Attentional control

Attentional control refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex, attentional control is thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory. Attentional control refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex, attentional control is thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory. Sources of attention in our brain create a system of three networks: alertness (maintaining awareness), orientation (information from sensory input), and executive control (resolving conflict). These three networks have been studied using experimental designs involving adults, children, and monkeys, with and without abnormalities of attention. Research designs include the Stroop task and flanker task, which study executive control with analysis techniques including event-related functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI). While some research designs focus specifically on one aspect of attention (such as executive control), others experiments view several areas, which examine interactions between the alerting, orienting, and executive control networks. More recently, the Attention Network Test (ANT), designed by Fan and Posner, has been used to obtain efficiency measures of the three networks, and allow their relationships to be examined. It was designed as a behavioural task simple enough to obtain data from children, patients, and animals. The task requires participants to quickly respond to cues given on a computer screen, while having their attention fixated on a center target. Early researchers studying the development of the frontal cortex thought that it was functionally silent during the first year of life. Similarly, early research suggested that infants aged one year or younger are completely passive in the allocation of their attention, and have no capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. This is shown, for example, in the phenomenon of 'sticky fixation', whereby infants are incapable of disengaging their attention from a particularly salient target. Other research has suggested, however, that even very young infants do have some capacity to exercise control over their allocation of attention, albeit in a much more limited sense. As the frontal lobes mature, children's capacity to exercise attentional control increases, although attentional control abilities remain much poorer in children than they do in adults. Some children show impaired development of attentional control abilities, thought to arise from the relatively slower development of frontal areas of the brain, which sometimes results in a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Some studies of aging and cognition focus on working memory processes and declines in attentional control. One study used fMRI measures during a Stroop task comparing neural activity of attentional control in younger (21–27 years) and older participants (60–75 years). Conditions included increased competition and increased conflict. Results showed evidence of decreases in responsiveness in brain areas associated with attentional control for the older group. This result suggests that older people may have decreases in their ability to utilize attentional control in their everyday lives. Disrupted attentional control has been noted not just in the early development of conditions for which the core deficit is related to attention such as ADHD, but also in conditions such as autism and anxiety. Disrupted attentional control has also been reported in infants born preterm, as well as in infants with genetic disorders such as Down syndrome and Williams syndrome. Several groups have also reported impaired attentional control early in development in children from lower socioeconomic status families. The patterns of disrupted attentional control relate to findings of disrupted performance on executive functions tasks such as working memory across a wide number of different disorder groups. The question of why the executive functions appear to be disrupted across so many different disorder groups remains, however, poorly understood. Studies have shown that there is a high probability that those who suffer from low attentional control also experience other mental conditions. Low attentional control is more common among those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),'a disorder with persistent age-inappropriate symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that are sufficient to cause impairment in major life activities'. Also low attentional control is common in individuals with Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, those with social anxiety, trait anxiety, and depression, and attention difficulties following a stroke. Individuals also respond quicker, and have better overall executive control when they have low levels of anxiety and depression. Low levels of attentional control are also thought to increase chances of developing a psychopathology because the ability to shift one’s focus away from threat information is important in processing emotions. More researchers are also accounting for attentional control in studies that might not necessarily focus on attention by having participants fill out an Attentional Control Scale (ACS) or a Cognitive Attentional Syndrome-1 (CAS1), both of which are self-reporting questionnaires measuring attention focusing and attention shifting. Researchers are also suggesting others in the field use experimental and longitudinal designs to address the relationship between ACS, emotional functioning, CAS, and attention to threat. This is due to the increasing problematic occurrences experts are seeing in the field regarding attentional control in relation to other mental illnesses. Attention problems are also characteristic of anxiety disorders like PTSD. Attentional bias causes a person to processes emotionally negative information preferentially over emotionally positive information. Participants were selected after being measured on scales for PTSD, anxiety proneness, attentional control, and attentional bias. Results indicated attentional control was inversely related to attentional bias. PTSD patients with higher attentional control exhibited less attentional bias. Individual differences in attentional control had an effect on anxiety problems in PTSD.