintain that facilitation is due to an attentional heuristic produced by the wording of the problem (System 1 reasoning). If Girotto and Legrenzi are correct, then System 2 reasoning, which is volitional and responsible for deductive reasoning, should be elicited, and participants should comprehend the solution principle of the THOG task and exhibit analogical transfer. However, if Griggs et al. are correct, then System 1 reasoning, which is responsible for heuristic problem solving strategies such as an attentional heuristic, should occur, and participants should not abstract the solution principle and transfer should not occur. Significant facilitation (68 and 82% correct) was only observed for the two SARS source problems, but significant analogical transfer did not occur. This lack of transfer suggests that System 1 reasoning was responsible for the facilitation observed in the SARS problem, supporting Griggs et al.'s attentional heuristic explanation. The present results also underscore the explanatory value of using analogical transfer rather than facilitation as the criterion for problem understanding.

Children's Failure in Analogical Reasoning Tasks: A Problem of Focus of Attention and Information Integration?

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Glady, Yannick; French, Robert M; Thibaut, Jean-Pierre

2017-01-01

Children's improved performance with age in analogy tasks has been explained by an increase in semantic knowledge of the items and the relations between them or by the development of an increased ability to inhibit irrelevant information. We tested the so-called "unbalanced attentional focus hypothesis" that claims that a failure to choose the "analogical" match can be the result of a difficulty to focus on all the relevant information available. Previous eye-tracking research has suggested, in analogies of the A:B::C:D format, that 5-6 year-olds organize their search around the C item. They focused significantly less than adults on the A:B pair, thereby hindering their discovering the relation(s) between A and B. We hypothesized that inducing them to focus their attention on the A:B pair at the beginning of the trial would affect their performance. In Experiment 1, increasing children's focus on the A:B pair did, indeed, lead to better performance. In contrast, in Experiment 2, focusing their attention on the A:B pair impaired performance when the most salient relation holding between A and B was, in fact, irrelevant for the analogy. By contrast, the obvious-but-irrelevant relation in the A:B pair had no negative effect on performance when no explicit A:B focusing was induced. These results are discussed in terms of the temporal organization of the task and availability of information, and of children's difficulties to disengage from the main goal of the task, when necessary.

Emotional modulation of attention: fear increases but disgust reduces the attentional blink.

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Nicolas Vermeulen

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: It is well known that facial expressions represent important social cues. In humans expressing facial emotion, fear may be configured to maximize sensory exposure (e.g., increases visual input whereas disgust can reduce sensory exposure (e.g., decreases visual input. To investigate whether such effects also extend to the attentional system, we used the "attentional blink" (AB paradigm. Many studies have documented that the second target (T2 of a pair is typically missed when presented within a time window of about 200-500 ms from the first to-be-detected target (T1; i.e., the AB effect. It has recently been proposed that the AB effect depends on the efficiency of a gating system which facilitates the entrance of relevant input into working memory, while inhibiting irrelevant input. Following the inhibitory response on post T1 distractors, prolonged inhibition of the subsequent T2 is observed. In the present study, we hypothesized that processing facial expressions of emotion would influence this attentional gating. Fearful faces would increase but disgust faces would decrease inhibition of the second target. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We showed that processing fearful versus disgust faces has different effects on these attentional processes. We found that processing fear faces impaired the detection of T2 to a greater extent than did the processing disgust faces. This finding implies emotion-specific modulation of attention. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Based on the recent literature on attention, our finding suggests that processing fear-related stimuli exerts greater inhibitory responses on distractors relative to processing disgust-related stimuli. This finding is of particular interest for researchers examining the influence of emotional processing on attention and memory in both clinical and normal populations. For example, future research could extend upon the current study to examine whether inhibitory processes invoked by

Spatial Attention-Related Modulation of the N170 by Backward Masked Fearful Faces

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Carlson, Joshua M.; Reinke, Karen S.

2010-01-01

Facial expressions are a basic form of non-verbal communication that convey important social information to others. The relevancy of this information is highlighted by findings that backward masked facial expressions facilitate spatial attention. This attention effect appears to be mediated through a neural network consisting of the amygdala,…

Using Highlighting to Train Attentional Expertise.

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Roads, Brett; Mozer, Michael C; Busey, Thomas A

2016-01-01

Acquiring expertise in complex visual tasks is time consuming. To facilitate the efficient training of novices on where to look in these tasks, we propose an attentional highlighting paradigm. Highlighting involves dynamically modulating the saliency of a visual image to guide attention along the fixation path of a domain expert who had previously viewed the same image. In Experiment 1, we trained naive subjects via attentional highlighting on a fingerprint-matching task. Before and after training, we asked subjects to freely inspect images containing pairs of prints and determine whether the prints matched. Fixation sequences were automatically scored for the degree of expertise exhibited using a Bayesian discriminative model of novice and expert gaze behavior. Highlighted training causes gaze behavior to become more expert-like not only on the trained images but also on transfer images, indicating generalization of learning. In Experiment 2, to control for the possibility that the increase in expertise is due to mere exposure, we trained subjects via highlighting of fixation sequences from novices, not experts, and observed no transition toward expertise. In Experiment 3, to determine the specificity of the training effect, we trained subjects with expert fixation sequences from images other than the one being viewed, which preserves coarse-scale statistics of expert gaze but provides no information about fine-grain features. Observing at least a partial transition toward expertise, we obtain only weak evidence that the highlighting procedure facilitates the learning of critical local features. We discuss possible improvements to the highlighting procedure.

Using Highlighting to Train Attentional Expertise.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Brett Roads

Full Text Available Acquiring expertise in complex visual tasks is time consuming. To facilitate the efficient training of novices on where to look in these tasks, we propose an attentional highlighting paradigm. Highlighting involves dynamically modulating the saliency of a visual image to guide attention along the fixation path of a domain expert who had previously viewed the same image. In Experiment 1, we trained naive subjects via attentional highlighting on a fingerprint-matching task. Before and after training, we asked subjects to freely inspect images containing pairs of prints and determine whether the prints matched. Fixation sequences were automatically scored for the degree of expertise exhibited using a Bayesian discriminative model of novice and expert gaze behavior. Highlighted training causes gaze behavior to become more expert-like not only on the trained images but also on transfer images, indicating generalization of learning. In Experiment 2, to control for the possibility that the increase in expertise is due to mere exposure, we trained subjects via highlighting of fixation sequences from novices, not experts, and observed no transition toward expertise. In Experiment 3, to determine the specificity of the training effect, we trained subjects with expert fixation sequences from images other than the one being viewed, which preserves coarse-scale statistics of expert gaze but provides no information about fine-grain features. Observing at least a partial transition toward expertise, we obtain only weak evidence that the highlighting procedure facilitates the learning of critical local features. We discuss possible improvements to the highlighting procedure.

Glucose and the wandering mind: not paying attention or simply out of fuel?

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Birnie, L H W; Smallwood, J; Reay, J; Riby, L M

2015-08-01

The impact of raising glycaemia by ingestion of a glucose drink has revealed cognitive facilitation, particularly for memory and attention. This study aimed to extend current knowledge by examining, for the first time, whether glucose load also moderates task-related (TRT) and task-unrelated thoughts (TUT) during activities that vary in their requirement for sustained attention. A 2 (25 g glucose vs. placebo) × 2 (fast vs. slow version of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART)) repeated measures, counterbalanced design was used with 16 healthy adults. Self-report questionnaires probed participants' levels of TRT and TUT during SART performance. Prior to testing, the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (SIPI) was also administered to help pinpoint the nature of thought processes during the task before and after treatment. Analysis of variance revealed no significant effect of treatment; however, we report a pattern of results that is consistent with glucose facilitation effects on task accuracy for more demanding attention tasks (d = 0.56). Additionally, glucose improved the monitoring and task reflection as measured by TRT (d = 0.33) in the more demanding task but no effect on TUT. Probing the nature of thought processes further, we also report two novel correlations (in the placebo) between fears of failure (indexed by the SIPI) and the number of TUT episodes and perceived poor attention control (indexed by the SIPI) and number of TUT and speculate that glucose may act to buffer against TUT episodes under externally demanding situations. These data extend previous research examining the glucose facilitation effect to the processing of internal thought processes.

Video game play, attention, and learning: how to shape the development of attention and influence learning?

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Cardoso-Leite, Pedro; Bavelier, Daphne

2014-04-01

The notion that play may facilitate learning has long been touted. Here, we review how video game play may be leveraged for enhancing attentional control, allowing greater cognitive flexibility and learning and in turn new routes to better address developmental disorders. Video games, initially developed for entertainment, appear to enhance the behavior in domains as varied as perception, attention, task switching, or mental rotation. This surprisingly wide transfer may be mediated by enhanced attentional control, allowing increased signal-to-noise ratio and thus more informed decisions. The possibility of enhancing attentional control through targeted interventions, be it computerized training or self-regulation techniques, is now well established. Embedding such training in video game play is appealing, given the astounding amount of time spent by children and adults worldwide with this media. It holds the promise of increasing compliance in patients and motivation in school children, and of enhancing the use of positive impact games. Yet for all the promises, existing research indicates that not all games are created equal: a better understanding of the game play elements that foster attention and learning as well as of the strategies developed by the players is needed. Computational models from machine learning or developmental robotics provide a rich theoretical framework to develop this work further and address its impact on developmental disorders.

Children’s Failure in Analogical Reasoning Tasks: A Problem of Focus of Attention and Information Integration?

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Yannick Glady

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Children’s improved performance with age in analogy tasks has been explained by an increase in semantic knowledge of the items and the relations between them or by the development of an increased ability to inhibit irrelevant information. We tested the so-called “unbalanced attentional focus hypothesis” that claims that a failure to choose the “analogical” match can be the result of a difficulty to focus on all the relevant information available. Previous eye-tracking research has suggested, in analogies of the A:B::C:D format, that 5–6 year-olds organize their search around the C item. They focused significantly less than adults on the A:B pair, thereby hindering their discovering the relation(s between A and B. We hypothesized that inducing them to focus their attention on the A:B pair at the beginning of the trial would affect their performance. In Experiment 1, increasing children’s focus on the A:B pair did, indeed, lead to better performance. In contrast, in Experiment 2, focusing their attention on the A:B pair impaired performance when the most salient relation holding between A and B was, in fact, irrelevant for the analogy. By contrast, the obvious-but-irrelevant relation in the A:B pair had no negative effect on performance when no explicit A:B focusing was induced. These results are discussed in terms of the temporal organization of the task and availability of information, and of children’s difficulties to disengage from the main goal of the task, when necessary.

Children’s Failure in Analogical Reasoning Tasks: A Problem of Focus of Attention and Information Integration?

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Glady, Yannick; French, Robert M.; Thibaut, Jean-Pierre

2017-01-01

Children’s improved performance with age in analogy tasks has been explained by an increase in semantic knowledge of the items and the relations between them or by the development of an increased ability to inhibit irrelevant information. We tested the so-called “unbalanced attentional focus hypothesis” that claims that a failure to choose the “analogical” match can be the result of a difficulty to focus on all the relevant information available. Previous eye-tracking research has suggested, in analogies of the A:B::C:D format, that 5–6 year-olds organize their search around the C item. They focused significantly less than adults on the A:B pair, thereby hindering their discovering the relation(s) between A and B. We hypothesized that inducing them to focus their attention on the A:B pair at the beginning of the trial would affect their performance. In Experiment 1, increasing children’s focus on the A:B pair did, indeed, lead to better performance. In contrast, in Experiment 2, focusing their attention on the A:B pair impaired performance when the most salient relation holding between A and B was, in fact, irrelevant for the analogy. By contrast, the obvious-but-irrelevant relation in the A:B pair had no negative effect on performance when no explicit A:B focusing was induced. These results are discussed in terms of the temporal organization of the task and availability of information, and of children’s difficulties to disengage from the main goal of the task, when necessary. PMID:28588516

The profile of attention differs between locations orthogonal to and in line with reach direction.

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Stewart, Emma E M; Ma-Wyatt, Anna

2017-11-01

People make movements in a variety of directions when interacting with the world around them. It has been well documented that attention shifts to the goal of an upcoming movement, whether the movement is a saccade or a reach. However, recent evidence suggests that the direction of a movement may influence the spatial spread of attention (Stewart & Ma-Wyatt, 2015, Journal of Vision, 15(5), 10). We investigated whether the spatiotemporal profile of attention differs depending on where that location is situated relative to the direction of movement, and if this pattern is consistent across different movement effectors. We compared attentional facilitation at locations in line with or orthogonal to the movement, for reach-only, reach-plus-saccade, and saccade-only conditions. Results show that the spatiotemporal profile of attention differs across different movement combinations, and is also different at target locations orthogonal to and in line with the movement direction. Specifically, when a reach alone was made, there was a general decrease in attention at all locations during the movement and a general increase in attention at all locations with a saccade only. However, the concurrent reach and saccade condition showed a premovement attentional facilitation at locations orthogonal to movement direction, but not those in line with the movement direction. These results suggest attentional guidance may be more important at differing time points, depending on the type of movement.

Multisensory brand search: How the meaning of sounds guides consumers' visual attention.

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Knoeferle, Klemens M; Knoeferle, Pia; Velasco, Carlos; Spence, Charles

2016-06-01

Building on models of crossmodal attention, the present research proposes that brand search is inherently multisensory, in that the consumers' visual search for a specific brand can be facilitated by semantically related stimuli that are presented in another sensory modality. A series of 5 experiments demonstrates that the presentation of spatially nonpredictive auditory stimuli associated with products (e.g., usage sounds or product-related jingles) can crossmodally facilitate consumers' visual search for, and selection of, products. Eye-tracking data (Experiment 2) revealed that the crossmodal effect of auditory cues on visual search manifested itself not only in RTs, but also in the earliest stages of visual attentional processing, thus suggesting that the semantic information embedded within sounds can modulate the perceptual saliency of the target products' visual representations. Crossmodal facilitation was even observed for newly learnt associations between unfamiliar brands and sonic logos, implicating multisensory short-term learning in establishing audiovisual semantic associations. The facilitation effect was stronger when searching complex rather than simple visual displays, thus suggesting a modulatory role of perceptual load. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Quantifying collective attention from tweet stream.

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Kazutoshi Sasahara

Full Text Available Online social media are increasingly facilitating our social interactions, thereby making available a massive "digital fossil" of human behavior. Discovering and quantifying distinct patterns using these data is important for studying social behavior, although the rapid time-variant nature and large volumes of these data make this task difficult and challenging. In this study, we focused on the emergence of "collective attention" on Twitter, a popular social networking service. We propose a simple method for detecting and measuring the collective attention evoked by various types of events. This method exploits the fact that tweeting activity exhibits a burst-like increase and an irregular oscillation when a particular real-world event occurs; otherwise, it follows regular circadian rhythms. The difference between regular and irregular states in the tweet stream was measured using the Jensen-Shannon divergence, which corresponds to the intensity of collective attention. We then associated irregular incidents with their corresponding events that attracted the attention and elicited responses from large numbers of people, based on the popularity and the enhancement of key terms in posted messages or "tweets." Next, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this method using a large dataset that contained approximately 490 million Japanese tweets by over 400,000 users, in which we identified 60 cases of collective attentions, including one related to the Tohoku-oki earthquake. "Retweet" networks were also investigated to understand collective attention in terms of social interactions. This simple method provides a retrospective summary of collective attention, thereby contributing to the fundamental understanding of social behavior in the digital era.

Disengagement as Withdrawal From Public Space: Rethinking the Relation Between Place Attachment, Place Appropriation, and Identity-Building Among Older Adults.

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Wanka, Anna

2018-01-18

Empirical research indicates that engagement with public space decreases with age. Why do some older adults withdraw from the public, and which role does the (urban) environment play in spatial (dis-)engagement? Environmental gerontology's model of person-environment (PE) fit suggests an interrelation between agency and belonging and their causal effects on identity and wellbeing in later life. However, there is little research on how these dimensions are actually related. This study sets out to investigate this relationship and how PE can be better adapted for deprived neighborhoods. The study follows a qualitative case studies approach, focusing on a deprived neighborhood in Vienna, Austria. Nonparticipant observations were conducted at this site and complemented by 13 episodic interviews with older residents. The results challenge PE's model of interrelation between agency and belonging and their causal effects on identity, wellbeing, and autonomy in later life. Spatial agency in the deprived neighborhood was intense but so was spatial alienation and distancing oneself from one's neighborhood. Drawing on notions of territorial stigma, this might be a coping strategy to prevent one's self-identity from being "stained". Which strategy is being adopted by whom depends on the position and the trajectory in social and physical space. PE can be complemented with intersubjective measures of environmental conditions (e.g., stigma) and spatial engagement. Gerontology should proceed to consider not only the poor, disadvantaged, disengaged elderly, but also the rebellious, resisting, provocative new generation of older adults. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Multimodal neuroimaging evidence linking memory and attention systems during visual search cued by context.

