What is attention bias variability? Examining the potential roles of attention control and response time variability in its relationship with anxiety

Recent years have seen increasing interest in the construct of attention bias variability (AB-Var). However, little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of this construct, with some research suggesting that AB-Var may represent an artefact of other processes. The present study examined the underlying role of attention control and response time variability in explaining the relationship between anxiety and two commonly computed measures of AB-Var (‘moving average’ and ‘trial-level bias score’ measures). Participants (final n=195) completed measures of anxiety symptomatology, antisaccade performance (attention control), a stand-alone measure of response-time variability, and a probe task measure of attentional bias. Both measures of AB-Var were significantly associated with anxiety, response time variability, and attention control. Attention control was the single significant statistical mediator of the relationship between anxiety and the trial-level bias score measure of AB-Var. Neither response time variability nor attention control significantly mediated the relationship between anxiety and the moving average measure of AB-Var. No evidence was found for the mediating role of response time variability. The present findings suggest that the relationships observed between anxiety and the trial-level bias score measure of AB-Var in particular may be attributable to the over-arching role of attention control.

Possible Age-Related Progression of Attentional Impairment in ADHD and Its Attenuation by Past Diagnosis and Treatment

Objective: The aim of the study is to evaluate attentional impairment in different age groups with ADHD. Method: In all, 58 children, 73 adolescents, and 104 adults with ADHD were evaluated using the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA). Subjects with comorbidities or psychotropic treatment were not included. Results: Considering Response Time Variability (RTV), adults were 10.6 and 4.0 times more likely to be severely impaired (standard score < 40) than children and adolescents, respectively. Adults were twice as likely as adolescents to be very impaired (standard score< 70) in Omissions. Considering d′ (decrement of attentional performance over time), all severely impaired participants were adults. Age predicted impairment in Attention Performance Index (API), RTV, and d′, but not Omissions or Commissions. Past treatment with stimulants predicted less impairment in d′, past diagnosis predicted less impairment in RTV, and each predicted less impairment in Omissions and API. Conclusion: Adults had more attentional impairment than children and adolescents. Past diagnosis and treatment were associated with less ADHD-related attentional impairment.

RESPONSE TIME VARIABILITY SIGNATURES OF NOVEL WORD LEARNING

Response time variability and its changes over time have been interpreted as indicative of levels of knowledge automatization. Predominantly, only declines in variability have been examined over the course of practice and growing second language proficiency. We discuss possible scenarios that may involve increasing, rather than declining variability, such as the establishment of new memory representations. We present repeated-measures lexical decision data on novel words encountered incidentally in a lexical decision task, which show increased variability as familiarity increases. Similar patterns were observed in our reanalyses of data from other novel word learning experiments with task demands different from ours: auditory presentation and a posttest after seven days (Brown & Gaskell, 2014), as well as picture-matching and production tests (Bartolotti & Marian, 2014). Jointly, these results suggest that when no prior representation of a word exists, increased variability may index learning during its initial stages.