The influence of distraction on speech processing: How selective is selective attention?

-* indicates shared first authorship - The present study investigated the effects of selective attention on the processing of morphosyntactic errors in unattended parts of speech. Two groups of German native (L1) speakers participated in the present study. Participants listened to sentences in which irregular verbs were manipulated in three different conditions (correct, incorrect but attested ablaut pattern, incorrect and crosslinguistically unattested ablaut pattern). In order to track fast dynamic neural reactions to the stimuli, electroencephalography was used. After each sentence, participants in Experiment 1 performed a semantic judgement task, which deliberately distracted the participants from the syntactic manipulations and directed their attention to the semantic content of the sentence. In Experiment 2, participants carried out a syntactic judgement task, which put their attention on the critical stimuli. The use of two different attentional tasks allowed for investigating the impact of selective attention on speech processing and whether morphosyntactic processing steps are performed automatically. In Experiment 2, the incorrect attested condition elicited a larger N400 component compared to the correct condition, whereas in Experiment 1 no differences between conditions were found. These results suggest that the processing of morphosyntactic violations in irregular verbs is not entirely automatic but seems to be strongly affected by selective attention

Neuropsychological and Electrophysiological Assessment of Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

The present study evaluated the neuropsychological performance of adults with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) during the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: Computerized Version 3 (WCST), and the Integrated Visual and Auditory Continuous Performance Test (IVA). The quantitative electroencephalograph (QEEG) was also collected during task performance to examine possible difference in cortical activity between groups and tasks. Results suggest that adults with ADHD demonstrate lower levels of performance on neuropsychological tasks that involve working memory, processing speed, and sustained attention, namely the PASAT and IVA. Furthermore, adult ADHD appears to be characterized by different neurophysiological markers than childhood ADHD and these markers vary according to the neuropsychological task being performed. In general, adults with ADHD demonstrate a QEEG pattern characterized by higher levels of high alpha during the tasks that differentiated their performance from controls, specifically the PASAT and IVA

Measuring working memory load effects on electrophysiological markers of attention orienting during a simulated drive

Intersection accidents result in a significant proportion of road fatalities, and attention allocation likely plays a role. Attention allocation may depend on (limited) working memory (WM) capacity. Driving is often combined with tasks increasing WM load, consequently impairing attention orienting. This study (n = 22) investigated WM load effects on event-related potentials (ERPs) related to attention orienting. A simulated driving environment allowed continuous lane-keeping measurement. Participants were asked to orient attention covertly towards the side indicated by an arrow, and to respond only to moving cars appearing on the attended side by pressing a button. WM load was manipulated using a concurrent memory task. ERPs showed typical attentional modulation (cue: contralateral negativity, LDAP; car: N1, P1, SN and P3) under low and high load conditions. With increased WM load, lane-keeping performance improved, while dual task performance degraded (memory task: increased error rate; orienting task: increased false alarms, smaller P3). Practitioner Summary: Intersection driver-support systems aim to improve traffic safety and flow. However, in-vehicle systems induce WM load, increasing the tendency to yield. Traffic flow reduces if drivers stop at inappropriate times, reducing the effectiveness of systems. Consequently, driver-support systems could include WM load measurement during driving in the development phase

Electrophysiological indices of feedback processing

xii, 76 leaves : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 29 cmAll sentient organisms use contextual information to assess the amount of reward associated with a particular behavior. Human beings have arguably evolved the most sophisticated of these mechanisms and are capable of integrating information over a long duration of time to accurately assess the expected outcome of a chosen action. This thesis used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure how the human brain processes rewarding and punishing feedback in a gambling-type game with variable risk and reward. Experiment 1 determined that phase-locked (evoked) and non-phase-locked (induced) electroencephalographic activity share only partially overlapping generators in human mediofrontal cortex. Experiment 2 determined that the magnitude of certain evoked EEG components during reward processing tracked subsequent changes in bets placed in the next round. These results extend the body of literature by assessing the overlap between induced and evoked EEG components and the role of evoked activity in affecting future decision making

Identifying and Intervening on Neural Markers of Attention to Threat in Children with Anxiety Disorders

