Dissertations / Theses: 'Selective attention'

1

Driver, Jonathon S. "Selective attention." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.236243.

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Mar, Corinne Mei. "Selective attention in schizophrenia /." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487945015617482.

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3

Hanania, Rima. "Selective attention and attention shifting in preschool children." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2009. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3380084.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the program in Cognitive Science, 2009.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 19, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: B, page: 7881. Adviser: Linda B. Smith.

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O'Brien, Jennifer L. "Motivation and visual selective attention." Thesis, Bangor University, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.496101.

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MacFarlane, Hood Bruce. "Development of visual selective attention." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.387062.

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6

Bullock, Thomas. "Crossmodal load and selective attention." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2012. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2771/.

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This thesis explores a current dominant theory of attention - the load theory of selective attention and cognitive control (Lavie et al., 2004). Load theory has been posited as a potential resolution to the long-running debate over the locus of selection in attention. Numerous studies confirm that high visual perceptual load in a relevant task leads to reduced interference from task-relevant distractors; whereas high working memory load leads to increased interference from task-irrelevant distractors in a relevant task. However, very few studies have directly tested perceptual and working memory load effects on the processing of task-relevant stimuli, and even fewer studies have tested the impact of load on processing both within and between different sensory modalities. This thesis details several novel experiments that test both visual and auditory perceptual and working memory load effects on task-relevant change detection in a change-blindness “flicker” task. Results indicate that both high visual and auditory perceptual load can impact on change detection, which implies that the perceptual load model can account for load effects on change detection, both within and between different sensory modalities. Results also indicate that high visual working memory load can impact on change detection. By contrast, high auditory working memory load did not appear to impact change detection. These findings do not directly challenge load theory per-se, but instead highlight how working memory load can have markedly different effects in different experimental paradigms. The final part of this thesis explores whether high perceptual load can attenuate distraction from highly emotionally salient stimuli. The findings suggest that potent emotional stimuli can “breakthrough” and override the effects of high perceptual load - a result that presents a challenge to load theory. All findings are discussed with reference to new challenges to load theory, particularly the “dilution” argument.

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7

Tan, Michael Nicholas. "Selective listening processes in humans." University of Western Australia. School of Psychology, 2009. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2009.0198.

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This thesis presents data which support cochlear involvement in attentional listening. It has been previously proposed that the descending auditory pathways, in particular the medial olivocochlear system, play a role in reducing the cochlea's response to noise in a process known as antimasking. This hypothesis was investigated in human subjects for its potential impact on the detection of signals in noise following auditory cues. Three experimental chapters (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) are described in this thesis. Experiments in the first chapter measured the effect of acoustic cues on the detection of subsequent tones of equal or different frequency. Results show that changes in the ability to detect signals following auditory cues are the result of both enhanced detection for tones at the cued frequency, and suppressed detection for tones at non-cue frequencies. Both effects were measured to be in the order of ~3 dB. This thesis has argued that the enhancement of a cued tone is the implicit result of an auditory cue, while suppression of a probe tone results from the expectation of a specific frequency based on accumulated experience of a listening task. The properties of enhancement support the antimasking hypothesis, however, the physiological mechanism for suppression is uncertain. In the second experimental chapter, auditory cues were replaced with visual cues (representing musical notes) whose pitch corresponded to the target frequency, and were presented to musician subjects who possessed absolute or relative pitch. Results from these experiments showed that a visual cue produces the same magnitude of enhancement as that produced by an acoustic cue. This finding demonstrates a cognitive influence on the detection of tones in noise, and implicates the role of higher centres such as those involved in template-matching or top-down control of the efferent pathways. The final experimental chapter repeated several of the experiments from the first chapter on subjects with various forms of hearing loss. The results indicate that subjects with an outer hair cell deficit (concomitant with a sensorineural hearing loss) do not exhibit an enhancement of cued frequencies or a suppression of unexpected frequencies to the same extent as the normal-hearing subjects. In addition, one subject with a long-standing conductive hearing loss (with normal cochlear function) produced an enhancement equivalent to that of the normalhearing subjects. These findings also support the role of the medial olivocochlear system and the outer hair cells in antimasking. It is the conclusion of this thesis that enhancement most likely results from a combination of changes in receptive field characteristics, at various levels of the auditory system. The medial olivocochlear system is likely to be involved in unmasking a portion of the signal at the cochlear level, which may be influenced by both acoustic reflex pathways or higher centres of the brain.

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Goddard, Kim M. "The attentional blink in audition and vision, an early selection model of selective attention revisited." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0012/MQ34961.pdf.

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Sock, Ching Low. "Giving centre stage to top-down inhibitory mechanisms for selective attention." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/670753.

