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The current experiment examined the effect of task demands on attention to emotional images. Eighty participants viewed pairs of images, with each pair consisting of an emotional (negative or positive) and a neutral image, or two neutral images. Participants' eye movements were recorded during picture viewing, and participants were either asked (1) which picture contains more colour? (colour task), (2) are the images equally pleasant? (pleasantness task), (3) which picture do you prefer? (preference task), or (4) were given no task instructions (control task). Although the results did not suggest that emotional images strongly captured attention, emotional images were looked at earlier than neutral images. Importantly, the pattern of results was dependent on the task instructions; while the preference and colour task conditions showed early attentional biases to emotional images, only positive images were looked at earlier in the pleasantness task condition, and no early attentional biases were observed in the control task. Moreover, total fixation duration was increased for positive images in the preference task condition, but not in the other task conditions. It was concluded that attention to emotional stimuli can be modified by the demands of the task during viewing. However, further research should consider additional factors, such as the cognitive load of the viewing tasks and the content of the images used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate on how different components of the event‐related potential (ERP) to threat‐related facial expressions are modulated by attentional conditions and interindividual differences in trait anxiety. In the current study (N = 80), we examined ERPs to centrally presented, task‐irrelevant fearful and neutral faces, while participants had to solve a face‐unrelated visual task, which differed in difficulty and spatial position. Critically, we used a fixation‐controlled experimental design and ensured the spatial attention manipulation by spectral analysis of the EEG. Besides the factors emotion, spatial attention, and perceptual load, we also investigated correlations between trait anxiety and ERPs. While P1 emotion effects were insignificant, the N170 was increased to fearful faces regardless of load and spatial attention conditions. During the EPN time window, a significantly increased negativity for fearful faces was observed only during low load and spatial attention to the face. We found no significant relationship between ERPs and trait anxiety, questioning the hypothesis of a general hypersensitivity toward fearful expressions in anxious individuals. These results show a high resistance of the N170 amplitude increase for fearful faces to spatial attention and task load manipulations. By contrast, the EPN modulation by fearful faces index a resource‐dependent stage of the ERP, requiring both spatial attention at the location of faces and low load of the face‐irrelevant task. The human brain responds differentially to fearful expressions. It remains unclear how and when attentional constraints attenuate differential processing. We systematically tested how spatial attention, task load, and trait anxiety affect neuronal processing to resolve this question. We found that early (N170) ERP responses to fearful faces were independent of attention task manipulations, in contrast to a subsequent resource‐dependent processing stage (EPN). Further, we found no significant relationship between ERP responses and trait anxiety, questioning the hypothesis of a general hypersensitivity toward fearful expressions in anxious individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustained attention to response task (SART) has been used for over 20 years to assess participants' response times and inability to withhold to No-Go stimuli (commission errors). While there is debate in the literature regarding what causes commissions errors in the SART, there is agreement the SART is subject to a speed-accuracy trade-off (SATO). Researchers have demonstrated that performance on the SART can be influenced by directive instructions to participants to prioritize either speed or accuracy during the task. In the present study, we investigated whether real-time performance feedback and whether feedback emphasis (emphasizing speed or accuracy) affected participants' response times and accuracy. We found performance feedback per se had no impact on performance, but performance emphasis did affect performance, apparently shifting the SATO. This finding provides further evidence that the commission errors in the SART are not indicative of sustained attention or vigilance as those terms are commonly used in the literature, but more likely assess response strategy and motor control (or lack of motor control). These findings have implications for the psychological assessment literature, as well as applied areas where SART findings have been utilized such as shoot/no-shoot decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behavior of account‐holders has been a blind spot in the accountability literature. Relatively little is known about why account‐holders prioritize certain aspects of their account‐holding mandates and emphasize certain account‐holding tasks over others. A reputational perspective has the potential to fill this knowledge gap. This article illustrates how reputational considerations shape the ways in which account‐holders manage their account‐holding roles through a critical case study of the European Court of Auditor's shifting focus toward a more salient account‐holding role. Amid concerns about a lack of visibility, generating audience attention is found to be a central characteristic of this shift. The study demonstrates how reputational strategies for managing account‐holding roles depend on the reputational threats and audience expectations that account‐holders face in their environments. With a lack of visibility being a pressing reputational threat, the European Court of Auditors is accordingly shifting its account‐holding focus toward the spotlight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The working memory Stroop task is to name the color of a rectangular patch with keypress while holding a color word in working memory. Previous studies using this variant of the Stroop task have shown that congruency between the color patch and the color word significantly affects both color naming and working memory, with the worsening of task performance when the color patch is semantically incongruent rather than congruent with the color word. However, it remains unclear with regard to cognitive mechanisms underlying such congruency effects in the working memory Stroop task. By including a control condition among the congruent and incongruent conditions in a working memory Stroop task, the present study showed that nearly all of the working memory Stroop effect can be facilitation, and that interference, if present, is markedly smaller than facilitation in this form of the Stroop effect. There was also a critical contrast between the working memory and classic Stroop effects in terms of facilitation and interference, with larger facilitation and smaller interference in the working memory Stroop effect than in the classic Stroop effect. Moreover, working memory for a color word can be either facilitated or interfered with by the perceptual judgment (color naming) of an interposed color patch during the retention interval, depending on whether the color patch is semantically congruent or incongruent with the color word. Together, these results suggest that both facilitation and interference mechanisms can contribute to the overall congruency effects in the working memory Stroop task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how drivers of an automated vehicle distribute their attention as a function of environmental events and driving task instructions. Twenty participants were asked to monitor pre-recorded