When predictive of extrinsic reward as targets, stimuli rapidly acquire the ability to automatically capture attention. Attentional biases for former targets of visual search can also develop without reward feedback, but typically require much longer training. These learned biases towards former targets are often conceptualized within a single framework, and might differ merely in degree. That is, both are the result of the reinforcement of selection history, with extrinsic reward for correct report of the target providing greater reinforcement than correct report alone. A direct test of this shared mechanisms hypothesis is lacking, however. Recent evidence demonstrates that depressed individuals present with blunted value-driven attentional biases. Based on the shared mechanisms hypothesis, we predicted that depressed individuals would similarly show blunted attentional biases for former targets following unrewarded training. To the contrary, however, we found that the effects of selection history on attention were robust and equivalent between individuals experiencing depressive symptoms and control participants, while attentional capture by previously reward-associated stimuli was blunted in depressed individuals. Our results suggest a qualitative distinction between the effects of reward history and the effects of selection history on attention, with depressive symptoms impairing the former while leaving the latter unaffected.
This study examined the neural basis of processing high- and low-message sensation value (MSV) antidrug public service announcements (PSAs) in high (HSS) and low sensation seekers (LSS) using fMRI. HSS more strongly engaged the salience network when processing PSAs (versus LSS), suggesting that high-MSV PSAs attracted their attention. HSS and LSS participants who engaged higher level cognitive processing regions reported that the PSAs were more convincing and believable and recalled the PSAs better immediately after testing. In contrast, HSS and LSS participants who strongly engaged visual attention regions for viewing PSAs reported lower personal relevance. These findings provide neurobiological evidence that high-MSV content is salient to HSS, a primary target group for antidrug messages, and additional cognitive processing is associated with higher perceived message effectiveness.
Early postmenopausal women at high risk for OSAS report more CI than those at low risk for OSAS. Future studies should identify biomarkers of this CI and define the degree of reversibility of CI with OSAS treatment.
Eye-tracking technology: Tracking gaze Eye-tracking technology allows researchers to record and analyse a range of information about what people visually attend to and how they process visual information. For example, eye-tracking technology can be used to document the order in which people attend to different features of a visual image, whether they gaze at (i.e. fixate on) particular elements of an image (or completely avoid them), and, if so, the frequency and duration of these gazes. It can also be used to track more basic processing information, such as pupil dilation (see Chapter 2 in this volume) and gaze 'directionality' (i.e. whether people's eyes tend to gaze in particular directions first or most dominantly). There are a variety of ways that researchers can track people's eye movements and gaze direction. For example, there are free-standing systems that are typically placed in front of the person-and, thus, require that the person remain still in one location, typically while viewing visual stimuli on a screen-as well as systems that can be secured to a person's head, and are thus more mobile, able to move with the person and track eye movement and gaze more organically, during motion (see suggested readings for reviews).
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