每周论坛 | Research of sustained attention in visuomotor processing

讲座题目：Research of sustained attention in visuomotor temporal processing （视觉运动过程中持续注意研究）

报 告 人 ：吴祥 教授

报告单位：中山大学心理学系

报告时间：2024/04/08  14：00-16：00

报告地点：心理学系305

讲座简介

Relative to audition, vision is considered much less trustworthy in sensorimotor timing such as synchronizing finger movements with a temporally regular sequence. Visuomotor timing requires maintaining attention over time, whereas the sustained visual attention may not be well held in conventional visuomotor timing task settings where flashing visual stimuli consisted of a briefly presented flash and a long blank period. In the present study, the potential attentional lapses in time due to the disappearance of the flash were carefully controlled in Experiment 1 by changing the color of the flash instead of its disappearance, or in Experiment 2 by adding an additional continuously presented fixation point serving as an external attentional cue when the flash disappeared. Improvement of visuomotor timing performance was found in both experiments. The finding suggests a role of enhanced sustained visual attention in improving visuomotor timing, by which vision could also be a trustworthy modality for processing temporal information in sensorimotor interactions.

Maintaining focus of attention over prolonged periods can be challenging, especially when the target stimulus is absent from the temporal sequence. Prior research has shown that a temporal attentional cue filling in the temporal blank can improve sustained attention: in a sustained visual attention task requiring synchronizing finger tapping with a temporally regular sequence composed of brief flash disks interleaved with blank periods, task performance was improved when a continuous fixation point that served as a temporal attentional cue was presented superimposed on the disk stimulus. To test the hypothesis that binding the temporal attentional cue with the target temporal sequence by spatial overlapping is crucial for enhancing sustained attention, the present study conducted a series of three experiments that deconstructed the bound connection between the cue and the sequence stimulus. In Experiment 1, the cue was placed above or below a flash disk. In Experiment 2, the cue was between two vertically arranged flash disks. In Experiment 3, the cue was in a flash ring. No significant effect of sustained attention improvement was found in any of the three experiments. Experiment 4 further replicated these null results and the previously observed effect of sustained attention improvement when the temporal cue was superimposed on the sequence stimulus. Our finding demonstrates that binding by spatial overlapping during the temporal blank when the sequence stimulus is absent is critical for enhancing sustained attention, which should be beneficial for improving performance across a broader range of tasks that require prolonged maintenance of attention.

报告人简介

报告人：吴祥，博士, 中山大学心理学系，教授，博导

研究领域：认知神经自动化科学

研究兴趣：意识，我，冲突解决; 神经/精神疾病; 时间/空间信息整合; 视觉

研究手段：心理物理; 脑影像; 机器人程序https://github.com/rwfwuwx/11buddy-and-I