Neurophysiological Measures of Proactive and Reactive Control in Negative Template Use.

In a visual search task, knowing features of distractors in advance leads to a more efficient visual search. Although previous studies suggested that the benefits of these negative cues rely on attentional control, it is unclear whether proactive or reactive control is involved. In this study, we analyzed the EEG data of participants performing a visual search task (n = 14). Participants searched for a shape-defined target after receiving a positive cue (target color), negative cue (distractor color), or neutral cue (non-informative). To examine proactive control, we measured EEG after the cue onset but before visual search. Our time-frequency analysis revealed a higher power of theta oscillations over frontoparietal regions after the negative cues compared with the positive and neutral cues, as well as higher theta phase synchronization within the prefrontal region, demonstrating negative cues rely more heavily on proactive control compared with other cue types. To examine reactive control, we measured EEG after the search onset. We found a lateralization of posterior alpha power toward the target side in both positive and negative cues conditions, with a later lateralization observed after negative cues. Interestingly, we observed a significant relationship between the increase of proactive theta power after negative cues and the decrease of reactive alpha power after the search. This suggests the coordination of proactive and reactive mechanisms lead to the most efficient search.

Flexibility in Attentional Control: Multiple Sources and Suppression.

In daily life, it is critical that we are able to direct our visual attention to information that is important for our tasks while avoiding distracting information. To control our attention, we engage "attentional templates" that reconfigure how incoming visual signals are processed in our brains. But what are these attentional templates and how do they work? Much of our understanding of the nature of attentional templates has been driven by the proposed mechanism linking attentional templates and working memory from the biased competition model [1] (Desimone and Duncan, 1995). Over the past 20 years, research inspired by this proposal has vastly increased our understanding of attentional control. This work has highlighted flexibility in attentional control, with multiple sources of control and flexible enhancement or suppression based on task demands.

How visual working memory contents influence priming of visual attention.

Recent evidence shows that when the contents of visual working memory overlap with targets and distractors in a pop-out search task, intertrial priming is inhibited (Kristjánsson, Sævarsson & Driver, Psychon Bull Rev 20(3):514-521, 2013, Experiment 2, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review). This may reflect an interesting interaction between implicit short-term memory-thought to underlie intertrial priming-and explicit visual working memory. Evidence from a non-pop-out search task suggests that it may specifically be holding distractors in visual working memory that disrupts intertrial priming (Cunningham & Egeth, Psychol Sci 27(4):476-485, 2016, Experiment 2, Psychological Science). We examined whether the inhibition of priming depends on whether feature values in visual working memory overlap with targets or distractors in the pop-out search, and we found that the inhibition of priming resulted from holding distractors in visual working memory. These results are consistent with separate mechanisms of target and distractor effects in intertrial priming, and support the notion that the impact of implicit short-term memory and explicit visual working memory can interact when each provides conflicting attentional signals.

The Control of Single-color and Multiple-color Visual Search by Attentional Templates in Working Memory and in Long-term Memory.

The question whether target selection in visual search can be effectively controlled by simultaneous attentional templates for multiple features is still under dispute. We investigated whether multiple-color attentional guidance is possible when target colors remain constant and can thus be represented in long-term memory but not when they change frequently and have to be held in working memory. Participants searched for one, two, or three possible target colors that were specified by cue displays at the start of each trial. In constant-color blocks, the same colors remained task-relevant throughout. In variable-color blocks, target colors changed between trials. The contralateral delay activity (CDA) to cue displays increased in amplitude as a function of color memory load in variable-color blocks, which indicates that cued target colors were held in working memory. In constant-color blocks, the CDA was much smaller, suggesting that color representations were primarily stored in long-term memory. N2pc components to targets were measured as a marker of attentional target selection. Target N2pcs were attenuated and delayed during multiple-color search, demonstrating less efficient attentional deployment to color-defined target objects relative to single-color search. Importantly, these costs were the same in constant-color and variable-color blocks. These results demonstrate that attentional guidance by multiple-feature as compared with single-feature templates is less efficient both when target features remain constant and can be represented in long-term memory and when they change across trials and therefore have to be maintained in working memory.

The effects of self-focus on attentional biases in social anxiety:An ERP study.

