scholarly journals Assessing Attention Orienting in Mice: A Novel Touchscreen Adaptation of the Posner-Style Cueing Task

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Li ◽  
C. May ◽  
AJ. Hannan ◽  
KA. Johnson ◽  
EL. Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Human Performance ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
Neuropsychological Disorders ◽  
Attention Orienting ◽  
Cueing Task ◽  
Peripheral Cues ◽  
Valid Animal Model ◽  
Symbolic Cues ◽  
Genetic Mouse Models

AbstractAtypical attention orienting has been found to be impaired in many neuropsychological disorders, but the underlying neural mechanism remains unclear. Attention can be oriented exogenously (i.e., driven by salient stimuli) or endogenously (i.e., driven by one’s goals or intentions). Genetic mouse models are useful tools to investigate the neurobiology of cognition, but a well-established assessment of attention orienting in mice is missing. This study aimed to adapt the Posner task, a widely used attention orienting task in humans, for use in mice using touchscreen technology and to test the effects of two attention-modulating drugs, methylphenidate (MPH) and atomoxetine (ATX), on the performance of mice during this task. In accordance with human performance, mice responded more quickly and more accurately to validly cued targets compared to invalidly cued targets, thus supporting mice as a valid animal model to study the neural mechanisms of attention orienting. This is the first evidence that mice can be trained to voluntarily maintain their nose-poke on a touchscreen and to complete attention orienting tasks using exogenous peripheral cues and endogenous symbolic cues. The results also showed no significant effects of MPH and ATX on attention orienting, although MPH improved overall response times in mice during the exogenous orienting task. In summary, the current study provides a critical translational task for assessing attention orienting in mice and to investigate the effects of attention-modulating drugs on attention orienting.

Fatigue in Boat Operation: The Development of a Visual Alertness Stressor Test (VAST)

1975 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-497
Author(s):  
C. Christian Stiehl
Keyword(s):  
Factorial Design ◽  
Secondary Task ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Environmental Stressors ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Design Construction

The use of secondary task to measure degradations in the performance of a primary task is well documented in the human performance literature. This paper describes research in the design, construction, and development of the Visual Alertness Stressor Test (VAST) as a means of measuring the effects of stressors on a boat operator's performance. The VAST task required the subject to respond to particular patterns of lights displayed in a semi-circle around the cockpit of the boat while he maintained a specified course with the boat. The basic measures taken were the response times and the number of missed signals. A 2 − 2 factorial design was used where the factors were the type and amount of fatigue that the subject experienced. The results confirmed that the overall effect of “typical” exposure to the environmental stressors of boating was a significant degradation in performance. The main effect of type of fatigue was insignificant, as was the interaction of type of fatigue and amount of fatigue. Implications for boating safety as well as future research efforts and applications of VAST are discussed.

scholarly journals Effects of Short-Term Physical Activity Interventions on Simple and Choice Response Times

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Norton ◽  
Lynda Norton ◽  
Nicole Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Exercise Program ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
Choice Response ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Active Adults

Objective. Response time (RT) is important for health and human performance and provides insight into cognitive processes. It deteriorates with age, is associated with chronic physical activity (PA), and improves with PA interventions. We investigated associations between the amount and type of PA undertaken and the rate of change in RT for low-active adults across the age range 18–63 yr.Methods. Insufficiently active adults were assigned to either a walking (n=263) or higher-intensity (n=380) exercise program conducted over 40 days. Active controls were also recruited (n=135). Simple response time (SRT) and choice response time (CRT) were measured before and after the intervention and at 3-, 6-, and 12-month follow-up.Results. SRT and CRT slowed across the age range; however, habitually active participants at baseline had significantly faster CRT (p<0.05). The interventions increased weekly PA with corresponding increases in physical fitness. These changes were mirrored in faster CRT across the study for both intervention groups (p<0.05). No changes were found for SRT.Conclusions. Both PA interventions resulted in improvements in CRT among adults starting from a low activity base. These improvements were relatively rapid and occurred in both interventions despite large differences in exercise volume, type, and intensity. There were no effects on SRT in either intervention.