videos of a simulated driving trip while their eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracker. The results showed that eye movements are strongly situation-dependent, with areas of interest (windshield, mirrors, and dashboard) attracting attention when events (e.g., passing vehicles) occurred in those areas. Furthermore, the task instructions provided to participants (i.e., speed monitoring or hazard monitoring) affected their attention distribution in an interpretable manner. It is concluded that eye movements while supervising an automated vehicle are strongly 'top-down', i.e., based on an expected value. The results are discussed in the context of the development of driver availability monitoring systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is desirable to prevent traffic accidents by focusing on elderly people's brain characteristics. The attention level during driving depends on the amount of information-processing resources. This study first aimed at investigating the effects of the change in attention levels on the electroencephalogram (EEG) waves during the graded working memory tasks for a traffic situation. With the increase in memory loads, reaction times were delayed in the elderly than the young group. The difficult tasks activated the induced δ and θ powers in the frontal midline area primarily in the elderly, during the selective task for a target. The elderly could retain the attention level because of the activated slow EEG responses, regardless of the task performance, although the increased δ wave may reflect drowsiness. Because the assistance system based on drivers' brain signals can prevent car accidents, this study also aimed at evaluating the analytical method to automatically discriminate the different attentional tasks from the EEG signals. Compared with k -nearest neighbors and artificial neural networks, support vector machines more accurately classified attention levels (i.e., task difficulty) during working memory tasks reflecting a change in the induced δ and θ waves. This result can be related to a brain-computer interface system to judge the task difficulty during driving and alert a driver to danger. The experimental tasks for this study were limited because they involved simulations only in which participants recognized guided boards and removed irrelevant information. Real-time judgments should be investigated using EEG data to improve systems that can alert drivers to oncoming dangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-driving-related tasks (NDRTs) have the potential to affect safety in a number of ways, but the conditions under which drivers choose to engage in NDRTs has not been extensively studied. This analysis considers naturalistic driving data in which drivers were recorded driving and engaging in NDRTs at will for several weeks. Using human-annotated video captured from vehicle cabins, we examined the probabilities with which drivers engaged in NDRTs, and we examined the relationship between vehicle speed and NDRT probability, with the goal of modeling NDRT probability as a function of speed and type of NDRT observed. We found that tasks that contain significant visual and manual components, such as phone manipulation, show strong sensitivity to vehicle speed, while other tasks, such as phone conversation, show no effects of vehicle speed. These results suggest that there are systematic relationships between NDRT patterns and vehicle speed, and that the nature of these relationships is sensitive to the demands of the NDRT. The relationship between speed and NDRT probability has implications for understanding the effects of NDRTs on safety, but also for understanding how drivers may differ in terms of the strategies they employ to modulate their NDRT behaviors based upon driving demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which dimension of a set of objects is more salient to young children: number or size? The 'Build‐A‐Train' task was developed and used to examine whether children spontaneously use a number or physical size approach on an un‐cued matching task. In the Build‐A‐Train task, an experimenter assembles a train using one to five blocks of a particular length and asks the child to build the same train. The child's blocks differ in length from the experimenter's blocks, causing the child to build a train that matches based on either the number of blocks or length of the train, as it is not possible to match on both. One hundred and nineteen children between 2 years 2 months and 6 years 0 months of age (M = 4.05, SD = 0.84) completed the Build‐A‐Train task, and the Give‐a‐Number task, a classic task used to assess children's conceptual knowledge of verbal number words. Across train lengths and verbal number knowledge levels, children used a number approach more than a size approach on the Build‐A‐Train task. However, children were especially likely to use a number approach over a size approach when they knew the verbal number word that corresponded to the quantity of blocks in the train, particularly for quantities smaller than four. Therefore, children's attention to number relates to their knowledge of verbal number words. The Build‐A‐Train task and findings from the current study set a foundation for future longitudinal research to investigate the causal relationship between children's acquisition of symbolic mathematical concepts and attention to number. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial disfigurements can influence how observers attend to and interact with the person, leading to disease-avoidance behaviour and emotions (disgust, threat, fear for contagion). However, it is unclear whether this behaviour is reflected in the effect of the facial stigma on attention and perceptual encoding of facial information. We addressed this question by measuring, in a mixed antisaccade task, observers' speed and accuracy of orienting of visual attention towards or away from peripherally presented upright and inverted unfamiliar faces that had either a realistic looking disease-signalling feature (a skin discolouration), a non-disease-signalling control feature, or no added feature. The presence of a disfiguring or control feature did not influence the orienting of attention (in terms of saccadic latency) towards upright faces, suggesting that avoidance responses towards facial stigma do not occur during covert attention. However, disfiguring and control features significantly reduced the effect of face inversion on saccadic latency, thus suggesting an impact on the holistic processing of facial information. The implications of these findings for the encoding and appraisal of facial disfigurements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial–numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect reflects the phenomenon that low digits are responded to faster with the left hand and high digits with the right. Recently, a particular variant of the SNARC effect known as the attentional SNARC (which reflects that attention can be shifted in a similar manner) has had notable replicability issues. However, a potentially useful method for measuring it was revealed by Casarotti et al. using a temporal order judgement (TOJ) task. Accordingly, the present study evaluated whether Casarotti et al.'s results were reproducible by presenting a low (1) or high (9) digit prior to a TOJ task where participants had to indicate which of two peripherally presented targets appeared first (Experiment 1) or second (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, it was revealed that the findings of Casarotti et al.'s were indeed observable upon replication. In Experiment 2, when attention and response dimensions were put in opposition, the SNARC effect corresponded to the side of response rather than attention. Taken together, the present study confirms the robustness of the attentional SNARC in TOJ tasks, but that it is not likely due to shifts in attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) have