Testing the Efficiency and Independence of Attentional Networks

Abstract

In recent years, three attentional networks have been defined in anatomical and functional terms. These functions involve alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Reaction time measures can be used to quantify the processing efficiency within each of these three networks. The Attention Network Test (ANT) is designed to evaluate alerting, orienting, and executive attention within a single 30-min testing session that can be easily performed by children, patients, and monkeys. A study with 40 normal adult subjects indicates that the ANT produces reliable single subject estimates of alerting, orienting, and executive function, and further suggests that the efficiencies of these three networks are uncorrelated. There are, however, some interactions in which alerting and orienting can modulate the degree of interference from flankers. This procedure may prove to be convenient and useful in evaluating attentional abnormalities associated with cases of brain injury, stroke, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit disorder. The ANT may also serve as an activation task for neuroimaging studies and as a phenotype for the study of the influence of genes on attentional networks.

P50 sensory gating and attentional performance

“…Additionally, inclusion of N100 data may help illuminate how these sensory ERP waveforms contribute to the early stages of attention. Grand Averaged Evoked Potentials on C3 for Four Groups under Two Conditions (Black line is the response to S1; red line is the response to S2) Attention Network Test (Fan et al, 2002) Table 4 Significant correlations between P50 gating ratio and performances on ANT and Stroop (STP) among all participants (r/p/n; α = 0.05) Correlations between P50 gating ratio and performances on ANT and Stroop (STP) among high schizotypy group and low schizotypy group (r/p/n; α = 0.05) …”

“…A positive association between sensory gating ability and attentional performance was predicted. Performance on the attention network test (ANT; Fan et al, 2002), a test specifically designed to assess the three components of Posner and Petersen's (1990) attention model, as well as a Stroop task (Lezak, 1995), served as indices of attention. Because of the inverse relationship between P50 sensory gating values and sensory gating ability, positive correlations indicate that the attention measure has a negative association with sensory gating, and negative correlations indicate the opposite.…”

Rumination impairs the control of stimulus-induced retrieval of irrelevant information, but not attention, control, or response selection in general

“…However, the recent emphasis on attentional processes in the context of rumination (Whitmer & Gotlib, 2013) suggests that more direct assessments of attention to external information might also be of interest. The most comprehensive assessment in this respect is provided by the Attentional Network Task (ANT) developed by Fan et al (2002). This task is a hybrid that combines Posner's (1980) cued reaction time (RT) task and Eriksen and Eriksen's (1974) flanker task.…”

Synaptogenesis and heritable aspects of executive attention

“…Imaging data have supported the presence of three anatomical networks related to different aspect of attention. These networks carry out the functions of alerting, orienting, and executive control [Posner and Petersen, 1990;Fan et al, 2002]. Genetic studies of attention in normal adult subjects can be informative since attentional performance in normal subjects appears to be influenced by genetic factors [Cornblatt et al, 1988;Bartfai et al, 1991;Myles-Worsley and Coon, 1997;Cannon et al, 2000;Pardo et al, 2000] and because unaffected first degree relatives of schizophrenic patients often show impaired executive function [Faraone et al, 1999].…”

“…Genetic studies of attention in normal adult subjects can be informative since attentional performance in normal subjects appears to be influenced by genetic factors [Cornblatt et al, 1988;Bartfai et al, 1991;Myles-Worsley and Coon, 1997;Cannon et al, 2000;Pardo et al, 2000] and because unaffected first degree relatives of schizophrenic patients often show impaired executive function [Faraone et al, 1999]. Inter-subject variability on the ANT has also been shown to be at least somewhat heritable, which makes the assay useful for candidate gene association studies on executive attention [Fan et al, 2001b].…”