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Selective attention determines the sensory signals that are processed at higher levels at the expense of others and is biased by higher-order brain regions which anticipate task-relevant stimuli and increase neural sensitivity to them in the sensory cortex. Often, this is thought to occur through excitation of selected neurons, but some studies have suggested that it is not the full description of the process. Increasingly, evidence has pointed to an alternative, top-down inhibitory biasing mechanism. Here, we investigated such an inhibitory model of attention. We first showed how sensitivity to stimulus features known to be task-irrelevant are reduced through top-down suppression. Secondly, we demonstrated a biologically grounded spiking model’s ability to modulate information processing and benchmarked it to physiology. Lastly, we explored the interaction between the excitatory and inhibitory models of top-down attention in a foraging agent. Our results support the inhibitory model of top-down attention as a biological attentional mechanism and show how it fits into the current zeitgeist of top-down attentional mechanisms.
L’atenció selectiva determina els senyals sensorials que es processen a nivells superiors a costa dels altres. Està esbiaixada per regions cerebrals d’ordre superior que anticipen estímuls rellevants per a la tasca i augmenten la sensibilitat neuronal a l’escorça sensorial. Sovint, es creu que això es produeix mitjançant l'excitació de neurones seleccionades, però alguns estudis han suggerit que no és la descripció completa del procés. Cada vegada més, l’evidència apunta cap a un mecanisme alternatiu de polarització inhibitiva de dalt a baix. Aquí hem investigat, aleshores, un model d’atenció inhibitori. Primer, vam demostrar com es redueix la sensibilitat a les funcions d’estímul irrellevants per tasques mitjançant la supressió de dalt a baix. En segon lloc, vam demostrar la capacitat d’un model d’espiga basat en la biologia per modular el processament de la informació i l’hem comparat amb la fisiologia. Per últim, hem explorat la interacció entre els models excitadors i inhibidors d’atenció de dalt a baix en un agent de cerca d’aliments. Els nostres resultats donen suport al model inhibitori de l’atenció de dalt a baix com a mecanisme d’atenció biològica i mostren com s’adapta al ‘zeitgeist’ actual dels mecanismes d’atenció de dalt a baix.

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Booth, Rob. "Attentional control theory & Stroop interference - selective attention deteriorates under stress." Thesis, University of Kent, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.498822.

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Clayton, Ian. "Selective attention in obsessive-compulsive disorder /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1997. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PM/09pmc622.pdf.

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Jenkins, Robert. "Attention and face processing." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.246310.

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Andrade, Brendan F. S. "Selective and sustained attention in children with and without attention difficulties." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ51988.pdf.

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Bleckley, M. Kathryn. "Working memory capacity as controlled attention : implications for visual selective attention." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/28885.

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Asriel, Melanie Waldrop. "Aging and Selective Attention in Causal Learning." TopSCHOLAR®, 2011. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1085.

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This study investigated age differences in generalization of causal value employing similarity as a cue to causality. Exemplars from six food categories (A+, B-, C+, D-. E+, F-) were presented to both young and older adults in two contiguous training phases. Training Phase 1 included exemplars from categories A+, B-, C+, D-. Training Phase 2 included exemplars from A+, B-, E+, F-. Foods in the “+” categories were paired with an outcome of sickness and foods in the “-” categories were not paired with sickness. Tests of causal judgment and exemplar recognition were conducted. For causal judgment, individual exemplars experienced during training and novel exemplars from all six categories were presented. For categories A+ and B-, the categories experienced in both training phases, young and older groups generalized the causal value to the category label and to all exemplars regardless of whether they were experienced in training or were novel. For categories experienced only once in training (C+, D-, E+, F-), both groups were better able to successfully judge causal value for experienced exemplars than novel exemplars. For young and older adults, experience made a difference in the ability to generalize causal value. Experienced and novel exemplars were also presented for recognition. Participants in both age groups showed a false memory effect for individual exemplars from the more experienced categories (A+, B-) suggesting that the process that allowed them to generalize causal value also interfered with their memory for individual exemplars. There was a difference between the younger and older groups for the categories that were only experienced once in training (C+, D-, E+, F-). In this case, younger participants showed better recognition than older adults for the individual exemplars. Older adults showed the same false memory effects for these categories as they showed for categories A+ and B-. These findings suggest that older adults generalize causal value as well as younger adults, but they are less able to distinguish individual exemplars. This discrepancy may be explained by differences in ability to use verbatim and gist. Older adults’ reduced verbatim processing leads to default gist encoding that enables them to focus on category level features but not process detailed exemplar identity (Brainerd & Reyna, 1990). Younger adults appear to have a flexibility that enables them to encode and retrieve both category-level gist and verbatim individualexemplar features when the task calls for it.

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Ruff, Christian Carl. "Top-down signals in visual selective attention." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2006. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1444575/.