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Kasper, Ryan W; Grafton, Scott T; Eckstein, Miguel P; Giesbrecht, Barry

2015-03-01

Visual search can be facilitated by the learning of spatial configurations that predict the location of a target among distractors. Neuropsychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence implicates the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system in this contextual cueing effect, and electroencephalography (EEG) studies have identified the involvement of visual cortical regions related to attention. This work investigated two questions: (1) how memory and attention systems are related in contextual cueing; and (2) how these systems are involved in both short- and long-term contextual learning. In one session, EEG and fMRI data were acquired simultaneously in a contextual cueing task. In a second session conducted 1 week later, EEG data were recorded in isolation. The fMRI results revealed MTL contextual modulations that were correlated with short- and long-term behavioral context enhancements and attention-related effects measured with EEG. An fMRI-seeded EEG source analysis revealed that the MTL contributed the most variance to the variability in the attention enhancements measured with EEG. These results support the notion that memory and attention systems interact to facilitate search when spatial context is implicitly learned. © 2015 New York Academy of Sciences.

Neural Determinants of Task Performance during Feature-Based Attention in Human Cortex

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Gong, Mengyuan

2018-01-01

Abstract Studies of feature-based attention have associated activity in a dorsal frontoparietal network with putative attentional priority signals. Yet, how this neural activity mediates attentional selection and whether it guides behavior are fundamental questions that require investigation. We reasoned that endogenous fluctuations in the quality of attentional priority should influence task performance. Human subjects detected a speed increment while viewing clockwise (CW) or counterclockwise (CCW) motion (baseline task) or while attending to either direction amid distracters (attention task). In an fMRI experiment, direction-specific neural pattern similarity between the baseline task and the attention task revealed a higher level of similarity for correct than incorrect trials in frontoparietal regions. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we disrupted posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and found a selective deficit in the attention task, but not in the baseline task, demonstrating the necessity of this cortical area during feature-based attention. These results reveal that frontoparietal areas maintain attentional priority that facilitates successful behavioral selection. PMID:29497703

Modality-specific Alpha Modulations Facilitate Long-term Memory Encoding in the Presence of Distracters

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Jiang, H.; Gerven, M.A.J. van; Jensen, O.

2015-01-01

It has been proposed that long-term memory encoding is not only dependent on engaging task-relevant regions but also on disengaging task-irrelevant regions. In particular, oscillatory alpha activity has been shown to be involved in shaping the functional architecture of the working brain because it

Modality-specific Alpha Modulations Facilitate Long-term Memory Encoding in the Presence of Distracters

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Jiang, H.; Gerven, M.A.J. van; Jensen, O.

2014-01-01

It has been proposed that long-term memory encoding is not only dependent on engaging task-relevant regions but also on disengaging task-irrelevant regions. In particular, oscillatory alpha activity has been shown to be involved in shaping the functional architecture of the working brain because it

Evaluating the role of attention in the context of unconscious thought theory: differential impact of attentional scope and load on preference and memory.

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Srinivasan, Narayanan; Mukherjee, Sumitava; Mishra, Maruti V; Kesarwani, Smriti

2013-01-01

Attention is a key process used to conceptualize and define modes of thought, but we lack information about the role of specific attentional processes on preferential choice and memory in multi-attribute decision making. In this study, we examine the role of attention based on two dimensions, attentional scope and load on choice preference strength and memory using a paradigm that arguably elicits unconscious thought. Scope of attention was manipulated by using global or local processing during distraction (Experiment 1) and before the information-encoding stage (Experiment 2). Load was manipulated by using the n-back task in Experiment 1. Results from Experiment 1 show that global processing or distributed attention during distraction results in stronger preference irrespective of load but better memory only at low cognitive load. Task difficulty or load did not have any effect on preference or memory. In Experiment 2, distributed attention before attribute encoding facilitated only memory but did not influence preference. Results show that attentional processes at different stages of processing like distraction and information-encoding influence decision making processes. Scope of attention not only influences preference and memory but the manner in which attentional scope influences them depends on both load and stage of information processing. The results indicate the important role of attention in processes critical for decision making and calls for a re-evaluation of the unconscious thought theory (UTT) and the need for reconceptualizing the role of attention.

Evaluating the role of attention in the context of unconscious thought theory: Differential impact of attentional scope and load on preference and memory

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Narayanan eSrinivasan

2013-02-01

Full Text Available Attention is a key process used to conceptualize and define modes of thought, but we lack information on the role of specific attentional processes on preferential choice and memory in multi-attribute decision making. In this study, we examine the role of attention based on two dimensions, attentional scope and load on choice preference strength and memory using a paradigm that arguably elicits unconscious thought. Scope of attention was manipulated by using global or local processing during distraction (Experiment 1 and before the information encoding stage (Experiment 2. Load was manipulated by using the n-back task in Experiment 1. Results from Experiment 1 show that global processing or distributed attention during distraction results in stronger preference irrespective of load but better memory only at low cognitive load. Task difficulty or load did not have any effect on preference or memory. In Experiment 2, distributed attention before attribute encoding facilitated only memory but did not influence preference. Results show that attentional processes at different stages of processing like distraction and information-encoding influence decision making processes. Scope of attention not only influences preference and memory but the manner in which attentional scope influences them depends on both load and stage of information processing. The results indicate the important role of attention in processes critical for decision making and calls for a re-evaluation of the unconscious thought theory (UTT and the need for reconceptualizing the role of attention.

Why (we think) facilitation works: insights from organizational learning theory.

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Berta, Whitney; Cranley, Lisa; Dearing, James W; Dogherty, Elizabeth J; Squires, Janet E; Estabrooks, Carole A

2015-10-06

Facilitation is a guided interactional process that has been popularized in health care. Its popularity arises from its potential to support uptake and application of scientific knowledge that stands to improve clinical and managerial decision-making, practice, and ultimately patient outcomes and organizational performance. While this popular concept has garnered attention in health services research, we know that both the content of facilitation and its impact on knowledge implementation vary. The basis of this variation is poorly understood, and understanding is hampered by a lack of conceptual clarity. In this paper, we argue that our understanding of facilitation and its effects is limited in part by a lack of clear theoretical grounding. We propose a theoretical home for facilitation in organizational learning theory. Referring to extant literature on facilitation and drawing on theoretical literature, we discuss the features of facilitation that suggest its role in contributing to learning capacity. We describe how facilitation may contribute to generating knowledge about the application of new scientific knowledge in health-care organizations. Facilitation's promise, we suggest, lies in its potential to stimulate higher-order learning in organizations through experimenting with, generating learning about, and sustaining small-scale adaptations to organizational processes and work routines. The varied effectiveness of facilitation observed in the literature is associated with the presence or absence of factors known to influence organizational learning, since facilitation itself appears to act as a learning mechanism. We offer propositions regarding the relationships between facilitation processes and key organizational learning concepts that have the potential to guide future work to further our understanding of the role that facilitation plays in learning and knowledge generation.

Flow Experience During Attentional Training Improves Cognitive Functions in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury: An Exploratory Case Study

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Kazuki Yoshida

2014-12-01

Conclusion: The results for Patient A suggested that the flow task was more effective than general OT for improving attention deficits. Moreover, the results for Patient B suggested that the flow task was more effective than the control task. Attention training inducing flow experience may thus facilitate improvement of attention.

An overview of attention deficits after paediatric traumatic brain injury.

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Ginstfeldt, Tim; Emanuelson, Ingrid

2010-01-01

Attention could be categorized into sustained, selective, shifting, divided and attention span. The primary objective was to evaluate the type of attention deficits that occurs after paediatric traumatic brain injury. Keywords were used such as 'attention', 'child', 'traumatic', 'brain' and 'injury' on MEDLINE articles published in 1991-2009. Articles found through MEDLINE were manually cross-referenced. Out of the examined categorizes, divided and sustained attention seem to be the most vulnerably, frequently displaying deficits in the children with TBI. Attention span seemed to be the most resistant and the shifting and selective categories falling somewhere in between. Most of the recovery is expected within the first year post-injury, even if some individuals continue to improve for years, and deficits often persist into adulthood. The attention domains are not affected to the same extent by TBI and this should be taken into consideration when evaluating a child. The commonly used tests also seem to differ in how sensitive they are in detecting deficits. The definition of attention domains and TBI would benefit to be stricter and agreed upon, to further facilitate research and rehabilitation programmes.

A multitrophic perspective on functioning and evolution of facilitation in plant communities

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Putten, van der W.H.

2009-01-01

1. Plant facilitation has been studied mostly in the context of plant–plant interactions, whereas multitrophic interactions including those that occur below ground have not yet received much attention. Here, I will discuss how above-ground and below-ground natural enemies and their predators

Is attention based on spatial contextual memory preferentially guided by low spatial frequency signals?

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Patai, Eva Zita; Buckley, Alice; Nobre, Anna Christina

2013-01-01

A popular model of visual perception states that coarse information (carried by low spatial frequencies) along the dorsal stream is rapidly transmitted to prefrontal and medial temporal areas, activating contextual information from memory, which can in turn constrain detailed input carried by high spatial frequencies arriving at a slower rate along the ventral visual stream, thus facilitating the processing of ambiguous visual stimuli. We were interested in testing whether this model contributes to memory-guided orienting of attention. In particular, we asked whether global, low-spatial frequency (LSF) inputs play a dominant role in triggering contextual memories in order to facilitate the processing of the upcoming target stimulus. We explored this question over four experiments. The first experiment replicated the LSF advantage reported in perceptual discrimination tasks by showing that participants were faster and more accurate at matching a low spatial frequency version of a scene, compared to a high spatial frequency version, to its original counterpart in a forced-choice task. The subsequent three experiments tested the relative contributions of low versus high spatial frequencies during memory-guided covert spatial attention orienting tasks. Replicating the effects of memory-guided attention, pre-exposure to scenes associated with specific spatial memories for target locations (memory cues) led to higher perceptual discrimination and faster response times to identify targets embedded in the scenes. However, either high or low spatial frequency cues were equally effective; LSF signals did not selectively or preferentially contribute to the memory-driven attention benefits to performance. Our results challenge a generalized model that LSFs activate contextual memories, which in turn bias attention and facilitate perception.

Tactile-dependant corticomotor facilitation is influenced by discrimination performance in seniors

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Tremblay François

2010-03-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Active contraction leads to facilitation of motor responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS. In small hand muscles, motor facilitation is known to be also influenced by the nature of the task. Recently, we showed that corticomotor facilitation was selectively enhanced when young participants actively discriminated tactile symbols with the tip of their index or little finger. This tactile-dependant motor facilitation reflected, for the large part, attentional influences associated with performing tactile discrimination, since execution of a concomitant distraction task abolished facilitation. In the present report, we extend these observations to examine the influence of age on the ability to produce extra motor facilitation when the hand is used for sensory exploration. Methods Corticomotor excitability was tested in 16 healthy seniors (58-83 years while they actively moved their right index finger over a surface under two task conditions. In the tactile discrimination (TD condition, participants attended to the spatial location of two tactile symbols on the explored surface, while in the non discrimination (ND condition, participants simply moved their finger over a blank surface. Changes in amplitude, in latency and in the silent period (SP duration were measured from recordings of motor evoked potentials (MEP in the right first dorsal interosseous muscle in response to TMS of the left motor cortex. Results Healthy seniors exhibited widely varying levels of performance with the TD task, older age being associated with lower accuracy and vice-versa. Large inter-individual variations were also observed in terms of tactile-specific corticomotor facilitation. Regrouping seniors into higher (n = 6 and lower performance groups (n = 10 revealed a significant task by performance interaction. This latter interaction reflected differences between higher and lower performance groups; tactile-related facilitation being

Disrupted functional connectivity in dorsal and ventral attention networks during attention orienting in autism spectrum disorders.

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Fitzgerald, Jacqueline; Johnson, Katherine; Kehoe, Elizabeth; Bokde, Arun L W; Garavan, Hugh; Gallagher, Louise; McGrath, Jane

2015-04-01

Attention orienting is a cognitive process that facilitates the movement of attention focus from one location to another: this may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Dorsal and ventral attention networks (DAN and VAN) sub-serve the process of attention orienting. This study investigated the functional connectivity of attention orienting in these networks in ASD using the Posner Cueing Task. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD and 21 age and IQ matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. A psychophysical interaction (PPI) analysis was implemented to investigate task-dependent functional connectivity, measuring synchronicity of brain regions during the task. Regions of interest (ROI) were selected to explore functional connectivity in the DAN during cue-only conditions and in the VAN during invalid and valid trials. Behaviourally, the ASD and control groups performed the task in a similar manner. Functional MRI results indicated that the ASD and control groups activated similar brain regions. During invalid trials (VAN), the ASD group showed significant positive functional connectivity to multiple brain regions, whilst the control group demonstrated negative connectivity. During valid trials (VAN), the two groups also showed contrasting patterns of connectivity. In the cue-only conditions (DAN), the ASD group showed weaker functional connectivity. The DAN analysis suggests that the ASD group has weaker coherence between brain areas involved in goal-driven, endogenous attention control. The strong positive functional connectivity exhibited by the ASD group in the VAN during the invalid trials suggests that individuals with ASD may generate compensatory mechanisms to achieve neurotypical behaviour. These results support the theory of abnormal cortical connectivity in autism. © 2014 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Attempting to "Increase Intake from the Input": Attention and Word Learning in Children with Autism

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Tenenbaum, Elena J.; Amso, Dima; Righi, Giulia; Sheinkopf, Stephen J.

2017-01-01

Previous work has demonstrated that social attention is related to early language abilities. We explored whether we can facilitate word learning among children with autism by directing attention to areas of the scene that have been demonstrated as relevant for successful word learning. We tracked eye movements to faces and objects while children…

Stroop tasks reveal abnormal selective attention among psychopathic offenders.

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Hiatt, Kristina D; Schmitt, William A; Newman, Joseph P

2004-01-01

Selective attention among offenders with psychopathy was investigated using 3 Stroop paradigms: a standard color-word (CW) Stroop, a picture-word (PW) Stroop, and a color-word Stroop in which the word and color were spatially separated (separated CW). Consistent with "overselective" attention, offenders with psychopathy displayed reduced Stroop interference on the separated CW and PW tasks relative to offenders who were not psychopathic. However, offenders with psychopathy displayed normal Stroop interference on the standard CW Stroop. Further, the reduced interference of offenders with psychopathy on the separated CW Stroop was accompanied by normal facilitation. These findings suggest a circumscribed attentional deficit in psychopathy that hinders the use of unattended information that is (a) not integrated with deliberately attended information and (b) not compatible with current goal-directed behavior. ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

Facilitation as a teaching strategy : experiences of facilitators

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E Lekalakala-Mokgele

2006-09-01

Full Text Available Changes in nursing education involve the move from traditional teaching approaches that are teacher-centred to facilitation, a student centred approach. The studentcentred approach is based on a philosophy of teaching and learning that puts the learner on centre-stage. The aim of this study was to identify the challenges of facilitators of learning using facilitation as a teaching method and recommend strategies for their (facilitators development and support. A qualitative, explorative and contextual design was used. Four (4 universities in South Africa which utilize facilitation as a teaching/ learning process were identified and the facilitators were selected to be the sample of the study. The main question posed during in-depth group interviews was: How do you experience facilitation as a teaching/learning method?. Facilitators indicated different experiences and emotions when they first had to facilitate learning. All of them indicated that it was difficult to facilitate at the beginning as they were trained to lecture and that no format for facilitation was available. They experienced frustrations and anxieties as a result. The lack of knowledge of facilitation instilled fear in them. However they indicated that facilitation had many benefits for them and for the students. Amongst the ones mentioned were personal and professional growth. Challenges mentioned were the fear that they waste time and that they do not cover the content. It is therefore important that facilitation be included in the training of nurse educators.

Auditory Working Memory Load Impairs Visual Ventral Stream Processing: Toward a Unified Model of Attentional Load

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Klemen, Jane; Buchel, Christian; Buhler, Mira; Menz, Mareike M.; Rose, Michael

2010-01-01

Attentional interference between tasks performed in parallel is known to have strong and often undesired effects. As yet, however, the mechanisms by which interference operates remain elusive. A better knowledge of these processes may facilitate our understanding of the effects of attention on human performance and the debilitating consequences…

Selective Attention Enhances Beta-Band Cortical Oscillation to Speech under "Cocktail-Party" Listening Conditions.

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Gao, Yayue; Wang, Qian; Ding, Yu; Wang, Changming; Li, Haifeng; Wu, Xihong; Qu, Tianshu; Li, Liang

2017-01-01

Human listeners are able to selectively attend to target speech in a noisy environment with multiple-people talking. Using recordings of scalp electroencephalogram (EEG), this study investigated how selective attention facilitates the cortical representation of target speech under a simulated "cocktail-party" listening condition with speech-on-speech masking. The result shows that the cortical representation of target-speech signals under the multiple-people talking condition was specifically improved by selective attention relative to the non-selective-attention listening condition, and the beta-band activity was most strongly modulated by selective attention. Moreover, measured with the Granger Causality value, selective attention to the single target speech in the mixed-speech complex enhanced the following four causal connectivities for the beta-band oscillation: the ones (1) from site FT7 to the right motor area, (2) from the left frontal area to the right motor area, (3) from the central frontal area to the right motor area, and (4) from the central frontal area to the right frontal area. However, the selective-attention-induced change in beta-band causal connectivity from the central frontal area to the right motor area, but not other beta-band causal connectivities, was significantly correlated with the selective-attention-induced change in the cortical beta-band representation of target speech. These findings suggest that under the "cocktail-party" listening condition, the beta-band oscillation in EEGs to target speech is specifically facilitated by selective attention to the target speech that is embedded in the mixed-speech complex. The selective attention-induced unmasking of target speech may be associated with the improved beta-band functional connectivity from the central frontal area to the right motor area, suggesting a top-down attentional modulation of the speech-motor process.