indicated that they experience attention capture in a qualitatively similar way to humans. Here, we apply a similar objective auditory streaming paradigm, using modified budgerigar vocalizations instead of ABAB-… patterned pure tones, in the sound sequences. The birds were trained to respond to deviants in the target stream while ignoring the distractors in the background stream. The background distractor could vary among five different categories and two different sequential positions, while the target deviants could randomly appear at five different sequential positions and vary among two different categories. We found that unpredictable background distractors could deteriorate birds' sensitivity to the target deviants. Compared to conditions where the background distractor appeared right before the target deviant, the attention capture effect decayed in conditions when the background distractor appeared earlier. In contrast to results from the same paradigm using pure tones, the results here are evidence for a faster recovery from attention capture using modified vocalization segments. We found that the temporally modulated background distractor captured birds' attention more and deteriorated birds' performance more than other categories of background distractor, as the temporally modulated target deviant enabled the birds to focus their attention toward the temporal modulation dimension. However, different from humans, birds have lower tolerances for suppressing the distractors from the same feature dimensions as the targets, which is evidenced by higher false alarm rates for the temporally modulated distractor than other distractors from different feature dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obtaining discriminative features is one of the key problems in three-dimensional (3D) shape retrieval. Recently, deep metric learning-based 3D shape retrieval methods have attracted the researchers' attention and have achieved better performance. The triplet-center loss can learn more discriminative features than traditional classification loss, and it has been successfully used in deep metric learning-based 3D shape retrieval task. However, it has a hard margin parameter that only leverages part of the training data in each mini-batch. Moreover, the margin parameter is often determined by experience and remains unchanged during the training process. To overcome the above limitations, we propose the soft margin triplet-center loss, which replaces the margin with the nonparametric soft margin. Furthermore, we combined the proposed soft margin triplet-center loss with the softmax loss to improve the training efficiency and the retrieval performance. Extensive experimental results on two popular 3D shape retrieval datasets have validated the effectiveness of the soft margin triplet-center loss, and our proposed 3D shape retrieval method has achieved better performance than other state-of-the-art method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, there is little understanding of how interoceptive attentiveness (IA) affects brain responses during synchronized cognitive or motor tasks. This pilot study explored the effect of explicit IA manipulation on hemodynamic correlates of simple cognitive tasks implying linguistic or motor synchronization. Eighteen healthy participants completed two linguistic and motor synchronization tasks during explicit IA and control conditions while oxygenated (O2Hb) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin variations were recorded by functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). The findings suggested that the brain regions associated with sustained attention, such as the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), were more involved when an explicit focus on the breath was induced during the cognitive linguistic task requiring synchronization with a partner, as indicated by increased O2Hb. Interestingly, this effect was not significant for the motor task. In conclusion, for the first time, this pilot research found increased activity in neuroanatomical regions that promote sustained attention, attention reorientation, and synchronization when a joint task is carried out and the person is focusing on their physiological body reactions. Moreover, the results suggested that the benefits of conscious concentration on physiological interoceptive correlates while executing a task demanding synchronization, particularly verbal alignment, may be related to the right PFC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of interest is used in describing and explaining political activities in various aspects: in terms of motive, intention, calculation. An individual participating in political activity represents a tangle of interests requiring coordination and selection: self-interest (personal and separate), self-interest as its share in the interest of the community, common interest with partners, allies, superior interest of society, group, party, church requiring sacrifices at one’s own expense. Thus, following an interest is a choice in a situation of tension, conflict of interests, not only external, but also internal. Interest materializes in the decisions and actions of the subject on the basis of the fact that at a given moment and in a given case, he is interested in something. The willingness of individuals to participate in the community, to identify with it, to be active and to make sacrifices for the common good, and to perform common tasks, depends on whether it has a sense of influence, a satisfying share of the benefits. An individual takes action if there is a correspondence between what is expected of him and what he himself is interested in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We investigated the functions and mechanisms of non-goal-driven eye movements, which are defined as eye movements induced when looking at visual stimuli on a display without engaging in a specific task or looking at a display without any visual stimuli or tasks. In our experiment, participants were asked to perform a visual search task on a display, which was followed by a rest period in which stimuli remained on the display or all stimuli were erased. During the rest period, the participants were asked to only look at the displays without engaging in any visual or cognitive tasks. We mainly analyzed the gaze-shift patterns in both task and rest periods, in which eye movements were classified in accordance with the angles of saccade directions in two consecutive saccades. The results indicate a significant difference between goal-driven eye movements, which were observed in the task period, and nongoal-driven eye movements, which were observed in the rest period. Scanning gaze-shift patterns dominated the task period, and backward and corrective-saccade-like gaze-shift patterns dominated the rest period. The gaze-shift pattern was affected by the task-difficulty during the task period. From these findings, we propose a model describing the oculomotor system in terms of goal-driven and non-goal-driven eye movements. In this model, the engagement levels of top-down and bottom-up control change along with task difficulty and are affected by the gaze-shift patterns during a visual search task. Decoupling of top-down control from the oculomotor system during a rest period induces backward saccades, resulting in fixation around the central part of a display. Therefore, we suggest that non-goaldriven eye movements play a crucial role in maintaining the readiness of the oculomotor system for the next search task [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformer architectures have brought about fundamental changes to computational linguistic field, which had been dominated by recurrent neural networks for many years. Its success also implies drastic changes in cross-modal tasks with language and vision, and many researchers have already tackled the issue. In this paper, we review some of the most critical milestones in