Cognitive theories of social anxiety disorder suggest that biased attention plays a key role in maintaining symptoms. These biases include self-focus and attention to socially threatening stimuli in the environment. The goal of this study was to utilize ERPs that are elicited by a change detection task to examine biases in selective attention (i.e., N2pc) and working memory maintenance (i.e., contralateral delay activity; CDA). Additionally, the effect of self-focus was examined using false heart rate feedback. In support of the manipulation, self-focus cues resulted in greater self-reported self-consciousness and task interference, enhanced anterior P2 amplitude and reduced SPN amplitude. Moreover, P2 amplitude for self-focus cues was correlated with reduced task performance for socially anxious subjects only. The difference in P2 amplitude between self-focus and standard cues was correlated with social anxiety independent of depression. As hypothesized, socially anxious participants (n = 20) showed early selection and maintenance of disgust faces relative to neutral faces as indicated by the N2pc and CDA components. Nonanxious controls (n = 22) did not show these biases. During self-focus cues, controls showed marginal evidence of biased selection for disgust faces, whereas socially anxious subjects showed no bias in this condition. Controls showed an ipsilateral delay activity after being cued to attend to one hemifield. Overall, this study supports early and persistent attentional bias for social threat in socially anxious individuals. Furthermore, self-focus may disrupt these biases. These findings and supplementary data are discussed in light of cognitive models of social anxiety disorder, recent empirical findings, and treatment.

Why are some individuals better at using negative attentional templates to suppress distractors? Exploration of interindividual differences in cognitive control efficiency.

Negative templates are based on foreknowledge of distractor features and can lead to more efficient visual search at the group level. However, large individual differences exist in the size of benefits induced by negative cues. The cognitive factors underlying these interindividual differences remain unknown. Previous research has suggested higher engagement of proactive control for negative templates compared to positive templates. We thus hypothesized that interindividual differences in proactive control efficiency may explain the large variability in negative cue benefits. A large data set made up of data from two previously published studies was reanalyzed (N = 139), with eye movements recorded in 36 participants. Individual proactive control efficiency was measured through reaction time (RT) variability. Participants with higher proactive control efficiency exhibited larger benefits after negative cues across two critical measures: Individuals with higher proactive control showed larger RT benefits following negative compared to neutral cues; similarly, individuals with higher proactive control exhibited lower first saccades to cued distractor items. No such relationship was observed for positive cues. Our results confirmed the existence of large interindividual differences in the benefits induced by negative attentional templates. Critically, we show that proactive control drives these interindividual differences in negative template use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Distinct mechanisms of attentional suppression: exploration of trait factors underlying cued- and learned-suppression.

Attention allows us to focus on relevant information while ignoring distractions. Effective suppression of distracting information is crucial for efficient visual search. Recent studies have developed two paradigms to investigate attentional suppression: cued-suppression which is based on top-down control, and learned-suppression which is based on selection history. While both types of suppression reportedly engage proactive control, it remains unclear whether they rely on shared mechanisms. This study aimed to determine the relationship between cued- and learned-suppression. In a within-subjects design, 54 participants performed a cued-suppression task where pre-cues indicated upcoming target or distractor colors, and a learned-suppression task where a salient color distractor was present or absent. No significant correlation emerged between performance in the two tasks, suggesting distinct suppression mechanisms. Cued-suppression correlated with visual working memory capacity, indicating reliance on explicit control. In contrast, learned-suppression correlated with everyday distractibility, suggesting implicit control based on regularities. These results provide evidence for heterogeneous proactive control mechanisms underlying cued- and learned-suppression. While both engage inhibition, cued-suppression relies on deliberate top-down control modulated by working memory, whereas learned-suppression involves implicit suppression shaped by selection history and distractibility traits.

Individual deviations from normative electroencephalographic connectivity predict antidepressant response.

BACKGROUND: Antidepressant medications yield unsatisfactory treatment outcomes in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) with modest advantages over the placebo, partly due to the elusive mechanisms of antidepressant responses and unexplained heterogeneity in patient's response to treatment. Here we develop a novel normative modeling framework to quantify individual deviations in psychopathological dimensions that offers a promising avenue for the personalized treatment for psychiatric disorders. METHODS: We built a normative model with resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) connectivity data from healthy controls of three independent cohorts. We characterized the individual deviation of MDD patients from the healthy norms, based on which we trained sparse predictive models for treatment responses of MDD patients (102 sertraline-medicated and 119 placebo-medicated). Hamilton depression rating scale (HAMD-17) was assessed at both baseline and after the eight-week antidepressant treatment. RESULTS: We successfully predicted treatment outcomes for patients receiving sertraline (r = 0.43, p < 0.001) and placebo (r = 0.33, p < 0.001). We also showed that the normative modeling framework successfully distinguished subclinical and diagnostic variabilities among subjects. From the predictive models, we identified key connectivity signatures in resting-state EEG for antidepressant treatment, suggesting differences in neural circuit involvement between sertraline and placebo responses. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings and highly generalizable framework advance the neurobiological understanding in the potential pathways of antidepressant responses, enabling more targeted and effective personalized MDD treatment. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Establishing Moderators and Biosignatures of Antidepressant Response for Clinical Care for Depression (EMBARC), NCT#01407094.

