Age changes in attention control: assessing the role of stimulus contingencies

Utilitarian Attention by Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder on a Filtering Task

The findings are evidence that persons with ASD benefit more than typically developing (TD) persons from spatial framing cues in focusing their attention on a visual target. Participants were administered a forced-choice task to assess visual filtering. A target stimulus was presented on a screen and flanker stimuli were presented simultaneously with or after the target, with varying stimuli onset asynchronies (SOAs). Regardless of SOA, TD children showed the expected distracting effects with slower reaction times (RTs) when flankers were at closer distances from the target. However, children with ASD displayed shorter RTs in the conditions in which the stimuli were presented simultaneously or with a short SOA. These findings are interpreted as reflecting utilitarian attention among children with ASD.

Neural Mechanisms of Selective Attention in Children with Amblyopia

Previous studies have indicated that amblyopia might affect children's attention. We recruited amblyopic children and normal children aged 9-11 years as study subjects and compared selective attention between the two groups of children. Chinese characters denoting colors were used in the Stroop task, and the event-related potential (ERP) was analyzed. The results show that the accuracy of both groups in the congruent condition was higher than the incongruent condition, and the reaction time (RT) of amblyopic children was longer. The latency of the occipital P1 in the incongruent condition was shorter than the neutral condition for both groups; the peak of the occipital P1 elicited by the incongruent stimuli in amblyopic children was higher. In both groups, the N1 peak was higher in the occipital region than frontal and central regions. The N1 latency of normal children was shorter in the congruent and neutral conditions and longer in the incongruent condition; the N1 peak of normal children was higher. The N270 latencies of normal children in the congruent and neutral conditions were shorter; the N270 peak was higher in parietal and occipital regions than frontal and central regions for both groups. The N450 latency of normal children was shorter; in both groups, the N450 average amplitude was significantly higher in the parietal region than central and frontal regions. The accuracy was the same for both groups, but the response of amblyopic children was significantly slower. The two groups showed differences in both stages of the Stroop task. Normal children showed advantages in processing speed on both stimulus and response conflict stages.Brain regions activated during the Stroop task were consistent between groups, in line with their age characteristics.

Threat-related selective attention predicts treatment success in childhood anxiety disorders

OBJECTIVE

The present study examined whether threat-related selective attention was predictive of treatment success in children with anxiety disorders and whether age moderated this association. Specific components of selective attention were examined in treatment responders and nonresponders.

METHOD

Participants consisted of 131 children with anxiety disorders (aged 8-16 years), who received standardized cognitive-behavioral therapy. At pretreatment, a pictorial dot-probe task was administered to assess selective attention. Both at pretreatment and posttreatment, diagnostic status of the children was evaluated with a semistructured clinical interview (the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for Children).

RESULTS

Selective attention for severely threatening pictures at pretreatment assessment was predictive of treatment success. Examination of the specific components of selective attention revealed that nonresponders showed difficulties to disengage their attention away from severe threat. Treatment responders showed a tendency not to engage their attention toward severe threat. Age was not associated with selective attention and treatment success.

CONCLUSIONS

Threat-related selective attention is a significant predictor of treatment success in children with anxiety disorders. Clinically anxious children with difficulties disengaging their attention away from severe threat profit less from cognitive-behavioral therapy. For these children, additional training focused on learning to disengage attention away from anxiety-arousing stimuli may be beneficial.

Explicit identification and implicit recognition of facial emotions: I. Age effects in males and females across 10 decades

A number of psychiatric and neurological disorders are characterized by impairments in facial emotion recognition. Recognition of individual emotions has implicated limbic, basal ganglionic, and frontal brain regions. Since these regions are also implicated in age-related decline and sex differences in emotion processing, an understanding of normative variation is important for assessing deficits in clinical groups. An internet-based test ("WebNeuro") was administered to 1,000 healthy participants (6 to 91 years, 53% female) to assess explicit identification of basic expressions of emotion (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, neutral). A subsequent implicit recognition condition was based on a priming protocol, in which explicit identification provided the "study" phase. Responses were most accurate for happiness and slowest for fear in the explicit condition, but least accurate for happiness and fastest for fear in the implicit condition. The effects of age, by contrast, showed a similar pattern for both explicit and implicit conditions, following a nonlinear distribution in which performance improved from childhood through adolescence and early adulthood and declined in later adulthood. Females were better than males at explicit identification of fear in particular. These findings are consistent with the priority of threat-related signals, but indicate opposing biases depending on whether emotion processing is conscious or nonconscious. The lifespan trends in emotion processing over 10 decades point to an interaction of brain-based (maturation, stability, and then atrophy of cortical and subcortical systems) and experiential contributing factors. These findings provide a robust normative platform for assessing clinical groups.

Choosing between two objects reduces 3-year-olds’ errors on a reverse-contingency test of executive function

In the present experiment, we used a reversed-contingency paradigm (the windows task: [Russell, J., Mauthner, N., Sharpe, S., & Tidswell, T. (1991). The windows task as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9, 331-349]) to explore the effect of alterations in the task array on 3-year-old children's strategic reasoning. Children were offered a choice between either a desirable object and an undesirable object, or between a desirable object and an empty location. There was significantly better performance on the two-object version of the task. This difference was evident even on subsequent trials when the second object was removed and the empty location reintroduced. This suggests that presenting children with a choice between two objects helps them to formulate a strategy, rather than to execute a previously determined response.

Variations of the flanker paradigm: assessing selective attention in young children

The development of selective attention and associated self-regulatory processes was assessed in young children, ages 4, 5, and 6, through the use of three alternative versions of the flanker paradigm utilizing colors, shapes, and fish. These variations were used to examine the influence of task differences on children's performance. The presence of cognitive self-regulatory strategies in young children was also assessed. Significant flanker interference effects, marked by significant task-linked response time differences, were found across all three versions of the paradigm. Although a significant portion of children demonstrated self-regulatory abilities, not every participant demonstrated the specific strategies of self-monitoring and response control. Furthermore, these differences were evident across all age groups. The implications of these results are discussed within the theoretical context of task development, taking into consideration the need to modify computerized attention paradigms for use with young children in order to reliably measure cognitive constructs across children and adults.

Threat-related attentional bias in anxious youth: a review

The research literature suggests that children and adolescents suffering from anxiety disorders experience cognitive distortions that magnify their perceived level of threat in the environment. Of these distortions, an attentional bias toward threat-related information has received the most theoretical and empirical consideration. A large volume of research suggests that anxiety-disordered youth selectively allocate their attention toward threat-related information. The present review critically examines this research and highlights several issues relevant to the study of threat-related attentional bias in youth, including the influences of temperament, trait anxiety, and state anxiety on threat-related attentional bias. It furthermore identifies the need for developmental and methodological considerations and recommends directions for research.