the field, as well as overall trends on how transformer architecture has been incorporated into visuolinguistic cross-modal tasks. Furthermore, we discuss its current limitations and speculate upon some of the prospects that we find imminent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Top-down attention is a dynamic cognitive process that facilitates the detection of the task-relevant stimuli from our complex sensory environment. A neural mechanism capable of deployment under specific task-demand conditions would be crucial to efficiently control attentional processes and improve promote goal-directed attention performance during fluctuating attentional demand. Previous studies have shown that frontal top-down neurons projecting from the anterior cingulate area (ACA) to the visual cortex (VIS; ACAVIS) are required for visual attentional behavior during the 5-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT) in mice. However, it is unknown whether the contribution of these projecting neurons is dependent on the extent of task demand. Here, we first examined how behavior outcomes depend on the number of locations for mice to pay attention and touch for successful performance, and found that the 2-choice serial reaction time task (2CSRTT) is less task demanding than the 5CSRTT. We then employed optogenetics to demonstrate that suppression ACAVIS projections immediately before stimulus presentation has no effect during the 2CSRTT in contrast to the impaired performance during the 5CSRTT. These results suggest that ACAVIS projections are necessary when task demand is high, but once a task demand is lowered, ACAVIS neuron activity becomes dispensable to adjust attentional performance. These findings support a model that the frontal-sensory ACAVIS projection regulates visual attention behavior during specific high task demand conditions, pointing to a flexible circuit-based mechanism for promoting attentional behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To gain insight into how human observers select items in the visual field we pitted two attentional biases against one another in a single free choice design. The first bias is the nasal-temporal asymmetry during free choice tasks, where observers tend to choose targets that appear in their temporal hemifield over targets appearing in their nasal hemifield. The second is the choice bias found in studies of attentional priming. When observers have to select between a stimulus that shares features with a preceding target and a stimulus sharing features with previous distractors, they have a strong tendency to choose the preceding search target and this bias increases the more often the same search is repeated. Our results show that both biases affect saccadic choice, but they also show that the nasal-temporal bias can modulate the strength of the priming effects, but not vice versa. The priming effect was stronger for stimuli appearing in the temporal than in the nasal hemifield, but the nasal-temporal bias was similar for primed and unprimed targets. Additionally, our findings are the first to show how search repetition leads to faster saccades. The observed difference between the effects of the NTA and priming biases may reflect the difference in neural mechanisms thought to be behind these biases and that biases at lower levels may outrank higher-level biases, at least in their effect on visual attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vigilance is the maintenance of attention over prolonged periods, often required when attempting to detect infrequent and/or difficult to detect stimuli, such as in baggage screening or sonar monitoring. This type of attention is characterized by the vigilance decrement: longer reaction times and decreased accuracy as time-on-task increases. Research previously demonstrated the vigilance decrement in auditory and visual vigilance tasks. However, little research has compared the strength and onset of the vigilance decrement in unimodal (auditory or visual) versus bimodal (auditory and visual) modalities. This knowledge gap was investigated in an experiment that first equated the discriminability of stimulus type at ~80% to control for stimulus difficulty and then by tracking subjects' target identification rate and reaction time for a target intermixed with a nontarget across three conditions: auditory, visual, and audiovisual. Overall, accuracy was worse in the bimodal condition relative to the unimodal condition. Target detection accuracy in the auditory bimodal condition declined more over time relative to the auditory unimodal task, with reaction time data suggesting the decrease was not due to a speed-accuracy trade-off. Results indicate that monitoring for targets in two modalities is more difficult, resulting in a greater vigilance decrement than unimodal vigilance. [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]

One of the fundamental prerequisites for effective collaborations between interactive partners is the mutual sharing of the attentional focus on the same perceptual events. This is referred to as joint attention. In psychological, cognitive, and social sciences, its defining elements have been widely pinpointed. Also the field of human-robot interaction has extensively exploited joint attention which has been identified as a fundamental prerequisite for proficient human-robot collaborations. However, joint attention between robots and human partners is often encoded in prefixed robot behaviours that do not fully address the dynamics of interactive scenarios. We provide autonomous attentional behaviour for robotics based on a multi-sensory perception that robustly relocates the focus of attention on the same targets the human partner attends. Further, we investigated how such joint attention between a human and a robot partner improved with a new biologically-inspired memory-based attention component. We assessed the model with the humanoid robot iCub involved in performing a joint task with a human partner in a real-world unstructured scenario. The model showed a robust performance on capturing the stimulation, making a localisation decision in the right time frame, and then executing the right action. We then compared the attention performance of the robot against the human performance when stimulated from the same source across different modalities (audio-visual and audio only). The comparison showed that the model is behaving with temporal dynamics compatible with those of humans. This provides an effective solution for memory-based joint attention in real-world unstructured environments. Further, we analyzed the localisation performances (reaction time and accuracy), the results showed that the robot performed better in an audio-visual condition than an audio only condition. The performance of the robot in the audio-visual condition was relatively comparable with the behaviour of the human participants whereas it was less efficient in audio-only localisation. After a detailed analysis of the internal components of the architecture, we conclude that the differences in performance are due to egonoise which significantly affects the audio-only localisation performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several space-based and object-based attention studies suggest these selection mechanisms may be voluntarily deployed, depending on task parameters and the attentional scope of the observer. Here, we sought to elucidate factors related to involuntary deployment of object-mediated space-based attention through two experiments. Experiment 1 used a modified flanker task where a target and nearby distractor were presented within the same or different object frames, such that an object-based attentional spread should be detrimental to performance. Results showed the presence of a flanker effect with no significant difference in magnitude between grouping conditions, indicating participants may have uniformly used a diffused attentional spotlight regardless of object