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Objective: Parkinson's disease (PD) may affect not only motor functions, but also cognitive processes such as attention. While past research has examined PD impact on spatial attention, it has not addressed how the key functions of attentional orienting and alerting in PD are mediated by cueing format, an ecologically relevant parameter. We assessed how exogenous and endogenous orienting cue modes affect PD patients' visuospatial attention expressed as dorsal attention network orienting benefits, ventral attention network reorienting costs, and alerting abilities., Method: Ninety PD patients and 72 healthy comparison participants performed a spatial attention task in an engaging game format which required selection of a target location without prior cueing, or with temporal, valid spatial, or invalid spatial exogenous or endogenous cueing., Results: PD patients differed from healthy participants only in response time benefits in orienting under endogenous probabilistically predictive cue processing. They did not exhibit greater reorienting costs, differences in inhibition of return, or alerting deficits, irrespective of modes of cueing., Conclusion: These results suggest that fundamental orienting and alerting functions might be intact in PD, with challenges emerging only if additional cognitive processes, including those related to motor preparation, are required to utilize cue information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

While perception is recognized as being atypical in individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC), the underlying mechanisms for such atypicality are unclear. Here we test the hypothesis that individuals with ASC will show enhanced orientation discrimination compared with neurotypical observers. This prediction is based both on anecdotal report of superior discriminatory skills in ASC and also on evidence in the auditory domain that some individuals with ASC have superior pitch discrimination. In order to establish whether atypical perception might be mediated by an imbalance in the ratio of neural excitation and inhibition (E:I ratio), we also measured peak gamma frequency, which provides an indication of neural inhibition levels. Using a rigorous thresholding method, we found that orientation discrimination thresholds for obliquely oriented stimuli were significantly lower in participants with ASC. Using EEG to measure the visually induced gamma band response, we also found that peak gamma frequency was higher in participants with ASC, relative to a well-matched control group. These novel results suggest that neural inhibition may be increased in the occipital cortex of individuals with ASC. Implications for existing theories of an imbalance in the E:I ratio of ASC are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the effects of irrelevant stimulus orientation on visually guided grasping movements. Participants had to grasp a rectangular object at either the ends or the sides, depending on the color of a visual stimulus. In this task, correspondence between stimulus orientation and object orientation (stimulus-object congruency) and correspondence between stimulus orientation and hand orientation (stimulus-hand congruency) varied independently. Two experiments, with different sets of object orientations, revealed a consistent pattern of results. In particular, there were significant effects of stimulus-hand congruency, suggesting that perceiving an object activates congruently oriented hand movements. However, stimulus-object congruency had no effects, indicating that participants did not benefit from a preactivation of object orientation in the present task. The pattern of congruency effects implies that the cognitive representation, which is affected by irrelevant visual information, entails only those object or response features that are needed to select and control a response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

P. McLeod, N. Reed, and Z. Dienes (2002) argued that the linear optical trajectory (LOT) strategy incorrectly cues fielders to run forward for balls headed beyond them. The authors of this article explain that the downward optical curvature found for balls landing beyond the fielder's initial position occurs because the balls reorient the direction the fielder is facing during pursuit. Thus, when downward optical curvature begins, the ball is headed to land in front of where the fielder is facing and running. This investigation of open-loop failure conditions has led to new insights such as the reorientation of the fielder, and it supports the use of maintaining matching rates of vertical and lateral optical ball movement consistent with primacy of the LOT control mechanism even when interception is unachievable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the source and location of the orientation advantage effect based on the findings made by J. Beck in 1972 on the relationship between similarity grouping and peripheral discriminability. Nonsensitivity of the effect to location uncertainty; Necessity of relative judgment for the manifestation of the effect; Conditions generating the effect.

Previous work has shown that talking on a mobile phone leads to an impairment of visual attention. Gunnell et al. (2020) investigated the locus of these dual-task impairments and found that although phone conversations led to cognitive delays in response times, other mechanisms underlying particular selective attention tasks were unaffected. Here, we investigated which attentional networks, if any, were impaired by having a phone conversation. We used the attentional network task (ANT) to evaluate performance of the alerting, orienting, and executive attentional networks, both in conditions where people were engaged in a conversation and where they were silent. Two experiments showed that there was a robust delay in response across all three networks. However, at the individual network level, holding a conversation did not influence the size of the alerting or orienting effects but it did reduce the size of the conflict effect within the executive network. The findings suggest that holding a conversation can reduce the overall speed of responding and, via its influence on the executive network, can reduce the amount of information that can be processed from the environment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Presents a study to determine how wild fox squirrels return to remembered locations in an arboreal environment, following training on an outdoor vertical maze. Maze manipulations with blocked routes, shifts and rotations; Allothetic frame of reference to orient; Hierarchical organization of the memory of the route.

Studies the acoustic startle reflex (ASR), orienting (OR) and ponto-geniculo-occipital waves (PGOE) elicited by tones during wakefulness (W), rapid eye movement (REM), REM without muscle atonia (REM-A) and non-REM (NREM) in cats. PGOE eliciting across behavioral states; Possibility that during REM there exists a suppression of the mechanisms that initiate movement in general.

Attention is biased toward stimuli that have been associated with aversive outcomes in the past. This bias has previously been interpreted as reflecting automatic orienting toward threat signals. However, in many prior studies, either the threatening stimulus provided valuable predictive information, signaling the possibility of an otherwise unavoidable punishment and thereby allowing participants to brace themselves, or the aversive event could be avoided with fast and accurate task performance. Under these conditions, monitoring for threat could be viewed as an adaptive strategy. In the present study, fixating a color stimulus immediately resulted in a shock on some trials, providing a direct incentive not to look at the stimulus. Nevertheless, this contingency resulted in participants fixating the shock-associated stimulus more frequently than a neutral distractor matched for physical salience. Our findings demonstrate that threatening stimuli are automatically attended even when attending such stimuli is actually responsible for triggering the aversive event, providing compelling evidence for automaticity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans and other apes represent magnitudes spatially, demonstrated by their responding faster and more accurately to one side of space when presented with small quantities and to the other side of space when presented with large quantities. This representation is flexible and shows substantial variability between cultural groups in humans and between and within individuals in great apes. In contrast, recent findings suggest that chicks show a spatial representation of magnitude that is highly lateralized and inflexible, implying a qualitatively different underlying representation than in primates. Using methods similar to those used with great apes and humans, we trained adult domestic pigeons ( Columba livia ) and blue jays ( Cyanocitta cristata ) to select the smaller (or larger) of two nonadjacent quantity arrays; later, this task was reversed. At test, birds were presented with novel probe pairs consisting of adjacent quantity pairs (e.g., 2 vs. 3). Both species showed robust evidence for a flexible spatial representation of magnitude with considerable individual variability in the orientation of this representation. These results are not consistent with an inflexible, lateralized, left-to-right representation of magnitude in birds, but are consistent with the flexible spatial representation of magnitude observed in apes and humans. We conclude that the tendency to organize quantities spatially may be a fundamental and evolutionarily ancient feature of cognition that is widespread among vertebrates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