Optimizing Antidepressant Efficacy: Multimodal Neuroimaging Biomarkers for Prediction of Treatment Response.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common and often severe condition that profoundly diminishes quality of life for individuals across ages and demographic groups. Unfortunately, current antidepressant and psychotherapeutic treatments exhibit limited efficacy and unsatisfactory response rates in a substantial number of patients. The development of effective therapies for MDD is hindered by the insufficiently understood heterogeneity within the disorder and its elusive underlying mechanisms. To address these challenges, we present a target-oriented multimodal fusion framework that robustly predicts antidepressant response by integrating structural and functional connectivity data (sertraline: R2 = 0.31; placebo: R2 = 0.22). Through the model, we identify multimodal neuroimaging biomarkers of antidepressant response and observe that sertraline and placebo show distinct predictive patterns. We further decompose the overall predictive patterns into constitutive network constellations with generalizable structural-functional co-variation, which exhibit treatment-specific association with personality traits and behavioral/cognitive task performance. Our innovative and interpretable multimodal framework provides novel insights into the intricate neuropsychopharmacology of antidepressant treatment and paves the way for advances in precision medicine and development of more targeted antidepressant therapeutics.

Terms of debate: Consensus definitions to guide the scientific discourse on visual distraction.

Hypothesis-driven research rests on clearly articulated scientific theories. The building blocks for communicating these theories are scientific terms. Obviously, communication - and thus, scientific progress - is hampered if the meaning of these terms varies idiosyncratically across (sub)fields and even across individual researchers within the same subfield. We have formed an international group of experts representing various theoretical stances with the goal to homogenize the use of the terms that are most relevant to fundamental research on visual distraction in visual search. Our discussions revealed striking heterogeneity and we had to invest much time and effort to increase our mutual understanding of each other's use of central terms, which turned out to be strongly related to our respective theoretical positions. We present the outcomes of these discussions in a glossary and provide some context in several essays. Specifically, we explicate how central terms are used in the distraction literature and consensually sharpen their definitions in order to enable communication across theoretical standpoints. Where applicable, we also explain how the respective constructs can be measured. We believe that this novel type of adversarial collaboration can serve as a model for other fields of psychological research that strive to build a solid groundwork for theorizing and communicating by establishing a common language. For the field of visual distraction, the present paper should facilitate communication across theoretical standpoints and may serve as an introduction and reference text for newcomers.

Where do we store the memory representations that guide attention?

During the last decade one of the most contentious and heavily studied topics in the attention literature has been the role that working memory representations play in controlling perceptual selection. The hypothesis has been advanced that to have attention select a certain perceptual input from the environment, we only need to represent that item in working memory. Here we summarize the work indicating that the relationship between what representations are maintained in working memory and what perceptual inputs are selected is not so simple. First, it appears that attentional selection is also determined by high-level task goals that mediate the relationship between working memory storage and attentional selection. Second, much of the recent work from our laboratory has focused on the role of long-term memory in controlling attentional selection. We review recent evidence supporting the proposal that working memory representations are critical during the initial configuration of attentional control settings, but that after those settings are established long-term memory representations play an important role in controlling which perceptual inputs are selected by mechanisms of attention.

Negative and positive templates: Two forms of cued attentional control.

Our ability to control our attention to focus on goal-relevant information is critical for functioning in daily life. In addition to the typical attentional control driven by target enhancement described in most theories of attention, recent research has focused on our ability to use information about distractions maintained in working memory to direct our attention away from known distractors. Using these negative templates can improve the efficiency of attention, much in the same way as enhancing information matching search targets. However, these effects only occur for specific tasks or in specific circumstances. In this review, I will focus on our emerging understanding of the relationship between distractor ignoring from negative templates and target enhancement from positive templates. I will also highlight key remaining questions for further study.

