Search results for "distraction"

Self-Control in Daily Life

2016

In this daily diary study, we investigated the flexibility-enhancing effects of positive affect on the self-reported success of self-control strategies followed in daily life; 297 participants completed a 13-day daily diary that included measures of positive affect, desire, and habit strength as well as three self-control strategies (i.e., monitoring, distraction, and stimulus control). We found specific effects of positive affect on self-control strategies: Individuals with higher positive affect were most successful when following a strategy of distraction (e.g., thinking about something else), particularly when faced with strong tempting desires. These results reinforce the idea that po…

On the Difference Between Necessary and Unnecessary Glances Away From the Forward Roadway : An Occlusion Study on the Motorway

2019

Objective The present study strove to distinguish traffic-related glances away from the forward roadway from non-traffic-related glances while assessing the minimum amount of visual information intake necessary for safe driving in particular scenarios. Background Published gaze-based distraction detection algorithms and guidelines for distraction prevention essentially measure the time spent looking away from the forward roadway, without incorporating situation-based attentional requirements. Incorporating situation-based attentional requirements would entail an approach that not only considers the time spent looking elsewhere but also checks whether all necessary information has been sampl…

Detection and distraction effects for threatening information in social phobia and change after treatment.

2007

This work examines differences in the detection and distraction by social-threatrelated information between a social phobia group (SP; N533) and a normal control group (NC; N532). The change obtained after psychological treatment is also studied for the SP group. A paper-and-pencil visual search task is used, in which the emotional valence of the ‘‘target’’ (social threat, physical threat, and neutral words) and ‘‘distractor’’ (social threat, physical threat, neutral, and nonsense words) verbal stimuli is manipulated. Results indicate that there are no differences in the detection of social-threat targets between SP and NC participants. However, the performance of SP individuals is more imp…

Messages beyond the phone: Processing variable message signs while attending hands-free phone calls.

2021

We examined the effects of different types of cognitive distraction coming from a hands-free phone conversation on the processing of information provided by variable message signs (VMS), on driving performance indicators, and on a physiological index of mental effort (heart rate). Participants drove a route in a driving simulator and had to respond to VMS messages under three conditions: no-distraction, visuospatial distraction (attending phone calls with questions inducing visuospatial processing), and conceptual distraction (attending phone calls with questions requiring semantic memory). Results showed more errors responding to VMS messages in the visuospatial distraction condition. In a…

Contribution of genetic and environmental factors to individual differences in maximal walking speed with and without second task in older women

2005

Background. Among older people, distraction while walking may increase the risk of falls. Factors underlying individual differences in dual tasking are not fully understood. Our aim was to study the effect of a second task on maximal walking speed and to examine whether individual differences in walking speed measured with and without a second task are accounted for by genetic and environmental influences shared across tasks or specific to each task. Methods. The data were collected from the 101 monozygotic and 116 dizygotic twin pairs aged 63–76 years recruited from the Finnish Twin Cohort. Maximal walking speed (MWS) over 10 m was measured on a laboratory corridor and timed with photocell…

Interference of Illusory Contour Perception by a Distractor

2021

The visual system is capable of recognizing objects when object information is widely separated in space, as revealed by the Kanizsa-type illusory contours (ICs). Attentional involvement in perception of ICs is an important topic, and the present study examined whether and how the processing of ICs is interfered with by a distractor. Discrimination between thin and short deformations of an illusory circle was investigated in the absence or presence of a central dynamic patch, with difficulty of discrimination varied in three levels (easy, medium, and hard). Reaction time (RT) was significantly shorter in the absence compared to the presence of the distractor in the easy and medium condition…

2020

Interruptions (interfering stimuli to respond to) and distractions (interfering stimuli to be ignored) have been shown to negatively impact performance, particularly in tasks requiring working memory (WM). This study investigated how these two types of external interference affect task performance and attentional and WM processes as indexed by specific event-related potentials (ERPs) of the EEG. A Continuous Number Task (CNT) was applied, in which participants had to either decide whether the current number (condition without WM load) or the sum of the current and the preceding number (condition with WM load) was odd or even while responding to interlaced single letters (interruptions) or i…

The feasibility of working memory tablet tasks in predicting scholastic skills in classroom settings

2019

Cognitive assessment in natural group settings facilitates data collection but poses threats to the validity. In this study, tablet‐based working memory (WM) tasks, the counting span, and reading span were used in predicting 12‐year‐old children's (N = 837) scholastic skills and fluid intelligence in a classroom with environmental noise. WM tasks had excellent internal consistency, correlated with scholastic skills, and accounted for more of the variance in cognitive performance (grade point average, fluid intelligence, scholastic skills) compared with individually administered (n = 190) digit span task. Furthermore, the multilevel analysis revealed that compared with the classrooms with no…

Anxiety, cognitive interference, and sports performance: The cognitive interference test—table tennis

2000

Abstract Task-irrelevant cognitions manifested by athletes engaged in competition may interfere with the course of an ongoing contest. The self-confrontation method was applied to 18 table tennis players ranging from intermediate to expert level. By means of this method, various types of interfering cognitions present during competition were registered and then tentatively assigned to content-related categories. Based on the content of these cognitions, a sports-specific questionnaire was developed and administered to 149 table tennis players of various levels. Employing principal component analysis, three components could be interpreted: (a) worry, self-doubt, and distraction, (b) emotiona…

Recall of common and uncommon words from pure and mixed lists

1980

Recall of high- and low-frequency words in the conventional free recall paradigm was compared with recall of the same words when subjects were required to count backward before and after the presentation of each word. The addition of this distractor task was associated with a reduction in the high-frequency advantage otherwise found with pure lists containing only high- or low-frequency words. This finding is attributed to the disruption of organizational processes. In contrast, the low-frequency advantage found with conventional presentation of mixed lists, containing high- and low-frequency words, was not reduced by distraction. These findings indicate that the frequency effects obtained …