Attention
Melanie Boysen & Gwendolyn Walton
Watanabe, Forssman, Green &
Bohlin (2012)
 Aim: Development of cognitive control and its effect on the
attention process
 Participants: 40 10-month olds and 40 12-month olds
 Babies sat on parent’s lap during the experiment
Method
 Babies separated into distractor or no distractor condition
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Looked at a screen with Mickey Mouse
Image disappeared, delay, reappeared
Four A trials, long B trial (9 secs), short B trial (5.5 secs)
A and B trials
 A: Image disappeared, 3.5 sec, sound, reappeared
 B: image disappeared, delay,
 Distractor
 Bouncing ball presented for 2 s, after Mickey disappeared for .5
secs
Demonstration
•
•
Test given to each 10 and 12
month old babies.
Used in both A and B trials
Results
 Eye tracker recorded eye movements during anticipation
 Results:
 12 month olds spent less time looking at A during B trials
 No difference in age for increased attentional demand
 10-month babies showed more (correct) perservative looking
than 12-month babies
 Development of inhibitory process needed for executive attention
 Ability to shift attention and use working memory are needed to
master goal-directed behavior
Wu, Libertus, Meyerhoff, &
Woldorff (2011)
 Feature Integration Theory by Treisman & Gelade
Study’s Aims
 Investigate perceptual categorization of objects on visual
pathway under distributed vs focal spatial attention
 Explore temporal dynamics of neural activity reflecting object
categorization processing during the transition from
distributed attention state to focused attention (focal attention
is shifted to specific object)
Participants
 Only 16
 With Normal or corrected-to-normal vision
 Other participants were excluded
 Eye blinks
 High frequency noise with some malfunctioning equipment
Method
 Participants instructed to focus on “X”
 Shift attention to the image that changed to a color scheme
different than the rest and press button if the image was
slightly blurred (whether a house or a face)
 Recorded brain activity with EEG against two markers: N2pc
and N170
N2pc and N170 (FH_Ndiff)
 ERP markers
 N2pc is a second negative potential
 Peaks 200-300 msec after stimulus array with goal-relevant
popout item
 Amplitude usually largest over posterior parieto-occipital scalp
contralateral to goal-relevant popout item
 N170 is a negative ERP component largest for face stimuli
compared to other object stimuli
 Used to compare the responses to houses and faces
 Peaks 170msec after stimulus onset of color change
Behavioral Results
 Participants accurately detected presence of blur
 Delay of attentional allocation reflected in relative delays of
mean RT
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No delay = 468msec
50ms delay = 507msec
100ms delay = 565msec
Highly significant
 Difficulty level of identifying blurred face was very similar to
identifying blurred house
Electrophysiological Results
 As predicted, participants shifted spatial attention according
to three delays of color-popout attentional shifting cues
 Shown by corresponding delays of N2pc effects
 Object-specific categorization processes were taking place
without focal spatial attention at least enough that facespecific neurophysiological activity occurred
Discussion
 Some degree of object specific representation can be
performed in parallel when spatial attention is distributed
 Once spatial attention is shifted to a specific location,
enhancement and extension of neural activity occurs
 Initial parallel processing of input seems to speed up
attentional enhancement of neural processing once focused
attention is directed to that item, because of presence of
stimulus information in visual pathways before attentional
shift
References
 Watanabe, H., Forssman, L., Green, D., Bohlin, G., & von
Hofsten, C. (2012). Attention Demands Influence 10- and 12Month-Old Infants' Perseverative Behavior. Developmental
Psychology, 48(1), 46-55. doi:10.1037/a0025412
 Wu, C. T., Libertus, M. E., Meyerhoff, K. L., & Woldorff, M. G.
(2011). The Temporal Dynamics of Object Processing in
Visual Cortex during the Transition from Distributed to
Focused Spatial Attention. Journal Of Cognitive
Neuroscience, 23(12), 4094-4105.