Reversal of the Cry-Wolf Effect: An Investigation of Two Methods to Increase Alarm Response Rates

1995 ◽  
Vol 80 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1231-1242 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bliss ◽  
M. Dunn ◽  
B. S. Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Human Performance ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Response Rates ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
Response Frequency ◽  
Alarm Response ◽  
Alarm Systems ◽  
And Control ◽  
Speed And Accuracy

In complex task environments, false alarms have been associated with less frequent and slower alarm responses. This research attempted to improve alarm responses using a hearsay method, in which participants were told that false alarms would be less frequent than they actually were, and an urgency method, in which the urgency of alarms was increased. Response frequency, speed, and accuracy of three groups of 20 students (Urgency, Hearsay, and Control) were compared across groups and sessions using analyses of variance and t tests. Both methods were successful; hearsay participants increased their response rates across sessions, and urgency participants decreased their response times. The results are discussed with regard to design of alarm systems and theory of human performance.

scholarly journals Assessing attention orienting in mice: a novel touchscreen adaptation of the Posner-style cueing task

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 432-441
Author(s):  
S. Li ◽  
C. May ◽  
A. J. Hannan ◽  
K. A. Johnson ◽  
E. L. Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Attention Orienting ◽  
Cueing Task

scholarly journals The effect of directional social cues on saccadic eye movements in Parkinson’s disease

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koray Koçoğlu ◽  
Gülden Akdal ◽  
Berril Dönmez Çolakoğlu ◽  
Raif Çakmur ◽  
Jagdish C. Sharma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Parkinson's Disease ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Saccadic Eye Movements ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Cueing Task ◽  
Anticipatory Errors ◽  
Socially Relevant ◽  
The Right

AbstractThere is growing interest in how social processes and behaviour might be affected in Parkinson’s disease. A task which has been widely used to assess how people orient attention in response to social cues is the spatial cueing task. Socially relevant directional cues, such as a picture of someone gazing or pointing to the left or the right have been shown to cause orienting of visual attention in the cued direction. The basal ganglia may play a role in responding to such directional cues, but no studies to date have examined whether similar social cueing effects are seen in people with Parkinson’s disease. In this study, patients and healthy controls completed a prosaccade (Experiment 1) and an antisaccade task (Experiment 2) in which the target was preceded by arrow, eye gaze or pointing finger cues. Patients showed increased errors and response times for antisaccades but not prosaccades. Healthy participants made most anticipatory errors on pointing finger cue trials, but Parkinson's patients were equally affected by arrow, eye gaze and pointing cues. It is concluded that Parkinson's patients have a reduced ability to suppress responding to directional cues, but this effect is not specific to social cues.

The Effects of Carbon Monoxide on Dual-Task Performance

1979 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon R. Putz
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Monoxide ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Blood Levels ◽  
Double Blind Study ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Monitoring Task ◽  
The Third ◽  
Tracking Condition ◽  
Intensity Changes

Thirty adult, nonsmokers were exposed for four hours to one of three concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO) 5 ppm, 35 ppm, and 70 ppm to produce blood levels of either 1%, 3%, or 5% carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) after the third hour of exposure. Performance in the double blind study was assessed by a tracking task paired with a peripheral monitoring task, each possessing two levels of difficulty. The results indicated that visual-manual tracking was significantly impaired by about 30%, during the fourth hour of exposure to 70 ppm of CO, when 5% COHb was reached, as compared to performance at 5 ppm and 35 ppm. The impairment occurred only during the high frequency tracking condition. Response times of subjects to the peripheral light-intensity-changes also increased during the third and fourth hours. The findings suggested that an assessment of the effects of low-level CO on human performance should include an analysis of the demand characteristics of the tasks as well as data on concentration and exposure duration.

Visual Information Processing: Perception, Decision, Response Triplet

1998 ◽  
Vol 1631 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasan Demirarslan ◽  
Yupo Chan ◽  
Michael Vidulich
Keyword(s):  
Decision Maker ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Behavioral Models ◽  
Yellow Light ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
The Difference

In performing critical tasks, the reaction time of the decision maker may mean the difference between safety and hazard. While different people have different risk-taking behavior, the process by which they react to a stimulus is fundamentally similar. The process involves perception, decision, and response. Thus, the decision maker sees an outside stimulus, processes the information and arrives at a yes or no decision, and then takes the necessary physical steps to implement the decision. For example, a driver sees the onset of a yellow light, makes up his or her mind about stopping or running for the light, and accordingly steps on the brake or the gas pedal. We refer to perception, decision, and response as the fundamental “triplet” underlying any human performance in a simple or complex environment. Unless this triplet is understood, other behavioral models cannot be constructed with confidence. By observing the percentage of drivers that run for a light and stop for a light, the authors have shown that one can separately measure the perception, decision, and response times in terms of probability distributions. The proposed approach is illustrated for drivers at an intersection through a series of experiments. Preliminary results point to its applicability toward other human tasks, such as landing an aircraft.