segmentation. In a second experiment, we manipulated the extent of the observer's sustained attentional scope via an inducer task to determine whether object-based selection depends on the initial spotlight size. The results revealed object-based effects solely when attention narrowly encompassed the target, but not when it was widened to include the distracting flanker. This suggests the deployment of object-based attention may occur when spatial attention is initially focused narrowly. Because selecting the whole object frame directly interfered with task goals, we conclude that object-based attention may not always fully conform to relevant task goals or operate in a goal-oriented manner. We discuss these results in the context of existing literature while proposing a reconciliation of previously inconsistent findings of object-based selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convolutional neural networks have established themselves over the past years as the state of the art method for image classification, and for many datasets, they even surpass humans in categorizing images. Unfortunately, the same architectures perform much worse when they have to compare parts of an image to each other to correctly classify this image. Until now, no well-formed theoretical argument has been presented to explain this deficiency. In this paper, we will argue that convolutional layers are of little use for such problems, since comparison tasks are global by nature, but convolutional layers are local by design. We will use this insight to reformulate a comparison task into a sorting task and use findings on sorting networks to propose a lower bound for the number of parameters a neural network needs to solve comparison tasks in a generalizable way. We will use this lower bound to argue that attention, as well as iterative/recurrent processing, is needed to prevent a combinatorial explosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I consider implicit meaning in a perspective focusing on explicitation practices, which is also suitable for highlighting its communicative functions, both cognitive and persuasive. I present an outline of my approach, which pays specific attention to how we detect implicit meaning and make it explicit, and to the functions it serves with respect to the overall significance of a text. I illustrate a way of distinguishing between presupposition and implicature that takes into account their modes of explicitation and their functional features. I then examine some varieties of implicit meaning (with the aid of examples from the press or the web): existential presupposition, supplements, Gricean conventional implicature, and conversational implicature according to Relation. These discussions yield some refinements of the initial distinction between presupposition and implicature, which I hope will serve to make it more suitable to the task of matching each variety of implicit meaning with the most appropriate mode of explicitation. Finally, I briefly discuss the potential and the limitations of explicitation practices, suggesting that their exercise can usefully foster the mastery of implicit meaning in everyday contexts too. • Explicitation of implicit meaning maximizes understanding and enables criticism. • For each variety of implicit meaning, explicitation is governed by rules or reasons. • Presupposed contents and implicata serve different functions. • Supplements are functionally closer to presupposition than to implicature. • Conventional implicata amount to conditions of non-central speech acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capacity of working memory is limited and undergoes important developmental changes during childhood. One proposed reason for the expansion of working memory capacity during childhood is the emergence and increased efficiency of active maintenance mechanisms, such as that of refreshing. Refreshing is a proposed mechanism to keep information active in working memory by bringing memory items back into the focus of attention. One prevalent view is that the spontaneous use of refreshing emerges around the age of 7 and becomes more efficient during middle childhood and beyond. Using a novel approach to examine refreshing in children in Experiment 1, we show, against common conceptions, that simply giving free time in a basic working memory task does not lead to spontaneous refreshing in 9–12‐year‐old children. Instead, their focus of attention appears to linger on the last‐presented memory item, even when ample time for refreshing is provided. Experimentally imposing the use of refreshing in Experiment 2, however, showed that children in this age range are able to switch their focus of attention away from the last‐presented item in switch to another memory item. Thus, the current study uncovers that children in middle childhood do not always spontaneously switch attention away from the last‐presented memory item to refresh the entire list, even though they are able to switch attention away from the last‐presented memory item when instructed to do so. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigated whether consonance (imperfect consonance: major third) and dissonance (minor second) would capture attention differently when they occurred as chords (combinations of two tones) that were deviant from their context. In addition, we also examined how task demand would modulate these chords' attentional capture. For this investigation, we used an auditory three-stimulus oddball paradigm in which these chords were presented as deviant stimuli (5% each) among frequent standard (80%) and infrequent target (10%) pure tones. The task difficulty was manipulated by changing pitch intervals between standard and target tones. The results showed that these chords elicited dual-peak P3a, and that consonance enhanced the late phase of P3a compared to dissonance, only when the task demand was high. These findings revealed that deviant consonance and dissonance captured attention differently; in particular, consonance captured attention more strongly than dissonance, and this effect was induced by high task demand. This attentional capture difference between the chord categories was induced through enhanced focus of attention on the pitch dimension of oddball stimuli. In addition, the deviant chords might have been processed by a mechanism similar to that which processes novel stimuli, and these chords' differences might have affected not the novelty detection process, but a process which orients attentional resources to deviant chords, which were recognized as novel stimuli. • We investigated whether consonance and dissonance capture attention differently. • Chords were presented as deviant stimuli in a three-stimulus oddball task. • The deviant chords elicited dual-peak P3a (early/late). • Consonance elicited larger late P3a than dissonance, only when task demand was high. • High task demand induced larger attentional capture by consonance than dissonance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier work on self-face processing has reported a bias in the processing of self-face result in faster response to self-face in comparison to other familiar and unfamiliar faces (termed as self-face advantage or SFA). Even though most studies agree that the SFA occurs due to an attentional bias, there is little agreement regarding the stage at which it occurs. While a large number of studies show self-face influencing processing later at disengagement stage, early event-related potential components show differential activity for the self-face suggesting that SFA occurs early. We address this contradiction using a cueless temporal order judgment task that allows us to investigate early perceptual processing, while bias due to top-down expectation is controlled. A greater shift in point of subjective simultaneity for self-face would indicate a greater processing advantage at early perceptual stage. With help of two experiments, we show an early perceptual advantage