Neural Correlates of Learning to Attend

Recent work has shown that training can improve attentional focus. Little is known, however, about how training in attention and multitasking affects the brain. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure changes in cortical responses to distracting stimuli during training on a visual categorization task. Training led to a reduction in behavioral distraction effects, and these improvements in performance generalized to untrained conditions. Although large regions of early visual and posterior parietal cortices responded to the presence of distractors, these regions did not exhibit significant changes in their response following training. In contrast, middle frontal gyrus did exhibit decreased distractor-related responses with practice, showing the same trend as behavior for previously observed distractor locations. However, the neural response in this region diverged from behavior for novel distractor locations, showing greater activity. We conclude that training did not change the robustness of the initial sensory response, but led to increased efficiency in late-stage filtering in the trained conditions

Visual Attention: Bottom-Up Versus Top-Down

AbstractVisual attention is attracted by salient stimuli that ‘pop out’ from their surroundings. Attention can also be voluntarily directed to objects of current importance to the observer. What happens in the brain when these two processes interact

Ability factors and cognitive processes

Several measures of the speed of information processing were related to ability factors derived from the Cattell-Horn theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Ninety-one college students took a battery of paper and pencil tests designed to measure four ability factors: fluid intelligence (Gf), crystallized intelligence (Gc), spatial visualization (Gv), and clerical perceptual speed (CPS). They also performed paper and pencil and computerized versions of three information processing tasks: mental rotations, letter matching, and sentence verification. Correlations among the ability measures, among the information processing measures, and between the two domains were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. The four ability factors were found to be largely independent in this college population. Speed of letter-matching and sentence verification were highly correlated, but neither was related to speed of mental rotation. Mental rotation speed was strongly correlated with Gv; letter matching speed was correlated with CPS; and sentence verification speed was correlated with both Gc and CPS.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/23856/1/0000095.pd

Learned Value Magnifies Salience-Based Attentional Capture

Visual attention is captured by physically salient stimuli (termed salience-based attentional capture), and by otherwise task-irrelevant stimuli that contain goal-related features (termed contingent attentional capture). Recently, we reported that physically nonsalient stimuli associated with value through reward learning also capture attention involuntarily (Anderson, Laurent, & Yantis, PNAS, 2011). Although it is known that physical salience and goal-relatedness both influence attentional priority, it is unknown whether or how attentional capture by a salient stimulus is modulated by its associated value. Here we show that a physically salient, task-irrelevant distractor previously associated with a large reward slows visual search more than an equally salient distractor previously associated with a smaller reward. This magnification of salience-based attentional capture by learned value extinguishes over several hundred trials. These findings reveal a broad influence of learned value on involuntary attentional capture

Temporal properties of human information processing: Tests of discrete versus continuous models,

Cognitive psychologists have characterized the temporal properties of human information processing in terms of discrete and continuous models. Discrete models postulate that component mental processes transmit a finite number of intermittent outputs (quanta) of information over time, whereas continuous models postulate that information is transmitted in a gradual fashion. These postulates may be tested by using an adaptive response-priming procedure and analysis of reaction-time mixture distributions. Three experiments based on this procedure and analysis are reported. The experiments involved varying the temporal interval between the onsets of a prime stimulus and a subsequent test stimulus to which a response had to be made. Reaction time was measured as a function of the duration of the priming interval and the type of prime stimulus. Discrete models predict that manipulations of the priming interval should yield a family of reaction-time mixture distributions formed from a finite number of underlying basis distributions, corresponding to distinct preparatory states. Continuous models make a different prediction. Goodness-of-fit tests between these predictions and the data supported either the discrete or the continuous models, depending on the nature of the stimuli and responses being used. When there were only two alternative responses and the stimulus-response mapping was a compatible one, discrete models with two or three states of preparation fit the results best. For larger response sets with an incompatible stimulus-response mapping, a continuous model fit some of the data better. These results are relevant to the interpretation of reaction-time data in a variety of contexts and to the analysis of speed-accuracy trade-offs in mental processes.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25558/1/0000100.pd

Stimulus-driven attentional capture and attentional control settings. Joumal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Jonides and Selection of information from visual displays is widely believed to be controlled in at least two distinct ways. Goaldirected selection refers to the observer's ability to control what regions or objects in the visual field are selected for further visual processing given a set of goals and beliefs about the current task; this is sometimes called top-down or endogenous control over the locus of attention. Stimulusdriven selection refers to the fact that certain properties of the stimulus may capture attention independently of the observer's goals and beliefs; this is sometimes referred to as bottom-up or exogenous control over the locus of attention. Either one of these mechanisms, or some combination of them, may determine how attention is distributed. Although goal-directed selection has been a major research question for several decades, stimulus-driven selection became a significant focus of investigation relatively recently.' The approach has been to determine the conditions under which the observer's distribution of attention is determined by attributes of the stimulus and not by the observer's goals or intentions (see Yantis, in press, for a review). The experiments reported by Folk, Remington, and Johnston (1992) fall into an intermediate category; they are concerned with the interaction between the intentions of the observer and stimulus-driven attentional capture. The exper