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This thesis describes experimental work on the brain mechanisms underlying human visual selective attention, with a focus on top-down activity changes in visual cortex. Using a combination of methods, the experiments addressed related questions concerning the functional significance and putative origins of such activity modulations due to selective attention. More specifically, the experiment described in Chapter 2 shows with TMS-elicited phosphenes that anticipatory selective attention can change excitability of visual cortex in a spatially-specific manner, even when thalamic gating of afferent input is ruled out. The behavioural and fMRI experiments described in Chapter 3 indicate that top-down influences of selective attention are not limited to enhancements of visual target processing, but may also involve anticipatory processes that minimize the impact of visual distractor stimuli. Chapters 4-6 then address questions about potential origins of such top-down activity modulations in visual cortex, using concurrent TMS-fMRI and psychophysics. These experiments show that TMS applied to the right human frontal eye field can causally influence visual cortex activity in a spatially-specific manner (Chapter 4), which has direct functional consequences for visual perception (Chapter 5), and is reliably different from that caused by TMS to the right intra-parietal sulcus (Chapter 6). The data presented in this thesis indicate that visual selective attention may involve top-down signals that bias visual processing towards behaviourally relevant stimuli, at the expense of distracting information present in the scene. Moreover, the experiments provide causal evidence in the human brain that distinct top-down signals can originate in anatomical feedback loops from frontal or parietal areas, and that such regions may have different functional influences on visual processing. These findings provide neural confirmation for some theoretical proposals in the literature on visual selective attention, and they introduce and corroborate new methods that might be of considerable utility for addressing such mechanisms directly.

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Hedge, Craig. "Selective attention in working memory - is there a link to perceptual attention?" Thesis, University of Bristol, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.627966.

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Understanding human cognition requires the characterisation of the limitations that our processing capacities are subject to. Such questions have been central to the examination of two key constructs in cognitive psychology: Working Memory (WM) and attention. In the domain of WM, recent models have posited a focus of attention, analogous to selective attention in perception, in which a single item is prioritised over others for cognitive operations. In nine experiments, this thesis explores the nature of the focus of attention in spatial WM in two regards. First, I used eye movements and reaction times to examine how priority is allocated to internal representations (Experiments 1-4). The results of these experiments indicated that orienting in WM could be decomposed into processes analogous to perceptual attention orienting. Through this, I was able to characterise three contributions to the switch cost: a) a process of cue evaluation; b) the process of orienting between objects; and c) interference between locations arising from attention shifts. Subsequently, I observed neurophysiological correlates of the first and third of these contributions in event-related potentials (Experiment 5). Second, building upon an increasing amount of evidence indicating an overlap between perception and WM, I sought to examine whether analogous processes of selection in both domains reflect a common mechanism (Experiments 6-9). Specifically, I examined whether the selection of an object in spatial WM was dependent on mechanisms underlying perceptual processing. The findings from these experiments indicated that selection in WM interacts with perceptual attention shifts, but is not dependent upon them. Overall, this thesis provides an account of how selection in WM is related to perceptual attention, and critically, how they are distinct. I account for these findings in a framework which specifies distinct representations for perception and WM, but in which they interact through a shared representation of attentional priority.

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Martin, Jesse. "An interference continuum for selective attention in vision : evidence from the attentional blink." Thesis, Bangor University, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.270688.

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Chow, Hiu-mei, and 周曉薇. "The effect of perceptual grouping on selective attention." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2013. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B50899946.

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Perceptual grouping plays an indispensable role on attention distribution. An example of this interaction is the impaired visual search performance when the target overlaps with a task-irrelevant salient distractor organized to a snake-like configuration by collinear bars, and when the collinear distractor is long enough (Jingling & Tseng, 2013). This phenomenon is puzzling because it is opposite to our understanding of attention capture which predicts search facilitation instead of impairment. As an attempt to fully understand the interaction between perceptual grouping and attention, the current research probed the possible neural stage of this collinear search impairment effect. In Study 1, the distractor column of the search display was split into two eyes: one eye saw a distractor with varied length (= 1, 5, or 9 bars) while the other eye saw the rest of the distractor column. When both eyes were properly fused, observers saw a search display containing a 9-bar distractor. Observers were asked to identify the orientation of a target gap that could be overlapping or non-overlapping with the distractor. It was found that search impairment was dominated by monocular collinear distractor length. In Study 2, a 9-bar distractor was shown to one eye of observers and strong flashing color patches were shown to the other eye (Continuous Flash Suppression) such that part of the distractor was suppressed from observers’ awareness. It was found that invisible collinear distractor parts enhanced search impairment, suggesting awareness of the distractor is not necessary for the effect. Results from both studies converge to suggest that the effect of collinear grouping on attention is likely to be at early visual sites like V1 where monocular information but not awareness is processed. It highlights the need to incorporate perceptual grouping into current salience-based attention models.
published_or_final_version
Psychology
Master
Master of Philosophy

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Kim, Jeong-Im. "Working memory, selective visual attention and hierarchical perception." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1565/.

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Previous research has shown that stimuli held in working memory can guide spatial allocation of attention, even when the stimuli are irrelevant to a subsequent search task. Responses are speeded when the content in working memory matches a target, and are slowed when the content matches a distractor (Downing, 2000; Soto, Heinke, Humphreys, & Blanco, 2005). The relevant literature reflects on whether or not this top-down process of attentional capture from working memory is an automatic mechanism where attention gets deployed without a need for voluntary effort, and on the neural process of this endogenous control working in conjunction with bottom-up exogenous factor. So far there have not been any explorations into how the working memory might influence non-spatial selection of attentional selection, whilst also testing for the automaticity of working memory. Using Navon stimuli, I explored if and how various types of items held in working memory affect the perception of visual targets non-spatially, at local and global levels in compound letters. The data show that information in working memory biases the selection of hierarchical forms whilst priming does not, that irrelevant part of memory item also influences attentional selection, that the specific type of attentional mode (distributed vs. focused) plays an important role in selection, and that it is not easy to eradicate the top-down working memory effect.