for self-face, compared to both a friend's face and an unfamiliar face (Experiment 1). This advantage is present even when the effect of criterion shift is minimized (Experiment 2). Interestingly, the magnitude of advantage is similar for self-friend and self-unfamiliar pair. The evidence from the two experiments suggests early capture of attention as a likely reason for the SFA, which is present for the self-face but not for other familiar faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finger tapping is a task widely used in a variety of experimental paradigms, in particular to understand sensorimotor synchronization and time processing in the range of hundreds of milliseconds (millisecond timing). Normally, subjects do not receive any instruction about what to attend to and the results are seldom interpreted taking into account the possible effects of attention. In this work we show that attention can be oriented to the purely temporal aspects of a paced finger‐tapping task and that it affects performance. Specifically, time‐oriented attention improves the accuracy in paced finger tapping and it also increases the resynchronization efficiency after a period perturbation. We use two markers of the attention level: auditory ERPs and subjective report of the mental workload. In addition, we propose a novel algorithm to separate the auditory, stimulus‐related components from the somatosensory, response‐related ones, which are naturally overlapped in the recorded EEG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schizophrenia is known to be associated with attentional deficits. Few studies have examined whether the disorder is also associated with a deficit in the ability to divide attention, and they have given contradictory results. Some have reported that patients show greater loss of performance than healthy controls when moving from single tasks to dual tasks, and others have reported that performance loss is similar in both groups or even that patients perform the dual task better than either task on its own. To help resolve this controversy, we performed a first study in which we designed a dual task paradigm with a group of 36 healthy participants. This dual task involves 2 tasks of equivalent difficulty that make use of different sensory modalities. In the second study, we gave this dual task to 23 patients with schizophrenia and 25 healthy participants. Both groups decreased similarly their performance in dual tasks, but the patients showed lower baseline performance in the single task. Our findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia and healthy participants use similar strategies to divide their attention, but in a high-degrading stimuli condition patients perform below the controls in a single task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological competitiveness of the economy is a very dynamic concept, associated with the rapid growth of production and implementation of innovations and technologies. The latter are continuously increasing their importance in ensuring the socio-economic development of the state. The evolution of scientific approaches to interpreting innovation infrastructure through a number of systemic features of institutional support for technological competitiveness of the economy is studied. The meaning of the definitions «infrastructure of technological activity» and «technological infrastructure» is substantiated. On analyzing the development of innovation infrastructure in the marketing behavior of the national economy, the author determined general properties of the innovation and market infrastructure. It is concluded that innovation infrastructure plays the main role in the technological growth of various sectors of the national economy. It is proved that the systemic-functional approach is the most common approach to interpreting the innovation infrastructure of the national economy. It is concluded that most studies reveal the meaning of the functions of a usual innovation infrastructure, and less attention is paid to the functions and tasks characteristic for the infrastructure of the technological competitiveness of the national economy. Within the comprehensive theoretical definition of the important role infrastructure of technological competitiveness plays in innovation and technological growth of the national economy, its main functions (the innovative and regenerative, investing and stimulating, supporting, transformational, coordinating, resources-accumulating, consolidating, and process-stimulating) and tasks are defined The results of generalizing the existing approaches make it possible to form a unique approach to interpreting the definition of the «infrastructure of technological competitiveness». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Since subjects with Rett syndrome (RTT) focus their attention mainly on the faces of people with whom they interact, in this study the role of a human-like smart interactive agent (an avatar) in enhancing cognitive processes is examined. More in depth, this study aimed to understand if, and to what extent, the use of an avatar can improve attention and memory abilities in subjects with RTT.Method: Thirty-six subjects with RTT participated in the study. All participants performed over-selectivity and memory tasks, for a total of six trials. These trials were randomly presented in two different conditions: with and without virtual avatar.Results: The results indicated that the participants improved their attention and memory abilities when they performed the tasks with the avatar. There were no improvements when they performed the tasks without the avatar.Discussion: The results were discussed considering the relationship between motivation, attention and memory in RTT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Prior work has demonstrated that competing tasks impact habitual speech production. The purpose of this investigation was to quantify the extent to which clear and loud speech are affected by concurrent performance of an attention-demanding task. Method: Speech kinematics and acoustics were collected while participants spoke using habitual, loud, and clear speech styles. The styles were performed in isolation and while performing a secondary tracking task. Results: Compared to the habitual style, speakers exhibited expected increases in lip aperture range of motion and speech intensity for the clear and loud styles. During concurrent visuomotor tracking, there was a decrease in lip aperture range of motion and speech intensity for the habitual style. Tracking performance during habitual speech did not differ from single-task tracking. For loud and clear speech, speakers retained the gains in speech intensity and range of motion, respectively, while concurrently tracking. A reduction in tracking performance was observed during concurrent loud and clear speech, compared to tracking alone. Conclusions: These data suggest that loud and clear speech may help to mitigate motor interference associated with concurrent performance of an attention-demanding task. Additionally, reductions in tracking accuracy observed during concurrent loud and clear speech may suggest that these higher effort speaking styles require greater attentional resources than habitual speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inhibitory control is a key executive function and has been studied extensively using the stop signal task. By applying a simple race model that posits an independent race between a GO process responsible for initiation of responses and a STOP process responsible for inhibition of responses, one can estimate how long it takes an individual to inhibit an ongoing response, the stop signal reaction time. Here, we examined how stop signal reaction time can be affected by working memory. Participants engaged in a dual task; they completed a stop signal task under low and high working memory load conditions. Working memory capacity was also measured. We found that the