Assessing recoding accounts of negative attentional templates using behavior and eye tracking.

Can we use attentional control to ignore known distractor features? Providing cues before a visual search trial about an upcoming distractor color (negative cue) can lead to reaction time benefits compared with no cue trials. This suggests top-down control may use negative templates to actively suppress distractor features, a notion that challenges the mechanisms of top-down control provided in many theories of attention. However, there is currently mixed support for this mechanism in the literature. Alternative explanations have been proposed, which do not require suppression within top-down control but instead involve recoding the negative cue into a positive template based on color or spatial layouts. In three experiments, we contrasted the predictions of active suppression and the recoding strategies. Across experiments, we found consistent evidence against a color recoding account. We also found evidence of accuracy, reaction time, and eye movement benefits when location recoding was not possible. These results suggest that prior benefits from negative cues cannot be explained exclusively by spatial or color recoding. The results indicate that active suppression likely plays a role in the attentional benefits following negative cues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Explicit attentional goals unlock implicit spatial statistical learning.

People can quickly learn spatial distributions of targets and direct attention to likely regions of targets. These implicitly learned spatial biases have been shown to be persistent, transferring to other similar visual search tasks. However, a persistent attentional bias is incompatible with frequently changing goals in our typical daily environment. We propose a flexible goal-specific probability cueing mechanism to address this discrepancy. We examined whether participants could learn and utilize target-specific spatial priority maps across five experiments (each N = 24). In Experiment 1, participants were faster to find the target at the target-specific high-probability location, in line with a goal-specific probability cueing effect. This demonstrated that separate spatial priorities derived from statistical learning can be flexibly activated based on the current goal. In Experiment 2, we ensured the results were not driven solely by intertrial priming. In Experiment 3, we ensured the results were driven by early attentional guidance effects. In Experiment 4, we extended our findings to a complex spatial distribution including four locations, supporting a sophisticated representation of target likelihood in the activated spatial priority maps. Finally, in Experiment 5, we confirmed that the effect was driven by the activation of an attentional template and not associative learning between the target cue and a spatial location. Our findings demonstrate a previously unrecognized mechanism for flexibility within statistical learning. The goal-specific probability cueing effect relies on coordination of feature-based and location-based attention, utilizing information that crosses traditional boundaries between top-down control and selection history. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Attentional templates in visual working memory.

Most theories of attention propose that we maintain attentional templates in visual working memory to control what information is selected. In the present study, we directly tested this proposal by measuring the contralateral-delay activity (CDA) of human event-related potentials during visual search tasks in which the target is cued on each trial. Here we show that the CDA can be used to measure the maintenance of attentional templates in visual working memory while processing complex visual scenes. In addition, this method allowed us to directly observe the shift from working memory to long-term memory representations controlling attention as learning occurred and experience accrued searching for the same target object. Our findings provide definitive support for several critical proposals made in theories of attention, learning, and automaticity.

Event-related potentials elicited by errors during the stop-signal task. II: human effector-specific error responses.

Although previous research with human and nonhuman primates has examined the neural correlates of performance monitoring, discrepancies in methodology have limited our ability to make cross-species generalizations. One major obstacle arises from the use of different behavioral responses and tasks across different primate species. Specifically, it is unknown whether performance-monitoring mechanisms rely on different neural circuitry in tasks requiring oculomotor vs. skeletomotor responses. Here, we show that the human error-related negativity (ERN) elicited by a saccadic eye-movement response relative to a manual response differs in several critical ways. The human saccadic ERN exhibits a prolonged duration, a broader frontomedial voltage distribution, and different neural source estimates than the manual ERN in exactly the same stop-signal task. The human saccadic error positivity (Pe) exhibited a frontomedial voltage distribution with estimated electrical sources in supplementary motor area and rostral anterior cingulate cortex for saccadic responses, whereas the manual Pe showed a posterior scalp distribution and potential origins in the superior parietal lobule. These findings constrain models of the cognitive mechanisms indexed by the ERN/Pe complex. Moreover, by paralleling work with nonhuman primates performing the same saccadic stop-signal task (Godlove et al. 2011), we demonstrate a cross-species homology of error event-related potentials (ERPs) and lay the groundwork for definitively localizing the neural sources of performance-monitoring ERPs.

Benefits from negative templates in easy and difficult search depend on rapid distractor rejection and enhanced guidance.

