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Negative priming refers to the delayed response to a probe target that was previously a prime distractor. Memory retrieval has been proposed as one critical mechanism for the manifestation of negative priming. This perspective perpetuates that the contextual similarity between prime and probe trials should modulate memory retrieval, and therefore, affect negative priming. However, evidence for the contextual similarity effect in negative priming is mixed. The present study tested the hypothesis that attended contextual cues are more likely to be encoded into a distractor representation, and thus, are more likely to modulate the negative priming effect. By manipulating whether the contextual cues were relevant to the task demand in Section 1, and by manipulating whether cues had an abrupt or simultaneous onset, and by analysing reaction time (RT) distributions of the data in Section 2, our results demonstrated that attended cues produced the contextual similarity effect in negative priming, especially when RTs were long. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affective effects on breadth of attention have been related to aspects of different components of affective states such as the arousal and valence of affective experience and the motivational intensity of action tendency. As none of these explanations fully aligns with existing evidence, we hypothesised that affective effects on breadth of attention may arise from the appraisal component of affective states. Based on this reconceptualisation, we tested the effects of conduciveness and power appraisals on two measures of breadth of attention. In two web-based experiments, we manipulated these appraisals in a 2 × 2 design using a game-like arithmetic task where participants could (1) gain or lose rewards (goal conducive vs. obstructive) based on (2) either their action or the actions of a "robot" (high vs. low power). Breadth of attention was assessed using the flanker task (Experiment 1; n = 236) and the Navon task (Experiment 2; n = 215). We found that appraisals did not directly influence breadth of attention even though high power appraisal significantly improved the overall performance in both experiments indicating successful appraisal manipulation. We discuss ways in which these findings inform future efforts to explain the origins of affective effects on attentional breadth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 3 (secondary task: none, related, unrelated) x 2 (ad-video congruence: high/low) between-subjects eye-tracking experiment, participants (N = 153) watched a 9-minute video documentary segment containing one mid-roll video ad while their visual attention to the screen was recorded. Participants in two-thirds of the conditions also read two online articles on a mobile device during the video. Results show effects for both multitasking and task relatedness on attention to the ad and attitudes toward the ad, through distinct pathways. Specifically, multitasking reduced attention to the ad. Moreover, multitasking on an unrelated task lowered attitudes toward the ad by decreasing program involvement and the subsequent attention to the ad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the time on-task hypothesis, the amount of time an individual devotes to an instructional task determines the extent to which learning occurs. Therefore, time off-task hampers learning by limiting learning opportunities. Prior research has generally found a positive relationship between time on-task and achievement; however, the correlation strength is highly variable across studies. Differences in the ways in which time has been operationalised may be one factor contributing to the divergent results. We utilise an existing data set of twenty classrooms (K-4) to investigate whether operationalising time in a consistent manner will yield a stable association between on-task behaviour and learning. Overall, on-task behaviour was positively correlated with learning, controlling for gender, school type, and grade-level. However, this correlation was weak. Importantly, considerable variability in the correlation strength was observed, indicating variations in the prior literature cannot be attributed solely to issues of measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing data on young children's patterning skills and evidence of a link between early pattern knowledge and later mathematics performance, little is known about the strategies children use to solve patterning tasks. This mixed-methods study examined 3- to 5-year-old children's informal strategies when solving eight patterning tasks with three different repeating patterns. In a sequential qualitative-quantitative design, patterning strategies were first longitudinally observed and categorized into five hierarchically ordered categories (n = 6), and then cross-sectionally tested and quantified (n = 174). Results show that young children use various different patterning strategies, and that both patterning strategies and skills organically develop between the age of three and five. However, despite high correct solution rates, the 5-year olds' strategies still reflect little attention to the patterns' structure, suggesting that a pattern and structure based instruction is needed to help young children abstract the unit of repeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's spontaneous focus on numerosity (SFON) is described as an unprompted tendency that is stable across contexts. The attention to number task (AtN), an experimental forced-choice picture-matching task designed to evaluate select aspects of children's focus on numerosity, may reveal whether task materials can implicitly prompt children to focus on numerosity. In two studies, we replicate earlier findings showing an effect of task context on children's performance on the AtN: When asked to identify one or more matches to a target picture from an array of four options, the frequency with which preschoolers and adults identify a numerosity-based match varies as a function of the features on which the remaining match