STOP process was lengthened in the high, compared to the low, working memory load condition, as evidenced by differences in stop signal reaction time. The GO process was unaffected and working memory capacity could not account for differences across the load conditions. These results indicate that inhibitory control can be influenced by placing demands on working memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current evidence suggests that the ability to detect and react to information under lowered alertness conditions might be more impaired on the left than the right side of space. This evidence derives mainly from right-handers being assessed in computer and paper-and-pencil spatial attention tasks. However, there are suggestions that left-handers might show impairments on the opposite (right) side compared to right-handers with lowered alertness, and it is unclear whether the impairments observed in the computer tasks have any real-world implications for activities such as driving. The current study investigated the alertness and spatial attention relationship under simulated monotonous driving in left- and right-handers. Twenty left-handed and 22 right-handed participants (15 males, mean age = 23.6 years, SD = 5.0 years) were assessed on a simulated driving task (lasting approximately 60 min) to induce a time-on-task effect. The driving task involved responding to stimuli appearing at six different horizontal locations on the screen, whilst driving in a 50 km/h zone. Decreases in alertness and driving performance were evident with time-on-task in both handedness groups. We found handedness impacts reacting to lateral stimuli differently with time-on-task: right-handers reacted slower to the leftmost stimuli, while left-handers showed the opposite pattern (although not statistically significant) in the second compared to first half of the drive. Our findings support suggestions that handedness modulates the spatial attention and alertness interactions. The interactions were observed in a simulated driving task which calls for further research to understand the safety implications of these interactions for activities such as driving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a retro-cue paradigm, after memorizing a set of objects, people are cued to remember only a subset. Improved memory from the retro-cue suggests that selection processes can benefit items stored in working memory. Does selection in working memory require attention? If so, an attention-demanding task should disrupt retro-cue effects. Studies using a dual-task paradigm have found mixed results, with only one study (Janczyk & Berryhill, Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 76 (3), 715–724, 2014) showing a decreased retro-cue effect by a secondary task. Here we explore a potential issue in that study – the temporal overlap of the secondary task response with the memory test presentation. This raises questions about whether the secondary task was impairing selection processes in memory or was impacting the memory response. We replicated their paradigm by inserting a tone discrimination task at the retro-cue offset, but we also included a condition in which the tone task and the memory test were temporally separated. In Experiment 1, performing the tone task did not impair the retro-cue effect. In Experiment 2, we added an articulatory suppression task as in Janczyk and Berryhill's study, and we found that the requirement to execute the tone task impaired retro-cue effects. This impairment was independent of whether the tone and memory tasks overlapped. These findings suggest that internal prioritization can be impaired by dual-task interference, but may only occur when such interference is robust enough, for example, due to switching between multiple tasks. [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]

Visual attentional processes have been an important topic in psychological research for years. Over the last few decades, new methods have been developed, aiming to explore the characteristics of the focus of attention in more detail. Studies that applied the "Attention-Window Task" (AWT) quantified the maximum extent of the "Attention Window" (AW) along its horizontal, vertical, and diagonal meridians, when subjects were required to perceive two peripheral stimuli simultaneously. In three experiments using the AWT, we investigated the effects of cue validity (Experiment 1), stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) (i.e., the interval between the onset of the cues and the onset of the target stimuli), and target stimuli complexity (Experiment 3) on the size and shape of the AW. Results showed that the AW was greater under valid cue conditions compared to invalid conditions, when the locations of cue and target stimuli differed. Furthermore, the AW decreased when the SOA between the cue and targets was reduced and also when the task complexity was higher and more objects within the target stimuli had to be classified. Overall, it can be stated that the AWT with its possible task changes and adjustments can be considered as a potential standard tool to measure the maximum spread and shape of the spatial AW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One puzzling result in training-test paradigms is that effects of reward-associated stimuli on attention are often seen in test but not in training. We focus on one study, where reward-related performance benefits occur in the training and which was discussed contentiously. By using a similar design, we conceptually replicated the results. Moreover, we investigated the underlying mechanisms and processes resulting in these reward-related performance benefits. In two experiments, using search tasks and having participants perform the tasks either with or without individually adjusted time pressure, we disentangled the mechanisms and processes contributing to the reward-related benefits. We found evidence that not only search efficiency is increased with increasing reward, but also that non-search factors contribute to the results. By also investigating response time distributions, we were able to show that reward-related performance effects increased as search time increased in demanding tasks but not in less demanding tasks. Theoretical implications of the results regarding how reward influences attentional processing are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its introduction nearly a half century ago, the Eriksen flanker task has prompted multiple theoretical and methodological advancements in the study of attention and control. Early research with the task inspired the continuous flow model of information processing, which in turn prompted researchers to investigate the dynamics of response competition using continuous behavioral measures. In recent years, the use of such measures in psychological research has increased dramatically as hand-tracking techniques have become more widely accessible. The current article highlights commonly overlooked links between Eriksen and colleagues' pioneering research investigating the continuous flow model and recent hand-tracking research investigating the dynamics of attention and control. After providing an overview of two hand-tracking techniques frequently used in psychological research, we review a series of recent studies that have used these techniques to investigate how the processes underlying attention and control (a) unfold over the course of a response (within-trial dynamics), (b) are impacted by recent experience (cross-trial dynamics), and (c) contribute to age-related changes observed across the life span (developmental dynamics). In addition to highlighting the central role that the flanker task has played in advancing psychological research and theory, this review underscores the advantages of collecting continuous behavioral measures, both in Eriksen's seminal work and in contemporary hand-tracking studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful navigation