Infants' visual sustained attention is higher during joint play than solo play: is this due to increased endogenous attention control or exogenous stimulus capture?

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Wass, Sam V; Clackson, Kaili; Georgieva, Stanimira D; Brightman, Laura; Nutbrown, Rebecca; Leong, Victoria

2018-04-06

Previous research has suggested that when a social partner, such as a parent, pays attention to an object, this increases the attention that infants pay to that object during spontaneous, naturalistic play. There are two contrasting reasons why this might be: first, social context may influence increases in infants' endogenous (voluntary) attention control; second, social settings may offer increased opportunities for exogenous attentional capture. To differentiate these possibilities, we compared 12-month-old infants' naturalistic attention patterns in two settings: Solo Play and Joint Play with a social partner (the parent). Consistent with previous research, we found that infants' look durations toward play objects were longer during Joint Play, and that moments of inattentiveness were fewer, and shorter. Follow-up analyses, conducted to differentiate the two above-proposed hypotheses, were more consistent with the latter hypothesis. We found that infants' rate of change of attentiveness was faster during Joint Play than Solo Play, suggesting that internal attention factors, such as attentional inertia, may influence looking behaviour less during Joint Play. We also found that adults' attention forwards-predicted infants' subsequent attention more than vice versa, suggesting that adults' behaviour may drive infants' behaviour. Finally, we found that mutual gaze did not directly facilitate infant attentiveness. Overall, our results suggest that infants spend more time attending to objects during Joint Play than Solo Play, but that these differences are more likely attributable to increased exogenous attentional scaffolding from the parent during social play, rather than to increased endogenous attention control from the infant. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Visual attention to features by associative learning.

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Gozli, Davood G; Moskowitz, Joshua B; Pratt, Jay

2014-11-01

Expecting a particular stimulus can facilitate processing of that stimulus over others, but what is the fate of other stimuli that are known to co-occur with the expected stimulus? This study examined the impact of learned association on feature-based attention. The findings show that the effectiveness of an uninformative color transient in orienting attention can change by learned associations between colors and the expected target shape. In an initial acquisition phase, participants learned two distinct sequences of stimulus-response-outcome, where stimuli were defined by shape ('S' vs. 'H'), responses were localized key-presses (left vs. right), and outcomes were colors (red vs. green). Next, in a test phase, while expecting a target shape (80% probable), participants showed reliable attentional orienting to the color transient associated with the target shape, and showed no attentional orienting with the color associated with the alternative target shape. This bias seemed to be driven by learned association between shapes and colors, and not modulated by the response. In addition, the bias seemed to depend on observing target-color conjunctions, since encountering the two features disjunctively (without spatiotemporal overlap) did not replicate the findings. We conclude that associative learning - likely mediated by mechanisms underlying visual object representation - can extend the impact of goal-driven attention to features associated with a target stimulus. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Exogenous and endogenous attention during perceptual learning differentially affect post-training target thresholds

Science.gov (United States)

Mukai, Ikuko; Bahadur, Kandy; Kesavabhotla, Kartik; Ungerleider, Leslie G.

2012-01-01

There is conflicting evidence in the literature regarding the role played by attention in perceptual learning. To further examine this issue, we independently manipulated exogenous and endogenous attention and measured the rate of perceptual learning of oriented Gabor patches presented in different quadrants of the visual field. In this way, we could track learning at attended, divided-attended, and unattended locations. We also measured contrast thresholds of the Gabor patches before and after training. Our results showed that, for both exogenous and endogenous attention, accuracy in performing the orientation discrimination improved to a greater extent at attended than at unattended locations. Importantly, however, only exogenous attention resulted in improved contrast thresholds. These findings suggest that both exogenous and endogenous attention facilitate perceptual learning, but that these two types of attention may be mediated by different neural mechanisms. PMID:21282340

Behavioral and Brain Measures of Phasic Alerting Effects on Visual Attention

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wiegand, Iris Michaela; Petersen, Anders; Finke, Kathrin

2017-01-01

In the present study, we investigated effects of phasic alerting on visual attention in a partial report task, in which half of the displays were preceded by an auditory warning cue. Based on the computational Theory of Visual Attention (TVA), we estimated parameters of spatial and non......-spatial aspects of visual attention and measured event-related lateralizations (ERLs) over visual processing areas. We found that the TVA parameter sensory effectiveness a, which is thought to reflect visual processing capacity, significantly increased with phasic alerting. By contrast, the distribution of visual....... These results suggest that phasic alerting facilitates visual processing in a general, unselective manner and that this effect originates in early stages of visual information processing....

Automatic selective attention as a function of sensory modality in aging.

Science.gov (United States)

Guerreiro, Maria J S; Adam, Jos J; Van Gerven, Pascal W M

2012-03-01

It was recently hypothesized that age-related differences in selective attention depend on sensory modality (Guerreiro, M. J. S., Murphy, D. R., & Van Gerven, P. W. M. (2010). The role of sensory modality in age-related distraction: A critical review and a renewed view. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 975-1022. doi:10.1037/a0020731). So far, this hypothesis has not been tested in automatic selective attention. The current study addressed this issue by investigating age-related differences in automatic spatial cueing effects (i.e., facilitation and inhibition of return [IOR]) across sensory modalities. Thirty younger (mean age = 22.4 years) and 25 older adults (mean age = 68.8 years) performed 4 left-right target localization tasks, involving all combinations of visual and auditory cues and targets. We used stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 100, 500, 1,000, and 1,500 ms between cue and target. The results showed facilitation (shorter reaction times with valid relative to invalid cues at shorter SOAs) in the unimodal auditory and in both cross-modal tasks but not in the unimodal visual task. In contrast, there was IOR (longer reaction times with valid relative to invalid cues at longer SOAs) in both unimodal tasks but not in either of the cross-modal tasks. Most important, these spatial cueing effects were independent of age. The results suggest that the modality hypothesis of age-related differences in selective attention does not extend into the realm of automatic selective attention.

Cognitive Food Processing in Binge-Eating Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

OpenAIRE

Sperling, Ingmar; Baldofski, Sabrina; L?thold, Patrick; Hilbert, Anja

2017-01-01

Studies indicate an attentional bias towards food in binge-eating disorder (BED); however, more evidence on attentional engagement and disengagement and processing of multiple attention-competing stimuli is needed. This study aimed to examine visual attention to food and non-food stimuli in BED. In n = 23 participants with full-syndrome and subsyndromal BED and n = 23 individually matched healthy controls, eye-tracking was used to assess attention to food and non-food stimuli during a free ex...

The effect of items in working memory on the deployment of attention and the eyes during visual search

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Houtkamp, R.; Roelfsema, P. R.

2006-01-01

Paying attention to an object facilitates its storage in working memory. The authors investigate whether the opposite is also true: whether items in working memory influence the deployment of attention. Participants performed a search for a prespecified target while they held another item in working

Sustained Spatial Attention in Touch: Modality-Specific and Multimodal Mechanisms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chiara F. Sambo

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Sustained attention to a body location results in enhanced processing of tactile stimuli presented at that location compared to another unattended location. In this paper, we review studies investigating the neural correlates of sustained spatial attention in touch. These studies consistently show that activity within modality-specific somatosensory areas (SI and SII is modulated by sustained tactile-spatial attention. Recent evidence suggests that these somatosensory areas may be recruited as part of a larger cortical network,also including higher-level multimodal regions involved in spatial selection across modalities. We discuss, in turn, the following multimodal effects in sustained tactile-spatial attention tasks. First, cross-modal attentional links between touch and vision, reflected in enhanced processing of task-irrelevant visual stimuli at tactuallyattended locations, are mediated by common (multimodal representations of external space. Second, vision of the body modulates activity underlying sustained tactile-spatial attention, facilitating attentional modulation of tactile processing in between-hand (when hands are sufficiently far apart and impairing attentional modulation in within-hand selection tasks. Finally, body posture influences mechanisms of sustained tactile-spatial attention, relying, at least partly, on remapping of tactile stimuli in external, visuallydefined, spatial coordinates. Taken together, the findings reviewed in this paper indicate that sustained spatial attention in touch is subserved by both modality-specific and multimodal mechanisms. The interplay between these mechanisms allows flexible and efficient spatial selection within and across sensory modalities.

Selective Attention Enhances Beta-Band Cortical Oscillation to Speech under “Cocktail-Party” Listening Conditions

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Gao, Yayue; Wang, Qian; Ding, Yu; Wang, Changming; Li, Haifeng; Wu, Xihong; Qu, Tianshu; Li, Liang

2017-01-01

Human listeners are able to selectively attend to target speech in a noisy environment with multiple-people talking. Using recordings of scalp electroencephalogram (EEG), this study investigated how selective attention facilitates the cortical representation of target speech under a simulated “cocktail-party” listening condition with speech-on-speech masking. The result shows that the cortical representation of target-speech signals under the multiple-people talking condition was specifically improved by selective attention relative to the non-selective-attention listening condition, and the beta-band activity was most strongly modulated by selective attention. Moreover, measured with the Granger Causality value, selective attention to the single target speech in the mixed-speech complex enhanced the following four causal connectivities for the beta-band oscillation: the ones (1) from site FT7 to the right motor area, (2) from the left frontal area to the right motor area, (3) from the central frontal area to the right motor area, and (4) from the central frontal area to the right frontal area. However, the selective-attention-induced change in beta-band causal connectivity from the central frontal area to the right motor area, but not other beta-band causal connectivities, was significantly correlated with the selective-attention-induced change in the cortical beta-band representation of target speech. These findings suggest that under the “cocktail-party” listening condition, the beta-band oscillation in EEGs to target speech is specifically facilitated by selective attention to the target speech that is embedded in the mixed-speech complex. The selective attention-induced unmasking of target speech may be associated with the improved beta-band functional connectivity from the central frontal area to the right motor area, suggesting a top-down attentional modulation of the speech-motor process. PMID:28239344

Positive mood broadens visual attention to positive stimuli.

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Wadlinger, Heather A; Isaacowitz, Derek M

2006-03-01

In an attempt to investigate the impact of positive emotions on visual attention within the context of Fredrickson's (1998) broaden-and-build model, eye tracking was used in two studies to measure visual attentional preferences of college students (n=58, n=26) to emotional pictures. Half of each sample experienced induced positive mood immediately before viewing slides of three similarly-valenced images, in varying central-peripheral arrays. Attentional breadth was determined by measuring the percentage viewing time to peripheral images as well as by the number of visual saccades participants made per slide. Consistent with Fredrickson's theory, the first study showed that individuals induced into positive mood fixated more on peripheral stimuli than did control participants; however, this only held true for highly-valenced positive stimuli. Participants under induced positive mood also made more frequent saccades for slides of neutral and positive valence. A second study showed that these effects were not simply due to differences in emotional arousal between stimuli. Selective attentional broadening to positive stimuli may act both to facilitate later building of resources as well as to maintain current positive affective states.

Vulnerability-attention analysis for space-related activities

Science.gov (United States)

Ford, Donnie; Hays, Dan; Lee, Sung Yong; Wolfsberger, John

1988-01-01

Techniques for representing and analyzing trouble spots in structures and processes are discussed. Identification of vulnerable areas usually depends more on particular and often detailed knowledge than on algorithmic or mathematical procedures. In some cases, machine inference can facilitate the identification. The analysis scheme proposed first establishes the geometry of the process, then marks areas that are conditionally vulnerable. This provides a basis for advice on the kinds of human attention or machine sensing and control that can make the risks tolerable.

Selective attention neutralizes the adverse effects of low socioeconomic status on memory in 9-month-old infants.

Science.gov (United States)

Markant, Julie; Ackerman, Laura K; Nussenbaum, Kate; Amso, Dima

2016-04-01

Socioeconomic status (SES) has a documented impact on brain and cognitive development. We demonstrate that engaging spatial selective attention mechanisms may counteract this negative influence of impoverished environments on early learning. We previously used a spatial cueing task to compare target object encoding in the context of basic orienting ("facilitation") versus a spatial selective attention orienting mechanism that engages distractor suppression ("IOR"). This work showed that object encoding in the context of IOR boosted 9-month-old infants' recognition memory relative to facilitation (Markant and Amso, 2013). Here we asked whether this attention-memory link further interacted with SES in infancy. Results indicated that SES was related to memory but not attention orienting efficacy. However, the correlation between SES and memory performance was moderated by the attention mechanism engaged during encoding. SES predicted memory performance when objects were encoded with basic orienting processes, with infants from low-SES environments showing poorer memory than those from high-SES environments. However, SES did not predict memory performance among infants who engaged selective attention during encoding. Spatial selective attention engagement mitigated the effects of SES on memory and may offer an effective mechanism for promoting learning among infants at risk for poor cognitive outcomes related to SES. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Research on Gear Shifting Process without Disengaging Clutch for a Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicle Equipped with AMT

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hui-Long Yu

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Dynamic models of a single-shaft parallel hybrid electric vehicle (HEV equipped with automated mechanical transmission (AMT were described in different working stages during a gear shifting process without disengaging clutch. Parameters affecting the gear shifting time, components life, and gear shifting jerk in different transient states during a gear shifting process were deeply analyzed. The mathematical models considering the detailed synchronizer working process which can explain the gear shifting failure, long time gear shifting, and frequent synchronizer failure phenomenon in HEV were derived. Dynamic coordinated control strategy of the engine, motor, and actuators in different transient states considering the detailed working stages of synchronizer in a gear shifting process of a HEV is for the first time innovatively proposed according to the state of art references. Bench test and real road test results show that the proposed control strategy can improve the gear shifting quality in all its evaluation indexes significantly.

The effects of perceived racism on psychological distress mediated by venting and disengagement coping in Native Hawaiians.

Science.gov (United States)

Kaholokula, Joseph Keawe'aimoku; Antonio, Mapuana C K; Ing, Claire K Townsend; Hermosura, Andrea; Hall, Kimberly E; Knight, Rebecca; Wills, Thomas A

2017-01-12

Studies have linked perceived racism to psychological distress via certain coping strategies in several different racial and ethnic groups, but few of these studies included indigenous populations. Elucidating modifiable factors for intervention to reduce the adverse effects of racism on psychological well-being is another avenue to addressing health inequities. We examined the potential mediating effects of 14 distinct coping strategies on the relationship between perceived racism and psychological distress in a community-based sample of 145 Native Hawaiians using structural equation modeling. Perceived racism had a significant indirect effect on psychological distress, mediated through venting and behavioral disengagement coping strategies, with control for age, gender, educational level, and marital status. The findings suggest that certain coping strategies may exacerbate the deleterious effects of racism on a person's psychological well-being. Our study adds Native Hawaiians to the list of U.S. racial and ethnic minorities whose psychological well-being is adversely affected by racism.

Reduced Inhibition of Return to Food Images in Obese Individuals.

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Megan A Carters

Full Text Available Previous research has shown that obese individuals may be biased towards attending to food over non-food information, and this bias may contribute to the development and/or maintenance of obesity. The present study sought to extend our understanding of maladaptive attentional processing in this population by investigating whether obese individuals have difficulty in disengaging attention from food compared with non-food images, relative to normal-weight controls. To address this question, we measured inhibition of return (IOR in an attentional cueing task. The participants were 29 obese and 35 normal-weight satiated females without eating disorders. The obese group displayed less IOR to food images than the normal-weight group, while there was no difference in IOR between the groups for non-food images. This suggests that obese females have greater difficulty disengaging attention from food than normal-weight females. Our findings provide a new focus for studies investigating maintenance factors in obesity and are discussed in relation to a theory of incentive-sensitisation.

Behavioral performance follows the time course of neural facilitation and suppression during cued shifts of feature-selective attention.

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Andersen, S K; Müller, M M

2010-08-03

A central question in the field of attention is whether visual processing is a strictly limited resource, which must be allocated by selective attention. If this were the case, attentional enhancement of one stimulus should invariably lead to suppression of unattended distracter stimuli. Here we examine voluntary cued shifts of feature-selective attention to either one of two superimposed red or blue random dot kinematograms (RDKs) to test whether such a reciprocal relationship between enhancement of an attended and suppression of an unattended stimulus can be observed. The steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), an oscillatory brain response elicited by the flickering RDKs, was measured in human EEG. Supporting limited resources, we observed both an enhancement of the attended and a suppression of the unattended RDK, but this observed reciprocity did not occur concurrently: enhancement of the attended RDK started at 220 ms after cue onset and preceded suppression of the unattended RDK by about 130 ms. Furthermore, we found that behavior was significantly correlated with the SSVEP time course of a measure of selectivity (attended minus unattended) but not with a measure of total activity (attended plus unattended). The significant deviations from a temporally synchronized reciprocity between enhancement and suppression suggest that the enhancement of the attended stimulus may cause the suppression of the unattended stimulus in the present experiment.