In previous research, pigeons and hill mynas that performed differently on an object permanence task were presumed to attend to objects in different ways (Plowright, Reid, & Kilian, 1998). In the current study, we conducted 4 experiments to investigate if the attention of hill mynas and pigeons is object-based and if there are species differences in their visual-attentional processes. In Experiment 1, pigeons were tested in a spatial cueing task requiring them to respond sequentially to a cue and a target that appeared at 1 of the 4 ends of two rectangles. Both when the response to a fixation stimulus was required before target presentation (Experiment 1A) and when such a response was not required (Experiment 1B), there were no significant differences in reaction times to the targets appearing at cued and noncued rectangles; these results provided no evidence of object-based attention in pigeons. In Experiment 2, for 2 of the 3 hill mynas tested in a procedure similar to that for the pigeons in Experiment 1B, reaction times were shorter to the target appearing on the cued rectangle than to the target appearing on noncued rectangle, suggesting the operation of object-based attention, as in humans. In Experiment 3, we tested naive pigeons by means of the procedure used for hill mynas in Experiment 2. However, again pigeons showed no evidence of object-based attention, suggesting a species difference in attentional processes. The generality of the current results and evolution of the possible species differences were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Humans use eye- and head-gaze cues to facilitate social interactions among members of their own species. Research examining nonhuman animal-to-human cueing effects has received little attention, but may provide valuable insight into the mechanisms that have enabled species to coexist and thrive in shared environments. The objective of the current studies was to determine how gaze cues influence the attention and target detection of humans when they view images of mammals (human, orangutan, and dog; Experiment 1) and aves (owl, macaw parrot, and duck; Experiment 2). Participants were presented with an image of a forward-facing head that was suddenly replaced with an image of the head facing to the left or right, creating an apparent head rotation and change of orientation. A target appeared randomly on the left or right side of the head-gaze cue after 1 of 4 stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs; 100, 300, 600, or 1,000 ms). Participants were asked to indicate the location of the target by pressing a spatially corresponding key. The analysis of response times (RTs) revealed facilitatory cueing effects (RTs to cued targets were shorter than to uncued targets) across all SOAs in Experiment 1 (images of mammals). Such facilitatory cueing effects were only present at short SOAs (i.e., 100 and 300 ms) in Experiment 2 (images of aves). These findings provide initial evidence that the processing of gaze cues observed during human-to-human interactions is similar to that observed during mammal-to-human interactions, but is different in aves-to-human interactions. Alternative interpretations of the data are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Attention can be guided by expectations stemming from long-term memories. In addition to such endogenous cues, exogenous salient stimuli capture attention, such as those conveying threat. This study examined the extent to which threatening distractors affect the employment of memories in guiding attention, and whether this is affected by trait anxiety. Emotional distractors were incorporated into a speeded target detection task, in which memory cues were presented simultaneously with task irrelevant emotional faces. Fearful face distractors disrupted target detection significantly more than neutral faces and the additional disruption to task performance from fearful compared with neutral faces was positively correlated with trait anxiety scores. The current findings of attentional capture by threat in the context of a second, powerful endogenous driver of attention underscore the magnitude of anxiety-related attention to threat. That is, threatening stimuli are sufficiently salient to induce prolonged disruption to goal directed behavior in anxious individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