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Peterson, Jared. "The effect of blur on visual selective attention." Thesis, Kansas State University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/34460.

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Master of Science
Department of Psychology
Lester C. Loschky
The effect of blur/clarity contrast on selective attention was investigated in terms of how unique blur and/or clarity guides attention. Visual blur has previously been suggested to be processed preattentively using a dual-task paradigm (Loschky et al., 2014). Experiments 1 and 2 used rotated L and T visual search tasks with blur/clarity contrast being manipulated such that it was non-predictive of the target’s location. Each experiment was preceded by a legibility control study such that blurred and clear letters had similar accuracy and reaction times. This allowed for the results to be interpreted as changes in attention rather than difficulty identifying the letters because they were blurry. Results suggest that when non-predictive of target location, unique blur plays a passive role in selective attention in which it is ignored, neither capturing nor repelling attention to its spatial location, whereas unique clarity captures attention. The findings provide insight to the role that blur/clarity contrast plays in guiding visual attention, which can be implemented in visual software to help guide selective attention to critical regions of interest displayed on a computer screen.

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Chapman, G. William IV. "A Model of Relational Reasoning through Selective Attention." Thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10826569.

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Understanding the relationship between sets of objects is a fundamental requirement of cognitive skills, such as learning from example or generalization. For example, recognizing that planets revolve around stars, and not the other way around, is essential for understanding astronomical systems. However, the method by which we recognize and apply such relations is not clearly understood. In particular, how a set of neurons is able to represent which object fulfills which role (role binding), presented difficulty in past studies. Here, we propose a systems-level model, which utilizes selective attention and working memory, to address issues of role binding. In our model, selective attention is used to perceive visual stimuli such that all relations can be reframed as an operation from one object unto another, and so binding becomes an issue only in the initial recognition of the direction of the relation. We test and refine this model, utilizing EEG during a second-order relational reasoning task. Epoched EEG was projected to the cortical surface, providing sourcespace estimates of event related potentials. Permutation testing revealed 8 cortical clusters which responded differentially based on the specifics of a trial. Dynamic connectivity between these clusters was estimated with the directed transfer function, to reveal the dynamic causality between regions. Our results support the model, identifying a distinct bottom-up network that identifies relations between single pairs of objects, along with a top-down biasing network that may reorient attention to sequential pairs of objects. Taken together, our results show that relational reasoning can be performed by a distributed network, utilizing selective attention

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Lukas, Sarah. "Cross-modal selective attention in switching stimulus modalities /." Hamburg : Kovač, 2009. http://d-nb.info/996716564/04.

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Watts, Sarah. "Selective Attention and Childhood Anxiety: The Associations Among Attention, Memory, Interpretive Biases and Anxiety." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2006. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/324.

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This paper examined the links between selective attention, memory bias, interpretive bias, and anxiety problems in a community sample of 81 children (38 females) aged 9-17 years. Cognitive biases were assessed using a word and picture Dot Probe Discrimination task to assess selective attention, a memory task to assess a memory bias, and the CNCEQ to assess interpretive bias. Childhood anxiety was assessed using the parent and child versions of the RCMAS and RCADS. Significant associations were found between the three cognitive biases and childhood anxiety problems. In addition, selective attention was found to be associated with the selective abstraction subscale of the CNCEQ. The results did not support the mediation of selective attention and interpretive bias by memory bias. Finally, the results supported a cognitive model that posited that interpretive bias may be predictive of childhood anxiety problems beyond what is predicted by selective attention and memory bias.

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Hood, Bruce MacFarlane. "Development of visual selective attention in the human infant." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1991. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/251517.

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Griffiths, Oren Dennis Psychology Faculty of Science UNSW. "Selective attention in human causal learning and recognition memory." Publisher:University of New South Wales. Psychology, 2009. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/42780.

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It was hypothesized that similar selective attention processes might underlie two important empirical phenomena from traditionally distinct fields of cognitive psychology; the effect of divided attention on memory, and the blocking effect in associative learning. To investigate this hypothesis, ten experiments were conducted to investigate the role of selective attention in recognition and causal learning. In order to do so, a new category-based causal judgment task was constructed (Chapter 1), which allowed measurement of both causal strength and cue recognition. This procedure was then used to examine the blocking effect, in which pre-training with one cue, A, typically results in impaired learning about a second cue, B, when those two cues are trained in compound (AB+). Participants also demonstrated decreased recognition performance for the causally redundant cue B, suggesting that less attention had been paid to it in training (Chapter 3). Neither blocking in recognition, nor in causal judgment, was influenced by an additivity manipulation (Chapter 4). These results are consistent with the idea that attention is preferentially allocated towards the more predictive cue A, and away from the less predictive cue B (e.g., Mackintosh, 1975). Contrary to this hypothesis, poorer recognition was observed for predictive cues than for novel, or unreliable predictors (Chapter 5). Finally, in Chapter 6, a dissociation was observed between memory encoding and the rate at which causal learning occurred; participants learned more rapidly about previously predictive cues (e.g. A) than previously non-predictive cues (e.g. E), but demonstrated equivalently poor recognition for both types of cues (e.g. A and E). In Chapter 7, the present data are discussed in relation to models of associative learning, categorization and memory. A new model, based upon Mackintosh (1975) and Kruschke (1992) is proposed to account for the observed relationship between the extent to which each cue is attended to, learned about and later recognized.

