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Our visual system’s capacity to vary the spatial extent of the attended area is important. It resolves the competition for processing resources demanded by multiple objects in the environment and for facilitating the processing of target items. Thus, the ability to narrow the spatial scope of attentional focus has critical survival value. This conception of varying spatial focus fits well with the distinction drawn by Navon (1977) between Global and Local attention. Thus, Global attention measures attention that is unfocused on a single object and dispersed across a broader space. And Local attention measures attention that is focused on fewer objects that fall within a narrower space. Attention as a non-unitary phenomenon is likely to support this ability to narrow attentional focus. That is to support the processing of relevant information inside the focus, the distracting and irrelevant information outside the focus is simultaneously inhibited. Cutzu and Tsotsos’ (2003) Selective tuning model proposes that attention takes the form of a center-surround distribution, where the attentional focus is accompanied by a suppressive surround and any information falling within this zone is inhibited. Direct neurophysiological evidence supports this profile of cortical responsiveness with an excitatory center and an inhibitory surround and reaffirms the coexistence of attentional amplification and inhibition (Desimone and Duncan, 1995; Hopf et al. 2006). We hypothesize that amplification and inhibition of attentional focus work together to achieve narrowed attention and in general in varying spatial scope of attention. Other theories contradict this view and suggest that ease of processing can’t be attributed to inhibition of processing of irrelevant information but rather to factors such as the degrees of feature overlap between objects that is taken to either facilitate or create interference (Hommel, 2004 and Park and Kanwisher, 1994). And as such differentiate inhibition of objects in the past from interference that disrupts current attentional focus (MacLeod, 2003). Thus, the amplification only hypothesis would dictate that narrowed attention only amplifies the salience of stimulus representations within the focus of attention. Previous studies inferring the involvement of surround inhibition and varying attentional distribution have relied on the speed (RT) and accuracy of attentional shift to uncued location or between the cued and uncued locations. This approach not only makes it difficult to make conclusions about attentional distribution but also more severely depends on the aftereffects to infer the existence of inhibition. Past studies have shown that previously inhibited stimuli are more negatively evaluated than previously attended and novel stimuli (Raymond et al. 2005, 2009, Clancy et al. 2019, De Vito et al. 2018). Kiss et al. (2008) have shown that this affective distractor devaluation is linked to states active during the exposure to stimuli. And Inhibition has also been shown to be utilized to maintain representations in the accessory mode of Working Memory (De Vito and Fenske, 2018). Thus, ‘Affective Devaluation by Inhibition’ can be an acceptable way of testing the involvement of inhibition underlying the narrowed focus of attention. In the present study, we propose that affective stimulus devaluation can be used with global/local attention manipulation tasks to provide support for one of the two alternative hypotheses we consider for testing the involvement of inhibition: amplification only hypothesis versus amplification plus inhibition hypothesis. Hyper inhibition and narrowed attention have been associated with ruminative thinking, whereas broadened attention has been correlated to more associative activations (Bar et al. 2009). Further, Varying the focus of attention has been found to be associated with specific changes in mood (Hanif and Fenske, 2020, under review). Thus, we are interested in understanding if mood can be regulated by changes in attentional focus. To that end, we will be partially integrating Hanif and Fenske’s design to understand changes in mood caused by Global and Local attention. There could be differences in every individual’s ability to control the expansion and contraction of spatial attention scope. Boredom has been conceptualized as the inability to adequately engage attention on internal or external information (Eastwood, 2012). Boredom proneness has also been found to be correlated with another form of attentional failure, spontaneous mind-wandering (Eastwood and Mercer, 2010). If boredom and mind-wandering reflect poor attentional control, then individuals prone to boredom and mind-wandering should be less effective at applying inhibition than those with good attentional control. Thus, we are employing measures of boredom and mind-wandering as measures of attention check for this study as well as including two questionnaires to assess individual differences. |
