Recent research has expanded the list of factors that control spatial attention. Beside current goals and perceptual salience, statistical learning, reward, motivation and emotion also affect ...attention. But do these various factors influence spatial attention in the same manner, as suggested by the integrated framework of attention, or do they target different aspects of spatial attention? Here I present evidence that the control of attention may be implemented in two ways. Whereas current goals typically modulate where in space attention is prioritized, search habits affect how one moves attention in space. Using the location probability learning paradigm, I show that a search habit forms when people frequently find a visual search target in one region of space. Attentional cuing by probability learning differs from that by current goals. Probability cuing is implicit and persists long after the probability cue is no longer valid. Whereas explicit goal-driven attention codes space in an environment-centered reference frame, probability cuing is viewer-centered and is insensitive to secondary working memory load and aging. I propose a multi-level framework that separates the source of attentional control from its implementation. Similar to the integrated framework, the multi-level framework considers current goals, perceptual salience, and selection history as major sources of attentional control. However, these factors are implemented in two ways, controlling where spatial attention is allocated and how one shifts attention in space.
It is widely suggested that ASD is characterized by atypical local/global processing, but the published findings are contradictory. In an effort to resolve this question, we tested a large group of ...children on both a free-choice task and an instructed task using hierarchical local–global stimuli. We find that although children with autism showed a reduced preference to report global properties of a stimulus when given a choice, their ability to process global properties when instructed to do so is unimpaired. These findings support prior claims that people with ASD show a disinclination, not a disability, in global processing, and highlight the broader question of whether other characteristics of autism may also reflect disinclinations rather than disabilities.
Repeated contexts yield faster response time in visual search, compared with novel contexts. This effect is known as
contextual cueing
. Despite extensive study over the past two decades, there ...remains a spirited debate over whether repeated displays expedite search before the target is found (early locus) or facilitate response after the target is found (late locus). Here, we provide a tutorial review of contextual cueing, with a focus on assessing the locus of the effect. We evaluate the evidence from psychophysics, EEG, and eye tracking. Existing studies support an early locus of contextual cueing, consistent with attentional guidance accounts. Evidence for a late locus exists, though it is less conclusive. Existing literature also highlights a distinction between habit-guided attention learned through experience and changes in spatial priority driven by task goals and stimulus salience.
Experience-Driven Auditory Attention Addleman, Douglas A.; Jiang, Yuhong V.
Trends in cognitive sciences,
November 2019, 2019-11-00, 20191101, Volume:
23, Issue:
11
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In addition to conscious goals and stimulus salience, an observer’s prior experience also influences selective attention. Early studies demonstrated experience-driven effects on attention mainly in ...the visual modality, but increasing evidence shows that experience drives auditory selection as well. We review evidence for a multiple-levels framework of auditory attention, in which experience-driven attention relies on mechanisms that acquire control settings and mechanisms that guide attention towards selected stimuli. Mechanisms of acquisition include cue–target associative learning, reward learning, and sensitivity to prior selection history. Once acquired, implementation of these biases can occur either consciously or unconsciously. Future research should more fully characterize the sources of experience-driven auditory attention and investigate the neural mechanisms used to acquire and implement experience-driven auditory attention.
In addition to conscious goals and physical salience, experience also influences auditory attention.Experience-driven attention operates at multiple levels, including an acquisition level involving the sources of attentional control and an implementation level involving attentional guidance.There are many forms of experience-driven attention, including cue–target associative learning, reward learning, and selection history. These categories represent dissociable effects that rely on a complex of different learning mechanisms.Experience can both consciously and unconsciously influence attentional guidance. In some cases, observers guide attention consciously based on explicit recognition of their experiences. Conscious recognition is not necessary for experience to affect auditory attention, however, as many forms of experience implicitly affect attentional guidance.
Given a changing visual environment, and the limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM), the contents of VWM must be in constant flux. Using a change detection task, the authors show that VWM is ...subject to obligatory updating in the face of new information. Change detection performance is enhanced when the item that may change is retrospectively cued 1 s after memory encoding and 0.5 s before testing. The retro-cue benefit cannot be explained by memory decay or by a reduction in interference from other items held in VWM. Rather, orienting attention to a single memory item makes VWM more resistant to interference from the test probe. The authors conclude that the content of VWM is volatile unless it receives focused attention, and that the standard change detection task underestimates VWM capacity.
Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is traditionally considered a robust form of visual memory resistant to interference from subsequent visual input. This study shows that the robustness of VSTM depends ...on the way attention is allocated in VSTM. When attention is distributed across multiple memory items, VSTM for these items is vulnerable to interference from subsequent input, including passively viewed images and the postchange testing displays. Yet attention can readjust its focus in VSTM on the basis of an attentional orienting cue presented long after encoding. When attention is oriented to a particular memorized item, the memory is resistant to subsequent interference. This effect, however, is eliminated when the subset of items demanding focal attention exceeds one, suggesting that orienting attention in VSTM is less flexible than orienting attention in perception. We propose that the robustness of VSTM is influenced by whether attention is focused or distributed in VSTM.
The attentional boost effect refers to the observation that when simultaneously performing a scene memory task and a target detection task, participants better remember scenes that appear at the same ...time as the detection target than scenes that coincide with distractors. The attentional boost effect is thought to result from a transient increase in attention during an acute behaviorally relevant event, resulting from a temporal orienting response. But can endogenous orienting to predictable targets trigger this response in the same manner as exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets? Until now, the attentional boost effect has only been tested under conditions in which the target's appearance was unpredictable. Because of the distinction between exogenous and endogenous orienting, target predictability could attenuate the attentional boost effect, or it could increase temporal orienting efficiency and enhance the effect. To test the attentional boost effect under predictable conditions, participants memorized scenes while responding to a target digit, 0, among a stream of digits appearing in the center of those scenes. In some blocks, the 0 predictably followed the digit sequence 3-2-1. In these predictable blocks, participants showed a robust attentional boost effect. This shows that both endogenous orienting to temporally predictable targets and exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets enhance concurrent task processing.
Both perceptual and cognitive processes are limited in capacity. As a result, attention is selective, prioritizing items and tasks that are important for adaptive behavior. However, a number of ...recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies suggest that, at least under some circumstances, increasing attention to one task can enhance performance in a second task (e.g., the attentional boost effect). Here we review these findings and suggest a new theoretical framework, the dual-task interaction model, that integrates these findings with current views of attentional selection. To reconcile the attentional boost effect with the effects of attentional load, we suggest that temporal selection results in a temporally specific enhancement across modalities, tasks, and spatial locations. Moreover, the effects of temporal selection may be best observed when the attentional system is optimally tuned to the temporal dynamics of incoming stimuli. Several avenues of research motivated by the dual-task interaction model are then discussed.
Our visual system is highly sensitive to regularities in the environment. Locations that were important in one's previous experience are often prioritized during search, even though observers may not ...be aware of the learning. In this study we characterized the guidance of spatial attention by incidental learning of a target's spatial probability, and examined the interaction between endogenous cuing and probability cuing. Participants searched for a target (T) among distractors (Ls). The target was more often located in one region of the screen than in others. We found that search reaction time (RT) was faster when the target appeared in the high-frequency region rather than the low-frequency regions. This difference increased when there were more items on the display, suggesting that probability cuing guides spatial attention. Additional data indicated that on their own, probability cuing and endogenous cuing (e.g., a central arrow that predicted a target's location) were similarly effective at guiding attention. However, when both cues were presented at once, probability cuing was largely eliminated. Thus, although both incidental learning and endogenous cuing can effectively guide attention, endogenous cuing takes precedence over incidental learning.
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).
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