scholarly journals The Effects of Unilateral Pulvinar Damage in Humans on Reflexive Orienting and Filtering of Irrelevant Information

2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 95-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shai Danziger ◽  
Robert Ward ◽  
Vanessa Owen ◽  
Robert Rafal
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Visual Fields ◽  
Irrelevant Information ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Reflexive Orienting ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Hierarchical Stimulus ◽  
Spatial Orienting ◽  
Different Response

The effects of damage to the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus in humans on reflexive orienting and selective attention were investigated. In a spatial orienting task three patients with unilateral pulvinar damage determined the location of a visual target that followed a cue that was not informative as to the targets location. Contralesional targets were responded to more slowly than ipsilesional targets. Also, at long cue target intervals patients responses to contralesional targets that appeared at previously cued locations were slower than to non-cued locations indicating that pulvinar damage does not affect inhibition of return. In the selective attention task two of the patients identified a target that appeared at one level of a global-local hierarchical stimulus while ignoring a distractor present at the other level. The distractor indicated either the same response as the target or a different response. Response times to targets in both visual fields were similar as were interference effects from the ignored distractors. These data indicate that engaging attention contralesionally is not impaired in discrimination tasks and that filtering of irrelevant information was not impaired contralesionally.

The P3 Parietal-To-Frontal Shift Relates to Age-Related Slowing in a Selective Attention Task

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva-Maria Reuter ◽  
Claudia Voelcker-Rehage ◽  
Solveig Vieluf ◽  
Franca Parianen Lesemann ◽  
Ben Godde
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Compensatory Mechanism ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Related Potentials

Abstract. Older adults recruit relatively more frontal as compared to parietal resources in a variety of cognitive and perceptual tasks. It is not yet clear whether this parietal-to-frontal shift is a compensatory mechanism, or simply reflects a reduction in processing efficiency. In this study we aimed to investigate how the parietal-to-frontal shift with aging relates to selective attention. Fourteen young and 26 older healthy adults performed a color Flanker task under three conditions (incongruent, congruent, neutral) and event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured. The P3 was analyzed for the electrode positions Pz, Cz, and Fz as an indicator of the parietal-to-frontal shift. Further, behavioral performance and other ERP components (P1 and N1 at electrodes O1 and O2; N2 at electrodes Fz and Cz) were investigated. First young and older adults were compared. Older adults had longer response times, reduced accuracy, longer P3 latencies, and a more frontal distribution of P3 than young adults. These results confirm the parietal-to-frontal shift in the P3 with age for the selective attention task. Second, based on the differences between frontal and parietal P3 activity the group of older adults was subdivided into those showing a rather equal distribution of the P3 and older participants showing a strong frontal focus of the P3. Older adults with a more frontally distributed P3 had longer response times than participants with a more equally distributed P3. These results suggest that the frontally distributed P3 observed in older adults has no compensatory function in selective attention but rather indicates less efficient processing and slowing with age.

Cognitive and affective benefits of colouring: Two randomized controlled crossover studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Jane Holt ◽  
Leah Furbert ◽  
Emily Sweetingham
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Performance Measures ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Creative Cognition ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Mindful Attention ◽  
Crossover Studies ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Implicit Mood

The current research sought to replicate and extend work suggesting that coloring can reduce anxiety, asking whether coloring can improve cognitive performance. In two experiments undergraduates (N = 47; N = 52) colored and participated in a control condition. Subjective and performance measures of mood and mindfulness were included: an implicit mood test (Experiment 1) and a selective attention task (Experiment 2) along with a divergent thinking test. In both experiments coloring significantly reduced anxiety and increased mindfulness compared with control and baseline scores. Following coloring participants scored significantly lower on implicit fear, than the control condition, and significantly higher on selective attention and original ideation. Coloring may not only reduce anxiety, but also improve mindful attention and creative cognition.

