Résumé : La psychologie cognitive s'intéresse depuis quelques années à un effet de positivité qui semble apparaître avec l'avancement en âge. Cet effet serait également lié à la diminution, voire la disparition, d'un biais attentionnel négatif, naturellement présent chez les jeunes adultes. Celui-ci consiste en une plus grande perturbation de l'attention sélective en présence de stimuli négatifs. Une tâche cognitive d'attention sélective très utilisée pour étudier ce biais cognitif est le Stroop émotion. Présentant des mots à valence négative, positive et neutre, il permet de vérifier l'effet d'interférence que produisent ces stimuli sur la capacité d'inhibition. Jusqu'à présent, les rares études utilisant le Stroop émotion auprès d'une population âgée sans trouble cognitif ne présentent pas de consensus permettant de statuer clairement sur la modification de ce biais cognitif dans le vieillissement. La présente étude proposait d'utiliser le Stroop émotion pour observer l'effet du vieillissement sur l'attention sélective, en répondant aux principales recommandations méthodologiques tirées des études précédentes. Il était attendu que les âgés ne devaient pas présenter d'effet d'interférence en réponse aux stimuli négatifs, contrairement aux jeunes adultes. Les résultats obtenus ont toutefois révélé la présence d'un biais attentionnel négatif tant chez les âgés que chez les jeunes adultes. L'interprétation de ces performances est discutée en regard des exigences cognitives du Stroop émotion. Il pourrait ainsi être plus facile de mettre en évidence la diminution du biais attentionnel négatif à l'aide d'une présentation différente des stimuli qui permettrait la mise en place de l'effet de positivité chez les âgés.||Abstract : For some years now, cognitive psychology has taken an interest in a positivity effect that appears with increased age. This effect is claimed to be related to the decrease in, or even disappearance of, a negative attentional bias that is naturally present in young adults; this effect consists in a greater disruption of selective attention in the presence of negative stimuli. A cognitive task measuring selective attention that is often used to study this cognitive bias is the emotional Stroop test. This task presents words with negative, positive and neutral valence and tests how these stimuli interfere with inhibition capacity. To date, the few studies that have used the emotional Stroop in an elderly population without cognitive disorders have not produced a consensus that would give us a clear sense of the change in this cognitive bias with aging. This study proposed to use the emotional Stroop to observe the effect of aging on selective attention by following the main methodological recommendations arising from earlier studies. It was expected that elderly people would not present an interference effect in response to negative stimuli, unlike young adults. However, the results revealed a negative attentional bias in both older and younger adults. This finding is interpreted in relation to the cognitive demands of the emotional Stroop. It could therefore be easier to highlight the decrease in negative attentional bias by using a different method of presenting stimuli, which would reveal the positivity effect in elderly people.

Nelson and Palmer (2007) concluded that figures/figural properties automatically attract attention, after they found that participants were faster to detect/discriminate targets appearing where a portion of a familiar object was suggested in an otherwise ambiguous display. We investigated whether these effects are truly automatic and whether they generalize to another figural property-convexity. We found that Nelson and Palmer's results do generalize to convexity, but only when participants are uncertain regarding when and where the target will appear. Dependence on uncertainty regarding target location/timing was also observed for familiarity. Thus, although we could replicate and extend Nelson and Palmer's results, our experiments showed that figures do not automatically draw attention. In addition, our research went beyond Nelson and Palmer's, in that we were able to separate figural properties from perceived figures. Because figural properties are regularities that predict where objects lie in the visual field, our results join other evidence that regularities in the environment can attract attention. More generally, our results are consistent with Bayesian theories in which priors are given more weight under conditions of uncertainty.

