The current study discussed the development and validation of the Checklist for Differential Diagnosis of Attentional Problems (CDDAP), a tool for use with adults seeking diagnosis and treatment of an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Normative data are provided on three subject groups (ADHD adults, controls, and adults with other psychiatric disorders). Convergent validity was established with the SCL-90, and criterion validity established through comparing scaled scores with final diagnoses. Overall, this measure was accurate at differentiating adults with ADHD from controls and adults with other psychiatric disorders. Results indicated that the CDDAP was also able to identify other psychiatric disorders with 71 to 92% accuracy, depending on the disorder.

This thesis focusses on the role of attentional bias for health-threat information in the production and maintenance of medically unexplained symptoms, somatoform disorders and high levels of physical symptom reporting. It is comprised of three separate papers. Paper 1 was prepared for Clinical Psychology Review as a systematic review of the evidence concerning attentional bias for health–threat information in populations presenting with somatoform/somatic symptom disorders and high levels of physical symptom reporting. From the 20 studies deemed relevant for review, it was concluded that - although limited - the evidence indicated that a relationship existed between attentional bias for health-threat information and levels of physical symptom reporting. No robust evidence was found to establish whether this relationship was a casual one. Paper 2 was prepared for Journal of Abnormal Psychology and investigated whether an exogenous cueing task could be used to reduce presumed attentional bias for health-threat information in a sample of high symptom reporting students. The results showed an unexpected attentional avoidance of health-threat information at baseline, which the study manipulation unintentionally exacerbated. No change in levels of physical symptom reporting was noted between groups (attributed to a methodological error) but a trend in relatively greater anxiety for those who received the manipulation was noted. It was concluded that avoidance may be a key factor in high symptom reporting and that this merited further research. Paper 3 provided a critical reflection of Papers 1 and 2, as well as the research process as a whole. Implications for theory and clinical practice as well as future research directions were discussed.

Social anxiety disorder is the third most common mental disorder with the lifetime prevalence rate of 13.3% in the US population. Typically, it causes significant impairment in a wide range of functioning and follows a chronic, unremitting course if untreated. Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic increase in clinical research aimed at examining underlying mechanisms maintaining social anxiety. One line of research has investigated attentional biases in social anxiety, using various cognitive experiment paradigms, including the emotional Stroop and the modified dotprobe tasks. However, overall findings are equivocal about the nature of attentional biases in social anxiety and several methodological problems limit the interpretability of the data. The present study examined attentional biases associated with social anxiety using a new research paradigm in the field of anxiety disorders: the inattentional blindness paradigm. This paradigm presents a social cue in the absence of the subjects’ expectation while they are engaged in a cognitively demanding task, thereby enabling the more purely attentional aspect of information processing to be examined reducing the influence of potential response biases or effortful strategies. Two independent experiments were conducted using nonclinical student samples consisting of individuals high in social anxiety (HSAs) versus individuals low in social anxiety (LSAs) based on the static and sustained inattentional blindness tasks. Overall, results revealed that HSAs were more likely to detect or identify a socially-threatening cue, relative to LSAs; whereas LSAs were more likely to detect or identify a non-threatening social cue, relative to HSAs. These findings were observed only in the presence of a bogus-speech manipulation. These data suggest the promising utility of the inattentional blindness paradigm in investigating attentional biases in social anxiety and perhaps other psychopathological conditions. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed. / text

Selective attention towards alcohol-related cues (i.e., “attentional bias”) is thought to reflect increased incentive motivational value of alcohol and alcohol cues acquired through a history of heavy alcohol use, and as such attentional bias is considered to be a clinically relevant factor contributing to alcohol use disorders. This dissertation consists of two studies that investigated specific mechanisms through which attentional bias might serve to promote alcohol abuse. Study 1 compared magnitude of attentional bias in heavy (n = 20) and light (n = 20) drinkers following placebo and two doses of alcohol (0.45 g/kg and 0.65 g/kg). Heavy drinkers displayed significantly greater attentional bias than did moderate drinkers following placebo. However, heavy drinkers displayed a dose-dependent decrease in response to alcohol. Individual differences in attentional bias under placebo were associated with both self-reported and laboratory alcohol consumption, yet bias following alcohol administration did not predict either measure of consumption. These findings suggest that attentional bias is strongest before a drinking episode begins, and as such might be most influential in terms of initiation of alcohol consumption. Study 2 addressed theoretical accounts regarding potential reciprocal interactions between attentional bias and inhibitory control that might promote excessive alcohol consumption. Fifty drinkers performed a measure of attentional bias and a novel task that measures the degree to which alcohol-related stimuli can increase behavioral activation and reduce the ability to inhibit inappropriate responses. As hypothesized, inhibitory failures were significantly greater following alcohol images compared to neutral images. Further, heightened attentional bias was associated with greater response activation following alcohol images. These findings suggest that alcohol stimuli serve to disrupt mechanisms of behavioral control, and that heightened attentional bias is associated with greater disruption of control mechanisms following alcohol images. Taken together, these studies provide strong evidence of an association between attentional bias in sober individuals and alcohol consumption, suggesting a pronounced role of attentional bias in initiation of consumption. Further, findings show that attention to alcohol cues can serve to disrupt mechanisms of inhibitory control that might be necessary to regulate drinking behavior, suggesting a potential means through which attentional bias might promote consumption.

