| Project/Area Number |
18530556
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Experimental psychology
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
IWASAKI Syoichi Tohoku University, Tohoku University, Graduate School of Information Sciences, Professor (90117656)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
WADA Yuichi Tohoku University, Graduate School of Information Sciences, Associate Professor (80312635)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2006 – 2007
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 2007)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
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| Keywords | spatial attention / working memory / individual difference / interference / executive attention / 注意 |
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| Research Abstract |
In order to find out what is optimal strategy for the control of attention, we conducted experiments on individual differences in the voluntary control of attention.
1) One source of individual difference is aging, which is known to bring about deterioration in the various frontal lobe functions including attention. With a dual task participants searched for a probe stimulus while answering to questions heard from either left or right ear. Compared to younger people, older participants were not only slower to detect the probe but also showed increased interference from answering to questions than younger participants, especially when they had to listen to left-ear messages.
2) In the second experiment, two types of working memory capacities (both spatial and verbal working memories) were measured and they were correlated with attentional gain scores of two types of spatial cueing tasks (Le., endogenous and exogenous control). Verbal working memory capacity was found to be correlated with
… More
top-down or endogenous control of attention. However, the direction of the results was contrary to what we had expected initially Thus, high verbal working memory participants tended to show smaller attentional gain when their attention was under voluntary control
3) In attentional blink task where participants had to respond to two successive targets, a new measure of attentional focusing was explored with flanker task as the second target. In the traditional probe task reaction time is used as a measure of attentional capacity Using Hanker interference task, both reaction time (RT) to compatible condition and interference score (difference between compatible RT and incompatible RT) were available. Reaction time may be an index of spare attentional capacity while interference was regarded as an indicator of attentional concentration with higher concentration leading to lower interference. The obtained result conformed this expectation in that attentional capacity as indicated by compatible RTs was a monotonic decreasing function of the interval from TI, while attentional focusing was dynamically modulated as a function of TI interval. Less
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