In a recent study, Lavie and Driver (1996) reported that object-based effects found with distributed attention disappear when attention is focused on a narrow area of the display. This finding stands in contrast with previous reports of object-based effects under conditions of focused attention (e.g., Atchley & Kramer, 1998; Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994). The present study was an attempt to repl...

For those with social phobia self-focused attention has been linked with impairment in social performance increased social anxiety, and a higher frequency of self-critical thoughts during social situations. The purpose of this investigation was to assess correlates of changes in situational self-focus over the course of cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT). Focus of attention was assessed after...

The present experiment examined the shape of the attentional gradient in three-dimensional space. Subjects performed a response-compatibility task in which they were instructed to respond to a centrally located target and ignore flanking distractors. The irrelevant distractors were presented at combinations of seven different depths, three different horizontal separations, and three different v...

Arousal sometimes enhances and sometimes impairs perception and memory. A recent theory attempts to reconcile these findings by proposing that arousal amplifies the competition between stimulus representations, strengthening already strong representations and weakening already weak representations. Here, we report a stringent test of this arousal-biased competition theory in the context of focu...

Self-focused and somatic attention were examined in a sample of 51 patients with tinnitus using the Self-Focus Sentence Completion Test, Private Self-Consciousness Subscale of the Self-Consciousness Scale, Modified Somatic Perception Questionnaire, and the Somatization Subscale of the Symptoms Checklist-90-Revised. Two subgroups of patients emerged following a cluster analysis of the attentiona...

Big brown bats emit biosonar sounds and perceive their surroundings from the delays of echoes received by the ears. Broadcasts are frequency modulated (FM) and contain two prominent harmonics sweeping from 50 to 25 kHz (FM1) and from 100 to 50 kHz (FM2). Individual frequencies in each broadcast and each echo evoke single-spike auditory responses. Echo delay is encoded by the time elapsed betwee...

It has been hypothesized that effective psychological treatment for social phobia changes the person's representation of the self in a more positive direction. In order to test this hypothesis, we analyzed 506 thoughts that were endorsed by 23 social phobic individuals while anticipating socially stressful situations before and after exposure therapy. Treatment efficacy was assessed with the So...

The study compared the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) related clinical symptoms and a wide-ranging attention performance in 216 youths with autistic disorder (autism), 138 youths with Asperger’s disorder (AD) and 255 typically-developing youths. The diagnosis of autism and AD were made based on the clinical assessments according to the DSM-IV criteria and confirmed by the Autis...

Although meditation and mindfulness practices are widely discussed in the scientific literature, there is little formal theory about the cognitive mechanisms that comprise it. Here we begin to develop such a theory by creating a computational cognitive model of a particular type of meditation: focused attention meditation. This model was created within Prims, a cognitive architecture similar to...