This thesis examined the influence of support type and support visibility on the effects of enacted social support on performance and a number of key psychological and behavioural variables. It comprises five chapters. Chapter 1 is a general introduction. The next three chapters (outlined below) present the results of four studies. Chapter 5 is a general discussion. Chapter 2 examined how support type and support visibility influenced the effects of natural support exchanges between athletes and their key support providers occurring in the week prior to an athlete’s match. Athletes and key support providers reported respectively the receipt and provision of support during this week. Athletes also indicated their self-confidence and emotional states regarding the upcoming the match. Moderated hierarchical regression analyses revealed that all types of received support predicted athletes’ emotional states and self-confidence regarding the upcoming match. There was no evidence that invisibly providing these support types predicted athletes’ outcomes. For informational support, however, it was found that its provision predicted self-confidence, suggesting that athletes’ levels of confidence may have benefited from advice that they were not always aware of. Chapter 3 employed an experimental paradigm to better examine the influence of the type and visibility of enacted social support. Using a golf-putting task with novices (n = 105), it examined the influence of informational and esteem support provided in a visible or invisible manner by a fellow novice golfer. This fellow novice golfer was in reality a confederate scripted to give one of five support manipulations (visible informational support, invisible informational support, visible esteem support, invisible esteem support, no support) to participants prior to performing the golf-putting task. The results demonstrated that participants given invisible informational support or visible esteem support outperformed those given no support, while participants given visible informational support or invisible esteem support did not. There was no evidence that participants’ self-efficacy or emotional states could explain these effects. Chapter 4 also involved experimental procedures across two separate studies with samples of skilled football players completing a football aiming task. In these studies, esteem and informational support was provided in a visible or invisible manner by a coach with expertise in penalty-taking. In the first of these studies, the players (n = 68) performed better when the expert provided them with informational support than when the expert provided them with esteem support. This effect occurred regardless of whether the support was provided in a visible or invisible manner. Self-efficacy could not explain this effect. Given the lack of effects of support visibility, the second of these two studies was designed as a replication and an extension of the first. It sought to further examine why informational support might be more effective than esteem support for skilled football players (n = 84). Consistent with the first study, kicking performance was again significantly better for players provided with informational support than for players provided with esteem support regardless of whether the support was provided in a visible or invisible manner. There was evidence that players given informational support performed better than those given esteem support, because their attention was focused more externally on the target and less internally on the process of movement execution. This series of studies are important for sport and social psychology: They are the first to explore the effect of support type and support visibility in a sport context; and they are the first to examine the effect of support type and support visibility in relation to performance. The results demonstrate that support type is a crucial factor to consider when exchanging support. However, no support type may necessarily be considered the best under all conditions. In light of explaining the effects of different support types on performance, the final study suggests that attentional focus may be an important underlying mechanism. The results indicate that support visibility may play a role in the exchange of support but its influence depends on the type of support provided and the context in which this type of support is provided. An overriding finding of this thesis is that enacted support can have beneficial effects upon athletes’ psychological states and performance.

The aims of the current program of research were to examine the impact of anxiety on performance and attentional control during the execution of two far aiming tasks, and to examine the efficacy of gaze training interventions in mediating these effects. Attentional control theory (ACT), which suggests that anxious individuals have impaired goal-directed attentional control, was adopted as a theoretical framework, and the Quiet Eye, characterised by long final fixations on relevant locations, was adopted as an objective measure of overt attentional control. In Studies 1 and 2 increased pressure impaired goal directed attentional control (QE) at the expense of stimulus-driven control (more fixations of shorter duration to various targets). The aim of studies 3 and 4 was therefore to examine the efficacy of an intervention designed to train effective visual attentional control (QE training) for novices, and determine whether such training protected against attentional disruptions associated with performing under pressure. In both studies the QE trained group maintained more effective visual attentional control and performed significantly better in a subsequent pressure test compared to the Control group, providing support for the efficacy of attentional training for visuo-motor skills. The aim of study 5 was to examine the effectiveness of a brief QE training intervention for elite golfers and to examine if potential benefits shown for novices in studies 3 and 4 transferred to competitive play. The QE-trained group maintained their optimal QE and performance under pressure conditions, whereas the control group experienced reductions in QE and performance. Importantly, these advantages transferred to the golf course, where QE-trained golfers reduced their putts per round by 1.9 putts, compared to pre-training, whereas the control group showed no change in their putting statistics. This series of studies has therefore implicated the role of attention in the breakdown of performance under pressure, but has also suggested that visual attentional training regimes may be a useful technique for alleviating this problem.

