The malleability of attentional capture

Zhang, Han; Abagis, Tessa; Jonides, John

doi:10.1080/13506285.2021.1915903

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…This variability may indicate that words capture attention more automatically for some individuals than for other individuals. The underlying causes of this variability are undoubtedly multifaceted, but we suspect that reading skill, working memory capacity, and other attention-control capabilities (e.g., the ability to minimize mind wandering; Forster & Lavie, 2014; Zhang et al, 2021) contribute to the variability reported herein.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Revisiting the automaticity of reading: Electrophysiological recordings show that stroop words capture spatial attention.

Lowery¹,

McDonald²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Interference in the Stroop task is reduced when the word and color patch are placed at different locations and is diluted further by the presence of another distractor that is responseneutral. Such dilution indicates that reading is not independent of an observer's attentional focus and thus is not a fully automatic process. So where does reading fall on the automaticity continuum? To address this question, we sought to determine whether an irrelevant word that appears abruptly in the field of view invariably draws attention to its location or whether observers can successfully ignore it while identifying a centrally presented target. In two experiments, electrical brain activity was recorded while healthy young adults participated in nonintegrated Stroop tasks. Irrelevant color words appearing randomly to the left or right of a target shape elicited an event-related potential (ERP) component that reflects the spatial focusing of attention (posterior contralateral N2; N2pc). This N2pc was observed when participants discriminated the color of the target and when they discriminated the shape of the target. These findings demonstrate that color words reflexively capture spatial attention even when their meaning is unrelated to the task at hand. We conclude that although reading is not fully automatic, skilled readers cannot ignore words that appear abruptly in their field of view.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Revisiting the automaticity of reading: Electrophysiological recordings show that stroop words capture spatial attention.

Lowery¹,

McDonald²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Previous studies tackled the malleability aspects of some mindfulness-related concepts. The malleability of attention (Zhang et al, 2021) is relevant for the attention segment of the mindfulness concept, while the malleability of rumination (Bessette et al, 2020) can be connected to the present-focus aspect of mindfulness. In contrast to these constructs, our focus on mindset regarding mindfulness was broader and included four already well-explored components (attention, awareness, present orientation, and acceptance) constituting mindfulness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From another perspective, recent studies examined mindsets about concepts relevant to mindfulness. The malleability of attention (Zhang et al, 2021) is relevant to the attention part of the mindfulness concept, while the malleability of rumination (Bessette et al, 2020) can be connected to the present focus aspects. The malleability of attention or rumination can grasp specific features of mindfulness but cannot reflect on its multifaceted nature.…”

Section: Mindfulness Mindset Among Similar Mindset Constructs In the ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Mindfulset”—Harnessing or unleashing learning potential through mindfulness mindset.

Orosz,

Török,

Takacs

et al. 2024

Journal of Educational Psychology

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This research introduces the "Mindfulness Mindset Scale," a concise and reliable tool designed to measure beliefs about the malleability of mindfulness skills. Study 1 (N = 285) revealed a single-factor structure through exploratory factor analysis, further validated in Study 2 (N = 286) using confirmatory factor analysis. Studies 3a (N = 266) and 3b (N = 320) revealed associations between the Mindfulness Mindset Scale and other measures of mindset, trait mindfulness, and coping, showing reasonable convergent and divergent validity. Study 4 (N = 470) showed the predictive validity of the mindfulness mindset, being correlated with behavioral persistence, effort, resilience, challenge-seeking, and academic grades. Study 5 (N = 320) supported the academic correlates of malleable beliefs of mindfulness beyond the mental health factors from Study 3 in two countries. In Study 6 (N French = 613, N Hungarian = 524), we demonstrated that a well-established learning mindset intervention can lead to changes in mindfulness mindset in two national contexts. Finally, a brief mindfulness mindset intervention designed for Study 7 (N = 208) also led to changes in malleability beliefs about mindfulness skills. These behavioral results suggest that beliefs about mindfulness being malleable are a novel construct distinct from trait mindfulness. Such beliefs are related to adaptive psychological mechanisms relevant in educational contexts, considering students' coping, mastery behavior, and academic performance. Importantly, these beliefs can be modified by brief interventions. Educational Impact and Implications StatementThis research underscores how beliefs about the malleability of mindfulness can influence educational outcomes. A brief, valid, and reliable measure can assess these beliefs. Besides grade point average, this survey can also predict mastery behaviors like resilience, effort, perseverance, challenge-seeking, and academic grades. The study also found that these beliefs can be changed through psychologically wise interventions focused on learning and mindfulness. Rod D. Roscoe served as action editor. Gábor Orosz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5883-6861 Gábor Orosz was supported by the Northern French Strategic Dialogue (Phases 1 and 2), STaRS, and Chaire de Professeur Junior Grants. Special thanks to the Schmidt Foundation postdoc grant that made it possible to study the links between growth mindset and mindfulness at Stanford University. Ethics approval was provided by the Institutional Ethical Board of Eötvös Loránd University (2015/50, 2016/39). All participants provided written informed consent prior to participation in the study. The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. The data and the analytics that support the findings of this study are available online: https://osf.io/ e6nrg/?view_only=c1d074f14d55485c924ab3896b811247.

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“…We have previously argued that the effect of attentional capture is quite malleable in that it varies from trial to trial and from person to person (Zhang et al, 2021). However, research has mostly focused on uncovering the "general principles" of attentional guidance.…”

Section: What Is the Role Of Past Experience In The Effect Of Abrupt ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although this concern has been widely recognized and rigorously explored in fields like attentional control, it has only recently gained serious attention among researchers interested in attentional capture. Recent investigations into the split-half and test-retest reliability of certain attentional capture tasks have revealed that the typically used RT difference scores exhibit suboptimal reliability (Anderson & Kim, 2019;Ivanov et al, 2023;Zhang et al, 2021). To appropriately study individual differences in attentional capture, we need to pay closer attention to principles from the psychometric tradition.…”

Section: What Is the Role Of Past Experience In The Effect Of Abrupt ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Abrupt Onsets in Visual Search: Foundations and Emerging Issues

Zhang,

York,

Jonides

2024

Preprint

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The study of attentional allocation due to external stimulation has a long history in psychology. Since the early work by Yantis and Jonides, there has been a growing and consistent interest in the effect of abrupt visual onsets on such attentional allocation. Yantis and Jonides concluded that abrupt onsets constitute a possibly unique class of stimuli that captures attention in a stimulus-driven fashion, unless attention is proactively directed elsewhere. Since then, the field of visual search has evolved significantly. This article revisits the core conclusions by Yantis and Jonides in light of subsequent evidence and highlights emerging issues for future investigation. We argue that perhaps due to their strong potential to capture attention, abrupt onsets are often set aside as a special case in pursuit of conditions that show attenuation of capture by other types of distractors, such as color singletons. However, given their prevalence in real life, abrupt onsets represent the exact type of stimuli that we need to study more to understand the mechanisms of attentional guidance, including whether abrupt onsets can be suppressed. We also propose using methods that more precisely measure the temporal and spatial dynamics of visual attention beyond making binary judgments about whether attention is captured or not. We provide an example, the forced-response method, that might be suitable for this endeavor.

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The malleability of attentional capture

Cited by 5 publications

References 12 publications

Revisiting the automaticity of reading: Electrophysiological recordings show that stroop words capture spatial attention.

Revisiting the automaticity of reading: Electrophysiological recordings show that stroop words capture spatial attention.

“Mindfulset”—Harnessing or unleashing learning potential through mindfulness mindset.

Abrupt Onsets in Visual Search: Foundations and Emerging Issues

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