Hyperfocusing in schizophrenia: Evidence from interactions between working memory and eye movements.

Luck, Steven J.; McClenon, Clara; Beck, Valerie; Hollingworth, Andrew; Leonard, Carly J.; Hahn, Britta; Robinson, Benjamin M.; Gold, James M.

doi:10.1037/abn0000003

Cited by 42 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Similarly, physically salient “color singleton” distractors cause no more interference with visual search performance in PSZ than in HCS (Leonard, Robinson, Hahn, Gold, & Luck, 2014). In contrast, the present ERP results and two previous behavioral studies (Luck et al, 2014; Mayer et al, 2012) indicate that PSZ exhibit exaggerated distraction by items that partially match active target representations.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Hyperfocusing of attention on goal-related information in schizophrenia: Evidence from electrophysiology.

Sawaki¹,

Kreither²,

Leonard³

et al. 2017

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

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Schizophrenia clearly involves impairments of attention, but the precise nature of these impairments has been difficult to determine. One possibility is that the deficit in attention is a secondary consequence of a deficit in goal maintenance. However, recent research suggests that people with schizophrenia (PSZ) actually focus attention more strongly on objects containing goal-relevant features. To test these competing hypotheses, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from PSZ (N = 20) and healthy control subjects (HCS, N = 20) while they looked for a particular target color at fixation and tried to ignore lateral distractors that sometimes matched the target color (target-color distractors). Goal maintenance was made trivially easy by the continual presentation of a goal reminder. We found that HCS were able to successfully suppress target-color distractors (leading to a PD ERP component), whereas PSZ focused attention on these items (leading to an N2pc ERP component). This suggests that, when maintaining a task set, PSZ engage in aberrant focusing of attention, or hyperfocusing, onto goal-relevant features.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Hyperfocusing of attention on goal-related information in schizophrenia: Evidence from electrophysiology.

Sawaki¹,

Kreither²,

Leonard³

et al. 2017

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

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“…This hyperfocusing hypothesis accounts for aberrant patterns of reaction time, accuracy, eye movements, and event-related potentials (ERPs), including experiments in which PSZ exhibit enhanced attentional benefits and enhanced working memory-related neural activity compared to HCS (e.g., Gray et al, 2014; Hahn et al, 2012; Leonard, Kaiser, et al, 2013; Luck et al, 2014). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered spatial profile of distraction in people with schizophrenia.

Leonard¹,

Robinson²,

Hahn³

et al. 2017

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

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Attention is critical for effective processing of incoming information and has long been identified as a potential area of dysfunction in people with schizophrenia (PSZ). In the realm of visual processing, both spatial attention and feature-based attention are involved in biasing selection toward task-relevant stimuli and avoiding distraction. Evidence from multiple paradigms has suggested that PSZ may hyperfocus and have a narrower “spotlight” of spatial attention. In contrast, feature-based attention seems largely preserved, with some suggestion of increased processing of stimuli sharing the target-defining feature. In the current study, we examined the spatial profile of feature-based distraction using a task in which participants searched for a particular color target and attempted to ignore distractors that varied in distance from the target location and either matched or mismatched the target color. PSZ differed from healthy controls in terms of interference from peripheral distractors that shared the target-color presented 200 ms before a central target. Specifically, PSZ showed an amplified gradient of spatial attention, with increased distraction to near distractors and less interference to far distractors. Moreover, consistent with hyperfocusing, individual differences in this spatial profile were correlated with positive symptoms, such that those with greater positive symptoms showed less distraction by target-colored distractors near the task-relevant location.

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“…However, other recent studies have also suggested a tendency of PSZ to hyperfocus processing resources. [12][13][14] A way of shedding light onto the nature of the disproportionately large spatial cueing effect in PSZ is by studying brain activity differences relative to HCS that accompany this phenomenon. In a previous functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study of the SARAT in healthy participants, 15 we have shown that brain regions typically recruited by top-down attentional resource allocation, [16][17][18] often termed the dorsal attention network, [19][20][21] display step-wise greater activation with fewer cued target locations, ie, with a progressively narrow attentional focus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hyperdeactivation of the Default Mode Network in People With Schizophrenia When Focusing Attention in Space

Hahn

Harvey

Gold

et al. 2016

SCHBUL

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When studying selective attention in people with schizophrenia (PSZ), a counterintuitive but replicated finding has been that PSZ display larger performance benefits than healthy control subjects (HCS) by cues that predicts the location of a target stimulus relative to non-predictive cues. Possible explanations are that PSZ hyperfocus attention in response to predictive cues, or that an inability to maintain a broad attentional window impairs performance when the cue is nonpredictive. Over-recruitment of regions involved in top-down focusing of spatial attention in response to predictive cues would support the former possibility, and an inappropriate recruitment of these regions in response to non-predictive cues the latter. We probed regions of the dorsal attention network while PSZ (N = 20) and HCS (N = 20) performed a visuospatial attention task. A central cue either predicted at which of 4 peripheral locations a target signal would appear, or it gave no information about the target location. As observed previously, PSZ displayed a larger reaction time difference between predictive and non-predictive cue trials than HCS. Activity in frontoparietal and occipital regions was greater for predictive than non-predictive cues. This effect was almost identical between PSZ and HCS. There was no sign of overrecruitment when the cue was predictive, or of inappropriate recruitment when the cue was non-predictive. However, PSZ differed from HCS in their cue-dependent deactivation of the default mode network. Unexpectedly, PSZ displayed significantly greater deactivation than HCS in predictive cue trials, which may reflect a tendency to expend more processing resources when focusing attention in space.

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Hyperfocusing in schizophrenia: Evidence from interactions between working memory and eye movements.

Cited by 42 publications

References 58 publications

Hyperfocusing of attention on goal-related information in schizophrenia: Evidence from electrophysiology.

Hyperfocusing of attention on goal-related information in schizophrenia: Evidence from electrophysiology.

Altered spatial profile of distraction in people with schizophrenia.

Hyperdeactivation of the Default Mode Network in People With Schizophrenia When Focusing Attention in Space

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