There are mixed results regarding the differentiation of neurofunctional correlates of spatial abilities. Previous studies employed complex environments or alternate memory tasks which could potentially add to inconsistencies across studies of navigation. To help elucidate the existing mixed findings, we conducted a study in a simplistic environment without a supplemental memory task in order to examine navigationally relevant neural function using fMRI. Participants completed a virtual navigation task where they learned the relationship between landmarks, environmental features, and a goal. The goal was a distinct landmark, or feature, consistently situated in one corner, or a geometric cue, of a rectangular room. Test trials varied the relationship of featural and geometric cues allowing insight into navigational strategies when using these cues and when the cues are in conflict. Behavioral results showed participants learned the task rapidly and utilized both landmark feature-based and environmental geometry-based strategies to locate the goal; preferring the feature-based strategy. Neuroimaging results provided evidence for activation in navigationally relevant regions, including the parahippocampus, caudate, and retrosplenial cortex. These results demonstrate the importance of these structures and their relation to environmental geometry and feature use while navigating an enclosed simplistic environment. The results provide clarification regarding the role of the parahippocampus and caudate when using geometric- or landmark-based strategies and demonstrate the prerequisite of environmental novelty to elicit hippocampal activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Our attention frequently shifts from ongoing tasks to internal content such that we find ourselves mind wandering (MW). Recent research has revealed that increasing age in adulthood is associated with a decrease in the frequency of MW, but the factors that contribute to this age-related effect are unclear. Thus, in the present study we conducted a meta-analysis of age differences in MW that aimed to analyze (a) the size and consistency of the age-related decrease in MW frequency, and (b) the moderating impact of methodological and sociodemographic factors. We analyzed studies comparing MW frequency in healthy younger and older groups and found a large effect in older adults. The age-related decrease in MW was more pronounced for probe compared to self-caught procedures, when task-related interfering thoughts were measured separately, when visual masks were presented, as the proportion of targets increased, and as older participants and fewer women were included in older adult groups. In discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, we highlight the role of motivation and response options and provide recommendations for future research. These included emphasizing the need for open-ended methods in order to avoid bias due to MW instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to deepen our understanding of attention (a core cognitive ability) in Rett syndrome (RTT), an x-linked neurodevelopmental disorder caused by mutations in the MECP2 gene. We focused on 2 key aspects of visual orienting-shifting and disengaging attention-both of which are critical for exploring the visual world. We used gaze-based measures and eye-tracking technology to minimize demands on the limited verbal and motor abilities associated with RTT., Method: Shifting and disengaging attention were examined in 31 children (2-12 years) with Rett Syndrome (RTT) and 31 age-matched typically developing (TD) controls. Using the gap-overlap paradigm, the frequency and speed of shifting attention from a central to peripheral target were compared on Baseline trials, where the central stimulus disappears as the peripheral target appears, and Overlap trials, where the central stimulus remains, thus requiring disengagement., Results: Our findings revealed that children with RTT had more "sticky fixations" (p < .001). That is, they had fewer saccades to the peripheral target than TD children, and this was true on both baseline (77% vs. 95%), and overlap trials (63% vs. 90%). The younger children in the RTT group also had slower saccadic RTs (SRTs) than their TD counterparts (p = .04). Within the RTT group, SRTs correlated with symptom severity. Surprisingly, disengagement cost (the relative difference between gap and overlap SRTs) did not differ across groups., Conclusion: Our results suggest that children with Rett have difficulty shifting attention and, to a lesser extent, disengaging attention, whereas with other disorders, problems with disengagement are paramount. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatial researchers have been arguing over the optimum cognitive strategy for spatial problem-solving for several decades. The current article aims to shift this debate from strategy dichotomies to strategy flexibility-a cognitive process, which although alluded to in spatial research, presents practical methodological challenges to empirical testing. In the current study, participants' eye movements were tracked during a mental rotation task (MRT) using the Tobii ×60 eye-tracker. Results of a latent profile analysis, combining different eye movement parameters, indicated two distinct eye-patterns-fixating and switching patterns. The switching eye-pattern was associated with high mental rotation performance. There were no sex differences in eye-patterns. To investigate strategy flexibility, we used a novel application of the changepoint detection algorithm on eye movement data. Strategy flexibility significantly predicted mental rotation performance. Male participants demonstrated higher strategy flexibility than did female participants. Our findings highlight the importance of strategy flexibility in spatial thinking and have implications for designing spatial training techniques. The novel approaches to analyzing eye movement data in the current paper can be extended to research beyond the spatial domain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The current pilot study probed the time course of attentional bias to cannabis-related cues among individuals with cannabis use disorders (CUDs) compared with healthy controls. Forty participants (individuals with CUDs, n = 20, M age = 26.2 and healthy controls, n = 20, M age = 28) completed a modified visual attention task in which they made decisions about the orientation of a target line while ignoring temporally flanking lines and cannabis-related, positive-, negative-, and neutral-images as behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. To examine the time course of attentional bias, we analyzed ERP responses separately to targets and distractors from 125 ms to 620 ms after stimulus onset. Results showed that, compared with healthy controls, cannabis users demonstrated greater selective attention failure (i.e., had more difficulties ignoring distractor stimuli) when making decisions in the presence of cannabis cues. Likewise, cannabis smokers demonstrated relatively larger differences in accuracy (i.e., committed more errors in target decisions) between trials involving cannabis cues versus neutral cues. ERP data revealed that the N1 component (125-200 ms after stimulus onset) to flankers preceding cannabis cues peaked relatively earlier and was of larger amplitude in cannabis users, suggesting an early perceptual bias toward the cannabis cues. Findings suggest that individuals with CUDs have poorer selective attention, impaired inhibitory control, and early attentional biases toward cannabis uses compared with healthy nonusers. The augmented early perceptual response suggests an involuntary orienting of attention toward cannabis cues. Implications for future research and intervention development for individuals with CUD are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Mobile animals need to reliably find goal locations and animal navigators acquire and use multiple cue sets within their environment designating direction and distance estimates of these locations. Foraging ants use multiple navigational tools including path integration and the learning of the landmark panorama. During landmark-based navigation, foragers first acquire the landmark cues around the nest through preforaging learning walks, and then learn non-nest site cues along their foraging routes. Here, we explore both foragers' ability to extrapolate views from around the nest to local displacement sites and landmark learning during the first foraging trips away from the nest area. During Experiment 1, foragers were given variable amounts of exposure to the nest area before being displaced 8 m away where their return trips were recorded. In Experiment 2, foragers' return trips from a site 8 m from the nest were recorded with the surrounding landmarks during either the outbound or inbound trip obstructed from view and with/without the aid of a homeward vector. Foragers were unable to correctly orient or return home efficiently regardless of the exposure level to the nest panorama, suggesting an inability to extrapolate views from learning walks and supporting recognition-based navigation. Foragers were able to use experience of either the outbound- or inbound-view sequence to initially orient home, yet were unable to quickly return to the nest when only exposed to the inbound route. Our results suggest that exposure to the outbound foraging path is critical for efficient homeward route formation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: This study aims to assess the role of mental-orientation in the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease using a novel task., Method: A behavioral study (Experiment 1) compared the mental-orientation task to standard neuropsychological tests in patients across the Alzheimer's disease spectrum. A functional MRI study (Experiment 2) in young adults compared activations evoked by the mental-orientation and standard-orientation tasks as well as their overlap with brain regions susceptible to Alzheimer's disease pathology., Results: The mental-orientation task differentiated mild cognitively impaired and healthy controls at 95% accuracy, while the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination, Mini-Mental State Examination and standard-orientation achieved 74%, 70% and 50% accuracy, respectively. Functional MRI revealed the mental-orientation task to preferentially recruit brain regions exhibiting early Alzheimer's-related atrophy, unlike the standard-orientation test., Conclusions: Mental-orientation is suggested to play a key role in Alzheimer's disease, and consequently in early detection and follow-up of patients along the Alzheimer's disease spectrum. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