Neurostructural abnormalities associated with axes of emotion dysregulation in generalized anxiety

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elena Makovac

2016-01-01

Conclusions: Results distinguish neural structures associated with impaired capacity for cognitive, attentional and physiological disengagement from worry, suggesting that aberrant competition between these levels of emotional regulation is intrinsic to symptom expression in GAD.

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African Journals Online (AJOL)

2009-12-14

Dec 14, 2009 ... driving ideology of economic globalisation is that disengagement from the global economy leads ...... focuses attention on the financial sphere and the king's .... political power and divided across ethnic and religious lines,.

The effects of sequential attention shifts within visual working memory

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Qi eLi

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Previous studies have shown conflicting data as to whether it is possible to sequentially shift spatial attention among visual working memory (VWM representations. The present study investigated this issue by asynchronously presenting attentional cues during the retention interval of a change detection task. In particular, we focused on two types of sequential attention shifts: 1 orienting attention to one location, and then withdrawing attention from it, and 2 switching the focus of attention from one location to another. In Experiment 1, a withdrawal cue was presented after a spatial retro-cue to measure the effect of withdrawing attention. The withdrawal cue significantly reduced the cost of invalid spatial cues, but surprisingly, did not attenuate the benefit of valid spatial cues. This indicates that the withdrawal cue only triggered the activation of facilitative components but not inhibitory components of attention. In Experiment 2, two spatial retro-cues were presented successively to examine the effect of switching the focus of attention. We observed benefits of both the first and second cues in sequential cueing, indicating that participants were able to reorient attention from one location to another within VWM, and the reallocation of attention did not attenuate memory at the first cued location. In Experiment 3, we found that reducing the validity of the preceding spatial cue did lead to a significant reduction in its benefit. However, performance at the first-cued location was still better than the neutral baseline or performance at the uncued locations, indicating that the first cue benefit might have been preserved both partially under automatic control and partially under voluntary control. Our findings revealed new properties of dynamic attentional control in VWM maintenance.

The effects of sequential attention shifts within visual working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Qi; Saiki, Jun

2014-01-01

Previous studies have shown conflicting data as to whether it is possible to sequentially shift spatial attention among visual working memory (VWM) representations. The present study investigated this issue by asynchronously presenting attentional cues during the retention interval of a change detection task. In particular, we focused on two types of sequential attention shifts: (1) orienting attention to one location, and then withdrawing attention from it, and (2) switching the focus of attention from one location to another. In Experiment 1, a withdrawal cue was presented after a spatial retro-cue to measure the effect of withdrawing attention. The withdrawal cue significantly reduced the cost of invalid spatial cues, but surprisingly, did not attenuate the benefit of valid spatial cues. This indicates that the withdrawal cue only triggered the activation of facilitative components but not inhibitory components of attention. In Experiment 2, two spatial retro-cues were presented successively to examine the effect of switching the focus of attention. We observed equivalent benefits of the first and second spatial cues, suggesting that participants were able to reorient attention from one location to another within VWM, and the reallocation of attention did not attenuate memory at the first-cued location. In Experiment 3, we found that reducing the validity of the preceding spatial cue did lead to a significant reduction in its benefit. However, performance was still better at first-cued locations than at uncued and neutral locations, indicating that the first cue benefit might have been preserved both partially under automatic control and partially under voluntary control. Our findings revealed new properties of dynamic attentional control in VWM maintenance.

The effects of sequential attention shifts within visual working memory

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Qi; Saiki, Jun

2014-01-01

Previous studies have shown conflicting data as to whether it is possible to sequentially shift spatial attention among visual working memory (VWM) representations. The present study investigated this issue by asynchronously presenting attentional cues during the retention interval of a change detection task. In particular, we focused on two types of sequential attention shifts: (1) orienting attention to one location, and then withdrawing attention from it, and (2) switching the focus of attention from one location to another. In Experiment 1, a withdrawal cue was presented after a spatial retro-cue to measure the effect of withdrawing attention. The withdrawal cue significantly reduced the cost of invalid spatial cues, but surprisingly, did not attenuate the benefit of valid spatial cues. This indicates that the withdrawal cue only triggered the activation of facilitative components but not inhibitory components of attention. In Experiment 2, two spatial retro-cues were presented successively to examine the effect of switching the focus of attention. We observed equivalent benefits of the first and second spatial cues, suggesting that participants were able to reorient attention from one location to another within VWM, and the reallocation of attention did not attenuate memory at the first-cued location. In Experiment 3, we found that reducing the validity of the preceding spatial cue did lead to a significant reduction in its benefit. However, performance was still better at first-cued locations than at uncued and neutral locations, indicating that the first cue benefit might have been preserved both partially under automatic control and partially under voluntary control. Our findings revealed new properties of dynamic attentional control in VWM maintenance. PMID:25237306

Long-term memory biases auditory spatial attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Zimmermann, Jacqueline F; Moscovitch, Morris; Alain, Claude

2017-10-01

Long-term memory (LTM) has been shown to bias attention to a previously learned visual target location. Here, we examined whether memory-predicted spatial location can facilitate the detection of a faint pure tone target embedded in real world audio clips (e.g., soundtrack of a restaurant). During an initial familiarization task, participants heard audio clips, some of which included a lateralized target (p = 50%). On each trial participants indicated whether the target was presented from the left, right, or was absent. Following a 1 hr retention interval, participants were presented with the same audio clips, which now all included a target. In Experiment 1, participants showed memory-based gains in response time and d'. Experiment 2 showed that temporal expectations modulate attention, with greater memory-guided attention effects on performance when temporal context was reinstated from learning (i.e., when timing of the target within audio clips was not changed from initially learned timing). Experiment 3 showed that while conscious recall of target locations was modulated by exposure to target-context associations during learning (i.e., better recall with higher number of learning blocks), the influence of LTM associations on spatial attention was not reduced (i.e., number of learning blocks did not affect memory-guided attention). Both Experiments 2 and 3 showed gains in performance related to target-context associations, even for associations that were not explicitly remembered. Together, these findings indicate that memory for audio clips is acquired quickly and is surprisingly robust; both implicit and explicit LTM for the location of a faint target tone modulated auditory spatial attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Attention to Attention

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tække, Jesper; Paulsen, Michael Eric

In these years digital media and wireless networks are introduced in upper secondary schools in Denmark. This implies new “attentional objects” like updates on Facebook or tweets on Twitter within instant reach of the pupils and teachers. Also it implies new kinds of attention (awareness) like when...... pupils try to listen to the teacher and simultaneously participate in online games. To this new social setting the teachers has reacted with either prohibition or unconcern. What has not been realised is that the introduction of new media profoundly challenges the way attention hitherto has functioned...... as a psychic prerequisite for the social interaction between pupils and teachers. New kinds of “split attention” arise and new kinds of social mediation (regulation and “use”) of psychic attention become necessary if teaching in the new digital medium milieu shall be beneficial. In this paper we qualify...

Building mindfulness bottom-up: Meditation in natural settings supports open monitoring and attention restoration.

Science.gov (United States)

Lymeus, Freddie; Lindberg, Per; Hartig, Terry

2018-03-01

Mindfulness courses conventionally use effortful, focused meditation to train attention. In contrast, natural settings can effortlessly support state mindfulness and restore depleted attention resources, which could facilitate meditation. We performed two studies that compared conventional training with restoration skills training (ReST) that taught low-effort open monitoring meditation in a garden over five weeks. Assessments before and after meditation on multiple occasions showed that ReST meditation increasingly enhanced attention performance. Conventional meditation enhanced attention initially but increasingly incurred effort, reflected in performance decrements toward the course end. With both courses, attentional improvements generalized in the first weeks of training. Against established accounts, the generalized improvements thus occurred before any effort was incurred by the conventional exercises. We propose that restoration rather than attention training can account for early attentional improvements with meditation. ReST holds promise as an undemanding introduction to mindfulness and as a method to enhance restoration in nature contacts. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Attention, Joint Attention, and Social Cognition

OpenAIRE

Mundy, Peter; Newell, Lisa

2007-01-01

Before social cognition there is joint processing of information about the attention of self and others. This joint attention requires the integrated activation of a distributed cortical network involving the anterior and posterior attention systems. In infancy, practice with the integrated activation of this distributed attention network is a major contributor to the development of social cognition. Thus, the functional neuroanatomies of social cognition and the anterior–posterior attention ...

Obama cares about visuo-spatial attention: perception of political figures moves attention and determines gaze direction.

Science.gov (United States)

Mills, Mark; Smith, Kevin B; Hibbing, John R; Dodd, Michael D

2015-02-01

Processing an abstract concept such as political ideology by itself is difficult but becomes easier when a background situation contextualizes it. Political ideology within American politics, for example, is commonly processed using space metaphorically, i.e., the political "left" and "right" (referring to Democrat and Republican views, respectively), presumably to provide a common metric to which abstract features of ideology can be grounded and understood. Commonplace use of space as metaphor raises the question of whether an inherently non-spatial stimulus (e.g., picture of the political "left" leader, Barack Obama) can trigger a spatially-specific response (e.g., attentional bias toward "left" regions of the visual field). Accordingly, pictures of well-known Democrats and Republicans were presented as central cues in peripheral target detection (Experiment 1) and saccadic free-choice (Experiment 2) tasks to determine whether perception of stimuli lacking a direct association with physical space nonetheless induce attentional and oculomotor biases in the direction compatible with the ideological category of the cue (i.e., Democrat/left and Republican/right). In Experiment 1, target detection following presentation of a Democrat (Republican) was facilitated for targets appearing to the left (right). In Experiment 2, participants were more likely to look left (right) following presentation of a Democrat (Republican). Thus, activating an internal representation of political ideology induced a shift of attention and biased choice of gaze direction in a spatially-specific manner. These findings demonstrate that the link between conceptual processing and spatial attention can be totally arbitrary, with no reference to physical or symbolic spatial information. Published by Elsevier B.V.

How to Assess Gaming-Induced Benefits on Attention and Working Memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Mishra, Jyoti; Bavelier, Daphne; Gazzaley, Adam

2012-06-01

Our daily actions are driven by our goals in the moment, constantly forcing us to choose among various options. Attention and working memory are key enablers of that process. Attention allows for selective processing of goal-relevant information and rejecting task-irrelevant information. Working memory functions to maintain goal-relevant information in memory for brief periods of time for subsequent recall and/or manipulation. Efficient attention and working memory thus support the best extraction and retention of environmental information for optimal task performance. Recent studies have evidenced that attention and working memory abilities can be enhanced by cognitive training games as well as entertainment videogames. Here we review key cognitive paradigms that have been used to evaluate the impact of game-based training on various aspects of attention and working memory. Common use of such methodology within the scientific community will enable direct comparison of the efficacy of different games across age groups and clinical populations. The availability of common assessment tools will ultimately facilitate development of the most effective forms of game-based training for cognitive rehabilitation and education.

Use of mobility aids reduces attentional demand in challenging walking conditions.

Science.gov (United States)

Miyasike-daSilva, Veronica; Tung, James Y; Zabukovec, Jeanie R; McIlroy, William E

2013-02-01

While mobility aids (e.g., four-wheeled walkers) are designed to facilitate walking and prevent falls in individuals with gait and balance impairments, there is evidence indicating that walkers may increase attentional demands during walking. We propose that walkers may reduce attentional demands under conditions that challenge balance control. This study investigated the effect of walker use on walking performance and attentional demand under a challenged walking condition. Young healthy subjects walked along a straight pathway, or a narrow beam. Attentional demand was assessed with a concurrent voice reaction time (RT) task. Slower RTs, reduced gait speed, and increased number of missteps (>92% of all missteps) were observed during beam-walking. However, walker use reduced attentional demand (faster RTs) and was linked to improved walking performance (increased gait speed, reduced missteps). Data from two healthy older adult cases reveal similar trends. In conclusion, mobility aids can be beneficial by reducing attentional demands and increasing gait stability when balance is challenged. This finding has implications on the potential benefit of mobility aids for persons who rely on walkers to address balance impairments. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Personal Values and Moral Disengagement Promote Aggressive and Rule-Breaking Behaviours in Adolescents With Disruptive Behaviour Disorders: A Pilot Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Paciello, Marinella; Muratori, Pietro; Ruglioni, Laura; Milone, Annarita; Buonanno, Carlo; Capo, Rosario; Lochman, John E; Barcaccia, Barbara

2017-01-01

The pilot study presented in this article investigated the role of moral-cognitive features in understanding aggressive and rule-breaking behaviours in adolescents with Disruptive Behaviour Disorder (DBD). We collected two samples. The community sample was composed of 85 adolescents, whereas the DBD sample was composed of 30 adolescents. Compared with a community sample, adolescents with DBD are more inclined to use moral disengagement (MD) to legitimize their aggressive and rule-breaking behaviours. Moreover, regression models showed that self-enhancement values and MD foster externalizing behaviours taking into account both gender and the group they belonged to, that is, either clinical or community sample. Instead, self-transcendence values could prevent externalizing problems by inhibiting MD. Implications of these findings for assessment and therapeutic interventions are discussed. © The Author(s) 2015.

Cingulate, Frontal and Parietal Cortical Dysfunction in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Science.gov (United States)

Bush, George

2011-01-01

Functional and structural neuroimaging have identified abnormalities of the brain that are likely to contribute to the neuropathophysiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In particular, hypofunction of the brain regions comprising the cingulo-frontal-parietal (CFP) cognitive-attention network have been consistently observed across studies. These are major components of neural systems that are relevant to ADHD, including cognitive/attention networks, motor systems and reward/feedback-based processing systems. Moreover, these areas interact with other brain circuits that have been implicated in ADHD, such as the “default mode” resting state network. ADHD imaging data related to CFP network dysfunction will be selectively highlighted here to help facilitate its integration with the other information presented in this special issue. Together, these reviews will help shed light on the neurobiology of ADHD. PMID:21489409

Attention-related modulation of auditory brainstem responses during contralateral noise exposure.

Science.gov (United States)

Ikeda, Kazunari; Sekiguchi, Takahiro; Hayashi, Akiko

2008-10-29

As determinants facilitating attention-related modulation of the auditory brainstem response (ABR), two experimental factors were examined: (i) auditory discrimination; and (ii) contralateral masking intensity. Tone pips at 80 dB sound pressure level were presented to the left ear via either single-tone exposures or oddball exposures, whereas white noise was delivered continuously to the right ear at variable intensities (none--80 dB sound pressure level). Participants each conducted two tasks during stimulation, either reading a book (ignoring task) or detecting target tones (attentive task). Task-related modulation within the ABR range was found only during oddball exposures at contralateral masking intensities greater than or equal to 60 dB. Attention-related modulation of ABR can thus be detected reliably during auditory discrimination under contralateral masking of sufficient intensity.

Attention and prediction in human audition: a lesson from cognitive psychophysiology

Science.gov (United States)

Schröger, Erich; Marzecová, Anna; SanMiguel, Iria

2015-01-01

Attention is a hypothetical mechanism in the service of perception that facilitates the processing of relevant information and inhibits the processing of irrelevant information. Prediction is a hypothetical mechanism in the service of perception that considers prior information when interpreting the sensorial input. Although both (attention and prediction) aid perception, they are rarely considered together. Auditory attention typically yields enhanced brain activity, whereas auditory prediction often results in attenuated brain responses. However, when strongly predicted sounds are omitted, brain responses to silence resemble those elicited by sounds. Studies jointly investigating attention and prediction revealed that these different mechanisms may interact, e.g. attention may magnify the processing differences between predicted and unpredicted sounds. Following the predictive coding theory, we suggest that prediction relates to predictions sent down from predictive models housed in higher levels of the processing hierarchy to lower levels and attention refers to gain modulation of the prediction error signal sent up to the higher level. As predictions encode contents and confidence in the sensory data, and as gain can be modulated by the intention of the listener and by the predictability of the input, various possibilities for interactions between attention and prediction can be unfolded. From this perspective, the traditional distinction between bottom-up/exogenous and top-down/endogenous driven attention can be revisited and the classic concepts of attentional gain and attentional trace can be integrated. PMID:25728182

Attended but unseen: visual attention is not sufficient for visual awareness.

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Kentridge, R W; Nijboer, T C W; Heywood, C A

2008-02-12

Does any one psychological process give rise to visual awareness? One candidate is selective attention-when we attend to something it seems we always see it. But if attention can selectively enhance our response to an unseen stimulus then attention cannot be a sufficient precondition for awareness. Kentridge, Heywood & Weiskrantz [Kentridge, R. W., Heywood, C. A., & Weiskrantz, L. (1999). Attention without awareness in blindsight. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 266, 1805-1811; Kentridge, R. W., Heywood, C. A., & Weiskrantz, L. (2004). Spatial attention speeds discrimination without awareness in blindsight. Neuropsychologia, 42, 831-835.] demonstrated just such a dissociation in the blindsight subject GY. Here, we test whether the dissociation generalizes to the normal population. We presented observers with pairs of coloured discs, each masked by the subsequent presentation of a coloured annulus. The discs acted as primes, speeding discrimination of the colour of the annulus when they matched in colour and slowing it when they differed. We show that the location of attention modulated the size of this priming effect. However, the primes were rendered invisible by metacontrast-masking and remained unseen despite being attended. Visual attention could therefore facilitate processing of an invisible target and cannot, therefore, be a sufficient precondition for visual awareness.

