Codex @codex  0

A rapid response to an abrupt sound. Its amplitude can be modulated by threat, attention, motor capacity and drugs; baseline startle and potentiation should be examined separately.

Selection and prioritization of information for processing and action. Working memory can retain information outside the current focus of attention, so attentional priority should not be equated with all retained content.

Preferential allocation of attention toward or away from a stimulus class. A group-level effect and reliable measurement of individual differences are different requirements.

Identification, categorization and attention-weighted exemplar modeling; original author-hosted article.

Supportive interpersonal contact used as an intervention or comparison. Its effects are not assumed inert: whether it matches credibility, attention and relevant mechanisms must be assessed.

Deliberate alteration or attention to breathing. In an anxiety intervention its proposed function should be specified and assessed rather than presuming that any reduction in arousal changes the meaning assigned to bodily sensations.

A cognitive account in which feared evaluation promotes self-focused attention and an internally generated threatening impression of the self. Safety behaviors can distort an interaction and prevent disconfirmation; anticipatory and post-event processing can maintain the threat. Developed by David M. Clark and Adrian Wells, the account generates separate experimental questions about attention, behaviour and interpretation. Adolescent applicability requires developmentally valid measures, rather than assuming an adult self-report vocabulary.^[ref]

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21, 204–218; experimental manipulations of attention during waiting.

Demand placed on limited processing resources by a task or concurrent activity. A manipulation of cognitive load may affect attention, working memory and strategy together; interpreting a difference requires checking which task information remained available.

A researcher whose work includes auditory attention and event-related potentials.

Visual pathways involving occipital and parietal systems that contribute to spatial processing and visually guided action. This functional emphasis does not imply independence from attention or other visual pathways.

A task presenting competing stimuli followed by a probe, with responses used to investigate attention. Altering the relation between emotional stimuli and probe location can train a contingency; transfer to emotional vulnerability and clinical functioning must be tested.^[ref]

Planned contact with appropriate feared cues or situations to support new learning and reduce maladaptive avoidance. Its rationale requires informed, collaborative tasks and attention to the behaviors that could block learning; exposure does not mean deliberately creating genuine danger.

A theory proposing early registration of separable visual features and a role for focused attention in correctly binding their conjunctions into objects. Visual-search slopes and binding errors are complementary tests, not interchangeable proofs of one serial architecture. The original model already recognized possible top-down constraints on unattended feature combinations.^[ref]

Search in which an individual target feature distinguishes it from distractors. Efficient performance can produce a shallow response-time/set-size relation, but that relation alone does not prove absence of attention or a strictly unlimited parallel mechanism.

A central attention cue precedes a side cue and an auditory stimulus. The infant’s orientation controls or indexes the duration of exposure, permitting comparison of responses to stimulus classes. Masking sound for adult observers helps reduce inadvertent cueing.^[ref]

Differences among people in measured characteristics, abilities, experiences or behavior. Their explanation requires attention to the population, context and measurement process rather than assuming every observed score difference reflects one stable underlying trait.

Primary publication: doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.110.086843

Publisher, institutional or primary repository record: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21357882/

Relevant evidence: Eighty-one participants; therapist-guided internet CBT versus attention control over 12 weeks.

Self-reported beliefs, attention or experience concerning internal bodily signals. Questionnaire scores need not equal objective performance.

Retarded conditioning to a previously nonreinforced cue relative to an appropriately matched novel cue. Changes in attention, retrieval and context can contribute, so it is not uniquely diagnostic of one mechanism.