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•Contrary to previous evidence, EEG alpha is not limited to the visual modality.•Alpha power indexes the level of attention to both visual and auditory streams.•Engaging auditory, but not visual, preparatory attention generated a switch effect.•Waning alpha suppression preceded error commission, irrespective of modality.•Alpha may index general attention control processes, used across sensory modalities. EEG alpha power varies under many circumstances requiring visual attention. However, mounting evidence indicates that alpha may not only serve visual processing, but also the processing of stimuli presented in other sensory modalities, including hearing. We previously showed that alpha dynamics during an auditory task vary as a function of competition from the visual modality (Clements et al., 2022) suggesting that alpha may be engaged in multimodal processing. Here we assessed the impact of allocating attention to the visual or auditory modality on alpha dynamics at parietal and occipital electrodes, during the preparatory period of a cued-conflict task. In this task, bimodal precues indicated the modality (vision, hearing) relevant to a subsequent reaction stimulus, allowing us to assess alpha during modality-specific preparation and while switching between modalities. Alpha suppression following the precue occurred in all conditions, indicating that it may reflect general preparatory mechanisms. However, we observed a switch effect when preparing to attend to the auditory modality, in which greater alpha suppression was elicited when switching to the auditory modality compared to repeating. No switch effect was evident when preparing to attend to visual information (although robust suppression did occur in both conditions). In addition, waning alpha suppression preceded error trials, irrespective of sensory modality. These findings indicate that alpha can be used to monitor the level of preparatory attention to process both visual and auditory information, and support the emerging view that alpha band activity may index a general attention control mechanism used across modalities.

We establish a new dissociation between the roles of working memory (WM) cognitive control and visual maintenance in selective attention as measured by the efficiency of distractor rejection. The extent to which focused selective attention can prevent distraction has been shown to critically depend on the level and type of load involved in the task. High perceptual load that consumes perceptual capacity leads to reduced distractor processing, whereas high WM load that reduces WM ability to exert priority-based executive cognitive control over the task results in increased distractor processing (e.g., Lavie, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (2), 75–82, 2005 ). WM also serves to maintain task-relevant visual representations, and such visual maintenance is known to recruit the same sensory cortices as those involved in perception (e.g., Pasternak & Greenlee, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6 (2), 97–107, 2005 ). These findings led us to hypothesize that loading WM with visual maintenance would reduce visual capacity involved in perception, thus resulting in reduced distractor processing—similar to perceptual load and opposite to WM cognitive control load. Distractor processing was assessed in a response competition task, presented during the memory interval (or during encoding; Experiment 1a) of a WM task. Loading visual maintenance or encoding by increased set size for a memory sample of shapes, colors, and locations led to reduced distractor response competition effects. In contrast, loading WM cognitive control with verbal rehearsal of a random letter set led to increased distractor effects. These findings confirm load theory predictions and provide a novel functional distinction between the roles of WM maintenance and cognitive control in selective attention.

Auditory selective attention is thought to consist of two mechanisms: an enhancement mechanism that boosts the target signal, and a suppression mechanism that attenuates concurrent distracting signals. The current study explored the conditions necessary to observe enhancement of predictable auditory objects. Participants heard scenes consisting of three voices and a distracting noise. They were asked to find the gender singleton (target) and report whether it was saying even or odd numbers. One of the voices appeared as the high-probability target (70%) across trials. We expected responses to be faster when the high-probability target was in the scene, and results from Experiment 1 supported that prediction. However, this target enhancement effect was substantially weakened when a distracting noise was also in the scene, suggesting that the distractor captured attention and interfered with enhancement. Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that distractor predictability modulates target enhancement by varying the probability of the distractor. Although this hypothesis was not supported, the results of Experiment 1 were replicated. Findings support the existence of an easily disruptable enhancement mechanism that boosts the representation of highly probable target objects.

 The purpose of this research was to test whether the neuromotricity activities of the BAPNE method based on the dual task could improve selective attention and concentration in 5th grade primary school pupils. A quantitative approach was used, with a quasi-experimental design between subjects and with repeated measures before and after the intervention (pretest-intervention-posttest). The research was carried out in two schools in Alicante (Spain). The sample consisted of N=114 students between 10 and 11 years of age with similar socio-economic and cultural characteristics. A non-probabilistic convenience sampling was used, dividing the sample into an experimental group (n=66) and a control group (n=48). The Spanish adaptation of the d2 attention test was used as the assessment instrument. Statistical data were processed using SPSS, JASP and Excel. Statistical decision-making was based on a significance level of alpha=0.05. Samples were tested for normality, parametric and non-parametric tests were applied, and effect sizes were calculated. The main results of the intra-subjects analysis were statistically significant in favour of the experimental group in the variables TRPOST (p=<.001), DifTR (p=<. 001), TAPOST (p=.025), DifTA (p=.021), CPOST (p=<.001), DifC (p=.021), VARPOST (p=<.001), DifVAR (p=.002), TR+POST (p=<.001), and DifTR+ (p=<.001). Three variables that showed differences in the pretest were invalidated. The within-subjects analysis was also favourable for the experimental group. In conclusion, an affirmative answer to the purpose of this research is presented. Keywords: Neuromotricity, BAPNE, Body percussion, cognitive functions, selective attention, executive functions, dual task