The effects of extinction-aroused attention on context conditioning.

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Nelson, James Byron; Fabiano, Andrew M; Lamoureux, Jeffrey A

2018-04-01

Two experiments assessed the effects of extinguishing a conditioned cue on subsequent context conditioning. Each experiment used a different video-game method where sensors predicted attacking spaceships and participants responded to the sensor in a way that prepared them for the upcoming attack. In Experiment 1 extinction of a cue which signaled a spaceship-attack outcome facilitated subsequent learning when the attack occurred unsignaled. In Experiment 2 extinction of a cue facilitated subsequent learning, regardless of whether the spaceship outcome was the same or different as used in the earlier training. In neither experiment did the extinction context become inhibitory. Results are discussed in terms of current associative theories of attention and conditioning. © 2018 Nelson et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

Dopamine Transporters in Striatum Correlate with Deactivation in the Default Mode Network during Visuospatial Attention

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tomasi, D.; Fowler, J.; Tomasi, D.; Volkow, N.D.; Wang, R.L.; Telang, F.; Wang, Chang L.; Ernst, T.; Fowler, J.S.

2009-01-01

Dopamine and dopamine transporters (DAT, which regulate extracellular dopamine in the brain) are implicated in the modulation of attention but their specific roles are not well understood. Here we hypothesized that dopamine modulates attention by facilitation of brain deactivation in the default mode network (DMN). Thus, higher striatal DAT levels, which would result in an enhanced clearance of dopamine and hence weaker dopamine signals, would be associated to lower deactivation in the DMN during an attention task. For this purpose we assessed the relationship between DAT in striatum (measured with positron emission tomography and [ 11 C]cocaine used as DAT radiotracer) and brain activation and deactivation during a parametric visual attention task (measured with blood oxygenation level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging) in healthy controls. We show that DAT availability in caudate and putamen had a negative correlation with deactivation in ventral parietal regions of the DMN (precuneus, BA 7) and a positive correlation with deactivation in a small region in the ventral anterior cingulate gyrus (BA 24/32). With increasing attentional load, DAT in caudate showed a negative correlation with load-related deactivation increases in precuneus. These findings provide evidence that dopamine transporters modulate neural activity in the DMN and anterior cingulate gyrus during visuospatial attention. Our findings suggest that dopamine modulates attention in part by regulating neuronal activity in posterior parietal cortex including precuneus (region involved in alertness) and cingulate gyrus (region deactivated in proportion to emotional interference). These findings suggest that the beneficial effects of stimulant medications (increase dopamine by blocking DAT) in inattention reflect in part their ability to facilitate the deactivation of the DMN.

Culture, attention, and emotion.

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Grossmann, Igor; Ellsworth, Phoebe C; Hong, Ying-yi

2012-02-01

This research provides experimental evidence for cultural influence on one of the most basic elements of emotional processing: attention to positive versus negative stimuli. To this end, we focused on Russian culture, which is characterized by brooding and melancholy. In Study 1, Russians spent significantly more time looking at negative than positive pictures, whereas Americans did not show this tendency. In Study 2, Russian Latvians were randomly primed with symbols of each culture, after which we measured the speed of recognition for positive versus negative trait words. Biculturals were significantly faster in recognizing negative words (as compared with baseline) when primed with Russian versus Latvian cultural symbols. Greater identification with Russian culture facilitated this effect. We provide a theoretical discussion of mental processes underlying cultural differences in emotion research.

The Benefit of Attention-to-Memory Depends on the Interplay of Memory Capacity and Memory Load

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Lim, Sung-Joo; Wöstmann, Malte; Geweke, Frederik; Obleser, Jonas

2018-01-01

Humans can be cued to attend to an item in memory, which facilitates and enhances the perceptual precision in recalling this item. Here, we demonstrate that this facilitating effect of attention-to-memory hinges on the overall degree of memory load. The benefit an individual draws from attention-to-memory depends on her overall working memory performance, measured as sensitivity (d′) in a retroactive cue (retro-cue) pitch discrimination task. While listeners maintained 2, 4, or 6 auditory syllables in memory, we provided valid or neutral retro-cues to direct listeners’ attention to one, to-be-probed syllable in memory. Participants’ overall memory performance (i.e., perceptual sensitivity d′) was relatively unaffected by the presence of valid retro-cues across memory loads. However, a more fine-grained analysis using psychophysical modeling shows that valid retro-cues elicited faster pitch-change judgments and improved perceptual precision. Importantly, as memory load increased, listeners’ overall working memory performance correlated with inter-individual differences in the degree to which precision improved (r = 0.39, p = 0.029). Under high load, individuals with low working memory profited least from attention-to-memory. Our results demonstrate that retrospective attention enhances perceptual precision of attended items in memory but listeners’ optimal use of informative cues depends on their overall memory abilities. PMID:29520246

The Benefit of Attention-to-Memory Depends on the Interplay of Memory Capacity and Memory Load

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Sung-Joo Lim

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Humans can be cued to attend to an item in memory, which facilitates and enhances the perceptual precision in recalling this item. Here, we demonstrate that this facilitating effect of attention-to-memory hinges on the overall degree of memory load. The benefit an individual draws from attention-to-memory depends on her overall working memory performance, measured as sensitivity (d′ in a retroactive cue (retro-cue pitch discrimination task. While listeners maintained 2, 4, or 6 auditory syllables in memory, we provided valid or neutral retro-cues to direct listeners’ attention to one, to-be-probed syllable in memory. Participants’ overall memory performance (i.e., perceptual sensitivity d′ was relatively unaffected by the presence of valid retro-cues across memory loads. However, a more fine-grained analysis using psychophysical modeling shows that valid retro-cues elicited faster pitch-change judgments and improved perceptual precision. Importantly, as memory load increased, listeners’ overall working memory performance correlated with inter-individual differences in the degree to which precision improved (r = 0.39, p = 0.029. Under high load, individuals with low working memory profited least from attention-to-memory. Our results demonstrate that retrospective attention enhances perceptual precision of attended items in memory but listeners’ optimal use of informative cues depends on their overall memory abilities.

Positive valence music restores executive control over sustained attention.

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Baldwin, Carryl L; Lewis, Bridget A

2017-01-01

Music sometimes improves performance in sustained attention tasks. But the type of music employed in previous investigations has varied considerably, which can account for equivocal results. Progress has been hampered by lack of a systematic database of music varying in key characteristics like tempo and valence. The aims of this study were to establish a database of popular music varying along the dimensions of tempo and valence and to examine the impact of music varying along these dimensions on restoring attentional resources following performance of a sustained attention to response task (SART) vigil. Sixty-nine participants rated popular musical selections that varied in valence and tempo to establish a database of four musical types: fast tempo positive valence, fast tempo negative valence, slow tempo positive valence, and slow tempo negative valence. A second group of 89 participants performed two blocks of the SART task interspersed with either no break or a rest break consisting of 1 of the 4 types of music or silence. Presenting positive valence music (particularly of slow tempo) during an intermission between two successive blocks of the SART significantly decreased miss rates relative to negative valence music or silence. Results support an attentional restoration theory of the impact of music on sustained attention, rather than arousal theory and demonstrate a means of restoring sustained attention. Further, the results establish the validity of a music database that will facilitate further investigations of the impact of music on performance.

Feature singletons attract spatial attention independently of feature priming.

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Yashar, Amit; White, Alex L; Fang, Wanghaoming; Carrasco, Marisa

2017-08-01

People perform better in visual search when the target feature repeats across trials (intertrial feature priming [IFP]). Here, we investigated whether repetition of a feature singleton's color modulates stimulus-driven shifts of spatial attention by presenting a probe stimulus immediately after each singleton display. The task alternated every two trials between a probe discrimination task and a singleton search task. We measured both stimulus-driven spatial attention (via the distance between the probe and singleton) and IFP (via repetition of the singleton's color). Color repetition facilitated search performance (IFP effect) when the set size was small. When the probe appeared at the singleton's location, performance was better than at the opposite location (stimulus-driven attention effect). The magnitude of this attention effect increased with the singleton's set size (which increases its saliency) but did not depend on whether the singleton's color repeated across trials, even when the previous singleton had been attended as a search target. Thus, our findings show that repetition of a salient singleton's color affects performance when the singleton is task relevant and voluntarily attended (as in search trials). However, color repetition does not affect performance when the singleton becomes irrelevant to the current task, even though the singleton does capture attention (as in probe trials). Therefore, color repetition per se does not make a singleton more salient for stimulus-driven attention. Rather, we suggest that IFP requires voluntary selection of color singletons in each consecutive trial.

Attentional capture and engagement during the attentional blink: A "camera" metaphor of attention.

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Zivony, Alon; Lamy, Dominique

2016-11-01

Identification of a target is impaired when it follows a previous target within 500 ms, suggesting that our attentional system suffers from severe temporal limitations. Although control-disruption theories posit that such impairment, known as the attentional blink (AB), reflects a difficulty in matching incoming information with the current attentional set, disrupted-engagement theories propose that it reflects a delay in later processes leading to transient enhancement of potential targets. Here, we used a variant of the contingent-capture rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm (Folk, Ester, & Troemel, 2009) to adjudicate these competing accounts. Our results show that a salient distractor that shares the target color captures attention to the same extent whether it appears within or outside the blink, thereby invalidating the notion that control over the attentional set is compromised during the blink. In addition, our results show that during the blink, not the attention-capturing object itself but the item immediately following it, is selected, indicating that the AB manifests as a delay between attentional capture and attentional engagement. We therefore conclude that attentional capture and attentional engagement can be dissociated as separate stages of attentional selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Does the sight of physical threat induce a tactile processing bias? Modality-specific attentional facilitation induced by viewing threatening pictures.

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Van Damme, Stefaan; Gallace, Alberto; Spence, Charles; Crombez, Geert; Moseley, G Lorimer

2009-02-09

Threatening stimuli are thought to bias spatial attention toward the location from which the threat is presented. Although this effect is well-established in the visual domain, little is known regarding whether tactile attention is similarly affected by threatening pictures. We hypothesised that tactile attention might be more affected by cues implying physical threat to a person's bodily tissues than by cues implying general threat. In the present study, participants made temporal order judgments (TOJs) concerning which of a pair of tactile (or auditory) stimuli, one presented to either hand, at a range of inter-stimulus intervals, had been presented first. A picture (showing physical threat, general threat, or no threat) was presented in front of one or the other hand shortly before the tactile stimuli. The results revealed that tactile attention was biased toward the side on which the picture was presented, and that this effect was significantly larger for physical threat pictures than for general threat or neutral pictures. By contrast, the bias in auditory attention toward the side of the picture was significantly larger for general threat pictures than for physical threat pictures or neutral pictures. These findings therefore demonstrate a modality-specific effect of physically threatening cues on the processing of tactile stimuli, and of generally threatening cues on auditory information processing. These results demonstrate that the processing of tactile information from the body part closest to the threatening stimulus is prioritized over tactile information from elsewhere on the body.

Understanding gender bias in face recognition: effects of divided attention at encoding.

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Palmer, Matthew A; Brewer, Neil; Horry, Ruth

2013-03-01

Prior research has demonstrated a female own-gender bias in face recognition, with females better at recognizing female faces than male faces. We explored the basis for this effect by examining the effect of divided attention during encoding on females' and males' recognition of female and male faces. For female participants, divided attention impaired recognition performance for female faces to a greater extent than male faces in a face recognition paradigm (Study 1; N=113) and an eyewitness identification paradigm (Study 2; N=502). Analysis of remember-know judgments (Study 2) indicated that divided attention at encoding selectively reduced female participants' recollection of female faces at test. For male participants, divided attention selectively reduced recognition performance (and recollection) for male stimuli in Study 2, but had similar effects on recognition of male and female faces in Study 1. Overall, the results suggest that attention at encoding contributes to the female own-gender bias by facilitating the later recollection of female faces. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of Task Repetition on Learners' Attention Orientation in L2 Oral Production

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Fukuta, Junya

2016-01-01

Task repetition facilitates learners' performance, at least temporarily: Since learners are already familiar with the content of the task at the initial enactment, they are capable of focusing their attention on linguistic form during the following enactment. However, the analysis in previous studies treated various aspects of "form" as…

Attention.

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Callahan, Patrick M; Terry, Alvin V

2015-01-01

The ability to focus one's attention on important environmental stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli is fundamental to human cognition and intellectual function. Attention is inextricably linked to perception, learning and memory, and executive function; however, it is often impaired in a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Accordingly, attention is considered as an important therapeutic target in these disorders. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the most common behavioral paradigms of attention that have been used in animals (particularly rodents) and to review the literature where these tasks have been employed to elucidate neurobiological substrates of attention as well as to evaluate novel pharmacological agents for their potential as treatments for disorders of attention. These paradigms include two tasks of sustained attention that were developed as rodent analogues of the human Continuous Performance Task (CPT), the Five-Choice Serial Reaction Time Task (5-CSRTT) and the more recently introduced Five-Choice Continuous Performance Task (5C-CPT), and the Signal Detection Task (SDT) which was designed to emphasize temporal components of attention.

Attention and memory benefits for physical attractiveness may mediate prosocial biases.

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Becker, David Vaughn

2017-01-01

Mating motivations can explain attractiveness benefits, but what proximate mechanisms might serve as efficient causes of these biases? There is growing evidence that visual cues of physical attractiveness capture attention and facilitate memory, enhancing salience in ways that could underlie, for example, preferring one job applicant over another. All of these effects beg deeper questions about the meaning of attractiveness.

Disengagement versus engagement - a need for greater expectations.

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Bell, J Z

1978-02-01

An attempt is made to clarify some existing perspectives of successful aging. The environmental milieu of the aged is laden with potent and pervasive implications about successful adaptation. Considerable exploration is required to facilitate a realistic focus upon various theoretical contributions already presented. The influence of stresses and adaptive energy depletions preceding the senescent state is discussed in an effort to facilitate knowledgeable assimilation of the potential impact of the socioeconomic milieu upon the aged. It is the author's contention that the elderly person, upon retirement, presents an adaptive energy reserve highly personalized in its ability to accommodate to change, and especially dependent upon the nature, number and intensity of environmental stressors to adapt, successfully or unsuccessfully, to senescence. Various environmental stressors are identified (e.g., changes in social opportunities and expectations which create new needs and constrict the realm of emotional and vocational influence, thus reducing opportunities and diminishing self-esteem). Heavy emphasis is placed upon role theory, interaction ritual, and transactional analysis. These concepts are extended to the institutional setting - an environment which serves only to magnify mechanisms occurring throghout the social system while adding its own unique dimension to the stressors confronting the elderly.

Facilitation of responses by task-irrelevant complex deviant stimuli.

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Schomaker, J; Meeter, M

2014-05-01

Novel stimuli reliably attract attention, suggesting that novelty may disrupt performance when it is task-irrelevant. However, under certain circumstances novel stimuli can also elicit a general alerting response having beneficial effects on performance. In a series of experiments we investigated whether different aspects of novelty--stimulus novelty, contextual novelty, surprise, deviance, and relative complexity--lead to distraction or facilitation. We used a version of the visual oddball paradigm in which participants responded to an occasional auditory target. Participants responded faster to this auditory target when it occurred during the presentation of novel visual stimuli than of standard stimuli, especially at SOAs of 0 and 200 ms (Experiment 1). Facilitation was absent for both infrequent simple deviants and frequent complex images (Experiment 2). However, repeated complex deviant images did facilitate responses to the auditory target at the 200 ms SOA (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that task-irrelevant deviant visual stimuli can facilitate responses to an unrelated auditory target in a short 0-200 millisecond time-window after presentation. This only occurs when the deviant stimuli are complex relative to standard stimuli. We link our findings to the novelty P3, which is generated under the same circumstances, and to the adaptive gain theory of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system (Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005), which may explain the timing of the effects. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Supporting anticipation in driving through attentional and interpretational in-vehicle displays.

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Stahl, Patrick; Donmez, Birsen; Jamieson, Greg A

2016-06-01

This paper evaluates two different types of in-vehicle interfaces to support anticipation in driving: one aids attention allocation and the other aids interpretation of traffic in addition to attention allocation. Anticipation is a competency that has been shown to facilitate safety and eco-driving through the efficient positioning of a vehicle for probable, upcoming changes in traffic. This competency has been shown to improve with driving experience. In an earlier simulator study, we showed that compared to novice drivers, experienced drivers exhibited a greater number of timely actions to avoid upcoming traffic conflicts. In this study, we seek to facilitate anticipation in general and for novice drivers in particular, who appear to lack the competency. We hypothesize that anticipation depends on two major steps and that it can be supported by aiding each: (1) conscious perception of relevant cues, and (2) effective processing of these cues to create a situational assessment as a basis for anticipation of future developments. We conducted a simulator experiment with 24 experienced and 24 novice drivers to evaluate two interfaces that were designed to aid the two hypothesized steps of anticipation. The attentional interface was designed to direct attention toward the most relevant cue. The interpretational interface represented several cues, and in addition to directing attention also aimed to aid sense-making of these cues. The results confirmed our hypothesis that novice drivers' anticipation performance, as measured through timely actions to avoid upcoming traffic conflicts, would be improved with either interface type. However, results contradicted our expectation that novice drivers would obtain larger improvements with the interpretational interface. Experienced drivers performed better than novice drivers to begin with and did not show any statistically significant improvements with either interface. Both interfaces improved anticipation performance for

Affective significance enhances covert attention: roles of anxiety and word familiarity.