options are based. We addressed a limitation of the original AtN study by including novel combinations of features as additional trials, with which we continued to demonstrate contextual effects. We also showed that adults seemed more susceptible than children to be primed to attend to numerosity on subsequent trials. Children's focus on numerosity under these experimental conditions was remarkably low. We discuss the implications of these findings for better understanding the SFON construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new variation of the Attention Network Task (ANT) was designed to measure the functioning of and interactions between the alerting, exogenous and endogenous visual spatial orienting, and executive control systems in young school children. Previous research has produced mixed results regarding typical functioning of the attention networks in six-year-olds; no ANT has measured the functioning of the endogenous network. This Staged ANT tested the Alerting, Exogenous, and Endogenous orienting networks in separate conditions. Two hundred and forty-seven children (average age 6 years, 103 girls) completed the task. There was no clear benefit of the alerting cue until the spatial orienting cues were introduced into the task, suggesting task complexity was needed before alerting benefits were observed. The validity effect of the exogenous cue was very strong: in contrast, the validity effect of the endogenous cue was very weak. The flanker effect was very strong. A benefit of the alerting cue was shown during both the exogenous and endogenous conditions, while a cost of the alerting cue was shown during the invalid exogenous trials. Neither the alerting nor validity effects interacted with the flanker effect. These results suggest that the alerting cue primes the exogenous and endogenous systems for the upcoming cues. Once the complexity of the task increases with the addition of the flankers, the alerting effect attenuates. The alerting and the two orienting networks interact together but the executive attention network acts independently, in children aged 6 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown that temporary task goals capture more attention than negative, threatening cues, even in anxious individuals. In the current study, we investigated whether temporary task goals would also capture more attention than alcohol-related cues. In Experiment 1, 59 hazardous drinkers performed both a modified dot-probe and a flanker task in which temporary goal- and alcohol-relevant stimuli were presented together. Results of the dot-probe task confirmed an attentional bias towards goal-relevant stimuli in the presence of alcohol cues. This effect was absent in a modified flanker task, although there was a general slowing when the targets appeared on top of goal-relevant stimuli, suggesting that goal-related backgrounds captured more attention than alcohol backgrounds. In Experiment 2, we replicated the dot-probe procedure in 29 hazardous drinkers who had been exposed to a prime dose of alcohol prior to performing the task. Our findings indicate that temporary goal stimuli are more salient than alcohol cues, which might lead the way to novel clinical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the response dynamics of the evaluative priming effect (i.e. facilitation of target responses following evaluatively congruent compared with evaluatively incongruent primes) using a mouse tracking procedure that records hand movements during the execution of categorisation tasks. In Experiment 1, when participants performed the evaluative categorisation task but not the non-evaluative semantic categorisation task, their mouse trajectories for evaluatively incongruent trials curved more toward the opposite response than those for evaluatively congruent trials, indicating the emergence of evaluative priming effects based on response competition. In Experiment 2, implementing a task-switching procedure in which evaluative and non-evaluative categorisation tasks were intermixed, we obtained reliable evaluative priming effects in the non-evaluative semantic categorisation task as well as in the evaluative categorisation task when participants assigned attention to the evaluative stimulus dimension. Analyses of hand movements revealed that the evaluative priming effects in the evaluative categorisation task were reflected in the mouse trajectories, while evaluative priming effects in the non-evaluative categorisation tasks were reflected in initiation times (i.e. the time elapsed between target onset and first mouse movement). Based on these findings, we discuss the methodological benefits of the mouse tracking procedure and the underlying processes of evaluative priming effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial cueing paradigms are popular tools to assess human attention to emotional stimuli, but different variants of these paradigms differ in what participants' primary task is. In one variant, participants indicate the location of the target (location task), whereas in the other they indicate the shape of the target (identification task). In the present paper we test the idea that although these two variants produce seemingly comparable cue validity effects on response times, they rest on different underlying processes. Across four studies (total N = 397; two in the supplement) using both variants and manipulating the motivational relevance of cue content, diffusion model analyses revealed that cue validity effects in location tasks are primarily driven by response biases, whereas the same effect rests on delay due to attention to the cue in identification tasks. Based on this, we predict and empirically support that a symmetrical distribution of valid and invalid cues would reduce cue validity effects in location tasks to a greater extent than in identification tasks. Across all variants of the task, we fail to replicate the effect of greater cue validity effects for arousing (vs. neutral) stimuli. We discuss the implications of these findings for best practice in spatial cueing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]