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Koski, Lisa Marie. "The role of frontal cortex in visual selective attention." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape10/PQDD_0017/NQ55350.pdf.

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Hismjatullina, Anna. "A study of selective attention in young autistic subjects." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/4344.

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Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006.
The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 1, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

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Djokovic-Ducic, Slobodanka. "Selective attention in adolescents with and without depressive symptoms." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61290.

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Visual selective attention was examined in a sample of non-referred adolescents with high and low depressive symptomatology. Two standardized depression inventories (CDI, DEQ) were used to classify the adolescents. The two groups were matched on age, sex and intelligence. The adolescents performed a forced-choice reaction time task designed to isolate several sources of interference in visual selective attention. Interference conditions varied with regard to number and type of distractors surrounding the target stimulus. Reaction times of the two groups were compared to identify differences in capacities and strategies utilized in filtering distracting information. Findings were examined with regard to the ability to select relevant information and ignore distracting information from the environment. Data analyses indicated that the reaction times of the adolescents who scored high on the depression scales were slower and more variable. In addition, facilitation occurred only with adolescents with low scores when the number of distractors exceeded visual capacities. The implications for understanding attentional capacities and strategies of adolescents with depressive symptoms are discussed.

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Boyd, Lee-Ann Michelle. "Selective attention and distractibility in children with Down syndrome." Thesis, McGill University, 1992. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=61282.

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The goal of this study was to examine selective attention and distractibility within the visual modality in children with Down syndrome as compared to children of normal intelligence matched for mental age. Selective attention was defined as the children's abilities to identify and respond to a target stimulus on a forced choice reaction time task. Distractibility was considered to be the extent to which the children's performances on the task were interfered with by extraneous stimuli in the visual field. Conditions on the task varied with regard to the presence or absence and location (close and far) of distracting stimuli and the presence or absence and size (small, medium and large) of boundary cues. Participants included 10 children with Down syndrome and 10 children of normal intelligence matched for mental age. The primary finding of this study was that the performance of children with Down syndrome was more adversely affected by the presence of distractors than that of the children of normal intelligence. This finding indicates that children with Down syndrome suffer from selective attention deficits and increased distractibility. The selective attention of children with Down syndrome is characterized as distractor-controlled as a result of a defective attentional (zoom) lens that "wanders" in visual space.

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Caparos, Serge. "Load and the spatial profile of visual selective attention." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.515278.

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32

Paltoglou, Aspasia Eleni. "Mechanisms of spatial and non-spatial auditory selective attention." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2009. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/10697/.

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Selective attention is a crucial function that encompasses all perceptual modalities and which enables us to focus on the behaviorally relevant information and ignore the rest. The main goal of the thesis is to test well-established hypotheses about the mechanisms of visual selective attention in the auditory domain using behavioral and neuroimaging methods. Two fMRI studies (Experiments 1 and 2) test the hypothesis of feature-specific attentional enhancement. This hypothesis states that when attending to an object or a feature, there should be an enhancement of the response in the sensory region that is sensitive to that object or feature. Experiment 1 investigated feature-specific attentional modulation mainly within the tonotopic fields around primary auditory cortex. Experiment 2 investigated feature-specific attentional modulation mainly around non-primary auditory cortex, when attending to frequency modulation or motion of the same auditory object. Experiment 1 showed evidence for feature-specific enhancement, while Experiment 2 did not. The role of competition among concurrent auditory objects as a necessary factor in driving feature-specific enhancement is discussed. A second hypothesis from vision research is that spatial perception and attention is much more precise in the centre than in the periphery. Experiment 3 used a masking release paradigm to investigate whether the acuity of auditory spatial attention was similarly increased in the midline. Although location discrimination of sounds segregated by inter-aural time differences was more precise at the midline than at the periphery, spatial attention was not. Therefore for this task at least there was no effect of eccentricity on auditory spatial attention. The results of these three studies are discussed in view of selective attention as a flexible process that operates in different ways according to the specifics of the task.

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Wrigley, Stuart Nicholas. "A theory and computational model of auditory selective attention." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.269326.

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Lees, Andrea Mary. "Selective attention to illness-related stimuli in health anxiety." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.369868.

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Wöstmann, Malte. "Neural dynamics of selective attention to speech in noise." Doctoral thesis, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 2015. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-186372.

