Change Detection as a Framework for Understanding Individual Differences in Attention Control and Allocation of Attention Across the Visual Field
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Draheim, Christopher
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Abstract
Attention control is a domain-general ability that guides the control of thoughts and intentional behavior in a goal-driven manner and is a central concept to many models of human cognition. Our lab recently showed that attention control can be measured more reliably and validly with alternative tasks, one of which being selective visual arrays (rapid change detection with distracting stimuli). The present study was designed with two goals in mind: first, to extend this finding by further exploring the nature of attentional individual differences in visual arrays tasks, and second to use the visual arrays paradigm to investigate individual differences in how individuals allocate attention across the visual field. Five variants of visual arrays were administered to 210 participants from the Atlanta community along with a battery of other cognitive tasks. Results showed that the presence of distractors in visual arrays was the most important factor in scores producing attention-related individual differences. Further, variants that had more distractors and/or required spatial selection of targets, as opposed to feature selection, were more difficult and more strongly predictive of overall cognitive ability. On the other hand, (1) performance on supra-capacity vs. near-capacity array sizes were not differentially predictive of cognitive ability, (2) within the variants that required spatial selection of targets there were no substantive differences in performance as a function how the targets and distractors were arranged, and (3) there were no detectable meaningful differences in performance across different cue-to-stimulus intervals. In the discussion section I explore how and potentially why some of these results are consistent with my hypotheses whereas some were unexpected and thus contrast with findings from the literature. The overall conclusion is that the visual arrays paradigm is an attention control measure robust to a variety of manipulations.
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2021-10-22
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Dissertation