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Calvo, Manuel G; Eysenck, Michael W

2008-11-01

To investigate the processing of emotional words by covert attention, threat-related, positive, and neutral word primes were presented parafoveally (2.2 degrees away from fixation) for 150 ms, under gaze-contingent foveal masking, to prevent eye fixations. The primes were followed by a probe word in a lexical-decision task. In Experiment 1, results showed a parafoveal threat-anxiety superiority: Parafoveal prime threat words facilitated responses to probe threat words for high-anxiety individuals, in comparison with neutral and positive words, and relative to low-anxiety individuals. This reveals an advantage in threat processing by covert attention, without differences in overt attention. However, anxiety was also associated with greater familiarity with threat words, and the parafoveal priming effects were significantly reduced when familiarity was covaried out. To further examine the role of word knowledge, in Experiment 2, vocabulary and word familiarity were equated for low- and high-anxiety groups. In these conditions, the parafoveal threat-anxiety advantage disappeared. This suggests that the enhanced covert-attention effect depends on familiarity with words.

Attention and apparent motion.

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Horowitz, T; Treisman, A

1994-01-01

Two dissociations between short- and long-range motion in visual search are reported. Previous research has shown parallel processing for short-range motion and apparently serial processing for long-range motion. This finding has been replicated and it has also been found that search for short-range targets can be impaired both by using bicontrast stimuli, and by prior adaptation to the target direction of motion. Neither factor impaired search in long-range motion displays. Adaptation actually facilitated search with long-range displays, which is attributed to response-level effects. A feature-integration account of apparent motion is proposed. In this theory, short-range motion depends on specialized motion feature detectors operating in parallel across the display, but subject to selective adaptation, whereas attention is needed to link successive elements when they appear at greater separations, or across opposite contrasts.

Is goal-directed attentional guidance just intertrial priming? A review.

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Lamy, Dominique F; Kristjánsson, Arni

2013-07-01

According to most models of selective visual attention, our goals at any given moment and saliency in the visual field determine attentional priority. But selection is not carried out in isolation--we typically track objects through space and time. This is not well captured within the distinction between goal-directed and saliency-based attentional guidance. Recent studies have shown that selection is strongly facilitated when the characteristics of the objects to be attended and of those to be ignored remain constant between consecutive selections. These studies have generated the proposal that goal-directed or top-down effects are best understood as intertrial priming effects. Here, we provide a detailed overview and critical appraisal of the arguments, experimental strategies, and findings that have been used to promote this idea, along with a review of studies providing potential counterarguments. We divide this review according to different types of attentional control settings that observers are thought to adopt during visual search: feature-based settings, dimension-based settings, and singleton detection mode. We conclude that priming accounts for considerable portions of effects attributed to top-down guidance, but that top-down guidance can be independent of intertrial priming.

Termination of T cell priming relies on a phase of unresponsiveness promoting disengagement from APCs and T cell division.

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Bohineust, Armelle; Garcia, Zacarias; Beuneu, Hélène; Lemaître, Fabrice; Bousso, Philippe

2018-05-07

T cells are primed in secondary lymphoid organs by establishing stable interactions with antigen-presenting cells (APCs). However, the cellular mechanisms underlying the termination of T cell priming and the initiation of clonal expansion remain largely unknown. Using intravital imaging, we observed that T cells typically divide without being associated to APCs. Supporting these findings, we demonstrate that recently activated T cells have an intrinsic defect in establishing stable contacts with APCs, a feature that was reflected by a blunted capacity to stop upon T cell receptor (TCR) engagement. T cell unresponsiveness was caused, in part, by a general block in extracellular calcium entry. Forcing TCR signals in activated T cells antagonized cell division, suggesting that T cell hyporesponsiveness acts as a safeguard mechanism against signals detrimental to mitosis. We propose that transient unresponsiveness represents an essential phase of T cell priming that promotes T cell disengagement from APCs and favors effective clonal expansion. © 2018 Bohineust et al.

Differentiating emotional processing and attention in psychopathy with functional neuroimaging.

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Anderson, Nathaniel E; Steele, Vaughn R; Maurer, J Michael; Rao, Vikram; Koenigs, Michael R; Decety, Jean; Kosson, David S; Calhoun, Vince D; Kiehl, Kent A

2017-06-01

Individuals with psychopathy are often characterized by emotional processing deficits, and recent research has examined the specific contexts and cognitive mechanisms that underlie these abnormalities. Some evidence suggests that abnormal features of attention are fundamental to emotional deficits in persons with psychopathy, but few studies have demonstrated the neural underpinnings responsible for such effects. Here, we use functional neuroimaging to examine attention-emotion interactions among incarcerated individuals (n = 120) evaluated for psychopathic traits using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Using a task designed to manipulate attention to emotional features of visual stimuli, we demonstrate effects representing implicit emotional processing, explicit emotional processing, attention-facilitated emotional processing, and vigilance for emotional content. Results confirm the importance of considering mechanisms of attention when evaluating emotional processing differences related to psychopathic traits. The affective-interpersonal features of psychopathy (PCL-R Factor 1) were associated with relatively lower emotion-dependent augmentation of activity in visual processing areas during implicit emotional processing, while antisocial-lifestyle features (PCL-R Factor 2) were associated with elevated activity in the amygdala and related salience network regions. During explicit emotional processing, psychopathic traits were associated with upregulation in the medial prefrontal cortex, insula, and superior frontal regions. Isolating the impact of explicit attention to emotional content, only Factor 1 was related to upregulation of activity in the visual processing stream, which was accompanied by increased activity in the angular gyrus. These effects highlight some important mechanisms underlying abnormal features of attention and emotional processing that accompany psychopathic traits.

EYE-TRAC: monitoring attention and utility for mTBI

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Maruta, Jun; Tong, Jianliang; Lee, Stephanie W.; Iqbal, Zarah; Schonberger, Alison; Ghajar, Jamshid

2012-06-01

Attention is a core function in cognition and also the most prevalent cognitive deficit in mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Predictive timing is an essential element of attention functioning because sensory processing and execution of goal-oriented behavior are facilitated by temporally accurate prediction. It is hypothesized that impaired synchronization between prediction and external events accounts for the attention deficit in mTBI. Other cognitive and somatic or affective symptoms associated with mTBI may be explained as secondary consequences of impaired predictive timing. Eye-Tracking Rapid Attention Computation (EYE-TRAC) is the quantification of predictive timing with indices of dynamic visuo-motor synchronization (DVS) between the gaze and the target during continuous predictive visual tracking. Such quantification allows for cognitive performance monitoring in comparison to the overall population as well as within individuals over time. We report preliminary results of normative data and data collected from subjects with a history of mTBI within 2 weeks of injury and post-concussive symptoms at the time of recruitment. A substantial proportion of mTBI subjects demonstrated DVS scores worse than 95% of normal subjects. In addition, longitudinal monitoring of acute mTBI subjects showed that initially abnormal DVS scores were followed by improvement toward the normal range. In summary, EYE-TRAC provides fast and objective indices of DVS that allow comparison of attention performance to a normative standard and monitoring of within-individual changes.

The influence of caffeine on spatial-selective attention: an event-related potential study.

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Ruijter, J; de Ruiter, M B; Snel, J; Lorist, M M

2000-12-01

Following the indications of previous studies that caffeine might have a specific effect on the processing of spatial information compared with other types of information, the present study investigated the influence of caffeine on an often used spatial-selective attention task. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 11 participants under conditions of caffeine (250 mg) and placebo. Spatial-selective attention effects were reflected in the ERPs as more positive going occipital P1 and broadly distributed P2 components, and more negative going occipital-temporal N1 and broadly distributed N2 components. A treatment effect was found as a more positive going frontal P2 component in the caffeine condition, whereas interactions between treatment and attention were observed for P2 and N2 components, but not for P1 and N1 components. This pattern of results suggests that caffeine has no specific influence on spatial-selective attention, but rather, has a more general facilitating effect on perceptual processing, as well as a possible effect on the frontal control mechanisms, i.e. focusing attention and increasing selectivity.

Mindful attention reduces neural and self-reported cue-induced craving in smokers

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Creswell, John David; Tabibnia, Golnaz; Julson, Erica; Kober, Hedy; Tindle, Hilary A.

2013-01-01

An emerging body of research suggests that mindfulness-based interventions may be beneficial for smoking cessation and the treatment of other addictive disorders. One way that mindfulness may facilitate smoking cessation is through the reduction of craving to smoking cues. The present work considers whether mindful attention can reduce self-reported and neural markers of cue-induced craving in treatment seeking smokers. Forty-seven (n = 47) meditation-naïve treatment-seeking smokers (12-h abstinent from smoking) viewed and made ratings of smoking and neutral images while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants were trained and instructed to view these images passively or with mindful attention. Results indicated that mindful attention reduced self-reported craving to smoking images, and reduced neural activity in a craving-related region of subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC). Moreover, a psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed that mindful attention reduced functional connectivity between sgACC and other craving-related regions compared to passively viewing smoking images, suggesting that mindfulness may decouple craving neurocircuitry when viewing smoking cues. These results provide an initial indication that mindful attention may describe a ‘bottom-up’ attention to one’s present moment experience in ways that can help reduce subjective and neural reactivity to smoking cues in smokers. PMID:22114078

Embodied harms: gender, shame, and technology-facilitated sexual violence.

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Henry, Nicola; Powell, Anastasia

2015-06-01

Criminality in cyberspace has been the subject of much debate since the 1990s, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to technology-facilitated sexual violence and harassment (TFSV). The aim of this article is to explore the ways in which retraditionalized gender hierarchies and inequalities are manifested in online contexts, and to conceptualize the cause and effects of TFSV as "embodied harms." We argue that problematic mind/body and online/off-line dualisms result in a failure to grasp the unique nature of embodied harms, precluding an adequate understanding and theorization of TFSV. © The Author(s) 2015.

Attention to memory: orienting attention to sound object representations.

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Backer, Kristina C; Alain, Claude

2014-01-01

Despite a growing acceptance that attention and memory interact, and that attention can be focused on an active internal mental representation (i.e., reflective attention), there has been a paucity of work focusing on reflective attention to 'sound objects' (i.e., mental representations of actual sound sources in the environment). Further research on the dynamic interactions between auditory attention and memory, as well as its degree of neuroplasticity, is important for understanding how sound objects are represented, maintained, and accessed in the brain. This knowledge can then guide the development of training programs to help individuals with attention and memory problems. This review article focuses on attention to memory with an emphasis on behavioral and neuroimaging studies that have begun to explore the mechanisms that mediate reflective attentional orienting in vision and more recently, in audition. Reflective attention refers to situations in which attention is oriented toward internal representations rather than focused on external stimuli. We propose four general principles underlying attention to short-term memory. Furthermore, we suggest that mechanisms involved in orienting attention to visual object representations may also apply for orienting attention to sound object representations.

Functional localization and effective connectivity of cortical theta and alpha oscillatory activity during an attention task

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Yuichi Kitaura

detailed level, decreased flow from right inferior frontal gyrus to anterior cingulate cortex for theta, and low and high alpha oscillations, and increased feedback (bidirectional flow between left superior temporal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus, were observed during the arithmetic task. Conclusions: Task related medial prefrontal increase in theta oscillations possibly corresponds to frontal midline theta, while parietal decreased alpha1 activity indicates the active role of this region in the numerical task. Task related decrease of intracortical right hemispheric connectivity support the notion that these nodes need to disengage from one another in order to not interfere with the ongoing numerical processing. The bidirectional feedback between left frontal-temporal-parietal regions in the arithmetic task is very likely to be related to attention network working memory function. Significance: The methods of analysis and the results presented here will hopefully contribute to clarify the roles of the different EEG oscillations during sustained attention, both in terms of their functional localization and in terms of how they integrate brain function by supporting information flow between different cortical regions. The methodology presented here might be clinically relevant in evaluating abnormal attention function. Keywords: Quantitative EEG, sLORETA, iCoh, Directional connectivity, Frontal midline theta, Attention network, Mental arithmetic, Fronto-parietal network, Directional flow, Attention task, Granger causality

Molecular Tools for Facilitative Carbohydrate Transporters (Gluts).

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Tanasova, Marina; Fedie, Joseph R

2017-09-19

Facilitative carbohydrate transporters-Gluts-have received wide attention over decades due to their essential role in nutrient uptake and links with various metabolic disorders, including diabetes, obesity, and cancer. Endeavors directed towards understanding the mechanisms of Glut-mediated nutrient uptake have resulted in a multidisciplinary research field spanning protein chemistry, chemical biology, organic synthesis, crystallography, and biomolecular modeling. Gluts became attractive targets for cancer research and medicinal chemistry, leading to the development of new approaches to cancer diagnostics and providing avenues for cancer-targeting therapeutics. In this review, the current state of knowledge of the molecular interactions behind Glut-mediated sugar uptake, Glut-targeting probes, therapeutics, and inhibitors are discussed. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Behavioral and Brain Measures of Phasic Alerting Effects on Visual Attention.

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Wiegand, Iris; Petersen, Anders; Finke, Kathrin; Bundesen, Claus; Lansner, Jon; Habekost, Thomas

2017-01-01

In the present study, we investigated effects of phasic alerting on visual attention in a partial report task, in which half of the displays were preceded by an auditory warning cue. Based on the computational Theory of Visual Attention (TVA), we estimated parameters of spatial and non-spatial aspects of visual attention and measured event-related lateralizations (ERLs) over visual processing areas. We found that the TVA parameter sensory effectiveness a , which is thought to reflect visual processing capacity, significantly increased with phasic alerting. By contrast, the distribution of visual processing resources according to task relevance and spatial position, as quantified in parameters top-down control α and spatial bias w index , was not modulated by phasic alerting. On the electrophysiological level, the latencies of ERLs in response to the task displays were reduced following the warning cue. These results suggest that phasic alerting facilitates visual processing in a general, unselective manner and that this effect originates in early stages of visual information processing.

Practice Facilitators' and Leaders' Perspectives on a Facilitated Quality Improvement Program.

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McHugh, Megan; Brown, Tiffany; Liss, David T; Walunas, Theresa L; Persell, Stephen D

2018-04-01

Practice facilitation is a promising approach to helping practices implement quality improvements. Our purpose was to describe practice facilitators' and practice leaders' perspectives on implementation of a practice facilitator-supported quality improvement program and describe where their perspectives aligned and diverged. We conducted interviews with practice leaders and practice facilitators who participated in a program that included 35 improvement strategies aimed at the ABCS of heart health (aspirin use in high-risk individuals, blood pressure control, cholesterol management, and smoking cessation). Rapid qualitative analysis was used to collect, organize, and analyze the data. We interviewed 17 of the 33 eligible practice leaders, and the 10 practice facilitators assigned to those practices. Practice leaders and practice facilitators both reported value in the program's ability to bring needed, high-quality resources to practices. Practice leaders appreciated being able to set the schedule for facilitation and select among the 35 interventions. According to practice facilitators, however, relying on practice leaders to set the pace of the intervention resulted in a lower level of program intensity than intended. Practice leaders preferred targeted assistance, particularly electronic health record documentation guidance and linkages to state smoking cessation programs. Practice facilitators reported that the easiest interventions were those that did not alter care practices. The dual perspectives of practice leaders and practice facilitators provide a more holistic picture of enablers and barriers to program implementation. There may be greater opportunities to assist small practices through simple, targeted practice facilitator-supported efforts rather than larger, comprehensive quality improvement projects. © 2018 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.

Attention Modulates Visual-Tactile Interaction in Spatial Pattern Matching

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Göschl, Florian; Engel, Andreas K.; Friese, Uwe

2014-01-01

Factors influencing crossmodal interactions are manifold and operate in a stimulus-driven, bottom-up fashion, as well as via top-down control. Here, we evaluate the interplay of stimulus congruence and attention in a visual-tactile task. To this end, we used a matching paradigm requiring the identification of spatial patterns that were concurrently presented visually on a computer screen and haptically to the fingertips by means of a Braille stimulator. Stimulation in our paradigm was always bimodal with only the allocation of attention being manipulated between conditions. In separate blocks of the experiment, participants were instructed to (a) focus on a single modality to detect a specific target pattern, (b) pay attention to both modalities to detect a specific target pattern, or (c) to explicitly evaluate if the patterns in both modalities were congruent or not. For visual as well as tactile targets, congruent stimulus pairs led to quicker and more accurate detection compared to incongruent stimulation. This congruence facilitation effect was more prominent under divided attention. Incongruent stimulation led to behavioral decrements under divided attention as compared to selectively attending a single sensory channel. Additionally, when participants were asked to evaluate congruence explicitly, congruent stimulation was associated with better performance than incongruent stimulation. Our results extend previous findings from audiovisual studies, showing that stimulus congruence also resulted in behavioral improvements in visuotactile pattern matching. The interplay of stimulus processing and attentional control seems to be organized in a highly flexible fashion, with the integration of signals depending on both bottom-up and top-down factors, rather than occurring in an ‘all-or-nothing’ manner. PMID:25203102

Attention modulates visual-tactile interaction in spatial pattern matching.