Objective: Attention Bias Modification Training (ABMT) for anxiety aims to train attention away from threatening stimuli and toward neutral stimuli. Although ABMT shows promising anxiety reduction effects in children and adolescents, no study has examined its influence on neural indicators of attention measured using event-related potentials (ERPs) in children or adolescents (i.e., youths). The present study examined the influence of ABMT on the P1, N170, P2 and P3 ERP components during completion of the emotional faces dot probe task in youths with anxiety disorders who failed to respond to cognitive behavioral therapy. Method: Thirty youths (M age = 11.97, SD = 2.89) with primary DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorders completed the dot probe task while undergoing electroencephalogram (EEG) to obtain ERPs before, immediately after, and eight weeks after eight sessions of either ABMT (n = 14) or a control task regimen (CT), (n = 16). Results: At post-treatment, statistically significant effects were found for P1 and P3 mean amplitudes: P1 was significantly higher during trials showing neutral-neutral (NN) face pairs in the ABMT arm than in the CT arm; P3 was significantly higher during trials showing NN face pairs than during trials showing neutral-threat (NT) face pairs in the ABMT arm, but not the CT arm. At eight-week follow-up, participants in both arms showed significantly higher (more negative) N170 responses for NN trials than for NT trials. Conclusions: Attention Bias Modification Treatment led to increases in neural processing of neutral stimuli in early and late stage attentional processing, as measured by the P1 and P3 components, respectively. These components during the dot probe task are promising neural markers of ABMT’s effects on attentional processing in youth with anxiety disorders

Driver's attention during monotonous driving and visual stimulation (ERP experiment)

Hlavním přínosem této práce je zjistit, zda je možné předpovídat pozornost řidiče pomocí měření jeho/její mozkové činnosti. Během monotóního řízení má pozornost tendenci se snižovat. Výrazný pokles pozornosti zůsobený únavou může mít fatanální následky pro řidiče nebo ostatní účastníky silničního provozu. Jednou z metod měření mozkové aktivity je tzv. elektroencefalografie (EEG). Spolu s EEG signálemje možné pozorovat specifické nervové odervy spojené s kognitivní stimulací subjektu (řidiče). Tyto odezvy jsou nazývány evokované potenciály (ERP). Existuje hypotéza, která tvrdí, že únava způsobuje prodloužení doby výskytu dané ERP komponenty. Tento nárůst je spojen s úpadkem pozornosti. Cílem práce je navrhnout a provést experiment, který by hypotézu potvrdil. Dalším úkolem je vyvinout aplikaci pro detekci artefaktů v naměřeném signálu.Katedra informatiky a výpočetní technikyObhájenoThe major contribution of this thesis is to discover if it is possible to predict the driver?s attention by measurement of his/her brain activity. During monotonous driving attention tends to decrease. The drop of attention due to fatigue might have serious consequences for the driver and for other traffic participants as well. One method to measure human brain activity is called the electroencephalography (EEG). Together with the EEG signal it is possible to observe specific neuronal responses connected with cognitive stimulation of the subject. These responses are known as event-related potentials (ERP). There is a hypothesis claiming that fatigue causes the shift in latency of the defined ERP component. An increase of this latency is associated with a fade of attention. The goal is to design and perform the experiment which verifies the hypothesis. Another goal of the thesis is to design and develop an application for artifact detection

Correlated Components of Ongoing EEG Point to Emotionally Laden Attention – A Possible Marker of Engagement?

Recent evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging suggests that cortical hemodynamic responses coincide in different subjects experiencing a common naturalistic stimulus. Here we utilize neural responses in the electroencephalogram (EEG) evoked by multiple presentations of short film clips to index brain states marked by high levels of correlation within and across subjects. We formulate a novel signal decomposition method which extracts maximally correlated signal components from multiple EEG records. The resulting components capture correlations down to a one-second time resolution, thus revealing that peak correlations of neural activity across viewings can occur in remarkable correspondence with arousing moments of the film. Moreover, a significant reduction in neural correlation occurs upon a second viewing of the film or when the narrative is disrupted by presenting its scenes scrambled in time. We also probe oscillatory brain activity during periods of heightened correlation, and observe during such times a significant increase in the theta band for a frontal component and reductions in the alpha and beta frequency bands for parietal and occipital components. Low-resolution EEG tomography of these components suggests that the correlated neural activity is consistent with sources in the cingulate and orbitofrontal cortices. Put together, these results suggest that the observed synchrony reflects attention- and emotion-modulated cortical processing which may be decoded with high temporal resolution by extracting maximally correlated components of neural activity

Evaluating attention allocation in children to young adults with a single and dual task EEG paradigm