Knowing where north is provides a navigator with invaluable information for learning and recalling a space, particularly in places with limited navigational cues, like complex indoor environments. Although north is effectively used by orienteers, pilots, and military personnel, very little is known about whether nonexpert populations can or will use north to create an accurate representation of an indoor space. In the current study, we taught people 2 nonoverlapping routes through a complex indoor environment, with which they were not familiar-a university hospital with few windows and several turns. Along 1 route, they wore a vibrotactile compass on their arm, which vibrated continuously indicating the direction of north. Along the other route, they were only told where north was at the start of the route. At the beginning, the end, and back at the beginning of each route, participants pointed to well-known landmarks in the surrounding city and campus (external landmarks), and newly learned landmarks in the hospital (internal landmarks). We found improved performance with the compass only for external landmarks, driven by people's use of the availability of north to orient these judgments. No such improved orientation occurred for the internal landmarks. These findings reveal the utility of vibrotactile compasses for learning new indoor spaces. We speculate that such cues help users map new spaces onto familiar spaces or to familiar reference frames. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

Two experiments investigated how people use buildings and street configurations to reorient in large-scale environments. In immersive virtual environments, participants learned objects' locations in an intersection consisting of 4 streets. The objects' locations were specified by 2 cues: a building and/or the street configuration. During the test, participants localized objects with either or both cues. Participants were divided into a competition group and a no-competition group. The competition group learned both cues whereas the no-competition group learned the single cue for trials with single testing cue. For the trials with both testing cues, both groups learned both cues and these 2 cues were placed at the original locations or displaced relative to each other during testing. Critically, the familiarity with the environment was also manipulated: in Experiment 1, participants learned the same building at the same corner of the same intersection for all trials (familiar); in Experiment 2, participants learned different buildings at different corners of different intersections across trials (unfamiliar). The results showed that the performance in the competition group was impaired in unfamiliar environments but not in familiar environments. When displacement occurred, the participants' preference in unfamiliar environments was determined by the response accuracy of using the 2 cues respectively, whereas participants in the familiar environment preferred the street configuration with a probability higher than what was solely determined by response accuracy based on individual cues. When the 2 cues were consistent with each other, they were combined additively in both familiar and unfamiliar environments. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

Orienting is a critical skill for all mobile animals. Two commonly studied visual components used to guide orientation in an environment are geometric (e.g., distance or direction) and featural cues (e.g., color or texture). Previous research has shown that visual-cue use and cue weighing can depend on the navigator's previous experience, the nature and reliability of the cues, and genetic factors. Accordingly, the domestic mouse (Mus musculus) is a species of increasing interest because of its potential as a model for human neurological disorders with associated spatial disorientation, as is seen in Alzheimer's disease. In the present study, adult C57BL/6 mice were trained to search for a hidden food reward in one corner of a rectangular environment with featural information displayed continuously along the walls. After training, one group of mice was given a block of testing in which the featural information was removed, followed by a second block of testing in which the featural information was put in conflict with the learned configuration of featural and geometric cues. A second group of mice was given the same set of tests, but in the reverse order. Our results show that the mice incidentally encoded the geometry of the environment if they had experience with featural cues being unreliable prior to tests, during which featural cues were completely removed (unstable). Furthermore, we found when featural and geometric cues provide conflicting spatial information, this unreliability of featural cues over the course of the study may influence cue weighing. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

The authors investigated how humans use multiple landmarks to locate a goal. Participants searched for a hidden goal location along a line between 2 distinct landmarks on a computer screen. On baseline trials, the location of the landmarks and goal varied, but the distance between each of the landmarks and the goal was held constant, with 1 landmark always closer to the goal. In Experiment 1, some baseline trials provided both landmarks, and some provided only 1 landmark. On probe trials, both landmarks were shifted apart relative to the previously learned goal location. Participants searched between the locations specified by the 2 landmarks and their search locations were shifted more toward the nearer landmark, suggesting a weighted integration of the conflicting landmarks. Moreover, the observed variance in search responses when both cues were presented in their normal locations was reduced compared to the variance on tests with single landmarks. However, the variance reduction and the weightings of the landmarks did not always show Bayesian optimality. In Experiment 2, some participants were trained only with each of the single landmarks. On subsequent tests with the 2 cues in conflict, searching did not shift toward the nearer landmark and the variance of search responses of these single-cue trained participants was larger than their variance on single-landmark tests, and even larger than the variance predicted by using the 2 landmarks alternatively on different trials. Taken together, these results indicate that cue combination occurs only when the landmarks are presented together during the initial learning experience. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Previous research in spatial reorientation, which only presented the target location in the corner, has found that adults weighed angles more than wall lengths. We proposed that in previous research, angular cues were available for direct use whereas length cues had to be associated with the left/right sense. We thus investigated whether the directness of cues rather than the cues themselves accounted for the previous findings in the reorientation task. Through navigating a virtual environment, 111 participants were trained to remember target locations in a parallelogram-shaped room and tested in varied versions of the training environment: (a) a reverse-parallelogram environment where angular information conflicted with wall length information, (b) a rhombic environment that preserved only angular information from the training environment, and (c) a rectangular environment that preserved only wall length information. We varied the directness of the two cues in the current study. In addition to the condition with target location in the corner, we included a condition that placed the target positions in the middle of the walls, making the length cues direct. The results revealed that angular information no longer received priority, especially in the wall condition. More interestingly, compared to the group trained with the target positions at walls, the group trained with target positions at corners weighted angular cues more heavily in conflict trials and performed less accurately using length cues in rectangular environments. The results suggest that human adults prefer to rely on direct cues more than indirect cues in the reorientation process. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