The attentional blink occurs when detection of a second target (T2) is impaired when it occurs between 180 to 450 ms after the first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). The attentional blink can be affected by relevant emotional stimuli, like emotional faces, such that an emotional T1 enhances the attentional blink, and an emotional T2 attenuates it. However, not all studies use the same type of face stimuli, and there is debate over whether schematic and photo-realistic faces are processed in the same way. Furthermore, the effect of emotion on the attentional blink should differ with age, given the tendency for younger adults to display a negativity bias and for older adults to display a positivity effect. Very little research has been conducted on the attentional blink with emotional stimuli in older adults. In fact, the effect of emotional faces, which are arguably more salient stimuli than other stimuli such as emotional words, on the attentional blink has not been investigated in older adults. Therefore, this study sought to examine the impact of emotional faces on the attentional blink in younger and older adults using photo-realistic faces with angry, happy, and neutral expressions as targets in a RSVP. Although older adults did perform worse overall, there were no age differences in the effect of emotion on the attentional blink. Angry faces, as well as happy faces to a limited extent, increased the attentional blink when they served as T1. Neither the angry or happy faces as T2 were able to attenuate the blink. Given that emotional faces affected the attentional blink at T1 but not at T2, it may be the case that the emotional expressions served to maintain attention, rather than to capture it. Future studies are necessary to test this idea, as well as to more directly test the differential effect of emotional photorealistic and schematic faces on the attentional blink.

As video games continue to become larger, more complex, and more costly to produce, research into methods to make game creation easier and faster becomes more valuable. One such research topic is procedural generation, which allows the computer to assist in the creation of content. This dissertation presents a new algorithm for the generation of Sokoban levels. Sokoban is a grid-based transport puzzle which is computational interesting due to being PSPACE-complete. Beyond just generating levels, the question of whether or not the levels created by this algorithm are interesting to human players is explored. A study was carried out comparing player attention while playing hand made levels versus their attention during procedurally generated levels. An auditory Stroop test was used to measure attention without disrupting play.

This study examined how attentional sub-processes contribute to binge-eating. Dense-array EEG and a version of the canonical attentional blink task were used to ascertain the neural correlates underlying the attentional sub-processes that comprise the Posner model of attention (alerting, orienting, and executive control) and how attentional activation differs for binge-eaters vs. non-binge eaters. Furthermore, we examined a number of the event-related potentials (ERP), including P2 activation, which has been linked with orientating of attention, and N2 activation which has been linked with attentional conflict. We found decreased P2 activation for binge-eaters, in the negative condition, for incorrect target 2 (T2) detection trials. We also found more N2 activation for binge-eaters than non-binge eaters, in negative trials when T2 was not detected. This pattern of results suggest that binge-eaters showed deficiencies in allocating attention to stimuli that followed negative images; this attention deficiency may be a key factor for binge-eating behavior.

Em estudos sobre a atenção visuoespacial automática, as regiões de aparecimento dos estímulos são comumente demarcadas na tela. Resultados preliminares de nosso laboratório demonstraram que as demarcações favorecem a manifestação do efeito atencional. O presente estudo estendeu esse achado determinando o modo de atuação destes estímulos. Em um primeiro experimento, confirmamos o achado de que o efeito atencional observado quando as demarcações estão presentes diminui na ausência delas. Em um segundo experimento, investigamos a possibilidade do efeito atencional não se manifestar na ausência das demarcações devido a um desvio muito precoce do foco atencional do local inicialmente atendido, porém o efeito atencional não se manifestou na ausência das demarcações quando se estabilizou o foco atencional por um período maior no local atendido. No terceiro experimento, identificamos a possibilidade do efeito atencional não se manifestar na ausência das demarcações devido a um mascaramento anterógrado de determinado estímulo alvo pelo estímulo precedente mobilizador da atenção / In studies about automatic visuospatial attention, the appearance of the stimulus regions are commonly marked on the screen. Preliminary results from our laboratory demonstrated that the placeholders favors the development of attentional effect. This study extended this finding by determining the mode of action of these stimuli. In a first experiment, we confirmed the finding that the attencional effect observed when placeholders decreases in their absence. In a second experiment, we investigated the possibility of attentional effect do not manifest in the absence of placeholders due to a very early turning from the attentional focus of initially attended site, however, the attentional effect did not manifest in the absence of placeholders when it stabilized the attentional focus by a longer period in the treated site. In the third experiment, we identified the possibility of the attentional effect do not manifest in the absence of placeholders due to an anterograde masking of certain stimulus target by mobilizing previous stimulus of attention