Competition in Reflective and Perceptual Attention
In order to focus our attention, we must inhibit distracting information. Most commonly, when we think of distractors, we think of sights and sounds that interfere with our ability to focus on a particular sight, sound, or task. Distractors are most commonly characterized as something in the external environment, such as a loud noise or bright light, but they can also be uninvited thoughts or memories that intrude on our mindstate, making it difficult to focus. In order to examine how our brain functions to ignore both types of distractors, we had participants complete a perceptual (externally oriented attention) and reflective (internally oriented attention) inhibition task while an MRI scanned their brain. Using this data, we plan to examine how certain locations in the brain respond to perceptual and reflective distractors of various categories.
Collaborators
Status
The manuscript for this project is currently in preparation.
Published Abstract
This work has been presented at the Vision Sciences Society Annual Convention in 2019. The conference proceedings were published in the Journal of Vision. Find the abstract here.
