Search results for "Attentional control"

Relationship between effortful control and facets of mindfulness in meditators, non-meditators and individuals with borderline personality disorder

2018

As dimensions of effortful control (EC), activation control, attentional control, and inhibitory control could mediate the relationship between mindfulness meditation practice and the facets of mindfulness (i.e., observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judging and non-reacting to inner experience). In this study, we tested whether participant status: meditators (n = 330), healthy non-meditators (n = 254) and individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis (n = 46) predicted the facets of mindfulness and if these potential effects were mediated through the three effortful control (EC) dimensions (activation, attentional and inhibitory control). Meditators scored hi…

Metacognitive Therapy in Patients with Tinnitus: a Single Group Study

2019

Tinnitus is often in comorbidity with anxiety and depression, and several authors have proposed a reduced efficiency of the top-down executive control in its perception. This single-group study describes a novel application of the metacognitive therapy (MCT), which works on a top-down engagement of proactive attentional control mechanisms on a group of patients with tinnitus, to see its impact on the perception of tinnitus and its anxiety and depression correlates. Eight metacognitive therapy group-sessions were proposed to a group of nine patients, as part of a regional project conducted at the University General Hospital “Paolo Giaccone” of Palermo. The last was a follow-up session, propo…

Distinct neural-behavioral correspondence within face processing and attention networks for the composite face effect

2022

The composite face effect (CFE) is recognized as a hallmark for holistic face processing, but our knowledge remains sparse about its cognitive and neural loci. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with independent localizer and complete composite face task, we here investigated its neural-behavioral correspondence within face processing and attention networks. Complementing classical comparisons, we adopted a dimensional reduction approach to explore the core cognitive constructs of the behavioral CFE measurement. Our univariate analyses found an alignment effect in regions associated with both the extended face processing network and attention networks. Further representational simi…

From development to aging: Holistic face perception in children, younger and older adults.

2015

Few published reports examine the development of holistic face processing across the lifespan such that face-specific processes are adequately differentiated from general developmental effects. To address this gap in the literature, we used the complete design of the composite paradigm (Richler & Gauthier, 2014) with faces and non-face control objects (watches) to investigate holistic processing in children (8-10years), young adults (20-32years) and older adults (65-78years). Several modifications to past research designs were introduced to improve the ability to draw conclusions about the development of holistic processing in terms of face-specificity, response bias, and age-related differ…

Attention orienting and inhibitory control across the different mood states in bipolar disorder: An emotional antisaccade task

2013

An antisaccade experiment, using happy, sad, and neutral faces, was conducted to examine the effect of mood-congruent information on inhibitory control (antisaccade task) and attentional orienting (prosaccade task) during the different episodes of bipolar disorder (BD) - manic (n=22), depressive (n=25), and euthymic (n=24). A group of 28 healthy controls was also included. Results revealed that symptomatic patients committed more antisaccade errors than healthy individuals, especially with mood-congruent faces. The manic group committed more antisaccade errors in response to happy faces, while the depressed group tended to commit more antisaccade errors in response to sad faces. Additionall…

Individual differences in working memory capacity are unrelated to the magnitudes of retrocue benefits

2021

AbstractPrevious studies have associated visual working memory (VWM) capacity with the use of internal attention. Retrocues, which direct internal attention to a particular object or feature dimension, can improve VWM performance (i.e., retrocue benefit, RCB). However, so far, no study has investigated the relationship between VWM capacity and the magnitudes of RCBs obtained from object-based and dimension-based retrocues. The present study explored individual differences in the magnitudes of object- and dimension-based RCBs and their relationships with VWM capacity. Participants completed a VWM capacity measurement, an object-based cue task, and a dimension-based cue task. We confirmed tha…

Working Memory in Children: A Time-Constrained Functioning Similar to Adults

2009

International audience; Within the Time-Based Resource-Sharing (TBRS) model, we tested a new conception of the relationships between processing and storage in which the core mechanisms of WM are time constrained. However, our previous studies were restricted to adults. The present study aimed at demonstrating that these mechanisms are present and functional before adulthood. For this purpose, we investigated the effect on maintenance of the duration of the attentional capture induced by processing. In two experiments using computer-paced WM span tasks, 10- year-old children were asked to maintain letters while performing spatial location judgments. The duration of this processing was manipu…

Impaired conflict resolution and vigilance in euthymic bipolar disorder.

2015

Abstract Difficulty attending is a common deficit of euthymic bipolar patients. However, it is not known whether this is a global attentional deficit or relates to a specific attentional network. According to the attention network approach, attention is best understood in terms of three functionally and neuroanatomically distinct networks-alerting, orienting, and executive control. In this study, we explored whether and which of the three attentional networks are altered in euthymic Bipolar Disorder (BD). A sample of euthymic BD patients and age-matched healthy controls completed the Attention Network Test for Interactions and Vigilance (ANTI-V) that provided not only a measure of orienting…

To switch or not to switch: Brain potential indices of attentional control after task-relevant and task-irrelevant changes of stimulus features

2009

Attention is controlled by the interplay of sensory input and top-down processes. We compared attentional control processes during task switching and reorientation after distraction. The primary task was to discriminate laterally and centrally presented tones; these stimuli were composed of a frequent standard or an infrequent deviant pitch. In the distraction condition, pitch was irrelevant and could be ignored. In the switch condition, pitch changes were relevant: whenever a deviant tone was presented, participants had to discriminate its pitch and not its direction. The task in standard trials remained unchanged. In both conditions, deviants elicited mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, P3b, …

2016

In studying holistic face processing across the life-span there are only few attempts to separate face-specific from general aging effects. Here we used the complete design of the composite paradigm (Cheung et al., 2008) with faces and novel non-face control objects (watches) to investigate composite effects in young (18-32 years) and older adults (63-78 years). We included cueing conditions to alert using a narrow or a wide attentional focus when comparing the composite objects, and used brief and relaxed exposure durations for stimulus presentation. Young adults showed large composite effects for faces, but none for watches. In contrast, older adults showed strong composite effects for fa…