Dividing Attention and Metacognition

Students increasingly control their learning as university instructors shift away from lecture formats, courses are offered online, and the internet offers near infinite resources for student-controlled informal learning. Students typically make effective choices about learning, including what to learn, when to learn, and how to learn, but sometimes make less-than-optimal study choices, including trying to study while multi-tasking. Dividing attention among various tasks impairs both learning and learners' control over their learning because secondary tasks divert cognitive resources away from learning and metacognition. This chapter reviews recent studies explaining how dividing attention affects students' metacognition, including their assessments of their own learning and the study choices that they make. This chapter reviews the fundamentals of metacognition, describes the impact of dividing attention on the effectiveness of learners' metacognition, and provides suggestions about how to enhance the efficacy of metacognition when students' attentional resources are limited.

Investigating the Relationships of P3b with Negative Symptoms and Neurocognition in Subjects with Chronic Schizophrenia

Neurocognitive deficits and negative symptoms (NS) have a pivotal role in subjects with schizophrenia (SCZ) due to their impact on patients’ functioning in everyday life and their influence on goal-directed behavior and decision-making. P3b is considered an optimal electrophysiological candidate biomarker of neurocognitive impairment for its association with the allocation of attentional resources to task-relevant stimuli, an important factor for efficient decision-making, as well as for motivation-related processes. Furthermore, associations between P3b deficits and NS have been reported. The current research aims to fill the lack of studies investigating, in the same subjects, the associations of P3b with multiple cognitive domains and the expressive and motivation-related domains of NS, evaluated with state-of-the-art instruments. One hundred and fourteen SCZ and 63 healthy controls (HCs) were included in the study. P3b amplitude was significantly reduced and P3b latency prolonged in SCZ as compared to HCs. In SCZ, a positive correlation was found between P3b latency and age and between P3b amplitude and the Attention-vigilance domain, while no significant correlations were found between P3b and the two NS domains. Our results indicate that the effortful allocation of attention to task-relevant stimuli, an important component of decision-making, is compromised in SCZ, independently of motivation deficits or other NS.

Correlation Evaluation of Pilots’ Situation Awareness in Bridge Simulations via Eye-Tracking Technology

To maintain situation awareness (SA) when exposed to emergencies during pilotage, a pilot needs to selectively allocate attentional resources to perceive critical status information about ships and environments. Although it is important to continuously monitor a pilot’s SA, its relationship with attention is still not fully understood in ship pilotage. This study performs bridge simulation experiments that include vessel departure, navigation in the fairway, encounters, poor visibility, and anchoring scenes with 13 pilots (mean = 11.3 and standard deviation = 1.4 of experience). Individuals were divided into two SA group levels based on the Situation Awareness Rating Technology (SART-2) score (mean = 20.13 and standard deviation = 5.83) after the experiments. The visual patterns using different SA groups were examined using heat maps and scan paths based on pilots’ fixations and saccade data. The preliminary visual analyses of the heat maps and scan paths indicate that the pilots’ attentional distribution is modulated by the SA level. That is, the most concerning areas of interest (AOIs) for pilots in the high and low SA groups are outside the window (AOI-2) and electronic charts (AOI-1), respectively. Subsequently, permutation simulations were utilized to identify statistical differences between the pilots’ eye-tracking metrics and SA. The results of the statistical analyses show that the fixation and saccade metrics are affected by the SA level in different AOIs across the five scenes, which confirms the findings of previous studies. In encounter scenes, the pilots’ SA level is correlated with the fixation and saccade metrics: fixation count ( p = 0.034 < 0.05 in AOI-1 and p = 0.032 < 0.05 in AOI-2), fixation duration ( p = 0.043 < 0.05 in AOI-1 and p = 0.014 < 0.05 in AOI-2), and saccade count ( p = 0.086 < 0.1 in AOI-1 and p = 0.054 < 0.1 in AOI-2). This was determined by the fixation count ( p = 0.024 < 0.05 in AOI-1 and p = 0.034 < 0.05 in AOI-2), fixation duration ( p = 0.036 < 0.05 in AOI-1 and p = 0.047 < 0.05 in AOI-2), and saccade duration ( p = 0.05 ≤ 0.05 in AOI-1 and p = 0.042 < 0.05 in AOI-2) in poor-visibility scenes. In the remaining scenes, the SA could not be measured using eye movements alone. This study lays a foundation for the cognitive mechanism recognition of pilots based on SA via eye-tracking technology, which provides a reference to establish cognitive competency standards in preliminary pilot screenings.

Phasic pupillary responses reveal differential engagement of attentional control in bilingual spoken language processing

Language processing is cognitively demanding, requiring attentional resources to efficiently select and extract linguistic information as utterances unfold. Previous research has associated changes in pupil size with increased attentional effort. However, it is unknown whether the behavioral ecology of speakers may differentially affect engagement of attentional resources involved in conversation. For bilinguals, such an act potentially involves competing signals in more than one language and how this competition arises may differ across communicative contexts. We examined changes in pupil size during the comprehension of unilingual and codeswitched speech in a richly-characterized bilingual sample. In a visual-world task, participants saw pairs of objects as they heard instructions to select a target image. Instructions were either unilingual or codeswitched from one language to the other. We found that only bilinguals who use each of their languages in separate communicative contexts and who have high attention ability, show differential attention to unilingual and codeswitched speech. Bilinguals for whom codeswitching is common practice process unilingual and codeswitched speech similarly, regardless of attentional skill. Taken together, these results suggest that bilinguals recruit different language control strategies for distinct communicative purposes. The interactional context of language use critically determines attentional control engagement during language processing.