Foi estudado o efeito de priming negativo associado à supressão do distrator palavra-cor de Stroop (Estudo 1), à supressão do local (Estudo 2) e à identidade do distrator (Estudos 3 e 4). No Estudo 1 constatou-se que a prática prévia em palavras-cor eliminou o efeito da ordem das condições experimentais sobre o índice de priming negativo. No Estudo 2, o efeito de priming negativo foi observado somente no hemicampo direito. A execução concorrente de uma tarefa verbal eliminou os efeitos de lateralidade, mas o efeito de priming negativo permaneceu significante. Estes achados são discutidos em termos de processamento interhemisférico sob condições que exigiriam maior controle da atenção. Os estudos 3 e 4 apresentam tarefas de comparação de pares de dígitos. A versão de papel e lápis da tarefa de comparação de dígitos permitiu avaliar de maneira simples e rápida o efeito de priming negativo. A versão computadorizada, revelou uma interação entre os componentes espacial e de identidade. Ambos os grupos de adultos jovens e idosos revelaram priming negativo nas tarefas de Stroop e de localização espacial. Nas tarefas de identificação do alvo somente os adultos jovens mostraram efeito de priming negativo. Os presentes achados são consistentes com a proposta de mecanismos inibitórios diferenciados na supressão da identidade e de localização espacial. / The development of sensitive and simple tests for the assessment of the negative priming effect has theoretical relevance to the elucidation of selective attention models, and also practical and potential clinical implications. The negative priming effect has been regarded as an index of inhibitory attentional processing and was proposed for the detection of syndromes that involve cognitive impairment. Diminished negative priming was reported in studies of individual differences, developmental stage, and clinical populations. However, evidences suggest that tasks requiring responses to the color feature, location or object identity of the stimuli may comprise distinct types of negative priming tasks. The following studies presents data for computerized and paper-and-pencil tasks to examine negative priming for Stroop color-word, location and identity distractors. All four studies take into account aging effects across the tasks. For comparisons between age-groups, proportional performance scores (ratio) were used. A first study employed a reading-sheet Stroop-color-word task, in which the participant is asked to name the colors of the ink in which words with incongruent color names have been printed. Color-word interference is indicated by increased time to complete the conflicting color-word condition compared with a nonconflicting condition with patches of color or strings of Xs. The greater strength of the interference, when the target ink-color of the present stimulus is the distracting color name of the previous stimulus, is attributed to the negative priming effect. A pilot experiment showed that the order of the list conditions containing unrelated and related stimuli affected the negative priming index. The analysis of data demonstrated that a practice trial in color naming of conflicting color-words before the color-word conditions eliminated the effect of the order of the lists. In addition, there was a reliable Stroop reverse interference after practice in color naming, as indicated by the fact that the incongruent color-ink affected post-test word-reading, whereas it had no effect in the pretest word-reading. With practice procedure, older and younger subjects did not differ in their proportional interference scores, whereas the negative priming and reverse effects were increased for older adults. Study 2 examined the negative-priming effect in a spatial localization task under single- and dual-task conditions. The task required the subject to detect the location of a target letter, ‘O’, while ignoring a distractor letter, ‘X’, when it was present. Significant negative-priming effects were observed under both task conditions, with increased response times for trials in which target location had matched the location of the distractor on the preceding. The magnitude of the negative priming effect was not different for older and younger adults. The performance in the single-task condition showed laterality effects with a right visual field advantage for control and target-alone trials, but not for related trials. In consequence, in the single-task condition, negative priming was observed only for targets displayed in the right hemifield. However, a concurrent digit span task, with a load level that had shown no affect on the dual-task coordination capacity, eliminated the laterality effects, but the negative priming effect remained. These results are considered as neuropsychological evidence that interhemispheric processes may operate under more controlled conditions. Studies 3 and 4 examined negative priming by using an identity-based task that required participants to select the greater of two-digits display or the digit that was paired with an asterisk. Study 3 presents data for a computerized version of the task. Negative-priming was expressed as a slowing in the time to name the digit that had been ignored in the preceding trial, compared to control trials with consecutive targets and distractors always different. Analysis of data revealed that negative priming was reliable only for younger adults, and only when target probe and distractor prime appeared at the same location, suggesting that suppression for location of distractor was underpinning the negative priming effect. However, response latencies for the control trials were facilitated when the target probe and the distractor prime shared the same location. Thus, local suppression affected negative priming for attended distractors with a cost in the response latency for ignored-repetition trials and with a gain in response latency for control trials when the locus of target-probe and distractor-prime was the same. In contrast, older adults’ performance showed local suppression for both ignored-repetition and control trials. This may explain the lack of negative priming for older adults in the digit-comparison task. Study 4 presents data for a new paper-and-pencil version of the digit-comparison task to obtain a practical measure of negative priming that do not require cumbersome technical equipment. In that task, subjects were asked to circle digits that were paired with asterisks and the greater of two digits in a series of digit pairs listed on a sheet of paper. For younger participants, but not for older participants, the time to complete the sheet with related pairs was slower than for unrelated pairs. In addition, the reduced scores of negative priming in older adults were associated with the lowest sustained attention scores from Toulouse-Piéron test. These results suggest that older adults’ performance in the digit-comparison task were mainly related to flexibility and sustained attentional scores, and the lower sustained attentional coefficient seemed to be the best predictor of diminished or reversed negative priming in older adults. Younger adults showed reliable negative priming across all tasks. In contrast, older adults showed negative priming in Stroop and spatial tasks, when compared with younger subjects performance, but reduced negative priming in identity suppression tasks. The findings are consistent with neurophysiological and behavioural evidence that identity and location suppressing may rely on separate inhibitory mechanisms, and that not all of these processes are weakened by factors associated with age.

