Flexibility in resizing attentional breadth: Asymmetrical versus symmetrical attentional contraction and expansion costs depends on context

Abstract

One of the core ways that attentional resources can be regulated is the breadth of attention: the tendency to concentrate one’s attentional resources over a small region of space (i.e., “narrow scope”), or to spread them over a larger region of space (i.e., “broad scope”). It has long been understood that humans have a preference towards the broad or global level of processing. More recently, beyond any static preference, researchers have increasingly appreciated the importance of rapid rescaling of attentional breadth to meet task demands, especially for real-world tasks such as driving. Here, we examined whether there was any asymmetry in the human capacity to resize attention from a narrow to broad scale (expansion) versus a broad to narrow scale (contraction). In Experiment 1, we found remarkable symmetry in expansion and contraction efficiency, even under conditions where the global stimuli were demonstrably more salient. This indicates that humans can flexibly adapt to the attentional demands of the context. However, in Experiment 2, an asymmetry was revealed, whereby attentional expansion was more efficient than contraction. The key difference between Experiments 1 and 2 was whether or not the initial baseline block demanded frequent attentional resizing, suggesting that recent experience can impact attentional flexibility. We also found reliable individual differences in participants’ ability to resize their attentional breadth, identifying a group of high-flexibility individuals who excelled at both attentional expansion and contraction.

When cognitive control harms rather than helps: individuals with high working memory capacity are less efficient at infrequent contraction of attentional breadth

“…For the present study, the focus on individual differences in attentional resizing was instead driven by the goal of providing insight into the mechanisms of attentional resizing itself. One recent study indicated that there are reliable, quantifiable individual differences in attentional resizing efficiency, even within a non-clinical sample of (presumably) healthy young adults (Goodhew & Plummer, 2019). The purpose of the present study was to determine the extent to which it is possible to predict an individuals' attentional resizing efficiency from other, theoretically-relevant variables.…”

“…That is, some tasks can produce highly reliable group-level effects, meaning that they are well-suited for assessing the effect of experimental manipulations, but may produce little between-participant variation, rendering them unsuitable for the goals of individual-differences research Hedge, Powell, & Sumner, 2018). The modified Navon task adopted here has been found to produce substantial and reliable between-participant variance (Goodhew & Plummer, 2019).…”

“…In particular, modifying the proportion of trials at which the target appears at the global or local level compels participants to broaden or narrow their attentional breadth. For example, when the majority of trials in a block have the target at the global level, participants broaden their attention, and then have to contract their attention to identify the target on the minority local trials (Calcott & Berkman, 2014;Goodhew & Plummer, 2019). Similarly, when the majority of trials in a block are local, participants narrow their attention, and then have to expand their attention to identify the target on the minority global trials (Calcott & Berkman, 2014;Goodhew & Plummer, 2019).…”

Standardizing measurement in psychological studies: On why one second has different value in a sprint versus a marathon

“…In the undirected Navon, participants' task is to identify a given letter (e.g., identify whether T or H is present in the stimulus) as quickly and accurately as possible. RT for trials when the target appears at the global level is subtracted from RT for which the target appears at the local level in order to yield a measure of global preference, such that a larger positive value indicates a greater tendency toward the global level of processing (Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2008;Goodhew & Plummer, 2019;McKone et al, 2010). Consider a hypothetical scenario in which global preference scores for experimental condition A are 100 ms, whereas for experimental condition B they are 200 ms.…”

“…Next, we can consider how this SSD solution works for real distributions of scores. Here, we consider the data from a recent study which examined the efficiency of people's ability to dynamically contract their attention focus (i.e., resize from global to local focus), versus their ability to expand their attention focus (i.e., resize from local to global focus) (Goodhew & Plummer, 2019). (Note that the raw data for these experiments are available in the supplementary material for the Goodhew & Plummer paper, for interested readers).…”