Title:
Are Prosaccades Always Automatic?: Validating the Antisaccade Task as a Measure of Controlled Attention
Are Prosaccades Always Automatic?: Validating the Antisaccade Task as a Measure of Controlled Attention
| dc.contributor.advisor | Engle, Randall W. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Mashburn, Cody Anthony | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Thomas, Rickey P. | |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Roberts, James S. | |
| dc.contributor.department | Psychology | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-05-18T17:48:25Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-05-18T17:48:25Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2023-05 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-02-10 | |
| dc.date.submitted | May 2023 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2023-05-18T17:48:26Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | Recently, mainstream cognitive psychology has become aware of difficulties in measuring individual differences in the ability to direct attention in a goal-direct manner. Such difficulties may suggest that attention control is not a measurable general cognitive ability but may instead be highly task-specific. Accuracy rates from the antisaccade task are a notable exception to the measurement difficulties often seen in other tasks, but the measure’s construct validity has been questioned. Some researchers have argued that antisaccade accuracy is a function of individual differences in general processing speed (e.g., Rey-Mermet et al., 2019). The present study evaluated this position in a combined differential-experimental study. I assessed whether the adaptive procedures adopted by previous studies in non-attention-demanding tasks increased attention control demands, leading to inaccurate estimates of criterion-related validity. I compared two versions of the prosaccade task (a non-attention-demanding variant of the antisaccade task), a non-adaptive version and an adaptive version which adjusted the presentation duration of a target stimulus on a trial-by-trial basis. I also attempted to eliminate the relationship between antisaccade accuracy and working memory capacity/fluid intelligence by accounting for speed measures from both prosaccade tasks. Mean pupil size was larger in the pre-target period of the adaptive prosaccade task than in the non-adaptive prosaccade task, suggesting the adaptive procedure made the task more effortful. Crucially, however, no matter how I attempted to control for processing speed, I could not eliminate the relationship between antisaccade accuracy and cognitive abilities, implying that antisaccade accuracy is not merely a proxy measure for general speed. | |
| dc.description.degree | M.S. | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1853/71963 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | Georgia Institute of Technology | |
| dc.subject | Antisaccade | |
| dc.subject | processing speed | |
| dc.title | Are Prosaccades Always Automatic?: Validating the Antisaccade Task as a Measure of Controlled Attention | |
| dc.type | Text | |
| dc.type.genre | Thesis | |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication | |
| local.contributor.advisor | Engle, Randall W. | |
| local.contributor.corporatename | College of Sciences | |
| local.contributor.corporatename | School of Psychology | |
| relation.isAdvisorOfPublication | 28b0e2e7-aba1-4731-8f59-12763f0d60cb | |
| relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication | 85042be6-2d68-4e07-b384-e1f908fae48a | |
| relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication | 768a3cd1-8d73-4d47-b418-0fc859ce897d | |
| thesis.degree.level | Masters |