Knight Helen C, Smith Daniel T, Knight David C, Ellison Amanda
a Department of Psychology , University of Sunderland , Sunderland , UK.
b Department of Psychology , Durham University , Stockton-on-Tees , UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2016;69(1):129-49. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1031144. Epub 2015 May 13.
Attentional control settings have an important role in guiding visual behaviour. Previous work within cognitive psychology has found that the deployment of general attentional control settings can be modulated by training. However, research has not yet established whether long-term modifications of one particular type of attentional control setting can be induced. To address this, we investigated persistent alterations to feature search mode, also known as an attentional bias, towards an arbitrary stimulus in healthy participants. Subjects were biased towards the colour green by an information sheet. Attentional bias was assessed using a change detection task. After an interval of either 1 or 2 weeks, participants were then retested on the same change detection task, tested on a different change detection task where colour was irrelevant, or were biased towards an alternative colour. One experiment included trials in which the distractor stimuli (but never the target stimuli) were green. The key finding was that green stimuli in the second task attracted attention, despite this impairing task performance. Furthermore, inducing a second attentional bias did not override the initial bias toward green objects. The attentional bias also persisted for at least two weeks. It is argued that this persistent attentional bias is mediated by a chronic change to participants' attentional control settings, which is aided by long-term representations involving contextual cueing. We speculate that similar changes to attentional control settings and continuous cueing may relate to attentional biases observed in psychopathologies. Targeting these biases may be a productive approach to treatment.
注意力控制设置在引导视觉行为中起着重要作用。认知心理学领域的先前研究发现，一般注意力控制设置的部署可以通过训练进行调节。然而，研究尚未确定是否可以诱导一种特定类型的注意力控制设置发生长期改变。为了解决这个问题，我们调查了健康参与者对任意刺激的特征搜索模式（也称为注意力偏差）的持续变化。通过一份信息表使受试者对绿色产生偏差。使用变化检测任务评估注意力偏差。在间隔1周或2周后，参与者再次接受相同的变化检测任务测试，或者接受颜色无关的不同变化检测任务测试，或者对另一种颜色产生偏差。其中一个实验包括干扰刺激（但目标刺激从不）为绿色的试验。关键发现是，尽管这会损害任务表现，但第二项任务中的绿色刺激仍会吸引注意力。此外，诱导第二种注意力偏差并没有覆盖对绿色物体的初始偏差。注意力偏差也持续了至少两周。有人认为，这种持续的注意力偏差是由参与者注意力控制设置的长期变化介导的，长期表征涉及情境线索对其有辅助作用。我们推测，注意力控制设置的类似变化和持续线索可能与在精神病理学中观察到的注意力偏差有关。针对这些偏差可能是一种有效的治疗方法。
