https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613(12)00243-4.pdf

Alpha-band oscillations, attention, and controlled access to stored information

As you drive into the centre of town, cars and trucks approach from several directions, and pedestrians swarm into the intersection. The wind blows a newspaper into the gutter and a pigeon does something unexpected on your windshield. This would be a demanding and stressful situation, but you would probably make it to the other side of town without mishap. Why is this situation taxing, and how do you cope?

What attributes guide the deployment of visual attention and how do they do it

https://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios21/PDF/Fall2007/Brain-Machine_Interface.pdf

Brain–machine interfaces: past, present and future

View from the top: hierarchies and reverse hierarchies in the visual system.

Attention is a core property of all perceptual and cognitive operations. Given limited capacity to process competing options, attentional mechanisms select, modulate, and sustain focus on information most relevant for behavior. A significant problem, however, is that attention is so ubiquitous that it is unwieldy to study. We propose a taxonomy based on the types of information that attention operates over—the targets of attention. At the broadest level, the taxonomy distinguishes between external attention and internal attention. External attention refers to the selection and modulation of sensory information. External attention selects locations in space, points in time, or modality-specific input. Such perceptual attention can also select features defined across any of these dimensions, or object representations that integrate over space, time, and modality. Internal attention refers to the selection, modulation, and maintenance of internally generated information, such as task rules, responses, long-term memory, or working memory. Working memory, in particular, lies closest to the intersection between external and internal attention. The taxonomy provides an organizing framework that recasts classic debates, raises new issues, and frames understanding of neural mechanisms.

/pdf/a-taxonomy-of-external-and-internal-attention-3k4coy8dz1.pdf

A taxonomy of external and internal attention.

Identification of the second of two targets is impaired if it is presented less than about 500 ms after the first. Theoretical accounts of this second-target deficit, known as attentional blink (AB), have relied on some form of limited attentional resource that is allocated to the leading target at the expense of the trailing target. Three experiments in the present study reveal a failure of resource-limitation accounts to explain why the AB is absent when the targets consist of a stream of three items belonging to the same category (e.g., letters or digits). The AB is reinstated, however, if an item from a different category is inserted in the target string. This result, and all major results in the AB literature, is explained by the hypothesis that the AB arises from a temporary loss of control over the prevailing attentional set. This lapse in control renders the observer vulnerable to an exogenously-triggered switch in attentional set.

The attentional blink: resource depletion or temporary loss of control?

Retrospective self-report questionnaires of negative mood states experienced in the past (e.g., the most recent two weeks) tend to be exaggerated in a negative direction relative to the average ratings given to the moods contemporaneously. The present study used three measures that decomposed mood states into their constituent elements to examine whether certain components selectively contributed to this negative bias or all components contributed to this bias equally. Fifty-three participants responded to the questionnaires via the Internet every evening for two weeks. On the final day, participants recalled and retrospectively evaluated their mood state over the previous two weeks as a whole. The results revealed that memory bias occurred selectively for negative mood states. Anxiety, depression, and helplessness were exaggerated in the global compared with the daily ratings. None of the positive mood components showed any bias in the retrospective global ratings. A regression analysis indicated that the difference in daily and global ratings for negative mood was partly explained by peak and final scores. Higher peak scores led to greater overestimation whereas final scores had smaller effects; the higher the final score was, the less participants overestimated their negative mood in the global ratings.

Selective bias in retrospective self-reports of negative mood states

Identification of the second of two brief targets is impaired at intertarget lags of less than about 500 msec. We compared two accounts of thisattentional blink (AB) by manipulating the number of digit distractors—and hence the lag—inserted among three letter targets in a rapid serial visual presentation stream of digit distractors. On the resource-depletion hypothesis, longer lags provide more time for processing the leading target, thus releasing resources for the trailing target. On the temporary-loss-of-control (TLC) hypothesis, intervening distractors disrupt the current attentional set, producing a trailing-target deficit. Identification accuracy for trailing targets was unimpaired not only at lag 1 (conventional lag 1 sparing) but also at later lags, if preceded by another target. The results supported the TLC hypothesis but not the resource-depletion hypothesis. We conclude that the AB is caused by a disruption in attentional set when a distractor is presented while the central executive is busy processing a leading target.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03194014.pdf

The attentional blink is governed by a temporary loss of control

Identification of the second of two targets is impaired if it is presented less than about 500 ms after the first. Three models of this second-target deficit, known as attentional blink (AB), were compared: resource-depletion, bottleneck, and temporary loss of control (TLC). Five experiments, in which three sequential targets were inserted in a stream of distractors, showed that identification accuracy for the leading target depended on an attentional switch whose magnitude varied with distractor-target similarity. In contrast, accuracy for the trailing target depended on similarity between the target and the trailing mask. These results strongly suggest that the AB is not a unitary phenomenon. Resource-depletion was ruled out as a viable account. The effect of attentional switching was handled naturally by the TLC model, while bottleneck models offered the best account of the effect of backward masking.

The attentional blink is not a unitary phenomenon.

How does past experience influence visual search strategy (i.e., attentional set)? Recent reports have shown that, when given the option to use 1 of 2 attentional sets, observers persist with the set previously required in a training phase. Here, 2 related questions are addressed. First, does the training effect result only from perseveration with the currently active set or from long-term learning? Experiment 1 supported the latter alternative: When training and test were separated by up to 1 week, to prevent perseveration across the 2 sessions, the training effect was still obtained. Second, is the learning feature-specific (tuned to a precise set of colors) or more abstract? Experiments 2 and 3 supported the latter: When stimulus colors were switched between training and test to remove the possibility of feature-specific learning, the training effect again was obtained. These experiments indicate that attentional set is largely guided by long-term abstract learning.

Jun-ichiro Kawahara

Papers

The attentional blink: resource depletion or temporary loss of control?

Selective bias in retrospective self-reports of negative mood states

The attentional blink is governed by a temporary loss of control

The attentional blink is not a unitary phenomenon.

Long-term abstract learning of attentional set.