We examined the attentional demands of the preparation process that intervenes a warning stimulus (S1) and a subsequent reaction stimulus (S2). Twelve participants performed a reaction task with a variable S1–S2 interval both with and without concurrent memory load that served to deplete attentional resources. We found that memory load did not modify the effect of the S1-S2 interval on reaction...

INTRODUCTION Attentional biases for alcohol related information (AB) have often been reported for heavy drinkers. These attentional biases have been found to have predictive value regarding relapse in abstaining alcoholics. Similarly impaired inhibitory processes have also been found to be associated with heavy drinkers. This paper describes a new experimental paradigm that can be utilised to i...

The ability to overcome attentional capture and attend goal-relevant information is typically viewed as a volitional, effortful process that relies on the maintenance of current task priorities or "attentional sets" in working memory. However, the visual system possesses statistical learning mechanisms that can incidentally encode probabilistic associations between goal-relevant objects and the...

The ability to overcome attentional capture and attend goal-relevant information is typically viewed as a volitional, effortful process that relies on the maintenance of current task priorities or “attentional sets” in working memory. However, the visual system possesses statistical learning mechanisms that can incidentally encode probabilistic associations between goal-relevant objects and the...

Human information processing is limited by attentional resources. That is, via attentional mechanisms, humans select a limited amount of sensory input to process while other sensory input is neglected. In multisensory research, a matter of ongoing debate is whether there are distinct pools of attentional resources for each sensory modality or whether attentional resources are shared across sens...

There is emerging evidence that attentional biases are related to the consumption of substances such as alcohol and tobacco, and that attentional bias modification can reduce unwanted consumption of these substances. We present evidence for the first time to our knowledge that the same logical argument applies in the food and eating domain. We conducted two experiments that used a modified dot ...

Depression is associated with attentional biases for emotional information that are proposed to reflect stable vulnerability factors for the development and recurrence of depression. A key question for researchers is whether those who have recovered from depression also exhibit attentional biases, and if so, how similar these biases are to those who are currently depressed. To address this ques...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Research has provided evidence for an association between attentional biases for substance-related stimuli and the development and maintenance of a variety of addictive behaviours. Attempts at reducing attentional bias amongst harmful and dependent drinkers have provided evidence to suggest that reduced attentional bias in heavy drinkers would lead to necessary reductions in alc...