Search results for "attention"
showing 10 items of 934 documents
Visual distractors differentially interfere with the reaching and grasping components of prehension movements
1998
In the present study we addressed the issue of how an object is visually isolated from surrounding cues when a reaching-grasping (prehension) movement towards it is planned. Subjects were required to reach and grasp an object presented either alone or with a distractor. In five experiments, different degrees of elaboration of the distractor were induced by varying: (1) the position of the distractor (central or peripheral); (2) the time when the distractor was suppressed (immediately or delayed, with respect to stimulus presentation); and (3) the type of distractor analysis (implicit or explicit). In addition, we tested whether the possible effects of the distractor on reaching-grasping wer…
Epoch versus impulse models in the analysis of parametric fMRI studies
2013
Abstract Objective In parametric fMRI studies the relationship between the amplitude of the hemodynamic response and electrophysiological or behavioral parameters is commonly analyzed using the general linear model (GLM). We examined ways of using single-trial response time (RT) in the analysis of a decision-making task to better isolate task-specific activation. Methods fMRI and RT data were recorded in twenty-one subjects performing a visual-oddball-task. Four explanatory variables (EVs) were generated for the GLM-analysis: A conventional (constant impulse) EV, a constant epoch EV informed using subjects’ average RT, a variable impulse EV and a variable epoch EV both informed using single…
Emotional communication in the context of joint attention for food stimuli: Effects on attentional and affective processing
2014
Guided by distinct theoretical frameworks (the embodiment theories, shared-signal hypothesis, and appraisal theories), we examined the effects of gaze direction and emotional expressions (joy, disgust, and neutral) of virtual characters on attention orienting and affective reactivity of participants while they were engaged in joint attention for food stimuli contrasted by preference (disliked, moderately liked, and liked). The participants were exposed to videos of avatars looking at food and displaying facial expressions with their gaze directed either toward the food only or toward the food and participants consecutively. We recorded eye-tracking responses, heart rate, facial electromyogr…
Attentional Biases and Vulnerability to Depression
1999
This study was designed to examine selective processing of emotional information in depression. It focuses on possible attentional biases in depression, and whether such biases constitute a cognitive vulnerability factor to suffer from the disorder or, on the contrary, they reflect a feature associated exclusively with the clinical level of depression. 81 participants were included in the study: 15 with a diagnosis of Major Depression; 17 were diagnosed as Dysthymia; 11 participants scored over 18 in the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979); 15 participants, in whom a sad mood state was induced by an experimental mood induction (Velten technique + music, or biographic…
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…
Associative and semantic priming effects occur at very short stimulus-onset asynchronies in lexical decision and naming
1997
Abstract Prior research has found significant associative/semantic priming effects at very short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) in experimental tasks such as lexical decision, but not in naming tasks (however, see Lukatela and Turvey, 1994 ). In this paper, the time course of associative priming effects was analyzed at several very short SOAs (33, 50, and 67 ms), using the masked priming paradigm ( Forster and Davis, 1984 ), both in lexical decision (Experiment 1) and naming (Experiment 2). The results show small—but significant—associative priming effects in both tasks. Additionally, using the masked priming procedure at the 67 ms SOA, Experiments 3 and 4, shows facilitatory priming ef…
Word order and Broca’s region: Evidence for a supra-syntactic perspective
2008
It has often been suggested that the role of Broca's region in sentence comprehension can be explained with reference to general cognitive mechanisms (e.g. working memory, cognitive control). However, the (language-related) basis for such proposals is often restricted to findings on English. Here, we argue that an extension of the database to other languages can shed new light on the types of mechanisms that an adequate account of Broca's region should be equipped to deal with. This becomes most readily apparent in the domain of word order variations, which we examined in German verb-final sentences using event-related fMRI. Our results showed that activation in the pars opercularis--a core…
Conscious knowledge and changes in performance in sequence learning: Evidence against dissociation.
1992
International audience; Two experiments examined the relation between explicit knowledge and motor performance on the serial reaction time task developed by Nissen and Bullemer (1987). Tests of free recall and recognition of sequence components revealed that reliable explicit knowledge was acquired after an amount of practice that was hardly sufficient to improve mean motor performance. In addition, reaction time improvement was limited to the ending trials of the 3- and 4-trial sequence components that Ss recalled or recognized. These results were replicated in Experiment 3, in which Ss were trained under attentional distraction in the task developed by Cohen, Ivry, and Keele (1990). Overa…
The P600-as-P3 hypothesis revisited: single-trial analyses reveal that the late EEG positivity following linguistically deviant material is reaction …
2014
The P600, a late positive ERP component following linguistically deviant stimuli, is commonly seen as indexing structural, high-level processes, e.g. of linguistic (re)analysis. It has also been identified with the P3 (P600-as-P3 hypothesis), which is thought to reflect a systemic neuromodulator release facilitating behavioural shifts and is usually response time aligned. We investigated single-trial alignment of the P600 to response, a critical prediction of the P600-as-P3 hypothesis. Participants heard sentences containing morphosyntactic and semantic violations and responded via a button press. The elicited P600 was perfectly response aligned, while an N400 following semantic deviations …
When tinnitus loudness and annoyance are discrepant: audiological characteristics and psychological profile.
2006
This study evaluates sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of patients reporting discrepant levels of tinnitus loudness and annoyance. 4958 subjects recruited from a national tinnitus association completed a comprehensive screening questionnaire including Klockhoff and Lindblom’s loudness grading system and the psychometric Mini-TQ (Tinnitus Questionnaire). There was a moderate correlation of 0.45 between loudness and annoyance. Of the subjects reporting very loud tinnitus, about one third had only mild or moderate annoyance scores. They were not different from those with high annoyance regarding age, gender and tinnitus duration, but annoyance was increased when subjects had additi…