Individual Differences in Attention: Behavioural and Electrophysiological Investigations

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In our day-to-day lives multiple events require our attention, yet our attention is limited in terms of how much information we can attend to at any given time. Consequently, although we may try to perform two tasks at once (e.g., talking on a cellular phone while driving), this often leads to poorer performance on one or both tasks. Also, our attention may be captured by stimuli that are irrelevant to the task at hand (e.g., an eye-catching billboard while driving). Therefore, appropriate control and allocation of attention are critical to successful and safe task performance. Recently, researchers, including myself, have begun to investigate individual differences in the ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously and to prevent our attention from being captured by task-irrelevant stimuli. For example, work from my lab has shown that there are reliable individual differences in the magnitude of dual-task attention costs in a computerized task, and that these attention costs can be predicted by various dispositional, cognitive, and EEG measures. The goal of this grant is to better understand individual differences in attentional performance. I will examine whether there are reliable individual differences in the degree and nature of attention capture across a variety of attention capture tasks, and if so, whether these individual differences are related across various attention capture tasks such that some people can be said to be more susceptible, generally, to having their attention captured. In addition I will examine whether individual differences in attention capture are related to individual differences in dual-task attention and whether these can be predicted by individual differences in everyday multi-tasking behaviour, working memory, attentional investment and/or cognitive control. A series of experiments will also ask 'At what stage of processing do reliable individual differences in cognitive investment begin?' I will also examine the degree to which individuals are aware of their ability to multi-task or to avoid attentional distraction and whether they modulate their everyday behaviour according to their abilities. Ultimately, this research will inform how and why individuals differ in their abilities to successfully navigate the attentional demands of everyday life.************