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Florian Göschl

Full Text Available Factors influencing crossmodal interactions are manifold and operate in a stimulus-driven, bottom-up fashion, as well as via top-down control. Here, we evaluate the interplay of stimulus congruence and attention in a visual-tactile task. To this end, we used a matching paradigm requiring the identification of spatial patterns that were concurrently presented visually on a computer screen and haptically to the fingertips by means of a Braille stimulator. Stimulation in our paradigm was always bimodal with only the allocation of attention being manipulated between conditions. In separate blocks of the experiment, participants were instructed to (a focus on a single modality to detect a specific target pattern, (b pay attention to both modalities to detect a specific target pattern, or (c to explicitly evaluate if the patterns in both modalities were congruent or not. For visual as well as tactile targets, congruent stimulus pairs led to quicker and more accurate detection compared to incongruent stimulation. This congruence facilitation effect was more prominent under divided attention. Incongruent stimulation led to behavioral decrements under divided attention as compared to selectively attending a single sensory channel. Additionally, when participants were asked to evaluate congruence explicitly, congruent stimulation was associated with better performance than incongruent stimulation. Our results extend previous findings from audiovisual studies, showing that stimulus congruence also resulted in behavioral improvements in visuotactile pattern matching. The interplay of stimulus processing and attentional control seems to be organized in a highly flexible fashion, with the integration of signals depending on both bottom-up and top-down factors, rather than occurring in an 'all-or-nothing' manner.

The facilitative orientation of the teacher as a base condition for the organization of group work with the elementary school students

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Maslova E. A.

2017-12-01

Full Text Available the questions connected with the organization of group work with the elementary school students are revised in this article as well as its object, objectives, advantages and difficulties which may occur during the preparation work. The author reveals the essence and meaning of the pedagogical facilitation and draws attention that one of the conditions for its effective organization is the pedagogical facilitation of the teacher and the safe educational environment. The pedagogical facilitation is being reviewed though the following components: emotionally-cognitive, praxeologically-behavioural, reflexive ones.

Selective attention modulates visual and haptic repetition priming: effects in aging and Alzheimer's disease.

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Ballesteros, Soledad; Reales, José M; Mayas, Julia; Heller, Morton A

2008-08-01

In two experiments, we examined the effect of selective attention at encoding on repetition priming in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients for objects presented visually (experiment 1) or haptically (experiment 2). We used a repetition priming paradigm combined with a selective attention procedure at encoding. Reliable priming was found for both young adults and healthy older participants for visually presented pictures (experiment 1) as well as for haptically presented objects (experiment 2). However, this was only found for attended and not for unattended stimuli. The results suggest that independently of the perceptual modality, repetition priming requires attention at encoding and that perceptual facilitation is maintained in normal aging. However, AD patients did not show priming for attended stimuli, or for unattended visual or haptic objects. These findings suggest an early deficit of selective attention in AD. Results are discussed from a cognitive neuroscience approach.

The Attentional Boost Effect: Transient increases in attention to one task enhance performance in a second task.

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Swallow, Khena M; Jiang, Yuhong V

2010-04-01

Recent work on event perception suggests that perceptual processing increases when events change. An important question is how such changes influence the way other information is processed, particularly during dual-task performance. In this study, participants monitored a long series of distractor items for an occasional target as they simultaneously encoded unrelated background scenes. The appearance of an occasional target could have two opposite effects on the secondary task: It could draw attention away from the second task, or, as a change in the ongoing event, it could improve secondary task performance. Results were consistent with the second possibility. Memory for scenes presented simultaneously with the targets was better than memory for scenes that preceded or followed the targets. This effect was observed when the primary detection task involved visual feature oddball detection, auditory oddball detection, and visual color-shape conjunction detection. It was eliminated when the detection task was omitted, and when it required an arbitrary response mapping. The appearance of occasional, task-relevant events appears to trigger a temporal orienting response that facilitates processing of concurrently attended information (Attentional Boost Effect). Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Spatial constancy of attention across eye movements is mediated by the presence of visual objects.

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Lisi, Matteo; Cavanagh, Patrick; Zorzi, Marco

2015-05-01

Recent studies have shown that attentional facilitation lingers at the retinotopic coordinates of a previously attended position after an eye movement. These results are intriguing, because the retinotopic location becomes behaviorally irrelevant once the eyes have moved. Critically, in these studies participants were asked to maintain attention on a blank location of the screen. In the present study, we examined whether the continuing presence of a visual object at the cued location could affect the allocation of attention across eye movements. We used a trans-saccadic cueing paradigm in which the relevant positions could be defined or not by visual objects (simple square outlines). We find an attentional benefit at the spatiotopic location of the cue only when the object (the placeholder) has been continuously present at that location. We conclude that the presence of an object at the attended location is a critical factor for the maintenance of spatial constancy of attention across eye movements, a finding that helps to reconcile previous conflicting results.

Attentional Lapses of Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Tasks of Sustained Attention.

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Gmehlin, Dennis; Fuermaier, Anselm B M; Walther, Stephan; Tucha, Lara; Koerts, Janneke; Lange, Klaus W; Tucha, Oliver; Weisbrod, Matthias; Aschenbrenner, Steffen

2016-06-01

Adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show attentional dysfunction such as distractibility and mind-wandering, especially in lengthy tasks. However, fundamentals of dysfunction are ambiguous and relationships of neuropsychological test parameters with self-report measures of ADHD symptoms are marginal. We hypothesize that basic deficits in sustaining attention explain more complex attentional dysfunction in persons with ADHD and relate to ADHD symptoms. Attentional function was analyzed by computing ex-Gaussian parameters for 3 time Blocks in a 20 min test of sustained alertness. Changes in performance across these blocks were analyzed by comparing adult persons with ADHD (n = 24) with healthy matched controls (n = 24) and correlated with neuropsychological measures of selective and divided attention as well as self-report measures of ADHD symptoms. We found a significantly steeper increase in the number of slow responses (ex-Gaussian parameter τ) in persons with ADHD with time on task in basic sustained alertness. They also performed significantly worse in tasks of sustained selective and divided attention. However, after controlling for an increase in τ during the alertness task, significant differences between groups disappeared for divided and partly selective attention. Increases in τ in the sustained alertness task correlated significantly with self-report measures of ADHD symptoms. Our results provide evidence that very basic deficits in sustaining attention in adults with ADHD are related to infrequent slow responses (=attentional lapses), with changes over time being relevant for more complex attentional function and experienced ADHD symptoms in everyday life. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Episodic memory for spatial context biases spatial attention.

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Ciaramelli, Elisa; Lin, Olivia; Moscovitch, Morris

2009-01-01

The study explores the bottom-up attentional consequences of episodic memory retrieval. Individuals studied words (Experiment 1) or pictures (Experiment 2) presented on the left or on the right of the screen. They then viewed studied and new stimuli in the centre of the screen. One-second after the appearance of each stimulus, participants had to respond to a dot presented on the left or on the right of the screen. The dot could follow a stimulus that had been presented, during the study phase, on the same side as the dot (congruent condition), a stimulus that had been presented on the opposite side (incongruent condition), or a new stimulus (neutral condition). Subjects were faster to respond to the dot in the congruent compared to the incongruent condition, with an overall right visual field advantage in Experiment 1. The memory-driven facilitation effect correlated with subjects' re-experiencing of the encoding context (R responses; Experiment 1), but not with their explicit memory for the side of items' presentation (source memory; Experiment 2). The results indicate that memory contents are attended automatically and can bias the deployment of attention. The degree to which memory and attention interact appears related to subjective but not objective indicators of memory strength.

Limits in feature-based attention to multiple colors.

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Liu, Taosheng; Jigo, Michael

2017-11-01

Attention to a feature enhances the sensory representation of that feature. Although much has been learned about the properties of attentional modulation when attending to a single feature, the effectiveness of attending to multiple features is not well understood. We investigated this question in a series of experiments using a color-detection task while varying the number of attended colors in a cueing paradigm. Observers were shown either a single cue, two cues, or no cue (baseline) before detecting a coherent color target. We measured detection threshold by varying the coherence level of the target. Compared to the baseline condition, we found consistent facilitation of detection performance in the one-cue and two-cue conditions, but performance in the two-cue condition was lower than that in the one-cue condition. In the final experiment, we presented a 50% valid cue to emulate the situation in which observers were only able to attend a single color in the two-cue condition, and found equivalent detection thresholds with the standard two-cue condition. These results indicate a limit in attending to two colors and further imply that observers could effectively attend a single color at a time. Such a limit is likely due to an inability to maintain multiple active attentional templates for colors.

Spatial Attention Is Attracted in a Sustained Fashion toward Singular Points in the Optic Flow

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Wang, Shuo; Fukuchi, Masaki; Koch, Christof; Tsuchiya, Naotsugu

2012-01-01

While a single approaching object is known to attract spatial attention, it is unknown how attention is directed when the background looms towards the observer as s/he moves forward in a quasi-stationary environment. In Experiment 1, we used a cued speeded discrimination task to quantify where and how spatial attention is directed towards the target superimposed onto a cloud of moving dots. We found that when the motion was expansive, attention was attracted towards the singular point of the optic flow (the focus of expansion, FOE) in a sustained fashion. The effects were less pronounced when the motion was contractive. The more ecologically valid the motion features became (e.g., temporal expansion of each dot, spatial depth structure implied by distribution of the size of the dots), the stronger the attentional effects. Further, the attentional effects were sustained over 1000 ms. Experiment 2 quantified these attentional effects using a change detection paradigm by zooming into or out of photographs of natural scenes. Spatial attention was attracted in a sustained manner such that change detection was facilitated or delayed depending on the location of the FOE only when the motion was expansive. Our results suggest that focal attention is strongly attracted towards singular points that signal the direction of forward ego-motion. PMID:22905096

Attentional Push: Augmenting Salience with Shared Attention Modeling

OpenAIRE

Gorji, Siavash; Clark, James J.

2016-01-01

We present a novel visual attention tracking technique based on Shared Attention modeling. Our proposed method models the viewer as a participant in the activity occurring in the scene. We go beyond image salience and instead of only computing the power of an image region to pull attention to it, we also consider the strength with which other regions of the image push attention to the region in question. We use the term Attentional Push to refer to the power of image regions to direct and man...

A framework to facilitate self-directed learning, assessment and supervision in midwifery practice: A qualitative study of supervisors' perceptions

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Embo, M.; Driessen, E.; Valcke, M.; Vleuten, C.P.M. van der

2014-01-01

BACKGROUND: Self-directed learning is an educational concept that has received increasing attention. The recent workplace literature, however, reports problems with the facilitation of self-directed learning in clinical practice. We developed the Midwifery Assessment and Feedback Instrument (MAFI)

Rewards modulate saccade latency but not exogenous spatial attention.

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Dunne, Stephen; Ellison, Amanda; Smith, Daniel T

2015-01-01

The eye movement system is sensitive to reward. However, whilst the eye movement system is extremely flexible, the extent to which changes to oculomotor behavior induced by reward paradigms persist beyond the training period or transfer to other oculomotor tasks is unclear. To address these issues we examined the effects of presenting feedback that represented small monetary rewards to spatial locations on the latency of saccadic eye movements, the time-course of learning and extinction of the effects of rewarding saccades on exogenous spatial attention and oculomotor inhibition of return. Reward feedback produced a relative facilitation of saccadic latency in a stimulus driven saccade task which persisted for three blocks of extinction trials. However, this hemifield-specific effect failed to transfer to peripheral cueing tasks. We conclude that rewarding specific spatial locations is unlikely to induce long-term, systemic changes to the human oculomotor or attention systems.

Rewards modulate saccade latency but not exogenous spatial attention.

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Stephen eDunne

2015-07-01

Full Text Available The eye movement system is sensitive to reward. However, whilst the eye movement system is extremely flexible, the extent to which changes to oculomotor behaviour induced by reward paradigms persist beyond the training period or transfer to other oculomotor tasks is unclear. To address these issues we examined the effects of presenting feedback that represented small monetary rewards to spatial locations on the latency of saccadic eye movements, the time-course of learning and extinction of the effects of rewarding saccades on exogenous spatial attention and oculomotor IOR. Reward feedback produced a relative facilitation of saccadic latency in a stimulus driven saccade task which persisted for 3 blocks of extinction trials. However this hemifield-specific effect failed to transfer to peripheral cueing tasks. We conclude that rewarding specific spatial locations is unlikely to induce long-term, systemic changes to the human oculomotor or attention systems.

Attention processes in chronic fatigue syndrome: attentional bias for health-related threat and the role of attentional control.

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Hou, Ruihua; Moss-Morris, Rona; Risdale, Anna; Lynch, Jeannette; Jeevaratnam, Preshan; Bradley, Brendan P; Mogg, Karin

2014-01-01

Cognitive behavioural models of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) propose that attention processes, specifically, enhanced selective attention to health-threat related cues, may play an important role in symptom maintenance. The current study investigated attentional bias towards health-threat stimuli in CFS. It also examined whether individuals with CFS have impaired executive attention, and whether this was related to attentional bias. 27 participants with CFS and 35 healthy controls completed a Visual Probe Task measuring attentional bias, and an Attention Network Test measuring executive attention, alerting and orienting. Participants also completed self-report measures of CFS and mood symptoms. Compared to the control group, the CFS group showed greater attentional bias for health-threat words than pictures; and the CFS group was significantly impaired in executive attention. Furthermore, CFS individuals with poor executive attention showed greater attentional bias to health-threat related words, compared not only to controls but also to CFS individuals with good executive attention. Thus, this study revealed a significant relationship between attentional bias and executive attention in CFS: attentional bias to threat was primarily evident in those with impaired executive attention control. Taking account of individual differences in executive attention control in current intervention models may be beneficial for CFS. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How the Brain Converts Negative Evaluation into Performance Facilitation.

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Prévost, Charlotte; Lau, Hakwan; Mobbs, Dean

2018-02-01

Surpassing negative evaluation is a recurrent theme of success stories. Yet, there is little evidence supporting the counterintuitive idea that negative evaluation might not only motivate people, but also enhance performance. To address this question, we designed a task that required participants to decide whether taking up a risky challenge after receiving positive or negative evaluations from independent judges. Participants believed that these evaluations were based on their prior performance on a related task. Results showed that negative evaluation caused a facilitation in performance. Concurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that the motivating effect of negative evaluation was represented in the insula and striatum, while the performance boost was associated with functional positive connectivity between the insula and a set of brain regions involved in goal-directed behavior and the orienting of attention. These findings provide new insight into the neural representation of negative evaluation-induced facilitation. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Employee pathway to voluntary turnover: Testing the direct and ınteractive roles of work family conflict and work family facilitation

OpenAIRE

Okechukwu Ethelbert Amah

2009-01-01

The direct effect of work family conflict on turnover has received much attention in organizational studies. However, neither the direct effect of work family facilitation on turnover nor the effect of its interaction with work family conflict on voluntary turnover has received similar attention. This has resulted in low explained variance in turnover in models that excluded these relationships. Using 450 participants drawn from employees in Nigeria, I found significant direct and interaction...

What affects social attention? Social presence, eye contact and autistic traits.

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Megan Freeth

Full Text Available Social understanding is facilitated by effectively attending to other people and the subtle social cues they generate. In order to more fully appreciate the nature of social attention and what drives people to attend to social aspects of the world, one must investigate the factors that influence social attention. This is especially important when attempting to create models of disordered social attention, e.g. a model of social attention in autism. Here we analysed participants' viewing behaviour during one-to-one social interactions with an experimenter. Interactions were conducted either live or via video (social presence manipulation. The participant was asked and then required to answer questions. Experimenter eye-contact was either direct or averted. Additionally, the influence of participant self-reported autistic traits was also investigated. We found that regardless of whether the interaction was conducted live or via a video, participants frequently looked at the experimenter's face, and they did this more often when being asked a question than when answering. Critical differences in social attention between the live and video interactions were also observed. Modifications of experimenter eye contact influenced participants' eye movements in the live interaction only; and increased autistic traits were associated with less looking at the experimenter for video interactions only. We conclude that analysing patterns of eye-movements in response to strictly controlled video stimuli and natural real-world stimuli furthers the field's understanding of the factors that influence social attention.

