Farstead, Brian; Williford, Tanner; Schow, Hunter; Muldowney, John; Stewart, Victoria� (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Lundwall, Rebecca (Brigham Young university, Psychology, Cognitive and Behavioral Nueroscience)
Reflexive and sustained attention are important components of daily functioning, and those who exhibit attention deficits typically have problems in school, work, and relationships. Previous studies have measured sustained and reflexive attention using different tasks with disparate stimuli. Because the stimuli are different, it is unclear how reflexive and sustained attention are related. There are some indications in the literature that individuals tend to be better at one or the other type of task.
We measured reflexive and sustained attention in a sample (N=185) of children who completed two computer tasks that recorded response time and accuracy. We developed the two tasks so that all stimuli were identical, but the reflexive attention task used peripheral stimuli and the sustained attention task used central stimuli. Parents also completed questionnaires reporting demographics (e.g., age and sex) and the child's usual sleep habits, behavior at home, and behavior at school. Asking about sleep, home behavior, and school behavior allows us to identify predictors of individual variability in computer-task scores.
We anticipated that children who have a better reflexive attention (lower response times and higher accuracy) would score lower on sustained attention. Furthermore, we expect the relationship between reflexive and sustained attention would be moderated by aspects of behavior related to sleep, home-life, and school. Determining the relationship between different components of attention is important because it will help us to understand the underlying factors that contribute to different deficits in attention. Furthermore, it is important to understand how these different components of attention manifest by age, sex, behaviors at home and behaviors in school. Understanding the relationship between reflexive and sustained attention and their association with child characteristics could potentially contribute to interventions in individuals who have symptoms of attentional deficits.