Psychology (Functional Area: Developmental Science)
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Browsing Psychology (Functional Area: Developmental Science) by Subject "Attention"
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Item Open Access Adults' long term memory as a function of birth experience(2022-12-14) Au, Kar Yin Michelle; Adler, Scott A.The growing rate of caesarean-section births has aroused concerns as it has shown to be associated with increasing biological and neurodevelopmental risks, but whether such neurodevelopmental impacts manifest behaviorally remain questionable. With studies demonstrating an attentional disruption in c-section-delivered infants and adults, similar effects are hypothesized to filter up the cognitive processing stream to memory function. The current study, therefore, aims to examine the birth experience effect on adults’ long-term memory. Vaginal-delivered and c-section-delivered adults participated in a two-day, memory-based visual search task. Results revealed that the two birth groups exhibited similar long-term memory retention and discrimination. However, memory differences might have been limited due to testing at a single retention interval as differences might manifest over longer intervals. Nonetheless, this finding suggests a negligible birth experience impact on adult’s long-term memory. Whether birth experience affects specific memory pathways and early memory development, as well as affecting memory differentially by c-section types, are yet to be examined.Item Open Access Attentional Control Processing in Working Memory: Effects of Aging and Bilingualism(2018-11-21) Sullivan, Margot Diane; Bialystok, Ellen BSelective attention is required for working memory and is theorized to underlie the process of selecting between two active languages in bilinguals. Studies of working memory performance and bilingualism have produced divergent results and neural investigations are still in the early stages. The purpose of the current series of studies using older and younger bilingual and monolingual adults was to examine working memory processing by manipulating attentional control demands and task domain. It was hypothesized that bilinguals in both age groups will outperform monolinguals when verbal demands are low and when attentional control demands are high. Study 1 included behavioural tasks that varied by domain and attentional control. Study 2 addressed these factors by examining the neural correlates of maintenance and updating using ERPs. A third analytic approach using partial least squares (PLS) analysis was performed on the recognition data from Study 2 to assess contrasting group patterns of amplitude and signal variability using multiscale entropy (MSE). Bilingual performance was poorer than monolingual when the task involved verbal production, but bilinguals outperformed monolinguals when the task involved nonverbal interference resolution. P3 amplitude was largely impacted by attentional demands and aging, whereas language group differences were limited. Extensive language and age group differences emerged once whole brain neural patterns were examined. Bilingual older adults displayed a neural signature similar to younger adults for both amplitude and MSE measures. Older adult monolinguals did not show these patterns and required additional frontal resources for the difficult spatial update condition. Younger bilinguals showed long-range, frontal-parietal MSE patterns for updating in working memory. These results are consistent with the interpretation of brain functional reorganization for bilingual working memory processing and may represent adaptations to a top-down attentional control mechanism.Item Open Access Examining the Time Course of Attention in Monolinguals and Bilinguals(2020-08-11) Chung-Fat-Yim, Ashley Kim; Bialystok, Ellen B.There is converging evidence demonstrating that lifelong experience managing multiple languages on a regular basis has consequences for both language and cognition. Across the lifespan, bilinguals tend to outperform monolinguals on tasks that require selective attention. Compared to studies on children and older adults, these effects are less consistently observed in young adults. The majority of the research with young adults use relatively simple tasks that yield fast reaction times and accuracy rates at ceiling. In addition, these measures capture the endpoint of a chain of dynamic cognitive processes. Hence, the goal of the dissertation was to integrate two time-sensitive methodologies, mouse-tracking and eye-tracking, to examine whether monolinguals and bilinguals differ in the processes engaged between the time a response is initiated to when a response is selected. To assess cognitive performance, young adult and older adult monolinguals and bilinguals were administered the global-local task and oculomotor Stroop task while their eye-movements and mouse-movements were recorded. Both tasks involved focusing on one feature of the stimulus, while ignoring the other feature. When standard analyses of mean reaction time and accuracy were performed, no differences between language groups were observed in either age group. The mouse-tracking