499 Trait anxiety and erp (nd) in a selective attention task

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 191-192
Author(s):  
S. Hayashida ◽  
S.-I. Niwa ◽  
K. Kobayashi ◽  
K. Itoh
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Trait Anxiety ◽  
Attention Task

Lateralization of lexical processing in monolinguals and bilinguals

2021 ◽  
pp. 136700692110188
Author(s):  
Filiz Mergen ◽  
Gulmira Kuruoglu
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Visual Fields ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Visual Hemifield ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Orthographic Neighbors

Aims and objectives: This study aims to investigate how lexical processing (LP) is organized in early Turkish–English bilinguals and Turkish monolinguals. Methodology: We used a visual hemifield paradigm where bilingual ( n = 48) and monolingual ( n = 53) participants performed a lexical decision task. Bilingual participants performed the task in both their languages. Data and analysis: We recorded response times (RTs) and the accuracy rates (ARs) of the participants. An analysis of variance and t-test were run to analyze the bilingual and monolingual data, respectively. Findings: The results obtained from the analysis of the RTs and ARs for the Turkish and English words showed a balanced hemispheric organization in LP in bilingual speakers. The RTs for Turkish words in the monolingual group provided supportive evidence for the predominant role of the left hemisphere in LP. However, no significant difference was found in the accuracy of their answers, suggesting that the monolingual participants’ performance was not influenced by visual field of presentation of the words. Finally, the comparison of the two groups revealed that bilingual participants’ performance was inferior to monolinguals’ in speed and accuracy of processing of words presented in both visual fields. This result gives further support for the differential representation of LP in monolinguals and bilinguals. Originality: The psycholinguistic literature abounds with studies of LP in bilinguals and monolinguals from a variety of language backgrounds; however, there is much less data regarding the brain correlates of LP in Turkish–English bilinguals and Turkish monolinguals. Implications: Since Turkish–English bilinguals and Turkish monolinguals are underrepresented in the literature as compared to the population who speak other languages with alphabetic writing, this study provides preliminary data for future studies. Limitations: We did not control for gender or lexical factors such as orthographic neighbors when designing the word sets used as stimuli.

scholarly journals Endogenous orienting in the archer fish

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (29) ◽  
pp. 7577-7581 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Saban ◽  
Liora Sekely ◽  
Raymond M. Klein ◽  
Shai Gabay
Keyword(s):  
Inhibition Of Return ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Volitional Control ◽  
Reflexive Orienting ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
Endogenous Orienting ◽  
Attention Orienting ◽  
Spatial Orienting ◽  
Human Attention ◽  
Human Participants

The literature has long emphasized the neocortex’s role in volitional processes. In this work, we examined endogenous orienting in an evolutionarily older species, the archer fish, which lacks neocortex-like cells. We used Posner’s classic endogenous cuing task, in which a centrally presented, spatially informative cue is followed by a target. The fish responded to the target by shooting a stream of water at it. Interestingly, the fish demonstrated a human-like “volitional” facilitation effect: their reaction times to targets that appeared on the side indicated by the precue were faster than their reaction times to targets on the opposite side. The fish also exhibited inhibition of return, an aftermath of orienting that commonly emerges only in reflexive orienting tasks in human participants. We believe that this pattern demonstrates the acquisition of an arbitrary connection between spatial orienting and a nonspatial feature of a centrally presented stimulus in nonprimate species. In the literature on human attention, orienting in response to such contingencies has been strongly associated with volitional control. We discuss the implications of these results for the evolution of orienting, and for the study of volitional processes in all species, including humans.

Telephone Conversations Affect the Executive but not the Alerting or Orienting Network

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melina Kunar ◽  
Derrick Watson ◽  
Rhiannon Richards ◽  
Daniel Gunnell
Keyword(s):  
Visual Attention ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Attentional Networks ◽  
Attention Tasks ◽  
Conflict Effect ◽  
The Individual

Previous work has shown that talking on a mobile phone leads to an impairment of visual attention. Gunnell et al. (2020) investigated the locus of these dual-task impairments and found that although phone conversations led to cognitive delays in response times, other mechanisms underlying particular selective attention tasks were unaffected. Here we investigated which attentional networks, if any, were impaired by having a phone conversation. We used the Attentional Network Task (ANT) to evaluate performance of the alerting, orienting and executive attentional networks, both in conditions where people were engaged in a conversation and where they were silent. Two experiments showed that there was a robust delay in response across all three networks. However, at the individual network level, holding a conversation did not influence the size of the alerting or orienting effects but it did reduce the size of the conflict effect within the executive network. The findings suggest that holding a conversation can reduce the overall speed of responding and, via its influence on the executive network, can reduce the amount of information that can be processed from the environment.

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