Search results for "attention"
showing 10 items of 934 documents
Electromyographic Effect of Using Different Attentional Foci During the Front Plank Exercise
2018
Objective The aim of this cross-sectional study was to examine whether an internal focus on different core muscles during the isometric prone plank exercise increased muscle activity. Design Twenty university students performed the following five different conditions: regular prone plank (external focus) and prone plank with an internal focus on different muscles. Surface electromyography signals were recorded for the upper rectus abdominis, lower rectus abdominis, external oblique, and lumbar erector spinae. Results For the upper rectus abdominis, an internal focus on using any muscle increased activity. For the lower rectus abdominis, internal focus on any muscle except the lumbar erector…
Identification and location tasks rely on different mental processes: a diffusion model account of validity effects in spatial cueing paradigms with …
2018
Spatial cueing paradigms are popular tools to assess human attention to emotional stimuli, but different variants of these paradigms differ in what participants' primary task is. In one variant, participants indicate the location of the target (location task), whereas in the other they indicate the shape of the target (identification task). In the present paper we test the idea that although these two variants produce seemingly comparable cue validity effects on response times, they rest on different underlying processes. Across four studies (total N = 397; two in the supplement) using both variants and manipulating the motivational relevance of cue content, diffusion model analyses reveale…
Exploring relations among mindfulness facets and various meditation practices: Do they work in different ways?
2017
Several meditation practices are associated with mindfulness-based interventions but little is known about their specific effects on the development of different mindfulness facets. This study aimed to assess the relations among different practice variables, types of meditation, and mindfulness facets. The final sample was composed of 185 participants who completed an on-line survey, including information on the frequency and duration of each meditation practice, lifetime practice, and the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. A Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes structural model was specified, estimated, and tested. Results showed that the Model's overall fit was adequate: chi(2) (1045) =…
Alexithymic traits are closely related to impulsivity and cognitive and empathic dysfunctions in intimate partner violence perpetrators: New targets …
2019
Clinical psychologists are interested in studying factors that interfere with the behavioral regulation of perpetrators of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW), as well as the way these factors affect the risk of future recidivism after interventions that are designed for them are completed. Although several variables have been proposed as risk factors for IPVAW, the role of alexithymia and its relationships with other cognitive and empathic variables in IPVAW perpetrators has been neglected. Thus, the main aim of this study was to compare the alexithymic and cognitive and empathic traits in a carefully selected sample of IPVAW perpetrators (
Music-induced positive mood broadens the scope of auditory attention
2017
Previous studies indicate that positive mood broadens the scope of visual attention, which can manifest as heightened distractibility. We used event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate whether music-induced positive mood has comparable effects on selective attention in the auditory domain. Subjects listened to experimenter-selected happy, neutral or sad instrumental music and afterwards participated in a dichotic listening task. Distractor sounds in the unattended channel elicited responses related to early sound encoding (N1/MMN) and bottom-up attention capture (P3a) while target sounds in the attended channel elicited a response related to top-down-controlled processing of task-releva…
Acute effects of exercise and active video games on adults’ reaction time and perceived exertion
2016
The purpose of the present study was to examine the acute effects of resting, aerobic exercise practised alone, and aerobic exercise with active video games (AVG), on complex reaction time (CRT) and the post-exercise acute rate of perceived exertion (RPE) in young healthy adults. The experimental group was composed of 92 healthy young adults, 78 males and 13 females (age M = 21.9 ± 2.7 years) who completed two sessions, A and B. In session A, participants rode 30 min on an ergometer, while in session B they exercised for 30 min on an ergometer while playing an AVG on a Wii. The control group was composed of 30 young adults, 26 males and 4 females (age M = 21.4 ± 2.9 years) who rested for 30…
Disturbed brain activation during a working memory task in drug-naive adult patients with ADHD.
2010
Neuroimaging studies in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have shown abnormalities in several brain areas including the frontostriatal circuitry and were mostly conducted in children and adolescents. We investigated 30 never-medicated adult ADHD patients (16 males) and 30 matched healthy control individuals. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was acquired during a working memory paradigm (n-back). Group activation maps and group differences of activation were calculated using voxel-based analyses. The generic activation pattern was more extended in the control group. In ADHD patients, significantly decreased activation was found in the right inferior parietal cortex. Distur…
Event-Related Potentials and Autonomic Responses to a Change in Unattended Auditory Stimuli
1992
Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses to occasional pitch and rise-time changes in a task-irrelevant auditory stimulus repeating at short intervals were measured while the subject performed a difficult intellectual task (Raven Matrices). It was found that deviant stimuli elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the ERP even when they elicited no ANS response. There was no significant difference in the mismatch negativity between trials in which the skin conductance response was or was not elicited. The pitch deviant tone also elicited heart rate deceleration, whereas the rise-time deviant tone tended to elicit a later heart rate accele…
Two systems of maintenance in verbal working memory: evidence from the word length effect.
2013
The extended time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model suggested a working memory architecture in which an executive loop and a phonological loop could both support the maintenance of verbal information. The consequence of such a framework is that phonological effects known to impact the maintenance of verbal information, like the word length effect (WLE), should depend on the use of the phonological loop, but should disappear under the maintenance by the executive loop. In two previous studies, introducing concurrent articulation in complex span tasks barely affected WLE, contradicting the prediction from the TBRS model. The present study re-evaluated the WLE in a complex span task while co…
Prismatic lenses shift time perception
2009
Previous studies have demonstrated the involvement of spatial codes in the representation of time and numbers. We took advantage of a well-known spatial modulation (prismatic adaptation) to test the hypothesis that the representation of time is spatially oriented from left to right, with smaller time intervals being represented to the left of larger time intervals. Healthy subjects performed a time-reproduction task and a time-bisection task, before and after leftward and rightward prismatic adaptation. Results showed that prismatic adaptation inducing a rightward orientation of spatial attention produced an overestimation of time intervals, whereas prismatic adaptation inducing a leftward…