Attention Fan & Posner (2004) - Attention Systems

Study Notes

Attention System

The attention system involves specialist networks that maintain alertness, orient resources to relevant sensory events, and control behaviour.
The attention system can be fractionated into subsystems with specific cognitive functions and anatomical substrates.

Subsystems of Attention

Alerting: involved in preparatory changes in the individual's ability to receive, evaluate, and respond to an upcoming stimulus.
Orienting: involved in physically distinguishing between exogenous and endogenous cues, temporally distinguishing between enhancement and inhibition of stimuli at cued locations, and functionally distinguishing between valid and invalid cues.
Executive Control (Conflict): involved in resolving conflicts between different stimuli or responses.

Brain Regions Associated with Attention

Frontal-Eye Fields (FEF): associated with endogenous cues.
Intraparietal Sulcus: associated with endogenous cues.
Superior Parietal Lobe: associated with endogenous cues.
Ventral Prefrontal Cortex: associated with exogenous cues.
Temporal Parietal Junction: associated with exogenous cues.

Testing Attention

Theoretical models and empirical studies describe and explain the brain mechanisms associated with prioritizing relevant over irrelevant information.
The Attention Network Test (Fan et al., 2002) is a task that manipulates orienting, alerting, and executive control (congruent vs. incongruent).
The timed cancellation task is used to measure attention, including the number of balloons crossed on the left and right and the time to completion.

Description

This quiz covers the attention system, its structures, and functions as described by Fan and Posner (2004). It includes topics such as alertness, orienting, and executive control. Test your knowledge of this important cognitive function.