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This thesis investigates how the neural system instantiates selective attention to speech in challenging acoustic conditions, such as spectral degradation and the presence of background noise. Four studies using behavioural measures, magneto- and electroencephalography (M/EEG) recordings were conducted in younger (20–30 years) and older participants (60–80 years). The overall results can be summarized as follows. An EEG experiment demonstrated that slow negative potentials reflect participants’ enhanced allocation of attention when they are faced with more degraded acoustics. This basic mechanism of attention allocation was preserved at an older age. A follow-up experiment in younger listeners indicated that attention allocation can be further enhanced in a context of increased task-relevance through monetary incentives. A subsequent study focused on brain oscillatory dynamics in a demanding speech comprehension task. The power of neural alpha oscillations (~10 Hz) reflected a decrease in demands on attention with increasing acoustic detail and critically also with increasing predictiveness of the upcoming speech content. Older listeners’ behavioural responses and alpha power dynamics were stronger affected by acoustic detail compared with younger listeners, indicating that selective attention at an older age is particularly dependent on the sensory input signal. An additional analysis of listeners’ neural phase-locking to the temporal envelopes of attended speech and unattended background speech revealed that younger and older listeners show a similar segregation of attended and unattended speech on a neural level. A dichotic listening experiment in the MEG aimed at investigating how neural alpha oscillations support selective attention to speech. Lateralized alpha power modulations in parietal and auditory cortex regions predicted listeners’ focus of attention (i.e., left vs right). This suggests that alpha oscillations implement an attentional filter mechanism to enhance the signal and to suppress noise. A final behavioural study asked whether acoustic and semantic aspects of task-irrelevant speech determine how much it interferes with attention to task-relevant speech. Results demonstrated that younger and older adults were more distracted when acoustic detail of irrelevant speech was enhanced, whereas predictiveness of irrelevant speech had no effect. All findings of this thesis are integrated in an initial framework for the role of attention for speech comprehension under demanding acoustic conditions.

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Remington, A. M. "Selective attention and perceptual load in autism spectrum disorder." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2010. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/19503/.

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This thesis examines selective attention in young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Existing literature regarding this issue is mixed; some research suggesting an overly-focused attentional style (Rincover & Ducharme, 1987) while others highlight an abnormally broad attentional lens (Burack, 1994). The research presented here has, for the first time, examined selective attention in individuals with ASD using a theoretically-led approach based on Lavie’s Load Theory of attention and cognitive control (Lavie et al., 2004). Load theory states that the perceptual load (amount of potentially task relevant information) of a task affects selective attention. This theory may explain the equivocal findings in the current data on selective attention and ASD. Using behavioural measures, the pattern of selective attention under various levels of load was explored in individuals with ASD and matched controls. The results provide evidence of increased perceptual capacity in ASD. This means that, at any one time, individuals with ASD may be able to process more information from the visual environment. This increase in capacity was evident on tasks of both unconscious and conscious perception. In light of the social deficits observed in the condition, the work in this thesis also explored selective attention in the presence of social distractor stimuli. Results indicated that faces are less salient for individuals with ASD and, unlike for typical adults, are not processed in an automatic and mandatory fashion. These results bring together findings on selective attention with work on social processing in an attempt to find basic abnormalities which might be fundamental in explaining the disorder.

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Yao, Xin. "The Role of Selective Attention in Early Inductive Generalization." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1373311941.

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Choi, Poi-ki, and 蔡博麒. "The role of divided attention and selective attention in time perception deficit of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/196502.

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Time deficit in people with ADHD has been consistently found, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. The present study aimed to investigate whether divided attention and selective attention are the causes for the deficit; and whether duration judgment performance was related to everyday temporal behaviour. 20 children with ADHD and 23 control children (mean age = 9 years 5 months) matched on age and IQ with no significant difference in working memory were tested. Experiment 1 used retrospective and prospective paradigms with arithmetic tasks. We compared time reproduction and arithmetic performances of the two groups across paradigms and found the expected interaction on the arithmetic performance but not the main effects of group or paradigm, and the interaction on time reproduction. Experiment 2 consisted of different event structures with simple motor tasks. We compared time reproduction of the two groups across structures and found the expected main effect of group and interaction effect but not main effect of structures. Furthermore, our results only provided limited support for the relationship between duration judgment and everyday temporal behaviour. The present findings suggest that aspects of attention remains promising as potential causes for time deficit in ADHD.
published_or_final_version
Educational Psychology
Master
Master of Social Sciences

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Johnson, Jennifer Adrienne. "The behavioral and neural correlates of bimodal selective and divided attention to incongruent audiovisual events /." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=111851.

