Individual difference study in the optimal strategy for attentional control

为了找出控制注意力的最佳策略，我们进行了关于注意力自愿控制的个体差异的实验。1）个体差异的一个来源是年龄，这是已知的，会导致包括注意力在内的各种额叶功能的退化。在双重任务中，参与者在回答从左耳或右耳听到的问题时寻找探针刺激。与年轻人相比，老年参与者不仅检测探针的速度较慢，而且回答问题的干扰也比年轻参与者增加，特别是当他们不得不听左耳信息时。两种工作记忆容量（空间和言语工作记忆），并与两种类型的空间线索任务的注意增益得分（即，内源性和外源性控制）。言语工作记忆容量与 ...更多信息 自上而下或内源性的注意力控制。3）在注意瞬脱任务中，被试必须对两个连续的目标做出反应，在此基础上，以侧翼任务为第二目标，探索了一种新的注意聚焦测量方法。在传统的探测任务中，反应时被用作注意能力的测量。在Hanker干扰任务中，既有对相容条件的反应时（RT），也有干扰得分（相容RT与不相容RT之间的差异）。反应时可以作为备用注意能力的指标，干扰可以作为注意集中度的指标，注意集中度越高，干扰越小。所得到的结果证实了这一预期，即注意能力所表示的兼容的RT是一个单调递减的功能，从TI的间隔，而注意力的聚焦是动态调制的TI间隔的函数。少

In order to find out what is optimal strategy for the control of attention, we conducted experiments on individual differences in the voluntary control of attention.1) One source of individual difference is aging, which is known to bring about deterioration in the various frontal lobe functions including attention. With a dual task participants searched for a probe stimulus while answering to questions heard from either left or right ear. Compared to younger people, older participants were not only slower to detect the probe but also showed increased interference from answering to questions than younger participants, especially when they had to listen to left-ear messages.2) In the second experiment, two types of working memory capacities (both spatial and verbal working memories) were measured and they were correlated with attentional gain scores of two types of spatial cueing tasks (Le., endogenous and exogenous control). Verbal working memory capacity was found to be correlated with … More top-down or endogenous control of attention. However, the direction of the results was contrary to what we had expected initially Thus, high verbal working memory participants tended to show smaller attentional gain when their attention was under voluntary control3) In attentional blink task where participants had to respond to two successive targets, a new measure of attentional focusing was explored with flanker task as the second target. In the traditional probe task reaction time is used as a measure of attentional capacity Using Hanker interference task, both reaction time (RT) to compatible condition and interference score (difference between compatible RT and incompatible RT) were available. Reaction time may be an index of spare attentional capacity while interference was regarded as an indicator of attentional concentration with higher concentration leading to lower interference. The obtained result conformed this expectation in that attentional capacity as indicated by compatible RTs was a monotonic decreasing function of the interval from TI, while attentional focusing was dynamically modulated as a function of TI interval. Less