The majority of research on voluntary visual attention has focused primarily on specific attentional processes. While we know much about individual attentional abilities such as shifting attention among spatial locations, tracking multiple objects and maintaining attention for specific targets, we know little about how these attentional processes relate to one another. Therefore, we designed a series of tasks to test multiple modes of voluntary visual attention (an attention battery) and examined the interrelationships among them. Our first goal was to select tasks that represented a variety of distinct attentional processes and to ensure that the tasks had sufficient reliability to be useful in correlational analyses. Our results indicated that two of the most commonly used tests lacked sufficient reliability to be useful in correlational studies, but the remainder of our attentional tasks were sufficiently reliable. Our second goal was to demonstrate the utility of the attention battery for testing differences in abilities between groups. To do this we compared performance scores between men and women and found that men out performed women on tasks that required strong spatial-temporal abilities. We also tested observers with behavioral traits related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Our results indicated that they performed within the normal range on the majority of our tasks but made considerably more errors on our center focusing task suggesting a select visual-spatial attentional deficit. Our third goal was to examine the interrelationships among attentional abilities. We used pair-wise correlational analyses to examine the relationships between pairs of tasks, and Revelle's ICLUST algorithm (1979) to examine the hierarchical clustering of tasks. The results suggested that the reliable tasks from our attention battery formed distinct clusters. The first cluster formed around tasks that required strong spatial/temporal abilities, the second formed around tasks that required vigilance/target detection skills, a third formed around tasks that involved global/local abilities and a fourth may exist for the ability to rapidly re-engage attention. These results suggest that there are at least three distinct domains for voluntary visual attentional abilities. Additionally, our results match well with previous research in that the tasks that formed clusters also appear to share similar regions of brain activity.

Last modified

• 09/19/2018

Creator

• KatieAnn KatieAnn

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2F15S

Subject

• Psychology

Keyword

• Psychology

Date created

• 2008-07-30

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright