This study provided the first direct test of the cognitive underpinnings of the attention-allocation model and attempted to replicate and extend past behavioral findings for this model as an explanation for alcohol-related aggression. Men were randomly assigned to a beverage (Alcohol, No-Alcohol Control) and a distraction (Moderate Distraction, No Distraction) condition. All men were provoked by a male confederate and completed a dot probe task and a laboratory aggression task without distraction or while presented with a moderate distraction task. Results indicated that intoxicated men whose attention was distracted displayed significantly lower levels of aggression bias and enacted significantly less physical aggression than intoxicated men whose attention was not distracted. However, aggression bias did not account for the lower levels of alcohol-related aggression in the distraction, relative to the no-distraction, condition. Discussion focused on how these data inform intervention programming for alcohol-related aggression.

Research summary: Behavioral Theory highlights the crucial role of social comparisons in attention allocation in adaptive aspirations. Yet, both the specification of social reference points and the dynamics of attention allocation have received little scholarly examination. We address performance feedback from two social reference points relative to divisions in multidivisional firms: economic reference point and political reference point. Comparing divisional performance with the two reference points can give consistent or inconsistent feedback, which has important consequences for the dynamics of attention allocation in adaptive aspirations. We find consistent feedback leads to more attention to own experience, while inconsistent feedback results in more attention to the social reference point the focal division underperforms. Results reveal that political reference point plays an important role in determining managerial attention allocation.Managerial summary: This article is based on how goal-based performance of divisions relative to both their relevant external market rivals and sister divisions in multidivisional firms influences corporate resource allocation. As a result, various combinations of performance against the two groups of peers drive the reallocation of divisional management attention. We show that specific attention shifts occur on average as a function of the focal division's performance relative to the marketplace performance and that of sister divisions. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Yes / Background: Past research has found cancellation tasks to be reliable markers of cognitive decline in Huntington’s disease (HD). Objective: The aim of this study was to extend previous findings by adopting the use of a dual task paradigm that paired cancellation and auditory tasks. Methods: We compared performance in 14 early stage HD participants and 14 healthy controls. HD participants were further divided into groups with and without cognitive impairment. Results: Results suggested that HD participants were not slower or less accurate compared with controls; however, HD participants showed greater dual task interference in terms of speed. In addition, HD participants with cognitive impairment were slower and less accurate than HD participants with no cognitive impairment, and showed greater dual task interference in terms of speed and accuracy. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that dual task measures may be a better measure of cognitive processing in HD compared with more traditional measures. / Supported by the School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University.

This study provided the first direct test of the cognitive underpinnings of the attention-allocation model and attempted to replicate and extend past behavioral findings for this model as an explanation for alcohol-related aggression. Men were randomly assigned to a beverage (Alcohol, No-Alcohol Control) and a distraction (Moderate Distraction, No Distraction) condition. All men were provoked by a male confederate and completed a dot probe task and a laboratory aggression task without distraction or while presented with a moderate distraction task. Results indicated that intoxicated men whose attention was distracted displayed significantly lower levels of aggression bias and enacted significantly less physical aggression than intoxicated men whose attention was not distracted. However, aggression bias did not account for the lower levels of alcohol-related aggression in the distraction, relative to the no-distraction, condition. Discussion focused on how these data inform intervention programming for alcohol-related aggression.

The primary aim of the present investigation was to directly examine a theoretically-based, ecologically-valid intervention and proposed mechanism for reducing at risk men’s alcohol-related aggression toward women for the bar setting. This study was developed in response to a critical need to address barriers to interventions for alcohol-related. This literature called for research to empirically investigate (a) specific intervention techniques that reduce aggression, (b) in whom such interventions will have the greatest impact, and (c) the mechanisms that account for such effects. Results of this study evidenced that the attention-allocation model-inspired intervention, relative to control, was associated with less alcohol-related physical aggression toward a female confederate. This finding held for men who reported lower, but not higher, levels of masculine gender role stress. However, results of the study did not support the hypotheses that intoxicated men who received the intervention, relative to control, would display the lowest levels of negative cognition and that masculine gender role stress would moderate this effect. Thus, the present study successfully addressed two of the three barriers cited. Discussion focused on how these data inform intervention programming for alcohol-related aggression.