The paper-and-pencil Mental Rotation Test (Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978) consistently produces large sex differences favoring men (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). In this task, participants select 2 of 4 answer choices that are rotations of a probe stimulus. Incorrect choices (i.e., foils) are either mirror reflections of the probe or structurally different. In contrast, in the mental rotation experimental task (Shepard & Metzler, 1971) participants judge whether 2 stimuli are the same but rotated or different by mirror reflection. The goal of the present research was to examine sources of sex differences in mental rotation, including the ability to capitalize on the availability of structure foils. In 2 experiments, both men and women had greater accuracy and faster reaction times (RTs) for structurally different compared with mirror foils in different versions of the Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotation Test (Experiment 1) and the Shepard and Metzler experimental task (Experiment 2). A significant male advantage in accuracy but not response time was found for both trial types. The male advantage was evident when all foils were structure foils so that mental rotation was not necessary (Experiment 3); however, when all foils were structure foils and participants were instructed to look for structure foils a significant sex difference was no longer evident (Experiment 4). Results suggest that the mental rotation process is not the only source of the sex difference in mental rotation tasks. Alternative strategy use is another source of sex differences in these tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

During locomotion, individuals can determine their positions with either idiothetic cues from movement (path integration systems) or visual landmarks (piloting systems). This project investigated how these 2 systems interact in determining humans' positions. In 2 experiments, participants studied the locations of 5 target objects and 1 single landmark. They walked a path after the targets and the landmark had been removed and then replaced the targets at the end of the path. Participants' position estimations were calculated based on the replaced targets' locations (Mou & Zhang, 2014). In Experiment 1, participants walked a 2-leg path. The landmark reappeared in a different location during or after walking the second leg. The results showed that participants' position estimations followed idiothetic cues in the former case, but the displaced landmark in the latter case. In Experiment 2, participants saw the displaced landmark when they reached the end of the second leg and then walked a third leg without the view of the landmark. Participants were asked or not to point to 1 of the targets before they walked the third leg. The results showed that the initial position of the third leg was still influenced by the displaced landmark in the former case, but was determined by idiothetic cues in the latter case. These results suggest that the path integration system works dynamically and the piloting system resets the path integration system when people judge their positions in the presence of conflicting piloting cues. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Recent empirical and theoretical work suggests that visual features such as color and orientation can be stored or retrieved independently in visual working memory (VWM), even in cases when they belong to the same object. Yet it remains unclear whether different feature dimensions have their own capacity limits, or whether they compete for shared but limited resources in VWM. In 3 experiments, participants memorized arrays of dual-feature objects, for which the number of feature values was fixed on one feature dimension and was varied on the other feature dimension. The results show that memory performance on the fixed dimension was not affected by the number of to-be-stored feature values on the other. These findings provide converging evidence that visual features can be encoded and stored separately in VWM if the task requires it, with each having its own capacity limit and little cross-dimensional interference. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

The present research explores how the trajectory of learning on a working memory task changes throughout the life span, and whether gains in working memory performance are exclusively a question of initial working memory capacity (WMC) or whether age exerts an independent effect. In a large, cross-sectional study of younger, middle-aged, and older adults, we examined learning on a widely used working memory task-the dual n-back task-over 20 sessions of practice. We found that, while all age groups improved on the task, older adults demonstrated less improvement on the task, and also reached a lower asymptotic maximum performance than younger adults. After controlling for initial WMC, we found that age exerted independent effects on training gains and asymptotic performance; older adults tended to improve less and reached lower levels of performance than younger adults. The difference between younger and older adults' rates of learning depended in part on initial WMC. These results suggest that age-related effects on working memory include not only effects on capacity, but also plasticity and the ability to improve on a task. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Joint attention-the mutual focus of 2 individuals on an item-speeds detection and discrimination of target information. However, what happens to that information beyond the initial perceptual episode? To fully comprehend and engage with our immediate environment also requires working memory (WM), which integrates information from second to second to create a coherent and fluid picture of our world. Yet, no research exists at present that examines how joint attention directly impacts WM. To investigate this, we created a unique paradigm that combines gaze cues with a traditional visual WM task. A central, direct gaze 'cue' face looked left or right, followed 500 ms later by 4, 6, or 8 colored squares presented on one side of the face for encoding. Crucially, the cue face either looked at the squares (valid cue) or looked away from them (invalid cue). A no shift (direct gaze) condition served as a baseline. After a blank 1,000 ms maintenance interval, participants stated whether a single test square color was present or not in the preceding display. WM accuracy was significantly greater for colors encoded in the valid versus invalid and direct conditions. Further experiments showed that an arrow cue and a low-level motion cue-both shown to reliably orient attention-did not reliably modulate WM, indicating that social cues are more powerful. This study provides the first direct evidence that sharing the focus of another individual establishes a point of reference from which information is advantageously encoded into WM. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

Objectives: Delayed recall of the first words of a list-the primacy position-is thought to be particularly dependent on intact memory consolidation. Hippocampal volume has been suggested as the primary neuronal correlate of delayed primacy recall in cognitively normal elderly individuals. Here, we studied the association of hippocampal volume with primacy recall in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI)., Method: We investigated serial position performance in 88 subjects with aMCI using a 16-word list (the California Verbal Learning Test [CVLT]). Primacy and recency performance were measured during learning and delayed recall. Hippocampal volumes were automatically determined from structural MRI scans. We conducted regression analyses with bilateral hippocampal volumes as predictors and serial position indices as outcomes., Results: After controlling for age, gender, and total intracranial volume, bilateral hippocampal volume was not associated with primacy recall either during learning or delayed recall. Primacy performance during learning was associated with the right inferior and middle temporal gyrus as well as the right inferior parietal cortex and supramerginal gyrus. During delayed recall, primacy performance was related to the bilateral supramarginal gyri., Conclusions: Our findings suggest a reduced primacy effect in aMCI already during learning, contrasting previous findings in normal cognitive aging. This might indicate impaired encoding and consolidation processes at an early stage of episodic memory acquisition. Furthermore, our data indicate that hippocampal volume may not be a relevant determinant of residual primacy performance in the stage of aMCI, which may rather depend on temporal and parietal neocortical networks. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