scholarly journals Ocular exposure to blue-enriched light has an asymmetric influence on neural activity and spatial attention

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Newman ◽  
Steven W. Lockley ◽  
Gerard M. Loughnane ◽  
Ana Carina P. Martins ◽  
Rafael Abe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Volunteers ◽  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Asymmetric Effect ◽  
Attention Orienting ◽  
Ocular Exposure ◽  
First Time

AbstractBrain networks subserving alertness in humans interact with those for spatial attention orienting. We employed blue-enriched light to directly manipulate alertness in healthy volunteers. We show for the first time that prior exposure to higher, relative to lower, intensities of blue-enriched light speeds response times to left, but not right, hemifield visual stimuli, via an asymmetric effect on right-hemisphere parieto-occipital α-power. Our data give rise to the tantalising possibility of light-based interventions for right hemisphere disorders of spatial attention.

scholarly journals Disrupted Spatial Organization of Cued Exogenous Attention Persists Into Adulthood in Developmental Dyslexia

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Pina Rodrigues ◽  
Miguel Castelo-Branco ◽  
Marieke van Asselen
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Developmental Dyslexia ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Exogenous Attention ◽  
Similar Response ◽  
Reading Impairment ◽  
Attention Orienting ◽  
The Neural Network ◽  
Attentional Engagement

Purpose: Abnormal exogenous attention orienting and diffused spatial distribution of attention have been associated with reading impairment in children with developmental dyslexia. However, studies in adults have failed to replicate such relationships. The goal of the present study was to address this issue by assessing exogenous visual attention and its peripheral spatial distribution in adults with developmental dyslexia.Methods: We measured response times, accuracy and eye movements of 18 dyslexics and 19 typical readers in a cued discrimination paradigm, in which stimuli were presented at different peripheral eccentricities.Results: Results showed that adults with developmental dyslexia were slower that controls in using their mechanisms of exogenous attention orienting. Moreover, we found that while controls became slower with the increase of eccentricity, dyslexics showed an abnormal inflection at 10° as well as similar response times at the most distant eccentricities. Finally, dyslexics show attentional facilitation deficits above 12° of eccentricity, suggesting an attentional engagement deficit at far periphery.Conclusion: Taken together, our findings indicate that, in dyslexia, the temporal deficits in orientation of attention and its abnormal peripheral spatial distribution are not restricted to childhood and persist into adulthood. Our results are, therefore, consistent with the hypothesis that the neural network underlying selective spatial attention is disrupted in dyslexia.

scholarly journals The Effect of Simultaneously Presented Words and Auditory Tones on Visuomotor Performance

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Rita Mendonça ◽  
Margarida V. Garrido ◽  
Gün R. Semin
Keyword(s):  
Response Times ◽  
Target Identification ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Response Latencies ◽  
Impaired Performance ◽  
Visual Words ◽  
Cueing Task ◽  
Reading Direction ◽  
The Right

Abstract The experiment reported here used a variation of the spatial cueing task to examine the effects of unimodal and bimodal attention-orienting primes on target identification latencies and eye gaze movements. The primes were a nonspatial auditory tone and words known to drive attention consistent with the dominant writing and reading direction, as well as introducing a semantic, temporal bias (past–future) on the horizontal dimension. As expected, past-related (visual) word primes gave rise to shorter response latencies on the left hemifield and future-related words on the right. This congruency effect was differentiated by an asymmetric performance on the right space following future words and driven by the left-to-right trajectory of scanning habits that facilitated search times and eye gaze movements to lateralized targets. Auditory tone prime alone acted as an alarm signal, boosting visual search and reducing response latencies. Bimodal priming, i.e., temporal visual words paired with the auditory tone, impaired performance by delaying visual attention and response times relative to the unimodal visual word condition. We conclude that bimodal primes were no more effective in capturing participants’ spatial attention than the unimodal auditory and visual primes. Their contribution to the literature on multisensory integration is discussed.

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