Thesis advisor: Rui Albuquerque / Thesis advisor: Thomas J. Chemmanur / In my first essay, I develop a model of investor behavior around prescheduled macroeconomic announcements to analyze the optimal allocation of investor attention between systematic and idiosyncratic risk factors when a macroeconomic announcement is anticipated. Skilled investors, when producing information under a limited attention capacity, optimally allocate more of their attention to analyzing the idiosyncratic risk factor when they anticipate more precise public information about the systematic risk factor from the macroeconomic announcement. Consequently, my model predicts that, the more informative (precise) the macroeconomic announcement is expected to be about the underlying risk factors, ceteris paribus, the more uncertainty pre-announcement, the more resolution of uncertainty post-announcement, and the higher the trading volume around the announcement on the market index. My empirical analysis of trading by investors around both FOMC and CPI announcements support my model's predictions. In particular, my empirical findings are consistent with model predictions about the effect of the anticipated macroeconomic announcement precision on investor attention allocation, the effect of investor attention on the levels of pre-announcement and post-announcement trading volumes, and the effect of investor attention on the ratio of post-announcement trading volume over the pre-announcement trading volume. In my second essay, we analyze, theoretically and empirically, how investor attention affects the stock market reaction to innovation announcements. In a dynamic model with limited investor attention, we show that the immediate reaction to innovation announcements increases, while the post-announcement stock return drift decreases, in investor attention. We empirically confirm our model predictions using a matched sample of pharmaceutical industry patent grant and subsequent FDA drug approval announcements and also a general USPTO patent sample. We show that post-announcement drift has predictive power for firm growth, profitability, and productivity, drawing implications for enhancing measures of patents' economic value and for trading strategy. In my third essay, we analyze, theoretically and empirically, the implications of a fraction of investors in the equity market paying only delayed attention to SEO announcements. We first show theoretically that, in the above setting, the announcement effect of an SEO will be positively related to the fraction of investors paying attention to the announcement and that there will be a post-announcement stock-return drift that is negatively related to investor attention. In the second part of the paper, we test the above predictions using the media coverage of firms announcing SEOs as a proxy for investor attention, and find evidence consistent with the above predictions. In the third part of the paper, we develop and test various hypotheses relating investor attention paid to the issuing firm (between the announcement and the equity issue) to various SEO characteristics. We empirically show that SEO underpricing, institutional investor participation in SEOs, and the post-SEO equity market valuation of firms are all positively related to investor attention. The results of our identification tests show that the above results are causal. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

The probability of a cycling crash is much higher at intersections as along the road. A number of reasons contribute to this difference, for example car drivers overlooking cyclists when taking a turn. There have been attempts to quantify the risk at prototypical, un-signaled intersections featuring different levels of cycling infrastructure, as well as cyclists' perception of risk of these intersections. However, these attempts are limited to regular, four-arm intersections, although irregular intersections featuring both a higher and a lower nwnber of anns as weil as odd angles are likely to pose additional challenges for cyclists. There appears tobe little research on the question how the complexity and layout of such intersection affects cyclists perception of risk, as weil as their allocation of attention towards the different arms of an intersection. In, we presented a first approach to taclde this issue in a virtua1 reality (VR) based setup. We found evidence that tbe type oftum affected the subjective risk (e.g. with. a higher risk associated with situations requiring a sharp turn or to continue to an offset road), but no effects of the general position of an intersection arm in relation to the cyclist' traveling trajectory. However, the repeated exposure to the same intersection in this stu.dy limits the conclusiveness of the findings. We thus developed a more flexible virtual environment allowing us to investigate the attention allocation and risk. perception at various types of intersections.

The concept of attention is complex and multifaceted and can be approached from many perspectives. One such perspective is of attention as a limited pool of resources. Kahneman’s (1973) model of limited capacity provides a basis for understanding constraints on attention, including the costs of divided attention. In the same vein as Kahneman’s model, the Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening (FUEL; Pichora-Fuller et al., 2016) applies the concept of limited attentional capacity to the demands of listening in a variety of contexts. The current work examines novel combinations of the methods commonly used in the field of Cognitive Hearing Science to address questions about the nature of attention allocation when listening in noise and under the constraints of divided attention. I first combined listening in noise with a secondary continuous working memory task and measured pupillary response as an index of cognitive work and listening effort. Here, I found that listening task demands affect performance on the working memory task. The shared demands of listening and working memory were not, however, evident in the pupil dilation patterns. As a result, I followed these findings by employing a different divided attention method. With the use of a temporally discrete secondary task that either closely overlapped with the listening task or did not closely overlap, I found the same carryover effects of listening demands on secondary task. Most importantly, I found that these demands interacted and were clearly present in the pupil dilation patterns, demonstrating the importance of the timing of the task demands. Together, the studies in this thesis provide evidence that these two secondary tasks access the same attentional resources as those accessed in the primary listening task and that this overlapping demand for resources can be seen in the pupillary response. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Listening to speech in a noisy environment is a cognitively difficult and effortful task. Attending to more than one task at a time is similarly demanding and effortful. These two kinds of tasks are assumed to use the same limited pool of cognitive resources that we have available to us. This thesis combines listening in noise with divided attention tasks to demonstrate this overlap in demands for cognitive resources using novel combinations of these kinds of tasks. Additionally, this thesis uses the pupillary response—a well-studied index of cognitive effort—to further examine the nature of these overlapping task demands. These studies found that the demands of these tasks do, in fact, overlap, and contribute evidence to the current literature supporting the underlying assumption that these two tasks, and the pupillary response as a measure of effort, are accessing the same pool of limited resources.

No description available.

Yes / Huntington’s disease (HD) is associated with impairments in dual-task performance. Despite that, only a few studies have investigated dual-tasking in HD. We examined dual-task performance in 15 participants in the early stages of HD and 15 healthy controls. Participants performed direct circle tracing (able to view arm) and indirect circle tracing (arm obscured) either on their own (single tasks) or paired with serial subtraction by twos or threes (dual tasks). Overall, our results suggested that HD participants were significantly slower and less accurate than controls. Both groups were slower and less accurate when performing indirect circle tracing compared with direct circle tracing. HD participants experienced greater dual-task interference in terms of accuracy when performing direct circle tracing compared with indirect circle tracing. Despite that, controls were more inclined to speed–accuracy trade-offs compared with HD participants. Importantly, unlike controls, HD participants were not disproportionately faster when performing direct circle tracing as a single task compared with the dual-task conditions. Our results suggest that simple tasks place greater attentional demands on HD participants compared with controls. These findings support that impaired automaticity may be responsible for some of the attentional deficits manifested in HD. / Supported by the School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University.