measures revealed that similar to experts, young adult bilinguals were slower to initiate a response than young adult monolinguals, while older adult bilinguals had a higher maximum velocity than older adult monolinguals. By using time-sensitive methodologies, we gain a deeper understanding of the cognitive processes associated with attention that are impacted by bilingualism during decision-making.Item Open Access Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Alleviates Stress and Depression in Adults with Chronic Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial(2017-07-27) Paneduro, Denise; Wiseheart, Melody S.The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in improving attention and pain-related outcomes, using a randomized controlled trial. Secondary aims included evaluating changes in mindfulness and pain acceptance following MBSR training and their role in improving outcomes, exploring the role of homework adherence in enhanced outcomes, and assessing stability of improvements long-term at 3-months follow up. Forty-nine adults with chronic pain between 18 and 80 years of age were randomized to an 8-week MBSR group or a Waitlist Control (WC) group that was then crossed over into the MBSR treatment. Outcome measures included pain intensity, pain disability, depression, anxiety, stress, mindfulness, pain acceptance, and performance on a change blindness task. Measures were administered prior to treatment, following the wait period for the WC group, following MBSR treatment, and 3-months subsequent to MBSR treatment completion. It was hypothesized that the MBSR group would demonstrate significant improvements in these outcomes, with the exception of pain severity, following treatment relative to the waitlist control group and that these benefits would be maintained at follow up. Linear regression analyses using changes scores of the outcomes revealed significantly greater reductions from pre-to-post treatment in the MBSR group compared to the WC group in depression and stress (ps < .05), and increases in mindfulness (p < .01). Multiple linear regression analyses using the entire sample demonstrated that increases in mindfulness significantly predicted decreases in depression (p < .05) and stress (p < .01) and increases in pain acceptance was significantly predictive of decreases in pain disability (p < .05). Significant correlations were obtained between the number of days engaging in practice and stress, pain acceptance, and attention. Benefits observed at post-treatment were maintained at 3-months follow up. Results suggest that mindfulness-based approaches can be integrated in pain clinics to facilitate patient recovery by reducing emotional distress.Item Open Access Spatial Attention-Modulated Surround Suppression Across Development: A Psychophysical Study(2019-03-05) Wong Kee You, Audrey Marie Beatrice; Adler, Scott A.Several studies have demonstrated that surrounding a given spatial location of attentional focus is a suppressive field (e.g., Hopf et al., 2006). Though several studies have provided psychophysical (e.g., Cutzu & Tsotsos, 2003) and neural evidence of this effect in young adults (e.g., Boehler et al., 2009), whether this phenomenon is also observed in development was not fully known. Experiment 1 of the current study was therefore conducted to examine whether attention-modulated surround suppression was observed in younger age groups. Participants between the ages of 8 and 22 years were tested on a two-alternative forced choice task, in which their accuracy in discriminating between two red target letters among black distractor letters was measured. A spatial cue guided the participants attention to the upcoming location of one of the target letters. As would be predicted for the young adults, their accuracy increased as the inter-target separation increased, suggesting that visual processing is suppressed in the immediate vicinity of an attended location. Pre-adolescents (12 to 13 years) and adolescents (14 to 17 years) also exhibited attentional surround suppression, but intriguingly their inhibitory surround appeared to be larger than that of young adults. The 8- to 11-year-olds did not exhibit attentional suppression. In Experiment 2, when a central cue instead of a spatial cue was presented, surround suppression was no longer observed in an independent set of 8- to 27-year-olds, suggesting that the findings of Experiment 1 were indeed related to spatial attention. In Experiment 3, yet another independent group of 8- to 9-year-olds were tested on a modified version of the Experiment 1 task, where the cue presentation time was doubled to provide them with more support and more time to complete their top-down feedback processes. With this manipulation, attention-modulated surround suppression was still not observed in the 8- to 11-year-olds. Overall the current study findings suggest that top-down attentional feedback processes are still immature until approximately 12 years of age, and that they continue to be refined throughout adolescence. Protracted white matter maturation and diffuse functional connectivity in younger age groups are some of the potential underlying mechanisms driving the current findings.