Anxiety and depression are among the most common psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence (Costello, Egger, & Angold, 2005). Although the parental environment appears to play a role in the development of emotional disorders (e.g., Abramson & Alloy, 2006), cognitive styles within the families of adolescents with internalising disorders have received little attention. The main aim of this thesis was to increase the understanding of maternal cognitions in relation to internalising disorders experienced by adolescents. Specifically, maternal attributional style, catastrophic worries, selective attention and perceptions of adolescents' social competence were examined through a combination of cross-sectional, correlational and experimental designs in the programme of five studies conducted with a clinical sample. Three groups of adolescents and their mothers participated in the studies: adolescents with clinical internalising disorders, adolescents with clinical externalising disorders and a non-referred group of school-children along with their mothers. In support of the hypotheses, mothers of adolescents with clinical internalising disorders had more negative attributional biases than the mothers in the two control groups. When parental attributions were examined from the child's perspective, adolescents in the clinical internalising group perceived that their parents had more negative attributions than both control groups. Examination of maternal evaluations of adolescents' social skills, revealed that even though adolescents did not have social deficits according to objective ratings, mothers of adolescents with internalising disorders underestimated the performance of their children compared to the non-referred control group. Significant relationships were found between maternal and adolescent attributions and perceptions of social competence, suggesting a link between maternal and adolescent cognitive style. Furthermore, mothers of the clinical internalising group produced a greater number of worries which were more catastrophic in content than mothers in the control groups. Contrary to predictions, mothers of adolescents with clinical internalising disorders did not selectively attend to threatening information related to adolescents' behaviours. Analyses using combined data from the four studies that showed significant relationships provided evidence that different cognitions in mothers and their children are interrelated, highlighting the importance of interactions between various cognitions within the family. Additionally, attributional style, catastrophic worries and negative perceptions were found to discriminate families with adolescents with internalising disorders from those with adolescents with externalising disorders or non-referred adolescents. The studies included in this thesis extend the current literature on maternal cognitions and adolescent internalising disorders and suggest that mothers of adolescents with internalising disorders are characterised by cognitive biases that should be taken into consideration in both research and clinical practice.

Forster and Lavie (2008) and Lavie, Lin, Zokaei and Thoma (2009) have demonstrated that meaningful stimuli, such as objects, are ignored under conditions of high perceptual load but not low. However, objects are seldom presented without context in the real world. Given that context can reduce the threshold for object recognition (Barenholtz, 2013), is it possible for context to reduce the processing load of objects such that they can be processed under high load? In the first experiment, I attempted to obtain similar findings of the aforementioned studies by replicating their paradigm with photographs of real-world objects. The findings of the experiment suggested that objects can cause distractor interference under high load conditions, but not low load conditions. These findings are opposite of what the perceptual literature suggests (e.g., Lavie, 1995). However, these findings are aligned with a two-stage dilution model of attention in which information is first processed in parallel and then selectively (Wilson, Muroi, and MacLeod, 2011). Experiment 2 assessed if this effect was specific to semantic objects by introducing meaningless, abstract objects. The results suggest that the dilution effect was not due to the semantic features of objects. The third experiment assessed the influence of context on objects under load. The results of the experiment found an elimination of all interference effects in both the high and low load conditions. Comparisons between scene-object congruency revealed no influence of semantic information from scenes. It appears that the presentation of a visual stimuli prior to the flanker task diluted attention such that the distractor effects previously observed in the high load condition were minimized. Thus, it does not appear that context reduced the threshold for object recognition under load. All three experiments have demonstrated strong evidence for the dilution approach of attention over perceptual load models. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Previous work shows that young children focus on holistic (or overall) similarity and older children focus on dimensional similarity (selectively attending to one property to the exclusion of others). Research on early word learning, however, suggests that process of learning new words trains attention towards category-relevant dimensions via regularities in the linguistic and physical environment. Thus, over development, children learn to attend to specific dimensions when making nominal category judgments--they selectively attend to shape, for example, when learning names for solid objects. In four experiments, I asked a question fundamental to our understanding of dimensional attention: does word learning scaffold attention to dimensional similarity in more general contexts. The results of Experiment 1 showed that children who are holistic classifiers are slower than dimensional classifiers to learn categories of objects that vary along both a category-relevant dimension (e.g. size) and a category-irrelevant dimension (e.g. brightness). However, the results of Experiment 2 showed