of information-rich, multimodal environments involves processing both auditory and visual information. The extent to which information within each modality is processed varies because of many factors, but the influence of auditory stimuli on the processing of visual stimuli in these multimodal environments is not well understood. Previous research has shown that a preceding sound leads to decreased reaction times in visual tasks (Bertelson, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 19(3), 272–279, 1967). The current study examines whether a nonspatial, task-irrelevant sound additionally alters processing of visual distractors that flank a central target. We used a version of a flanker task in which participants responded to a central letter surrounded by two irrelevant flanker letters. When these flankers are associated with a conflicting response, a congruency effect occurs such that reaction time to the target is slowed (Eriksen & Eriksen, Perception & Psychophysics, 16(1), 143–149, 1974). In two experiments using this task, results showed that a preceding tone caused general speeding of reaction time across flanker types, consistent with alerting. The tone also caused decreased variation in response time. Critically, the tone modulated the congruency effect, with a greater speeding for congruent flankers than for incongruent flankers. This suggests that the influence of flanker identity was more intense after tone presentation, consistent with a nonspatial sound increasing perceptual and/or response-association processing of flanking stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eriksen's zoom model of attention implies a trade-off between the breadth and resolution of representations of information. Following this perspective, we used Eriksen's flanker task to investigate culture's influence on attentional allocation and attentional resolution. In Experiment 1, the spatial distance of the flankers was varied to test whether people from Eastern cultures (here, Turks) experienced more interference than people from Western cultures (here, Americans) when flankers were further from the target. In Experiment 2, the contrast of the flankers was varied. The pattern of results shows that congruency of the flankers (Experiment 1) as well as the degree of contrast of the flankers compared with the target (Experiment 2) interact with participants' cultural background to differentially influence accuracy or reaction times. In addition, we used evidence accumulation modeling to jointly consider measures of speed and accuracy. Results indicate that to make decisions in the Eriksen flanker task, Turks both accumulate evidence faster and require more evidence than Americans do. These cultural differences in visual attention and decision-making have implications for a wide variety of cognitive processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the text‐to‐image synthesis task, most discriminators in existing generative adversarial networks based methods tend to fall into a local suboptimal state too early in the training process, resulting in the poor quality of generated images. To address the above problems, a hybrid augmented loss discriminator is designed. In this designed discriminator, to reduce the sensitivity of the discriminator classification recognition, make it pay attention to the semantic and structural changes, we add the loss value of the fake sample to the loss value of the real sample. Moreover, to indirectly guide the generator to generate samples, the loss value of the real sample is added to the fake sample. The loss value mixed with real and fake samples actually augments signal transmission. It perturbs parameter update of the discriminator during optimization and prevents the discriminator from falling into the local suboptimal state prematurely. Whereafter, we apply the proposed discriminator to two kinds of text‐to‐image synthesis tasks. Experimental results show that the proposed method can help the baseline models to improve performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relationship between dream lucidity, i.e., a dreamer's insight to the ongoing dream, and attention by considering lucidity as a trait. We examined the ways in which lucidity correlates with the orienting, alerting, and conflict components of the attentional network. A total of 77 participants rated the lucidity of their dreams over 7 consecutive days with the LuCiD scale and then completed the attentional network task (ANT). A negative correlation between trait lucidity and the conflict score of the ANT was found for 49 participants whose responses were faster when an alerting signal was presented. This result suggested that, with a prerequisite that the presence of cues facilitates subsequent information processing, the greater a person's trait lucidity, the more efficiently he or she is capable of resolving conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dysfunctional attentional control is observed in patients with mental disorders. However, there is no established neurophysiological method to assess attention in such patients. We showed a discrepancy in alpha-band power in the tasks that evoked internal and external attention event-related alpha-band power changes in healthy subjects during self-reflection (SR) and working memory (WM) tasks in a preliminary study. In this study, we aimed at elucidating event-related alpha-band power changes in healthy subjects during the tasks, addressing the shortcomings of the previous study. Sixteen healthy volunteers were examined for the event-related power (ERpow) change during the tasks. The results demonstrated the discrepancy of alpha-band ERpow at 8, 10, and 12 Hz in the parieto-occipital area between the WM and SR tasks for a period between a target stimulus and a command stimulus, where a participant switched to internal attention from external attention according to the SR task and remained at external attention according to the WM task. The results suggest that alpha-band ERpow in this area is associated with the direction of attention in response to cognitive stimuli, indicating that the findings of ERpow during the two tasks would potentially aid in the clarification of the pathophysiology of the dysfunctional change in attention in patients with psychiatric disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vigilance decrement phenomenon has been traditionally studied by simple and monotonous behavioral tasks. Nowadays, however, there is considerable interest in measuring vigilance with more complex tasks, including independent measures of other attentional functions. In the present study, we provide evidence supporting the suitability of the Attentional Networks Test for Interactions and Vigilance - executive and arousal components (ANTI-Vea) as an appropriate method to simultaneously assess multiple attentional and vigilance components. Vigilance was examined as two dissociated components: executive vigilance -as the detection of infrequent signals- and arousal vigilance -as the sustenance of a fast reaction to stimuli without response selection-. Importantly, the executive vigilance decrement was analyzed with a novel methodological approach to particularly determine whether the sensitivity loss effect is influenced by a floor level on the false alarms. As expected, the ANTI-Vea proved to be a task suitable to assess: (a) the main effects and interactions of phasic alertness, orienting, and executive control; (b) the executive vigilance decrement as a progressive change in the response bias; and (c) the arousal vigilance decrement as a progressive slowness and variability in reaction time. We discuss some critical theoretical and empirical implications of measuring vigilance components with the ANTI-Vea task. We expect the present study to provide a suitable method to analyze the vigilance decrement phenomenon when measuring multiple attentional and vigilance functions. [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]