Yoshimura Naoto, Yonemitsu Fumiya, Marmolejo-Ramos Fernando, Ariga Atsunori, Yamada Yuki
Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu University, JP.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, JP.
J Cogn. 2019 Aug 2;2(1):21. doi: 10.5334/joc.77.
Previous research has suggested that oral respiration may disturb cognitive function and health. The present study investigated whether oral respiration negatively affects visual attentional processing during a visual search task. Participants performed a visual search task in the following three breathing conditions: wearing a nasal plug, wearing surgical tape over their mouths, or no modification (oral vs. nasal vs. control). The participants searched for a target stimulus within different set sizes of distractors in three search conditions (orientation vs colour vs conjunction). Experiment 1 did not show any effect due to respiration. Experiment 2 rigorously manipulated the search efficiency and found that participants required more time to find a poorly discriminable target during oral breathing compared with other breathing styles, which was due to the heightened intercept under this condition. Because the intercept is an index of pre-search sensory processing or motor response in visual search, such cognitive processing was likely disrupted by oral respiration. These results suggest that oral respiration and attentional processing during inefficient visual search share a common cognitive resource.
先前的研究表明，口呼吸可能会干扰认知功能和健康。本研究调查了在视觉搜索任务中，口呼吸是否会对视觉注意力加工产生负面影响。参与者在以下三种呼吸条件下执行视觉搜索任务：佩戴鼻塞、用手术胶带封住嘴巴或不做改变（口呼吸与鼻呼吸与对照）。参与者在三种搜索条件（方向与颜色与联合）下，在不同数量的干扰项中搜索目标刺激。实验1未显示出呼吸带来的任何影响。实验2严格控制了搜索效率，发现与其他呼吸方式相比，参与者在口呼吸时找到难以区分的目标需要更多时间，这是由于在此条件下截距增加所致。因为截距是视觉搜索中搜索前感觉加工或运动反应的指标，所以这种认知加工可能受到了口呼吸的干扰。这些结果表明，在低效视觉搜索过程中，口呼吸和注意力加工共享一种共同的认知资源。