EXPRESS: Framing the area: An efficient approach for avoiding visual interference and optimizing visual search in adolescents

Attentional resources are limited, and resistance to interference plays a critical role during cognitive tasks and learning. Previous studies have shown that participants find it difficult to avoid being distracted by global visual information when processing local details. In this study, we investigated an innovative approach for enhancing the processing of local visual details by middle-school adolescents. Two groups completed a classic global/local visual search task in which a predefined target could appear at the global or local level, either with or without a frame. The results from the no-frame display group provided a direct replication in adolescents of previous findings in adults, with increasing number of interferent stimuli presented in the display adversely affecting detection of local targets. Additionally, by varying the numbers of distractors inside and outside the frame, we showed that distractors only interfered with the processing of local information inside the frame, while the deleterious impact of increases in distracting information was prevented when the distractors were outside the frame. These findings suggest that when a frame delimits an attentional area, the influence of an increasing number of distractors present outside the frame is eliminated. We assume that application of a frame allows for efficient delimitation of attention deployment to a restricted topographical visual area in adolescents. These results evidence that processing of local details can be improved without modifying the structure of the stimuli, and provide promising clues for optimizing attentional resources during time-absorbing visual searches. Applicable implications in the educational field are discussed.

EXPRESS: The role of perceptual and cognitive load on inattentional blindness: a systematic review and three meta-analyses

The inattentional blindness phenomenon refers to situations where a visible but unexpected stimulus remains consciously unnoticed by observers. This phenomenon is classically explained as the consequence of insufficient attention, because attentional resources are already engaged elsewhere or vary between individuals. However, this attentional-resources view is broad and often imprecise regarding the variety of attentional models, the different pools of resources that can be involved in attentional tasks and the heterogeneity of the experimental paradigms. Our aim was to investigate whether a classic theoretical model of attention, namely the Load Theory, could account for a large range of empirical findings in this field by distinguishing the role of perceptual and cognitive resources in attentional selection and attentional capture by irrelevant stimuli. Since this model has been mostly built on implicit measures of distractor interference, it is unclear whether its predictions also hold when explicit and subjective awareness of an unexpected stimulus is concerned. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analyses of inattentional blindness studies investigating the role of perceptual and/or cognitive resources. The results reveal that, in line with the perceptual account of the Load Theory, inattentional blindness significantly increases with the perceptual load of the task. However, the cognitive account of this theory is not clearly supported by the empirical findings analyzed here. Furthermore, the interaction between perceptual and cognitive load on inattentional blindness remains understudied. Theoretical implications for the Load Theory are discussed, notably regarding the difference between attentional capture and subjective awareness paradigms, and further research directions are provided.

From aMCI to AD: The Role of Visuo-Spatial Memory Span and Executive Functions in Egocentric and Allocentric Spatial Impairments

A difficulty in encoding spatial information in an egocentric (i.e., body-to-object) and especially allocentric (i.e., object-to-object) manner, and impairments in executive function (EF) are typical in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Since executive functions are involved in spatial encodings, it is important to understand the extent of their reciprocal or selective impairment. To this end, AD patients, aMCI and healthy elderly people had to provide egocentric (What object was closest to you?) and allocentric (What object was closest to object X?) judgments about memorized objects. Participants' frontal functions, attentional resources and visual-spatial memory were assessed with the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), the Trail Making Test (TMT) and the Corsi Block Tapping Test (forward/backward). Results showed that ADs performed worse than all others in all tasks but did not differ from aMCIs in allocentric judgments and Corsi forward. Regression analyses showed, although to different degrees in the three groups, a link between attentional resources, visuo-spatial memory and egocentric performance, and between frontal resources and allocentric performance. Therefore, visuo-spatial memory, especially when it involves allocentric frames and requires demanding active processing, should be carefully assessed to reveal early signs of conversion from aMCI to AD.

The Effect of Pedaling At Different Cadence On Attentional Resources

Research aim: We investigated the relationship between attentional resources and pedaling cadence using electroencephalography (EEG) to measure P300 amplitudes and latencies. Methods: Twenty-five healthy volunteers performed the oddball task while pedaling on a stationary bike or relaxing (no pedaling). We set them four conditions: 1) performing only the oddball task (control), 2) performing the oddball task while pedaling at optimal cadence (optimal), 3) performing the oddball task while pedaling faster than optimal cadence (fast), and 4) performing the oddball task while pedaling slower than optimal cadence (slow). Results: P300 amplitudes at Cz and Pz electrodes under optimal, fast, and slow conditions were significantly lower than that under control conditions. P300 amplitudes at Pz under fast and slow conditions were significantly lower than that under the optimal condition. No significant changes in P300 latency at any electrode were observed under any condition. Conclusion: Our findings revealed that pedaling at non-optimal cadence results in less attention being paid to external stimuli compared with pedaling at optimal cadence.

Practical and methodological considerations

This penultimate chapter considers how athletes might develop the ability to exert attentional control. It outlines some approaches that might help athletes to switch their focus or re-distribute patterns of attention when they realize they have adopted task-irrelevant thoughts. It evaluates the use of mindfulness, quiet-eye training, pressurized training, among other approaches, as means of training attentional control. The chapter concludes by outlining a series of methodological approaches that might be employed by researchers wishing to test some of the predictions put forth by our model of skilled action and our proposal that skilled maintenance is underpinned by the flexible deployment of attentional resources.