that when children were presented with incidental labels during category learning, holistic classifiers learn the categories as quickly as dimensional classifiers. In a follow-up similarity classification task, children who had been holistic classifiers showed an increase in dimensional attention only if they had been in the label experiment. In Experiments 3 and 4, I examined category learning with and without a label in children who preferred to selectively attend to one dimension of similarity (e.g. brightness) regardless of whether this means selecting dimensional or holistic matches in a classification task. The results of these experiments provide a more complete picture of the continuous developmental trajectory of increasing selective and flexible dimensional attention. By showing how labels support dimensional attention, these results clarify the processes involved in development of similarity perception and potentially unify our understanding of attentional processes in word learning with those in a broader context.

Cognitive-behavioural based models of chronic pain contend that appraisals of harm affect the individual�s response to pain. It has been suggested that fear of pain and/or anxiety sensitivity predispose individuals to chronicity. However, other factors such as pain self-efficacy are believed to mediate between experience of pain and disability. According to this view, pain is maintained through hypervigilance towards painful sensations and subsequent avoidance. Four studies were conducted in order to evaluate the structure of fear-avoidance models of chronic pain, and also, to examine the role of hypervigilance as an underlying mechanism in maintenance of pain. In study one, using a sample of 207 consecutive patients, two models were tested. First, fear of movement model as proposed by Vlaeyen et al. (1995a) was examined. It was found that negative affectivity has direct effects on the fear and avoidance of pain, which in turn, contributes to disability. In total, fear/avoidance accounted for a significant amount of the variance of disability. In addition, severity of pain was found to increase pain disability, while itself is influenced still by negative affectivity. These findings supported the model of fear of pain as described by Vlaeyen et al. (1995a). Further, we found that self-efficacy may mediate the impact of fear of pain on disability and reduces the perceived physical disability. At the same time, self-efficacy was shown to have direct reductive impact on disability. However, both studies indicated that people who are fearful in response to pain are more likely to develop disability, although self-efficacy may play a moderating role. In the studies one, two, and three, the role of hypervigilance in over attending to pain was investigated. In study one a large sample of 168 chronic pain patients were studied. Questionnaires measuring different aspects of pain and a computerised version of the Dot-Probe Task were administered. Four types of words related to different dimensions of pain and matched neutral words were used as stimuli. Reaction times in response to the stimuli were recorded. A factorial design 3x4x2x2 and ANOVAs were employed to analyse the data. Chronic pain patients showed a cognitive bias to sensory pain words relative to affective, disability, and threat-related words. However, contrary to expectations, those high in fear of pain responded more slowly to stimuli than those less fearful of pain. These results suggest that patients with chronic pain problems selectively attend to sensory aspects of pain. However, selective attention appears to depend upon the nature of pain stimuli. For those who are highly fearful of pain they may not only selectively attend to pain-related information but also have difficulty disengaging from those stimuli. In study two, 35 chronic pain patients were compared with the same number matched healthy subjects. Both groups completed measures of fear of pain, anxiety sensitivity, depression and anxiety, in addition to dot probe task. Results indicated that both groups show similar attentional bias to sensory words in comparison with other word types. However, the level of this biasness was higher for chronic pain patients. Lack of significant differences between patients and controls is discussed in the context of possible evolutionary value of sensitivity to pain as an adaptive reaction in healthy controls, and contrary, as a maladaptive response to pain in chronic pain patients. The results of the previous research suggest that chronic pain patients demonstrate cognitive biases towards pain-related information and that such biases predict patient functioning. The forth study examined the degree to which a successful cognitive-behavioural program was able to modify the observed attentional bias towards sensory pain words. Forty-two patients with chronic pain conditions for more than three months were recruited prior to commencing a cognitive-behavioural pain management program. Participants were assessed before the program, after the program and at one-month follow-up. Results confirmed that chronic pain patients exhibited biased attention towards sensory pain-related words at pre-treatment. These biases were still evident at post-treatment, but were no longer statistically significant at follow up. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the changes in attentional bias towards sensory words between post-treatment and follow-up were predicted by pre- to post- treatment changes in fear of movement (Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia) but not other relevant variables, such as fear of pain or anxiety sensitivity. These results demonstrate that successful cognitive-behavioural treatments can reduce selective attention, thought to be indicative of hypervigilance towards pain. Moreover, these biases appear to be changed by reducing the fear associated with movement. Theoretically, these results provide support for the fear of (re)injury model of pain. Clinically, this study supports the contention that fear of (re)injury and movement is an appropriate target of pain management and that reducing these fears causes patients to attend less to pain-related stimuli.