While most research on attentional templates focuses on how attention can be guided toward targets, a growing body of research has been examining our ability to guide attention away from distractors using negative templates. A recent report showed larger reaction time benefits from negative templates during a difficult search task compared to an easy search task. However, it remains unclear what shifts in attentional processing led to these differences in reaction time benefits. In the current study, we tested the predictions of enhanced guidance and rapid rejection as potential explanations for the differential impact of negative templates based on search difficulty. In Experiment 1, we replicated the larger benefits from negative templates in a within-subjects design. In Experiment 2, we use eye tracking to measure the proportion of fixations directed towards target-colored distractors as an index of enhanced guidance and the dwell time on distractors as a measure of rapid rejection. We found more attentional guidance from negative templates in the difficult search condition. In addition, we found larger benefits of rapid rejection from negative templates in the difficult search condition. While we typically focus on templates as a way of guiding attention, these results highlight another key role played by attentional templates: rapid distractor rejection.

When memory is not enough: electrophysiological evidence for goal-dependent use of working memory representations in guiding visual attention.

Biased competition theory proposes that representations in working memory drive visual attention to select similar inputs. However, behavioral tests of this hypothesis have led to mixed results. These inconsistent findings could be due to the inability of behavioral measures to reliably detect the early, automatic effects on attentional deployment that the memory representations exert. Alternatively, executive mechanisms may govern how working memory representations influence attention based on higher-level goals. In the present study, we tested these hypotheses using the N2pc component of participants' event-related potentials to directly measure the early deployments of covert attention. Participants searched for a target in an array that sometimes contained a memory-matching distractor. In Experiments 1 to 3, we manipulated the difficulty of the target discrimination and the proximity of distractors, but consistently observed that covert attention was deployed to the search targets and not the memory-matching distractors. In Experiment 4, we showed that when participants' goal involved attending to memory-matching items, these items elicited a large and early N2pc. Our findings demonstrate that working memory representations alone are not sufficient to guide early deployments of visual attention to matching inputs and that goal-dependent executive control mediates the interactions between working memory representations and visual attention.

What not to look for: Electrophysiological evidence that searchers prefer positive templates.

To-be-attended information can be specified either with positive cues (I'll be wearing a blue shirt) or with negative cues (I won't be wearing a red shirt). Numerous experiments have found that positive cues help search more than negative cues. Given that negative cues produce smaller benefits compared to positive cues, it stands to reason that searchers may choose to use positive templates instead of negative templates if given the opportunity. Here, we evaluate this possibility with behavioral measures as well as by directly measuring the formation of positive and negative templates with event-related potentials. Analysis of the contralateral delay activity (CDA) elicited by cues revealed that positive and negative templates relied on working memory to the same extent, even when negative working memory templates could have been circumvented by relying on long-term memories of target colors. Whereas the CDA did not discriminate positive and negative templates, a CNV-like potential did, suggesting cognitive differences between positive and negative templates beyond visual working memory. However, when both positive and negative information were presented in each cue, participants preferred to make use of the positive cues, as indicated by a CDA contralateral to the positive color in negative cue blocks, and a lack of search benefits for positive- and negative-color cues relative to positive-color cues alone. Our results show that searchers elect to selectively encode only positive information into visual working memory when both positive and negative information are available.

Probing early attention following negative and positive templates.

In visual search tasks, cues indicating the upcoming distractor color can benefit search performance compared with uninformative cues. However, benefits from these negative cues are consistently smaller than benefits from positive cues (cuing target color), even when both cues are equally informative. This suggests that using a negative template is less effective than using a positive template. Here, we contrast the early attentional effects of negative and positive templates using the letter probe technique. On most trials, participants searched for a shape-defined target after receiving a positive, negative, or neutral color cue. On occasional probe trials, letters briefly appeared on the search items, and participants reported as many letters as possible. Examining the proportion of letters reported on potential targets versus distractors provided a snapshot of attentional allocation at the time of the probe. Across probes at 100, 250, and 400 ms, participants recalled more letters on target-colored objects than letters on distractor-colored objects following both negative and positive cues. These cuing benefits on probe report trials were larger at later probe times than early probe times, indicating both types of cues became more effective across time. Importantly, negative cue probe benefits were consistently smaller than positive cue benefits. Finally, following an extremely short probe (25 ms), we found no RT benefit following negative cues as well as no evidence that negatively cued items capture attention. These results help explain the previously reported differences in RT benefit following positive and negative cues, and support the idea of early active attentional suppression.