We examined whether a reduced ability to ignore irrelevant information is responsible for the age-related decline of working memory (WM) functions. By means of event-related brain potentials, we will show that filtering is not out of service in older adults but shifted to a later processing stage. Participants performed a visual short-term memory task (change-detection task) in which targets were presented along with distractors. To allow early selection, a cue was presented in advance of each display, indicating where the targets were to appear. Despite this relatively easy selection criterion, older adults' filtering was delayed as indicated by the amplitude pattern of the contralateral delay activity. Importantly, WM-equated younger adults did not show a delay indicating that the delay is specific to older adults and not a general phenomenon that comes with low WM capacity. Moreover, the analysis of early visual potentials revealed qualitatively different perceptual/attentional processing between the age groups. Young adults exhibited stronger distractor sensitivity that in turn facilitated filtering. Older adults, in contrast, seemed to initially store distractors and to suppress them after the fact. These early selection versus late-correction modes suggest an age-related shift in the strategy to control the contents of WM. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Prior research indicates attentional bias to drug cues in opioid dependence. As this bias may be a marker of vulnerability to relapse following treatment, it is useful to clarify its underlying processes. The present study examined whether the opioid-related bias operates in early attention processes such as initial orienting, or in maintained attention, or both. Evidence from prior research is limited and mixed. The time course of attentional bias for drug cues was assessed using a dot-probe task with pictorial drug cues presented at 3 stimulus exposure durations: 200, 500 and 1,500 ms. There were 2 groups: opioid-dependent (n = 19) and healthy controls (n = 20). Individuals in the opioid-dependent group were recruited from community drug and alcohol treatment services; 95% were taking methadone. Compared with the control group, the opioid-dependent group showed a significant attentional bias for opioid-related information presented at 200 ms (p = .006). There was a similar trend at 500 ms which was nonsignificant (p = .057), and no bias at 1,500 ms (p = .698). The findings indicate an attentional bias to drug cues in opioid dependence, which operates in initial orienting processes, but not maintained attention. Further research should examine whether modification of this bias by treatment reduces risk of relapse. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Many studies have examined how people recall the locations of objects in spatial layouts. However, little is known about how people monitor the accuracy of judgments based on those memories. The goal of the present experiments was to examine the effect of reference frame characteristics on metacognitive accuracy for spatial judgments. Reference frame characteristics include the alignment of one's viewpoint with the structure of the environment (allocentric alignment), direction of the target with respect to one's current viewpoint (egocentric direction), and the type of perspective used to solve the task (egocentric vs. allocentric). Participants were tested on their knowledge of a well-known location in which they had experience navigating. They were asked to orient themselves toward a particular heading and point to target landmarks from this heading. They then rated their confidence in their pointing judgments. Confidence judgments were sensitive to the effects of allocentric alignment and egocentric direction on performance. However, they underestimate the magnitude of these effects. Follow-up regression analyses indicate that confidence in individual landmarks was a stronger predictor of confidence than reference frame characteristics. Overall, the results suggest that people use reference frame features and landmark confidence when monitoring performance in directional judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Individuals' psychological distance from the stimuli they encounter in daily life can influence the abstractness or generality of the mental representations they form of these stimuli. However, these representations can also depend on the perspective from which the stimuli are construed. When individuals have either an individualistic social orientation or a short-term temporal orientation, they construe psychologically distal events more globally than they construe proximal ones, as implied by construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010). When they have either a collectivistic social orientation or a long-term temporal orientation, however, they not only construe the implications of distal events more concretely than individuals with an egocentric perspective but also construe the implications of proximal events in more abstract terms. These effects are mediated by the flexibility of the perspectives that people take when they make judgments. Differences in perspective flexibility account for the impact of both situationally induced differences in social and temporal orientation and more chronic cultural differences in these orientations. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

We tested pigeons' acquisition of a conditional discrimination task between colored grating stimuli that included choosing 1 of 2 response keys, which either appeared as white keys to the left and right of the discriminative stimulus, or were replicas of the stimulus. Pigeons failed to acquire the discrimination when the response keys were white disks but succeeded when directly responding to a replica of the stimulus. These results highlight how conditioning processes shape learning in pigeons: The results can be accounted for by supposing that, when pigeons were allowed to respond directly toward the stimulus, learning was guided by classical conditioning, but that responding to white keys demanded instrumental learning, which impaired task acquisition for pigeons. In contrast, humans completing the same paradigm showed no differential learning success depending on whether figure or position indicated the correct key. However, only participants who could state the underlying discrimination rule acquired the task, which implies that human performance in this situation relied on the deduction and application of task rules instead of associative processes., ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

The behavioral urgency hypothesis suggests that stimuli signaling potential danger will receive attentional priority. However, results from the gaze cueing paradigm have failed to consistently show that emotional expression modulates gaze following. One possible explanation for these null results is that participants are repeatedly exposed to the same emotional expressions during the typical gaze cueing procedure. We employed a relatively novel gaze cueing method in which participants were presented with 2 unique (or "rare") trials during an experimental block. Specifically, either 2 fearful face trials appeared within a block of happy faces or 2 happy face trials appeared within a block of fearful faces. Results showed that when participants were repeatedly exposed to the same emotional expression, gaze cueing was independent of face type. However, when the emotional expression was a rare event, significantly larger cueing occurred for fearful than for happy faces. These results support the behavioral urgency hypothesis and show that emotional expression does indeed modulate gaze following., ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Inhibition of return (IOR) is an attentional effect that has been much researched in the spatial domain, whereby people are slower to respond to stimuli presented in a previously attended location. Recently, Chao (2010) reported that participants were slower to respond to a negative schematic facial target compared with a positive facial target if they had previously viewed a cue with a negative expression, which he interpreted as IOR in the purely emotional domain. That is, once their attention is drawn away, people are slower to reattend to negative emotions. Here, we investigated whether this effect could be observed when controlling for the valence of the target and when using a more naturalistic human facial expression as a cue. We replicated Chao's findings using real face cues, observing slower responses for negative cues followed by negative versus positive targets, and faster responses for positive cues followed by positive versus negative targets. However, our reanalysis indicates that these effects are better accounted for by the valence (positive/negative) of the target, with responses being slower to negative compared with positive facial expressions regardless of the preceding cue. In conclusion, orienting in the emotional domain could not be measured using a cue-target task, as the effect of responding to emotional targets eclipsed any potential emotional cuing effect., ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Objective: Contraversive pushing (CP) is a neurologic disorder characterized by a lateral postural imbalance. Pusher patients actively push toward their contralesional side due to a misperception of the body's orientation in relation to gravity. Although not every patient with CP suffers from spatial neglect (SN), both phenomena are highly correlated in right-hemispheric patients. The present study investigates whether peripersonal visuospatial functioning differs in neglect patients with versus without CP (NP+ vs. NP- patients)., Method: Eighteen right-hemispheric stroke patients with SN were included, of which 17 in a double-blind case-control study and 1 single case with posterior pushing to supplement the discourse. A computer-based visuospatial navigation task, in which lateralized deviation can freely emerge, was used to quantify visuospatial behavior. In addition, visuospatial orienting was monitored using line bisection., Results: Significant intergroup differences were found. The NP+ patients demonstrated a smaller ipsilesional navigational deviation and more cross-over (contralesional instead of ipsilesional deviation) in long line bisection. As such, they demonstrated a contraversive (contralesionally directed) shift in comparison with the NP- patients., Conclusions: These findings highlight the similarity between 2 systems of space representation. They are consistent with a coherence between the neural processing system that mainly provides for postural control, and the one responsible for nonpredominantly postural, visuospatial behavior., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