Neuronal studies have shown that selectively attending to a common object in one sensory modality results in facilitated processing of that object’s representations in the ignored sensory modality. Thus, the audiovisual (AV) integration of common objects can be observed under modality-specific selective attention. However, little is known about whether this AV integration can also occur under increased attentional load conditions. Additionally, whether semantic associations between multisensory features of common objects modulate the influence of increased attentional loads on this cross-modal integration remains unknown. In the present study, participants completed an AV integration task (ignored auditory stimuli) under various attentional load conditions: no load, low load, and high load. The semantic associations between AV stimuli were composed of animal pictures presented concurrently with semantically congruent, semantically incongruent, or semantically unrelated auditory stimuli. Our results demonstrated that attentional loads did not disrupt the integration of semantically congruent AV stimuli but suppressed the potential alertness effects induced by incongruent or unrelated auditory stimuli under the condition of modality-specific selective attention. These findings highlight the critical role of semantic association between AV stimuli in modulating the effect of attentional loads on the AV integration of modality-specific selective attention.

Whether cognitive load-and other aspects of task difficulty-increases or decreases distractibility is subject of much debate in contemporary psychology. One camp argues that cognitive load usurps executive resources, which otherwise could be used for attentional control, and therefore cognitive load increases distraction. The other camp argues that cognitive load demands high levels of concentration (focal-task engagement), which suppresses peripheral processing and therefore decreases distraction. In this article, we employed an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) protocol to explore whether higher cognitive load in a visually-presented task suppresses task-irrelevant auditory processing in cortical and subcortical areas. The results show that selectively attending to an auditory stimulus facilitates its neural processing in the auditory cortex, and switching the locus-of-attention to the visual modality decreases the neural response in the auditory cortex. When the cognitive load of the task presented in the visual modality increases, the neural response to the auditory stimulus is further suppressed, along with increased activity in networks related to effortful attention. Taken together, the results suggest that higher cognitive load decreases peripheral processing of task-irrelevant information-which decreases distractibility-as a side effect of the increased activity in a focused-attention network.

Objects represent a fundamental selection unit of visual attention. However, at odds with the integrated competition account, our recent study demonstrated that attentional facilitation of constituent features does not spread automatically within an object, but instead depends on the specific task relevance of each feature. Here, we employed a novel experimental design, allowing simultaneous electrophysiological measurements of the allocation of attention to two distinct features (rotation and color) within one object (a square) during both trial-wise and block-wise cued shifts of attention. This was possible through the presentation of a square that evokes two distinct steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) for its rotation and its color changes, respectively. Given the continuous oscillatory nature of SSVEPs, we were able to investigate the time course of neural activity in the early visual cortex of the human brain when subjects attended to one of the two features, compared to when the whole object was attended. This approach enabled us to uncover feature-based mechanisms of attention within one object, as well as their interaction with object-based mechanisms. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results indicate a biphasic process composed of an early transient integration of the constituent object features, followed by sustained mechanisms of feature selection with amplification of the to-be-attended feature, followed temporally by suppression of the to-be-ignored feature.

Table-to-text generation aims to generate descriptions for structured data (i.e., tables) and has been applied in many fields like question-answering systems and search engines. Current approaches mostly use neural language models to learn alignment between output and input based on the attention mechanisms, which are still flawed by the gradual weakening of attention when processing long texts and the inability to utilize the records’ structural information. To solve these problems, we propose a novel generative model SAN-T2T, which consists of a field-content selective encoder and a descriptive decoder, connected with a selective attention network. In the encoding phase, the table’s structure is integrated into its field representation, and a content selector with self-aligned gates is applied to take advantage of the fact that different records can determine each other’s importance. In the decoding phase, the content selector’s semantic information enhances the alignment between description and records, and a featured copy mechanism is applied to solve the rare word problem. Experiments on WikiBio and WeatherGov datasets show that SAN-T2T outperforms the baselines by a large margin, and the content selector indeed improves the model’s performance.

The early work of Charles W. Eriksen and colleagues provided us with both the flanker task and the concepts of response competition and continuous flow. The model of the flanker task that Eriksen and colleagues developed also includes the idea that processing occurs in two phases and the specific claim that pro-active response inhibition is employed to prevent errors under certain conditions. We first replicated and extended the behavioral evidence that motivated this specific claim and then tested it using a variety of physiological measures. We verified the prediction of Eriksen’s Two-Phase Model of Spatial Selective Attention using the lateralized readiness potential and contingent negative variation. We also clarified a detail of the model using electromyographic activity and response force. We note that this contribution of Charles W. Eriksen has not received the attention that it deserves and that several recent models might need to be revised in light of Eriksen’s work.

The goal of the present study was to investigate preparatory mechanisms of auditory selective attention. In two experiments, participants performed a classification task on one of two dichotically presented spoken number words, one spoken by a female, one spoken by a male. A cue indicated which gender participants had to attend to in the upcoming trial, so that attention switches and repetitions occurred randomly. The cue-target interval (CTI) was either 400 ms or 1,200 ms. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between target and distractor word varied; hence, the distractor could be presented before or after the target. In two experiments, we found robust performance costs of attention switches. Like in previous studies using versions of this paradigm, these switch costs were not significantly reduced by prolonged CTI, even though we found substantial general cue-based preparation effects. The most important finding refers to the influence of SOA, showing that the general preparation effect was greater in the condition with the distractor presented first than in the condition with the target presented first. Thus, increased time to prepare for the attention focus of the upcoming trials seems to benefit distractor suppression more than target enhancement. This occurred in switch trials and repetition trials alike, suggesting that it is a general feature of auditory attention.