Chewing and Attention: A Positive Effect on Sustained Attention

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Onozuka, Minoru

2015-01-01

Chewing is crushing food not only to aid swallowing and digestion, but also to help stress relief and regulate cognitive function, especially in attention. It is well known that chewing gum is used for sleepiness prevention during work, learning, and driving, suggesting a link between chewing and sustained attention. We hypothesized that chewing elevates attention and/or alertness, leading to improvements in cognitive performance. We carried out a systematic review of the PubMed database. We inspected the attributes of effects on attention in studies investigating the effects of chewing on attention or alertness conducted with pre-post design in healthy subjects, except elderly. We identified 151 references, 22 of which were included: 14 (64%) showed positive attributes of effects on attention, 1 (5%) showed negative attributes of effects on attention, 5 (23%) showed both positive and negative attributes of effects on attention, and 2 (9%) showed no significant attributes of effects on attention. Thus, positive attributes of effects of chewing on attention, especially on sustained attention, were shown in over half of the reports. These effects also appeared with improvement in mood and stress relief and were influenced by time-on-task effect. Further studies are needed, but chewing could be useful for modifying cognitive function. PMID:26075234

Chewing and Attention: A Positive Effect on Sustained Attention

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Yoshiyuki Hirano

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Chewing is crushing food not only to aid swallowing and digestion, but also to help stress relief and regulate cognitive function, especially in attention. It is well known that chewing gum is used for sleepiness prevention during work, learning, and driving, suggesting a link between chewing and sustained attention. We hypothesized that chewing elevates attention and/or alertness, leading to improvements in cognitive performance. We carried out a systematic review of the PubMed database. We inspected the attributes of effects on attention in studies investigating the effects of chewing on attention or alertness conducted with pre-post design in healthy subjects, except elderly. We identified 151 references, 22 of which were included: 14 (64% showed positive attributes of effects on attention, 1 (5% showed negative attributes of effects on attention, 5 (23% showed both positive and negative attributes of effects on attention, and 2 (9% showed no significant attributes of effects on attention. Thus, positive attributes of effects of chewing on attention, especially on sustained attention, were shown in over half of the reports. These effects also appeared with improvement in mood and stress relief and were influenced by time-on-task effect. Further studies are needed, but chewing could be useful for modifying cognitive function.

Chewing and attention: a positive effect on sustained attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Hirano, Yoshiyuki; Onozuka, Minoru

2015-01-01

Chewing is crushing food not only to aid swallowing and digestion, but also to help stress relief and regulate cognitive function, especially in attention. It is well known that chewing gum is used for sleepiness prevention during work, learning, and driving, suggesting a link between chewing and sustained attention. We hypothesized that chewing elevates attention and/or alertness, leading to improvements in cognitive performance. We carried out a systematic review of the PubMed database. We inspected the attributes of effects on attention in studies investigating the effects of chewing on attention or alertness conducted with pre-post design in healthy subjects, except elderly. We identified 151 references, 22 of which were included: 14 (64%) showed positive attributes of effects on attention, 1 (5%) showed negative attributes of effects on attention, 5 (23%) showed both positive and negative attributes of effects on attention, and 2 (9%) showed no significant attributes of effects on attention. Thus, positive attributes of effects of chewing on attention, especially on sustained attention, were shown in over half of the reports. These effects also appeared with improvement in mood and stress relief and were influenced by time-on-task effect. Further studies are needed, but chewing could be useful for modifying cognitive function.

The Attention Cascade Model and Attentional Blink

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Shih, Shui-I

2008-01-01

An attention cascade model is proposed to account for attentional blinks in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of stimuli. Data were collected using single characters in a single RSVP stream at 10 Hz [Shih, S., & Reeves, A. (2007). "Attentional capture in rapid serial visual presentation." "Spatial Vision", 20(4), 301-315], and single words,…

Attention skills and executive functioning in children with Noonan syndrome and their unaffected siblings.

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Pierpont, Elizabeth I; Tworog-Dube, Erica; Roberts, Amy E

2015-04-01

Emerging research indicates that gene mutations within the RAS-MAPK signaling cascade, which cause Noonan syndrome and related disorders, affect neurophysiologic activity in brain regions underlying attention and executive functions. The present study examined whether children with Noonan syndrome are at heightened risk for symptoms of attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and executive dysfunction relative to an unaffected sibling comparison group, and investigated three key aspects of behavioral attention: auditory attention, sustained attention, and response inhibition. Children and adolescents with Noonan syndrome (n=32, 17 males, 15 females, mean age 11y 3mo, SD 3y) and their unaffected siblings (n=16, eight males, eight females, mean age 11y, SD 3y 6mo) were administered standardized tests of intellectual functioning and clinic-based measures of behavioral attention. Parent ratings of ADHD symptoms, executive functioning, and behavior were also obtained. Children with Noonan syndrome demonstrated higher rates of past ADHD diagnosis, as well as reduced performance compared with unaffected siblings on behavioral attention measures. Parent-rated functional impairments in attention, social skills, working memory, and self-monitoring were more prevalent in the Noonan syndrome group. The relationship between attention regulation skills (sustained attention and inhibitory control) and intellectual test performance was significantly stronger in the Noonan syndrome group than the comparison group. Clinical screening/evaluation for ADHD and executive dysfunction in Noonan syndrome is recommended to facilitate appropriate intervention and to address functional impact on daily life activities. © 2014 Mac Keith Press.

Attention-getting skills of deaf children using American Sign Language in a preschool classroom.

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Lieberman, Amy M

2015-07-01

Visual attention is a necessary prerequisite to successful communication in sign language. The current study investigated the development of attention-getting skills in deaf native-signing children during interactions with peers and teachers. Seven deaf children (aged 21-39 months) and five adults were videotaped during classroom activities for approximately 30 hr. Interactions were analyzed in depth to determine how children obtained and maintained attention. Contrary to previous reports, children were found to possess a high level of communicative competence from an early age. Analysis of peer interactions revealed that children used a range of behaviors to obtain attention with peers, including taps, waves, objects, and signs. Initiations were successful approximately 65% of the time. Children followed up failed initiation attempts by repeating the initiation, using a new initiation, or terminating the interaction. Older children engaged in longer and more complex interactions than younger children. Children's early exposure to and proficiency in American Sign Language is proposed as a likely mechanism that facilitated their communicative competence.

Reducing attentional capture of emotion by broadening attention: increased global attention reduces early electrophysiological responses to negative stimuli.

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Gable, Philip A; Harmon-Jones, Eddie

2012-05-01

Decades of research has shown the influence of emotion on attentional capture, and more recently, the influence of emotion on neurophysiological processes related to attentional capture. The current research tested whether some of the earliest neurophysiological underpinnings of emotive attentional processes can be influenced by attentional manipulations of broadening versus narrowing. Previous research has shown that negative affects high in motivational intensity (e.g., disgust, fear) cause a relative narrowing of attentional scope (Gable and Harmon-Jones, 2010a; Easterbrook, 1959). Because of the strong link between motivation and attention, attentional scope should also influence the attentional capture of negative stimuli. The current study manipulated a local attentional scope or global attentional scope, then measured attentional capture towards disgust and neutral pictures using the N1 event-related potential component. Results revealed that a manipulated global attentional scope reduced N1 amplitude towards disgust pictures compared to a manipulated local attentional scope. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Capturing Attention When Attention "Blinks"

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Wee, Serena; Chua, Fook K.

2004-01-01

Four experiments addressed the question of whether attention may be captured when the visual system is in the midst of an attentional blink (AB). Participants identified 2 target letters embedded among distractor letters in a rapid serial visual presentation sequence. In some trials, a square frame was inserted between the targets; as the only…

Familial influences on the full range of variability in attention and activity levels during adolescence: A longitudinal twin study.

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Peng, Chun-Zi; Grant, Julia D; Heath, Andrew C; Reiersen, Angela M; Mulligan, Richard C; Anokhin, Andrey P

2016-05-01

To investigate familial influences on the full range of variability in attention and activity across adolescence, we collected maternal ratings of 339 twin pairs at ages 12, 14, and 16, and estimated the transmitted and new familial influences on attention and activity as measured by the Strengths and Weaknesses of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms and Normal Behavior Scale. Familial influences were substantial for both traits across adolescence: genetic influences accounted for 54%-73% (attention) and 31%-73% (activity) of the total variance, and shared environmental influences accounted for 0%-22% of the attention variance and 13%-57% of the activity variance. The longitudinal stability of individual differences in attention and activity was largely accounted for by familial influences transmitted from previous ages. Innovations over adolescence were also partially attributable to familial influences. Studying the full range of variability in attention and activity may facilitate our understanding of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder's etiology and intervention.

Contextual cueing improves attentional guidance, even when guidance is supposedly optimal.

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Harris, Anthony M; Remington, Roger W

2017-05-01

Visual search through previously encountered contexts typically produces reduced reaction times compared with search through novel contexts. This contextual cueing benefit is well established, but there is debate regarding its underlying mechanisms. Eye-tracking studies have consistently shown reduced number of fixations with repetition, supporting improvements in attentional guidance as the source of contextual cueing. However, contextual cueing benefits have been shown in conditions in which attentional guidance should already be optimal-namely, when attention is captured to the target location by an abrupt onset, or under pop-out conditions. These results have been used to argue for a response-related account of contextual cueing. Here, we combine eye tracking with response time to examine the mechanisms behind contextual cueing in spatially cued and pop-out conditions. Three experiments find consistent response time benefits with repetition, which appear to be driven almost entirely by a reduction in number of fixations, supporting improved attentional guidance as the mechanism behind contextual cueing. No differences were observed in the time between fixating the target and responding-our proxy for response related processes. Furthermore, the correlation between contextual cueing magnitude and the reduction in number of fixations on repeated contexts approaches 1. These results argue strongly that attentional guidance is facilitated by familiar search contexts, even when guidance is near-optimal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Legal-institutional arrangements facilitating offshore wind energy conversion systems (WECS) utilization. Final report

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Mayo, L.H.

1977-09-01

Concern for the continuing sufficiency of energy supplies in the U.S. has tended to direct increasing attention to unconventional sources of supply, including wind energy. Some of the more striking proposals for the utilization of wind energy relate to offshore configurations. The legal-institutional arrangements for facilitating the utilization of offshore wind energy conversion systems (WECS) are examined by positioning three program alternatives and analyzing the institutional support required for the implementation of each.

Attention deficit and attention training in early twentieth-century Japan.

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Takeda, Toshinobu; Ando, Mizuho; Kumagai, Keiko

2015-06-01

Yuzero Motora (1856-1912), regarded as the first professional Japanese psychologist, tried to address students' attention difficulties through attention training methods of his own design. His reports contain the first description of ADHD-like symptoms in the history of Japan. Motora viewed "distractibility" as the irregular transition of attention. Students with low scores and attention difficulties who participated in Motora's exercises showed improvement in arithmetic, psychological testing, and certain aspects of daily life. This article describes Motora's theoretical conception of attention and attention training methodology, the history of attention deficit and attention training, and the significance of Motora's experiments.

Prepulse inhibition and facilitation of the postauricular reflex, a vestigial remnant of pinna startle.

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Hackley, Steven A; Ren, Xi; Underwood, Amy; Valle-Inclán, Fernando

2017-04-01

If the postauricular reflex (PAR) is to be used effectively in studies of emotion and attention, its sensitivity to basic modulatory effects such as prepulse inhibition and facilitation must be determined. Two experiments were carried out with healthy young adults to assess the effects of transient and sustained visual prestimuli on the pinna-flexion response to trains of startle probes. In the first experiment, participants passively viewed a small white square. It was displayed from 1,000 ms prior to onset of a train of noise bursts until the end of that train. Relative to no-prepulse control trials, PAR amplitude was inhibited, possibly due to the withdrawal of attentional resources from the auditory modality. In the second experiment, participants performed a visual oddball task in which irrelevant trains of startle probes followed most briefly displayed task stimuli (checkerboards). Prepulse inhibition was observed when a transient stimulus preceded the first probe at a lead time of 100 ms. Amplitude facilitation was observed at longer lead times. In addition to documenting the existence of prepulse inhibition and facilitation, the data suggest that the PAR is not elicited by visual stimuli, that temporal expectancy does not influence its amplitude or latency, and that this vestigial microreflex is resistant to habituation. Results are interpreted in light of a recent theory that the human PAR is a highly degraded pinna startle, in which the reflex arc no longer includes the startle center (nucleus reticularis pontis caudalis). © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Inhibition of return is not impaired but masked by increased facilitation in schizophrenia patients.

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Kalogeropoulou, Fenia; Woodruff, Peter W R; Vivas, Ana B

2015-01-01

When attention is attracted to an irrelevant location, performance on a subsequent target is hindered at that location in relation to novel, not previously attended, locations. This phenomenon is known as inhibition of return (IOR). Previous research has shown that IOR is not observed, or its onset is delayed, in schizophrenia patients. In the present study, the authors tested the hypothesis that IOR may be intact but masked by increased facilitation in schizophrenia patients. To test this hypothesis, they used a procedure that usually reduces or eliminates the early facilitation. In the first experiment, the authors used the typical single-cue IOR task in the group of healthy adults (N = 28) and in a group of schizophrenia patients (N = 32). In the second experiment, they manipulated cue-target discriminability by presenting spatially overlapping cues and targets where the cues were more intense than the targets. In Experiment 1, they did not find significant IOR effects in the group of schizophrenia patients, even with cue-target intervals as long as 3,200 ms. However, in Experiment 2, IOR effects were significant at the 350- and 450-ms cue-target intervals for healthy and patients, respectively. This is the first study that shows that schizophrenia patients can actually show inhibitory effects very similar to healthy controls, even when no help is provided to shift their attention away from the irrelevant location. The authors suggest that inhibition is intact in schizophrenia patients, but it is usually masked by increased facilitation. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Cortisol acutely reduces selective attention for erotic words in healthy young men.

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Putman, Peter; Berling, Sylvia

2011-10-01

Psychological stress prompts activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis resulting in increased release of cortisol. Long-term HPA aberrations have been observed for stress-related affective disorders but research into acute effects of cortisol on affect-regulation has only recently begun. Previous studies reported that exogenous cortisol acutely attenuated automatic attentional processing of task-irrelevant threatening information. This has been taken to suggest that cortisol may have acute anxiolytic properties, possibly through facilitating inhibition of threatening information. However, the role of cortisol in attentional inhibition of non-threatening arousing stimuli remained unclear. Therefore acute effects of 40 mg cortisol on performance of a masked and unmasked emotional Stroop task (EST) were assessed. Results for only the unmasked task demonstrated EST interference (interpreted as increased automatic attention) for erotic stimuli which was abolished by cortisol administration. This implies that effects of cortisol may not be restricted to attenuation of specifically anxiogenic information processing, as previously suggested. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social Image Captioning: Exploring Visual Attention and User Attention

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Leiquan Wang

2018-02-01

Full Text Available Image captioning with a natural language has been an emerging trend. However, the social image, associated with a set of user-contributed tags, has been rarely investigated for a similar task. The user-contributed tags, which could reflect the user attention, have been neglected in conventional image captioning. Most existing image captioning models cannot be applied directly to social image captioning. In this work, a dual attention model is proposed for social image captioning by combining the visual attention and user attention simultaneously.Visual attention is used to compress a large mount of salient visual information, while user attention is applied to adjust the description of the social images with user-contributed tags. Experiments conducted on the Microsoft (MS COCO dataset demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method of dual attention.

Social Image Captioning: Exploring Visual Attention and User Attention.

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Wang, Leiquan; Chu, Xiaoliang; Zhang, Weishan; Wei, Yiwei; Sun, Weichen; Wu, Chunlei

2018-02-22

Image captioning with a natural language has been an emerging trend. However, the social image, associated with a set of user-contributed tags, has been rarely investigated for a similar task. The user-contributed tags, which could reflect the user attention, have been neglected in conventional image captioning. Most existing image captioning models cannot be applied directly to social image captioning. In this work, a dual attention model is proposed for social image captioning by combining the visual attention and user attention simultaneously.Visual attention is used to compress a large mount of salient visual information, while user attention is applied to adjust the description of the social images with user-contributed tags. Experiments conducted on the Microsoft (MS) COCO dataset demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method of dual attention.

Altered visual-spatial attention to task-irrelevant information is associated with falls risk in older adults

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Nagamatsu, Lindsay S.; Munkacsy, Michelle; Liu-Ambrose, Teresa; Handy, Todd C.

2014-01-01

Executive cognitive functions play a critical role in falls risk – a pressing health care issue in seniors. In particular, intact attentional processing is integral for safe mobility and navigation. However, the specific contribution of impaired visual-spatial attention in falls remains unclear. In this study, we examined the association between visual-spatial attention to task-irrelevant stimuli and falls risk in community-dwelling older adults. Participants completed a visual target discrimination task at fixation while task-irrelevant probes were presented in both visual fields. We assessed attention to left and right peripheral probes using event-related potentials (ERPs). Falls risk was determined using the valid and reliable Physiological Profile Assessment (PPA). We found a significantly positive association between reduced attentional facilitation, as measured by the N1 ERP component, and falls risk. This relationship was specific to probes presented in the left visual field and measured at ipsilateral electrode sites. Our results suggest that fallers exhibit reduced attention to the left side of visual space and provide evidence that impaired right hemispheric function and/or structure may contribute to falls. PMID:24436970

Selective Attention and Attention Switching: Towards a Unified Developmental Approach

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