The use of environmental visual cues for navigation is an ability present in many groups of animals. The effect of spatial proximity between a visual cue and a goal on reorientation in an environment has been studied in several vertebrate groups, but never previously in amphibians. In this study, we tested the use of local visual cues (beacons) to orient in an open field in the terrestrial toad (Rhinella arenarum). Experiment 1 showed that toads could orient in space using 2 cues located near the rewarded container. Experiment 2 used only 1 cue placed at different distances to the goal and revealed that learning speed was affected by the proximity to the goal (the closer the cue was to the goal, the faster toads learned its location). Experiment 3 showed that the position of a cue results in a different predictive value. Toads preferred cues located closer to the goal more than those located farther away as a reference for orientation. Present results revealed, for the first time, that (a) toads can learn to orient in an open space using visual cues, and that (b) the effect of spatial proximity between a cue and a goal, a learning phenomenon previously observed in other groups of animals such as mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates, also affects orientation in amphibians. Thus, our results suggest that toads are able to employ spatial strategies that closely parallel those described in other vertebrate groups, supporting an early evolutionary origin for these spatial orientation skills., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

An experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that an internally generated sense of spatial orientation contributes to navigation by rats in the Morris water task and to determine whether this strategy is dependent on vestibular cues. Rats were trained in a standard hidden platform procedure in which they received 8 daily swim trials. In a probe test, rats were carried in an opaque box to a pool located in a novel adjacent environment. During transport, 1 cohort of rats received a disorientation procedure, composed of gentle rotation in the box, while a second cohort served as transport controls. Upon being placed in the pool in the novel room, controls displayed a preference for the pool quadrant predicted by a retained directional response across rooms, whereas disoriented rats failed to display a preference for the same quadrant. Furthermore, control rats swam faster and more directly toward the target quadrant. Together, these findings suggest that rats retain a directional response based on vestibular cues across environments, which can be used to disambiguate geometrically equivalent locations in a novel room and apparatus. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs), a commonly used animal model of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, exhibit little habituation of the orienting response to repeated presentations of a nonreinforced visual stimulus. However, SHRs that have access to a running wheel for 5, 10, or 21 days exhibit robust habituation that is indistinguishable from normo-active rats. Two days of exercise, in comparison, is not sufficient to affect habituation. Here we tested the hypothesis that the effect of exercise on orienting behavior in SHRs is mediated by changes in noradrenergic function. In Experiment 1, we found that 5, 10, or 21 days of access to a running wheel, but not 2 days, significantly reduced levels of the norepinephrine transporter in medial prefrontal cortex. In Experiment 2, we tested for a causal relationship between changes in noradrenergic function and orienting behavior by blocking noradrenergic receptors during exercise. Rats that received propranolol (beta adrenergic/noradrenergic receptor blocker) during 10 days of exercise failed to exhibit an exercise-induced reduction in orienting behavior. The results inform a growing literature regarding the effects of exercise on behavior and the potential use of exercise as a treatment for mental disorders., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

Anger is a negative and highly aroused emotion. Previous research has revealed that a high level of arousal can induce the participant in a physical preparation and self-awareness. The aim of this research was to study the influence of anger on the attentional network using the Attention Network Test-Interactions (ANT-I). This test has been developed in order to assess 3 attentional networks: alerting, orienting, and executive control. Here, participants were induced in anger using the autobiographic recall procedure or in a neutral mood before the realization of the ANT-I. As expected, the results showed a better alerting score for the angry group. The possible origin of this alerting gain related to the high level of arousal is discussed. The results obtained should enlighten the interaction between emotion and the functioning of the attentional system. They also may be relevant for applied fields related to anger., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

A central aim of life-span psychology is to understand ontogenetic changes in the structure of individuals' actions, thoughts, and behaviors. The dedifferentiation hypothesis of cognitive aging suggests that the structure of individuals' cognitive abilities becomes less differentiated in old age. Empirical tests have almost exclusively approached this hypothesis from a between-person difference perspective and produced a mixed set of findings. In the present study, we pursue a within-person test of the hypothesis using up to 8 repeated measures of cognitive abilities over up to 49 years, covering fluid (inductive reasoning), visualization (spatial orientation), and crystallized abilities (number, verbal meaning, and word fluency), obtained from 419 now-deceased individuals who participated in the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS) and have provided at least 4 observations for each cognitive test. Results revealed that with advancing age and proximity to death, within-person coupling increased (a) among the crystallized abilities, (b) between visualization and fluid abilities, (c) between visualization and crystallized abilities, and (d) between fluid abilities and crystallized abilities. We discuss the importance of within-person analyses for understanding changes in the structure of behavior and consider how our findings inform research on cognitive decline and dedifferentiation later in life., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.)