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Humans live in a world rich in multisensory information. Often information reaching one sense is completely unrelated to information reaching another sense; that is, they are spatially and temporally incongruent. The goal of the research presented in this thesis was to elucidate the behavioral and neural bases of attention to incongruent audiovisual information. Five issues were addressed: (1) developing an appropriate behavioral paradigm to test bimodal attention, (2) understanding the role of crossmodal suppression in unimodal attention, (3) exploring the interaction of auditory and visual sensory cortex during bimodal selective attention, (4) exploring the role of fronto-parietal networks in bimodal selective attention, and (5) exploring the neural correlates of bimodal divided attention. Two different behavioral paradigms demonstrated that attended information was remembered better than unattended information. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that crossmodal suppression of sensory cortex subserving a non-presented modality occurred consistently during unimodal attention tasks, and increased with attentional demand. During bimodal selective attention, activity was often enhanced in sensory cortex subserving an attended modality and suppressed in sensory cortex subserving an unattended modality, both compared to a bimodal passive baseline. This interaction depended in part on attentional demand and the nature of the stimulus information. No prefrontal regions were consistently activated by bimodal selective attention; however, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was recruited during one of the bimodal divided attention paradigms. Furthermore, temporary inactivation of the DLPFC using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) led to decreased bimodal divided attention performance using the same paradigm. However, using a different bimodal divided attention paradigm, DLPFC was not recruited and instead ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) showed task-induced deactivation. This divergence is explained by the unique requirements of the two bimodal divided attention paradigms. Overall, these findings provide improved understanding of how humans process and attend to multisensory information, and raise several questions for further investigation.

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Castellanos, Irina. "Infants’ Selective Attention to Faces and Prosody of Speech: The Roles of Intersensory Redundancy and Exploratory Time." FIU Digital Commons, 2011. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/526.

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One of the overarching questions in the field of infant perceptual and cognitive development concerns how selective attention is organized during early development to facilitate learning. The following study examined how infants’ selective attention to properties of social events (i.e., prosody of speech and facial identity) changes in real time as a function of intersensory redundancy (redundant audiovisual, nonredundant unimodal visual) and exploratory time. Intersensory redundancy refers to the spatially coordinated and temporally synchronous occurrence of information across multiple senses. Real time macro- and micro-structural change in infants’ scanning patterns of dynamic faces was also examined. According to the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis, information presented redundantly and in temporal synchrony across two or more senses recruits infants’ selective attention and facilitates perceptual learning of highly salient amodal properties (properties that can be perceived across several sensory modalities such as the prosody of speech) at the expense of less salient modality specific properties. Conversely, information presented to only one sense facilitates infants’ learning of modality specific properties (properties that are specific to a particular sensory modality such as facial features) at the expense of amodal properties (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000, 2002). Infants’ selective attention and discrimination of prosody of speech and facial configuration was assessed in a modified visual paired comparison paradigm. In redundant audiovisual stimulation, it was predicted infants would show discrimination of prosody of speech in the early phases of exploration and facial configuration in the later phases of exploration. Conversely, in nonredundant unimodal visual stimulation, it was predicted infants would show discrimination of facial identity in the early phases of exploration and prosody of speech in the later phases of exploration. Results provided support for the first prediction and indicated that following redundant audiovisual exposure, infants showed discrimination of prosody of speech earlier in processing time than discrimination of facial identity. Data from the nonredundant unimodal visual condition provided partial support for the second prediction and indicated that infants showed discrimination of facial identity, but not prosody of speech. The dissertation study contributes to the understanding of the nature of infants’ selective attention and processing of social events across exploratory time.

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Pond, Miranda S. "The influence of development and methylphenidate on selective attention in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0034/MQ27588.pdf.

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O'Donnell, Helen Louise. "Visual texture integration processes and the role of selective attention." Thesis, Bangor University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.327345.

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Stoesz, Brenda Marie. "Selective attention to static and dynamic faces and facial cues." Journal of Vision, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1993/23996.

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Much of what is known about how we process faces comes from research using static stimuli. Thus, the primary goal of the present series of studies was to compare the processing of more naturalistic, dynamic face stimuli to the processing of static face stimuli. A second goal of the present series of studies was to provide insight into the development of attentional mechanisms that underlie perception of faces. Results from the eye-tracking study (Chapter 2) indicated that viewers attended to faces more than to other parts of the static or dynamic social scenes. Importantly, motion cues were associated with a reduction in the number, but an increase in the average duration of fixations on faces. Children showed the largest effects related to the introduction of motion cues, suggesting that they find dynamic faces difficult to process. Then using selective attention tasks (Chapters 3-5), interactions between the processing of facial expression and identity while participants viewed static and dynamic faces were examined. When processing static faces, viewers experienced significant interference from task-irrelevant cues (expression or identity) while processing the relevant cues (identity or expression). Age-related differences in interference effects were not evident (Chapter 3); however, biological sex and perceptual biases did contribute to the levels of interference seen with static faces (Chapters 4-5). During dynamic trials, however, viewers (regardless of age, sex, or perceptual bias) experienced negligible interference from task-irrelevant facial cues. Taken together, these findings stress the importance of using dynamic displays when characterizing typical face processing mechanisms, using the same methods across development, and of considering individual differences when examining various face processing abilities.

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Kingstone, Alan Forbes. "Selective attention : expecting where, when and what will happen next." Thesis, University of Manchester, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.257309.

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Muller, Hermann Josef. "The effect of selective spatial attention on peripheral discrimination thresholds." Thesis, Durham University, 1986. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7060/.