The research focuses on the role of top-down influences on selective attention across the attentional visual field. The attentional visual field is the subset of the visual field in which attentional processes take place. The size of the attentional visual field is relatively large compared to the areas considered by most empirical studies of visual attention to date. Three possible forms of top-down influence are examined: 1) the expectation of the size of the area in which the target is likely to occur; 2) the expectation of the direction in which the target is likely to occur; and 3) existing unconscious bias in the spatial distribution of attention. Results from Experiment 1 suggest that participants modify the size of the attended area according to their expectation of the location of the target. Experiment 2 demonstrates that focus of attention can be oriented toward the expected target direction. Experiment 3 reveals that, even when no conscious control is involved, the distribution of attention is biased toward certain areas. Theoretical considerations are discussed, including the introduction of a simple statistical model to assist in conceptualizing the modifications of the distribution of attention over the attentional visual field. Practical applications of the results are also discussed.

The research focuses on the role of top-down influences on selective attention across the attentional visual field. The attentional visual field is the subset of the visual field in which attentional processes take place. The size of the attentional visual field is relatively large compared to the areas considered by most empirical studies of visual attention to date. Three possible forms of top-down influence are examined: 1) the expectation of the size of the area in which the target is likely to occur; 2) the expectation of the direction in which the target is likely to occur; and 3) existing unconscious bias in the spatial distribution of attention. Results from Experiment 1 suggest that participants modify the size of the attended area according to their expectation of the location of the target. Experiment 2 demonstrates that focus of attention can be oriented toward the expected target direction. Experiment 3 reveals that, even when no conscious control is involved, the distribution of attention is biased toward certain areas. Theoretical considerations are discussed, including the introduction of a simple statistical model to assist in conceptualizing the modifications of the distribution of attention over the attentional visual field. Practical applications of the results are also discussed.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) use atypical approaches when processing facial stimuli. The first purpose of this research was to investigate face processing abilities in adults with ASD using several tasks, to compare patterns of interference between static identity and expression processing in adults with ASD and typical adults, and to investigate whether the introduction of dynamic cues caused members of one or both groups to shift from a global to a more local processing strategy. The second purpose was to compare the gaze behaviour of groups of participants as they viewed static and dynamic single- and multiple-character scenes. I tested 16 adults with ASD and 16 sex-, age-, and IQ-matched typical controls. In Study 1, participants completed a task designed to assess processing speed, another to measure visual processing bias, and two tasks involving static and dynamic face stimuli -- an identity-matching task and a Garner selective attention task. Adults with ASD were less sensitive to facial identity, and, unlike typical controls, showed negligible interference between identity and expression processing when judging both static and moving faces. In Study 2, participants viewed scenes while their gaze behaviour was recorded. Overall, participants with ASD showed fewer and shorter fixations on faces compared to their peers. Additionally, whereas the introduction of motion and increased social complexity of the scenes affected the gaze behaviour of typical adults, only the latter manipulation affected adults with ASD. My findings emphasize the importance of using dynamic displays when studying typical and atypical face processing mechanisms. / October 2015