Head Direction (HD) cells of the rodent Papez circuit are thought to reflect the spatial orientation of the animal. Because NMDA transmission is important for spatial behavior, we sought to determine the effects of NMDA blockade on the basic directional signal carried by HD cells and on experience-dependent modification of this system. In Experiment 1, HD cells were recorded from the anterior dorsal thalamus in female Long-Evans rats while they foraged in a familiar enclosure following administration of the NMDA antagonist CPP or saline. While the drug produced a significant decrease in peak firing rates, it failed to affect the overall directional specificity and landmark control of HD cells. Experiment 2 took place over 2 days and assessed whether the NMDA antagonist would interfere with the stabilization of the HD network in a novel environment. On Day 1 the animal was administered CPP or saline and placed in a novel enclosure to allow the stabilization of the HD signal relative to the new environmental landmarks. On Day 2 the animal was returned to the formerly novel enclosure to determine if the enclosure specific direction-dependent activity established on Day 1 was maintained. In contrast to HD cells from control animals, cells from animals receiving CPP during the initial exposure to the novel enclosure did not maintain the same direction-dependent activity relative to the enclosure in the subsequent drug-free exposure. These findings demonstrate that plasticity in the HD system is dependent on NMDA transmission similar to many other forms of spatial learning., ((PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

Objective: Numerous studies using dual-task paradigms (postural and cognitive) have shown that postural control requires cognitive resources. However, the influence of postural control on attention components has never been directly addressed., Method: Using the attention network test (ANT), which assesses specifically each of the 3 components of attention-alertness, orientation, and executive control-within a single paradigm, we investigated the effect of postural balance demand on these 3 components. Forty-two participants completed the ANT in 3 postural conditions: (a) supine, a very stable position; (b) sitting on a chair, an intermediate position; and (c) standing with feet lined up heel to toe, a very instable position known as the Romberg position., Results: Our results revealed that the difficulty of postural control does modulate alerting in such a way that it improves with the level of instability of the position. Regarding the orienting and executive control components of attention, performance was not different when participants were standing upright or seated, whereas in the supine position, performance dropped., Conclusions: The strong and specific interaction between postural control and the alerting system suggests that these mechanisms may share parts of the underlying neural circuits. We discuss the possible implication of the locus coeruleus, known to be involved in both postural balance and alerting. Also, our findings concerning orienting and executive control systems suggest that supine posture could have a specific effect on cognitive activities. These effects are discussed in terms of particularities resulting from the supine position., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.)

This study quantified the effectiveness of tactile guidance in indicating a direction to turn to and measured its benefits compared to spatial language. The device (CAYLAR), which was composed of 8 vibrators, specified the requested direction by a vibration at the corresponding location around the waist. Twelve participants were tested in normal light and in total darkness with 3 guidance conditions: spatial language, a long tactile rhythm (1 s on/4 s off vibrations) providing a single stimulation before movement, and a short rhythm (200 ms on/200 ms off vibrations) allowing information-movement coupling during body rotation. We measured response time, heading error, and asked participants to rate task easiness, intuitiveness and perceived accuracy for each guidance mode. Accuracy was higher and participants' ratings were more positive with the short tactile mode than with the 2 other modes. Compared to spatial language, tactile guidance, regardless of the vibration rhythm, also allowed faster responses and did not impair accuracy in the absence of vision. These findings quantitatively demonstrate that tactile guidance is particularly effective when it is reciprocally related to movement. We discuss implications of the benefits of perception-action coupling for the design of tactile navigation devices., ((PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).)

This study determined the duration of exercise and amount of methylphenidate that is needed to affect attentional function and social behavior in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR), a commonly used animal model of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Attention was assessed by measuring the orienting response to repeated presentations of a nonreinforced visual cue. Social behavior was examined by allowing rats to freely explore a large arena containing an unfamiliar conspecific rat. Consistent with their hyper-responsive phenotype, nonexercising SHRs exhibited a high level of orienting behavior and little habituation, as well as hyper-social behavior compared with normo-active rats. Exercise or methylphenidate decreased orienting behavior and social behavior in a dose-dependent fashion. In addition, we found an additive effect of combining doses of exercise and methylphenidate that alone were ineffective in altering behavior. These data indicate that physical exercise and methylphenidate can reduce hyper-responsiveness to irrelevant stimuli and reduce hyper-social behavior in SHR. Moreover, subthreshold doses of methylphenidate can be used in combination with moderate amounts of exercise to reduce distractibility, supporting the notion that exercise may be useful as an adjunctive or replacement therapy in ADHD.

Objective: Behavioral studies of spatial navigation in aging indicate that orientation using an allocentric reference frame (object-centered orientation) is impaired, whereas orientation using egocentric processes (self-centered orientation) is not. It has been proposed that navigational deficits may result from more general alterations of perception and attention or executive functions. The purpose of this study is to assess allocentric and egocentric representation in elderly individuals, and to determine if age-related deficits in spatial navigation are related to an attentional decline., Method: We assessed encoding of the position of geometrical shapes, depending specifically on an allocentric or egocentric reference frame, during ERP recording in young and old subjects., Results: Aging was associated with a performance decline in allocentric, but not egocentric, encoding. Both allocentric and egocentric conditions elicited parietal early components P1 and N1, reflecting top-down modulation, and components P2 and N2, reflecting selective attention and stimulus categorization. We observed age-associated effects on N1 and N2 amplitudes and on N2 latency in both spatial conditions. Moreover, impaired allocentric performance in older subjects was associated with a greater P2 amplitude and delayed P2 latency compared with younger subjects., Conclusion: These results suggest that elderly individuals present with deficits when spatial orientation relies on allocentric representation, and are associated with age-related deficits in spatial attention., ((c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.)

The perspective-taking task is one of the most common paradigms used to study the nature of spatial memory, and better performance for certain orientations is generally interpreted as evidence of spatial representations using these reference directions. However, performance advantages can also result from the relative ease in certain transformations/rotations. To differentiate spatial memory from spatial transformations, the present study took a new approach based on the hypothesis that responses may be biased toward the original representation but not a transformed one. Participants memorized a regular target array and then judged the relative direction between 2 targets while imagining facing various directions. Their response time and absolute errors showed the standard advantages at 4 imagined orientations. In contrast, an attraction analysis suggested that only 1 orientation was represented in memory, whereas performance advantages at other orthogonal orientations were due to lower transformation costs and should not be interpreted as spatial representations. These findings challenged the traditional performance-based interpretations of perspective change tasks and provided a new research paradigm to differentiate spatial representations from spatial transformations.