2019 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Objectives. The ability to effectively allocate attentional resources between tasks has implications for participation in activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) across the lifespan. Neuroimaging techniques, such as electroencephalography (EEG) can measure cognitive processing with more precision than some behavioral paradigms and can evaluate the neural underpinnings of cognitive processes such as attention. Further, EEG has excellent temporal resolution, as it can measure changes in attention occurring at the neural level in milliseconds. This study's purpose is to understand how neural markers of attention are impacted in neurotypical participants under different task demands (i.e. single versus dual). This study also seeks to understand if attention is different across age under different task demands. Methods. All EEG data were collected for this study using a portable QuickTrace system (Neuroscan (Compumedics USA, 5015 West WT Harris Blvd, Suite E, Charlotte, NC 28269, USA)) from 29 scalp sites according to the 10-20 system. Data from 206 neurotypical participants age 7-25 (M= 13.64 years, SD= 4.21) were analyzed for this study. Each participant completed the novelty oddball paradigm (single task) and novelty dual task paradigm. Three distinct tone types (standard, target, and novel) are used in the novelty oddball (NOD) paradigm. Participants were instructed to press a button with their right index finger in response to the target tone. Participants were instructed to not respond to any other tones. In the novelty dual task (NDT) paradigm, participants continued to respond to target tone and simultaneously viewed numbers displayed on a computer monitor. Participants were instructed to press a button with their left index finger when there were three sequentially-presented odd numbers. Results. P3 amplitude and latency from Fz and Pz scalp sites during target tone presentation were analyzed. There was a negative correlation between participant age and P3 amplitude and latency at both Fz and Pz. There was no main effect of task nor an interaction of task and age on either P3 amplitude or latency at Pz. However, there was a significant main effect of task on P3 amplitude at Fz, as single task amplitudes were smaller than dual task amplitudes. There was also a significant interaction of task and age for P3 amplitude at Fz, demonstrating that the P3 amplitude in response to dual tasks decreased more with increasing participant age than P3 amplitude in response to single tasks. A significant interaction of task and age for latency at Fz was found, demonstrating that the latency of the P3 in response to single tasks decreases more with increasing participant age than the latency in response to dual tasks. Conclusions. These findings suggest that attention changes with age and that dual tasks are more effortful in younger participants compared to older participants. Future directions of this research include exploration of how manipulating the probability of hearing each stimulus affects amplitude and latency of the P3 in a three-tone novelty paradigm. Other future directions include exploration of the effects of differing task demands in populations such as those who may have attention deficits

Application of Electroencephalography to the Study of Cognitive and Brain Functions in Schizophrenia

The electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded from the human scalp is widely used to study cognitive and brain functions in schizophrenia. Current research efforts are primarily devoted to the assessment of event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related oscillations (EROs), extracted from the ongoing EEG, in patients with schizophrenia and in clinically unaffected individuals who, due to their family history and current mental status, are at high risk for developing schizophrenia. In this article, we discuss the potential usefulness of ERPs and EROs as genetic vulnerability markers, as pathophysiological markers, and as markers of possible ongoing progressive cognitive and cortical deterioration in schizophrenia. Our main purpose is to illustrate that these neurophysiological measures can offer valuable quantitative biological markers of basic pathophysiological mechanisms and cognitive dysfunctions in schizophrenia, yet they may not be specific to current psychiatry's diagnosis and classification. These biological markers can provide unique information on the nature and extent of cognitive and brain dysfunction in schizophrenia. Moreover, they can be utilized to gain deeper theoretical insights into illness etiology and pathophysiology and may lead to improvements in early detection and more effective and targeted treatment of schizophrenia. We conclude by addressing several key methodological, conceptual, and interpretative issues involved in this research field and by suggesting future research directions

An EEG study on emotional intelligence and advertising message effectiveness

Some electroencephalography (EEG) studies have investigated emotional intelligence (EI), but none have examined the relationships between EI and commercial advertising messages and related consumer behaviors. This study combines brain (EEG) techniques with an EI psychometric to explore the brain responses associated with a range of advertisements. A group of 45 participants (23females, 22males) had their EEG recorded while watching a series of advertisements selected from various marketing categories such as community interests, celebrities, food/drink, and social issues. Participants were also categorized as high or low in emotional intelligence (n = 34). The EEG data analysis was centered on rating decision-making in order to measure brain responses associated with advertising information processing for both groups. The findings suggest that participants with high and low emotional intelligence (EI) were attentive to different types of advertising messages. The two EI groups demonstrated preferences for “people” or “object,” related advertising information. This suggests that differences in consumer perception and emotions may suggest why certain advertising material or marketing strategies are effective or not