scholarly journals Attentional interference is modulated by salience not sentience

2017 ◽  
Vol 178 ◽  
pp. 56-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Wilson ◽  
Alessandro Soranzo ◽  
Marco Bertamini
2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason S. McCarley ◽  
Jeffrey R. W. Mounts ◽  
Arthur F. Kramer

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Albayay ◽  
Umberto Castiello ◽  
Valentina Parma

AbstractWhether emotional stimuli influence both response readiness and inhibition is highly controversial. Visual emotional stimuli appear to interfere with both under certain conditions (e.g., task relevance). Whether the effect is generalisable to salient yet task-irrelevant stimuli, such as odours, remains elusive. We tested the effect of orthonasally-presented pleasant (orange) and unpleasant odours (trimethyloxazole and hexenol) and clean air as a control on response inhibition. In emotional Go/No-Go paradigms, we manipulated the intertrial interval and ratios of Go/No-Go trials to account for motor (Experiment 1, N = 31) and cognitive (Experiment 2, N = 29) response inhibition processes. In Experiment 1, participants had greater difficulty in withholding and produced more accurate and faster Go responses under the pleasant vs. the control condition. Faster Go responses were also evident in the unpleasant vs. the control condition. In Experiment 2, neither pleasant nor unpleasant odours modulated action withholding, but both elicited more accurate and faster Go responses as compared to the control condition. Pleasant odours significantly impair action withholding (as compared to the control condition), indicating that more inhibitory resources are required to elicit successful inhibition in the presence of positive emotional information. This modulation was revealed for the motor aspect of response inhibition (fast-paced design with lower Go/No-Go trial ratio) rather than for attentional interference processes. Response readiness is critically impacted by the emotional nature of the odour (but not by its valence). Our findings highlight that the valence of task-irrelevant odour stimuli is a factor significantly influencing response inhibition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 119 (9) ◽  
pp. 2053-2064
Author(s):  
Eneida Yuri Suda ◽  
Rogerio Pessoto Hirata ◽  
Thorvaldur Palsson ◽  
Nicolas Vuillerme ◽  
Isabel C. N. Sacco ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Adva Segal ◽  
Daniel S. Pine ◽  
Yair Bar-Haim

Abstract Background Previous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) suggest that attention control therapy (ACT), targeting aberrant fluctuations of attention toward and away from threats in patients with PTSD, may be effective in reducing symptoms. The current RCT examined whether the use of personalized-trauma stimuli enhances ACT efficacy in patients with PTSD. Additional moderators of treatment outcome were tested on an exploratory basis. Methods Sixty patients with PTSD were randomly assigned to either personalized ACT, non-personalized ACT, or a control condition. Changes in symptoms were examined across pre-treatment, post-treatment, and a 3-month follow-up. Attentional interference was examined pre- and post-treatment. Baseline clinical and cognitive indices as well as the time elapsed since the trauma were tested as potential moderators of treatment outcome. Results A significant reduction in clinical symptoms was noted for all three conditions with no between-group differences. Attention bias variability decreased following ACT treatment. Personalized ACT was more effective relative to the control condition when less time had elapsed since the trauma. Baseline clinical and cognitive indices did not moderate treatment outcome. Conclusions In this RCT of patients with PTSD, ACT was no more effective in reducing PTSD symptoms than a control condition. The data also suggest a potential benefit of personalized ACT for patients who experienced their trauma more recently.


Pain ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 155 (4) ◽  
pp. 821-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Keogh ◽  
Rebecca Cavill ◽  
David J. Moore ◽  
Christopher Eccleston

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1907) ◽  
pp. 20190715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph J. Völter ◽  
Roger Mundry ◽  
Josep Call ◽  
Amanda M. Seed

Working memory (WM) is a core executive function that allows individuals to hold, process and manipulate information. WM capacity has been repeatedly nominated as a key factor in human cognitive evolution; nevertheless, little is known about the WM abilities of our closest primate relatives. In this study, we examined signatures of WM ability in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ). Standard WM tasks for humans ( Homo sapiens ) often require participants to continuously update their WM. In Experiment 1, we implemented this updating requirement in a foraging situation: zoo-housed chimpanzees ( n = 13) searched for food in an array of containers. To avoid redundant searches, they needed to continuously update which containers they had already visited (similar to WM paradigms for human children) with 15 s retention intervals in between each choice. We examined chimpanzees' WM capacity and to what extent they used spatial cues and object features to memorize their previous choices. In Experiment 2, we investigated how susceptible their WM was to attentional interference, an important signature, setting WM in humans apart from long-term memory. We found large individual differences with some individuals remembering at least their last four choices. Chimpanzees used a combination of spatial cues and object features to remember which boxes they had chosen already. Moreover, their performance decreased specifically when competing memory information was introduced. Finally, we found that individual differences in task performance were highly reliable over time. Together, these findings show remarkable similarities between human and chimpanzee WM abilities despite evolutionary and life-history differences.


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