On the allocation of attention in space and time

注意力是一种关键的认知功能，努力理解它的性质和操作是基本的。就像记忆一样，注意力指的是具有相关功能的多个系统。在从功能和神经科学的角度整合各种属于注意力范畴的心理学概念的最值得注意的尝试中，波斯纳和他的同事们提出了一个孤立但相互联系和相互作用的神经网络，协调定向、警报和执行控制，并创造了注意力网络测试(ANT)来衡量这些网络的有效性。我们建议用NSERC发现基金进行的这项研究旨在提高我们关于注意力的基本知识，为应用程序改善人类福利、心理健康和安全提供必要的基础。我们已经创建了一个可公开搜索的数据库，其中包含800多项研究的结果，这些研究将任何版本的蚂蚁用于任何目的。通过分析这个数据库中关于同一问题的研究小组的结果，我们已经使用，将继续使用，并鼓励其他人使用这个数据库来揭示关于注意力的基本事实。我们已经开发并正在完善一个类似游戏的蚂蚁版本(AttentionTrip)。我们已经证明AttentionTrip比蚂蚁更有吸引力，我们建议从这项任务中产生标准化的注意力网络分数，这将鼓励研究人员和临床医生使用它。基于自愿控制和反射性控制之间的重要区别，我们提出了一个修订的分类法，其中这两种控制模式可以在时间(警报)、空间(定向)和任务/活动(执行)领域分配注意力。我们已经开发了联合注意力系统测试(CAST)，它在儿童和年轻人身上提供了对我们修订后的分类法所暗示的六种注意力形式的稳健和可靠的测量。接下来，我们将把这项测试应用于老年人。我们建议继续进行前沿实验，以探索在时间和空间上对注意的自愿和反射控制如何影响人类的表现，重点放在反应的速度和准确性上。在其中一些研究中，我们将使用生理数据来提供正在探索的注意形式的神经实现的聚合证据。我们的几个实验任务已经被编程，这样参与者就可以在他们的家庭计算机上远程执行这些任务。AttentionTrip是在i-Pad上作为可下载的应用程序实现的。只要COVID大流行使面对面的研究变得困难(如果不是不可能的话)，这些发展将使我们能够继续我们的大部分研究。虽然这是一份个人发现基金申请，但我们是故意使用的，因为我的RAS、学生和其他受训人员是一个成功依赖于智力合作、交叉培训和想法分享的团队。

Attention is a pivotal cognitive function and efforts to understand its properties and operations are fundamental. Like memory, attention refers to multiple systems with related functions. In the most noteworthy attempt to integrate, functionally and neuroscientifically, the variety of psychological concepts that fall under the rubric of attention, Posner & colleagues proposed by that isolable, but connected and interacting, neural networks mediate orienting, alerting and executive control and created the Attention Network Test (ANT) for measuring the efficacy of these networks. The research we propose to conduct with funds from an NSERC Discovery Grant is designed to improve our basic knowledge about attention which provides a necessary foundation for applications to improve human welfare, mental health and safety. We have created a publicly searchable database with the results of over 800 studies that have used any version of the ANT for any purpose. By analyzing the results from groups of studies in this database about the same question, we have used, will continue to use, and are encouraging others to use this database to reveal fundamental truths about attention. We have developed and are in the process of perfecting a game-like version of the ANT (AttentionTrip). We have shown AttentionTrip to be more engaging than the ANT and we propose to generate normative attention network scores from this task which will encourage its use by researchers and clinicians. Building on the important distinction between voluntary and reflexive control, we have proposed a revised taxonomy in which attention can be allocated by these two modes of control in the domains of time (alerting), space (orienting) and task/activity (executive). We have developed the Combined Attention Systems Test (CAST) that, in children and young adults, provided robust and reliable measures of the six forms of attention implied by our revised taxonomy. We will next apply this test to older adults. We propose to continue conducting cutting edge experiments to explore how voluntary and reflexive control of attention in time and in space affect human performance with a focus on the speed and accuracy of responding. In some of these studies we will use physiological data to provide converging evidence about the neural implementation of the form of attention being explored. Several of our experimental tasks have been programmed so that they can be performed remotely by participants on their home computers. And the AttentionTrip is implemented on the i-pad as a downloadable app. So long as the COVID-pandemic makes in-person research difficult if not impossible, these developments will allow us to continue much of our research. Although this is an individual discovery grant application, "we" has been used deliberately because my RAs, students and other trainees are a team whose successes depend on intellectual collaboration, cross-training and the sharing of ideas.