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Experiments were conducted to investigate the role of attention in peripheral detection and discrimination. Advance spatial cues informed subjects about likely target positions; the task required to detect/discriminate plus localise a target briefly presented at cued or uncued locations, with accuracy as the dependent variable ("cost-benefit" analysis).Spatial cueing produced reliable advantages for cued over uncued locations, in single and in multiple element displays. However, costs plus benefits were less marked for single displays. Thus, advance knowledge of the likely target location enhances performance also when there are no competing stimuli present in the visual field. But costs plus benefits are smaller because single target onsets at uncued locations summon attention in the same "automatic" fashion as peripheral cues. Peripheral cues trigger a rapid facilitatory component (automatic), fading out within 300 msec after cue onset. Facilitation is then maintained by a less effective mechanism (controlled). Central cues initiate only this second component. Sustained, controlled, orienting in response to central cues is interruptable by automatic orienting in response to uninformative peripheral flashes. Interruption also occurs when irrelevant flashes compete with peripheral cues. However, interference is less marked for the early automatic than for the following controlled orienting component. Indication of a second position (four-location display) to be most likely resulted in a marked sensitivity gain for this position, relative to uncued locations in a single cue condition. That is, attention could be simultaneously shared between two cued positions. For a luminance detection task (single target), cued locations showed no advantage in sensitivity; but for letter detection tasks (target plus distractors), there was a marked priming effect. That is, letter detection is capacity limited, whereas luminance detection is not. In all tasks, decision criteria are largely preset according to a-priori target probabilities assigned to particular locations, i.e. more liberal for cued and more conservative for uncued locations.

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Stewart, Hannah J. "Auditory selective attention in typical development and Auditory Processing Disorder." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2017. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/39178/.

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This thesis examines auditory selective attention as a possible cause of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). APD is a diagnosis based on the clinical needs of the 5% of children who present with listening difficulties but demonstrate normal hearing. This thesis will focus on developmental APD, which affects children with no known infection, trauma or primary cause inducing their listening difficulties. It will seek to address the current lack of understanding of the root causes of APD, which leads to significant variation in clinical referral routes, resulting in inconsistent methods of diagnosis and treatment. APD has historically been approached via a bottom-up route of assessing auditory processing skills, such as temporal-spatial abilities. The inconsistent results of bottom-up studies has led to debate regarding the diagnosis and treatment of APD, resulting in extensive batteries of tests being conducted on children. However, recent evidence suggests that studies on the causality of APD should be refocused on top-down processes such as auditory attention and memory – hence the focus of this thesis on auditory selective attention. The thesis begins by assessing a new test of auditory selective attention, the Test of Attention in Listening (TAiL), to ensure that it measures auditory rather than supramodal attention. Having established the modality-specificity of TAiL, the thesis examines the development of auditory selective attention to both spatial and non-spatial auditory stimulus features, across tasks of varying levels of perceptual demand. Finally, the thesis assesses the selective attention ability of children with listening difficulties. Specifically, listeners’ selective attention is assessed in both the auditory and visual domains, using both spatially- and non-spatially-based tasks. If auditory selective attention deficits are found in those with listening difficulties, this will provide a basis for the diagnosis and treatment of APD to be constructed and managed from a psychological viewpoint rather than an audiological one.

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Laurent, Xavier. "The impact of selective attention and action on episodic memory." Thesis, Bangor University, 2013. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-impact-of-selective-attention-and-action-on-episodic-memory(242f38e7-5c02-434b-a237-a846d53356da).html.

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In 1972, Endel Tulving coined the term "episodic memory", with reference to the process used to link the many different types of infonuation constituting an event into a spatio-temporal context, which can be retrieved later. In this thesis I investigate what type of information is encoded in episodic memory while performing selective attention and action tasks. Over seven experiments, I look at the impact of various experimental conditions on the recall accuracy (free, recognition and cue) of episodic memory that includes object identity, spatial and temporal recall, since only very few studies have considered these three components together. My approach is novel as most other studies have used traditional attention experimental tasks to understand how infonuation is selected, Specifically, I use episodic-like memory tests to dissociate the impact of active and passive encoding states on memory, which in turn allows me to observe the phenomenon of distractor suppression encountered during the retrieval of previously encoded information. In general, results across several experimental conditions strongly indicate that memory superiority under passive 1110de could be related to the incidental encoding of irrelevant information. This effect is mostly found when memory is immediately tested and disappears some time later following a retroactive interference task. Distractors competing for an action receive a stronger suppression than those, which are not. The results are in agreement with selective attention studies, which suggest that distractors prevent from becoming the target of the action. The results highlight the role of action on epikodic encoding, demonstrating that using an active state of encoding does not increase the amount of information to encode (enhancement of targets), but reduces the numbers of non- relevant information stored in this trace (suppression of distractors).

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Marriott, Michael. "Selective attention, negative priming, and hyperactivity : investigating the "AD" in ADHD /." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0013/NQ42864.pdf.

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Park, Gewn hi. "Vagal influence on selective attention under high and low perceptual load." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view.cgi?acc%5Fnum=osu1245438999.

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Hindi, Attar Catherine. "Affective bias in visual selective attention evidence from EEG and fMRI." Leipzig Leipziger Univ.-Verl, 2009. http://d-nb.info/1001282736/04.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Selective attention'

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