Talk: Rhythmic Properties of Attention across Development
Speaker: Ivette Planell-Mendez, Princeton University (grid.16750.35)
Title: Rhythmic Properties of Attention across Development
Emcee: Cheng Xue
Backend host: Gelana Tostaeva
Details: https://neuromatch.io/abstract?submis...
Lab website: https://scholar.princeton.edu/napl
Twitter: / ivetteneuro
Presented during Neuromatch Conference 3.0, Oct 26-30, 2020.
Summary: Classically, attention has been understood as a constant and continuous process. However, recent evidence suggests that attention alternates rapidly between states of enhanced and diminished perceptual sensitivity. This rhythmic property, which facilitates environmental sampling during the allocation of attention, allows attention to be flexibly applied to the most relevant target at any moment. Importantly, these dynamic attentional state alternations can be measured at the behavioral level. In adults, this rhythmicity occurs in the theta range (3-8 Hz). While adult and non-human primate studies have shaped our understanding of these dynamic properties of attention, little is known about this rhythmicity during development. In this study we aim to determine the developmental trajectory of rhythmic properties of attention at the behavioral level and hypothesize that it becomes more adult-like with age. A barrier to studying this in childhood has been that tasks for revealing the rhythmicity of attention are long and demanding. We’ve implemented a foveal task that is accessible for children, yet still captures this rhythmicity. During this task children fixate on a central point while a blue dot cloud followed by a red dot cloud appears on the screen. The appearance of the red cloud serves as a cue and is followed by a random cue-target interval that varies between 250-750ms after which time, one of the two clouds changes slightly in contrast. The ability to detect this contrast change depends on the phase of attention at the time it occurs, thereby allowing us to quantify the frequency at which attention is rhythmically oscillating. We are collecting data for ages 6-8 and 11-13, and have so far collected data from 11 children in the older group, to determine if there is a significant difference in peak frequency between these age groups. If so, we will include more ages to get a more holistic picture of the developmental trajectory of rhythmicity in attention.