TY  - JOUR
A1  - Koenig, Sebastian
A1  - Wolf, Reinhard
A1  - Heisenberg, Martin
T1  - Vision in Flies: Measuring the Attention Span
JF  - PLoS ONE
N2  - A visual stimulus at a particular location of the visual field may elicit a behavior while at the same time equally salient stimuli in other parts do not. This property of visual systems is known as selective visual attention (SVA). The animal is said to have a focus of attention (FoA) which it has shifted to a particular location. Visual attention normally involves an attention span at the location to which the FoA has been shifted. Here the attention span is measured in Drosophila. The fly is tethered and hence has its eyes fixed in space. It can shift its FoA internally. This shift is revealed using two simultaneous test stimuli with characteristic responses at their particular locations. In tethered flight a wild type fly keeps its FoA at a certain location for up to 4s. Flies with a mutation in the radish gene, that has been suggested to be involved in attention-like mechanisms, display a reduced attention span of only 1s.
KW  - eye movements
KW  - attention
KW  - Drosophila melanogaster
KW  - torque
KW  - motion
KW  - insect flight
KW  - eyes
KW  - vision
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-179947
VL  - 11
IS  - 2
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Holtfrerich, Sarah K. C.
A1  - Schwarz, Katharina A.
A1  - Sprenger, Christian
A1  - Reimers, Luise
A1  - Diekhof, Esther K.
T1  - Endogenous Testosterone and Exogenous Oxytocin Modulate Attentional Processing of Infant Faces
JF  - PLoS ONE
N2  - Evidence indicates that hormones modulate the intensity of maternal care. Oxytocin is known for its positive influence on maternal behavior and its important role for childbirth. In contrast, testosterone promotes egocentric choices and reduces empathy. Further, testosterone decreases during parenthood which could be an adaptation to increased parental investment. The present study investigated the interaction between testosterone and oxytocin in attentional control and their influence on attention to baby schema in women. Higher endogenous testosterone was expected to decrease selective attention to child portraits in a face-in-the-crowd-paradigm, while oxytocin was expected to counteract this effect. As predicted, women with higher salivary testosterone were slower in orienting attention to infant targets in the context of adult distractors. Interestingly, reaction times to infant and adult stimuli decreased after oxytocin administration, but only in women with high endogenous testosterone. These results suggest that oxytocin may counteract the adverse effects of testosterone on a central aspect of social behavior and maternal caretaking.
KW  - maternal behavior
KW  - oxytocin
KW  - testosterone
KW  - attention
KW  - infant faces
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-166783
VL  - 11
IS  - 11
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gressmann, Marcel
A1  - Janczyk, Markus
T1  - The (Un)Clear Effects of Invalid Retro-Cues
JF  - Frontiers in Psychology
N2  - Studies with the retro-cue paradigm have shown that validly cueing objects in visual working memory long after encoding can still benefit performance on subsequent change detection tasks. With regard to the effects of invalid cues, the literature is less clear. Some studies reported costs, others did not. We here revisit two recent studies that made interesting suggestions concerning invalid retro-cues: One study suggested that costs only occur for larger set sizes, and another study suggested that inclusion of invalid retro-cues diminishes the retro-cue benefit. New data from one experiment and a reanalysis of published data are provided to address these conclusions. The new data clearly show costs (and benefits) that were independent of set size, and the reanalysis suggests no influence of the inclusion of invalid retro-cues on the retro-cue benefit. Thus, previous interpretations may be taken with some caution at present.
KW  - visual working memory
KW  - retro-cue
KW  - attention
KW  - replication
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-165296
VL  - 7
IS  - 244
ER  -