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Modulations among the alerting, orienting and executive control networks

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Abstract

This paper reports a series of experiments that were carried out in order to study the attentional system. Three networks make up this system, and each of them specializes in particular processes. The executive control network specializes in control processes, such as conflict resolution or detection of errors; the orienting network directs the processing system to the source of input and enhances its processing; the alerting network prepares the system for a fast response by maintaining an adequate level of activation in the cognitive system. Recently, Fan and collaborators [J Cogn Neurosci 14(3):340–347, 2002] designed a task to measure the efficiency of each network. We modified Fan’s task to test the influences among the networks. We found that the executive control network is inhibited by the alerting network, whereas the orienting network raises the efficiency of the executive control network (Experiment 1). We also found that the alerting network influences the orienting network by speeding up its time course function (Experiment 2). Results were replicated in a third experiment, proving the effects to be stable over time, participants and experimental context, and to be potentially important as a tool for neuropsychological assessment.

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Notes

  1. However, it is worth mentioning that dissenting views reject the thought of attention as a system independent of those used for the processing of input and planning of responses (see Allport 1993; Rizzolatti et al. 2002 for elaborations on this point of view).

  2. Even though the orienting network is not exclusively concerned with visual information, but with input coming from any sense, for the sake of simplicity we only mention the studies concerning visual orienting since it is the most relevant to our tasks. See Spence and Driver (2005) for a review on crossmodal spatial orienting or Correa et al. (2004) for temporal orienting.

  3. We used this nomenclature instead of the usual “valid/invalid” one to emphasize the absence of contingence between the location of the cue and that of the target.

  4. The same criteria were used for all the experiments.

  5. The results of the interactions including all the levels of the variables were: Visual Cue × Congruency: F (4,92)=6.31; p<0.001; Auditory Signal × Congruency: F (2,46)=2.60; p=0.08; Auditory Signal × Visual Cue: F (2,46)=39.26; p<0.0001.

  6. This is easily explained by arguing that visual cues already produce some alerting, thus reducing the net effect produced by an auditory cue (Fernandez-Duque and Posner 1997).

  7. The results of the interactions, including all the levels of the variables, were: Visual Cue × Congruency: F (2,94)=17.69; p<0.0001; Auditory Signal × Congruency does not change since the neutral level of the congruency variable was eliminated from the design; Auditory Signal × Visual Cue: F (2,94)=20.92; p<0.0001; SOA × Auditory Signal × Visual Cue: F (2,94)=1.45; p<0.24; Auditory Signal × Visual Cue (SOA 100): F (2,94)=9.6; p<0.0005; Auditory Signal × Visual Cue (SOA500): F (2,94)=9.47; p<0.0005.

  8. Again all the main effects, as well as the interactions, pointed in the same direction as the previous findings. Mean RT and error rates per condition can be found in Table 1. Main effects: Auditory Signal: F (1,24)=29.66; p<0.0001; Visual Cue: F (2,48)=50.69; p<0.0001 and Congruency: F (1,24)=129.74; p<0.0001. Interactions: Visual Cue × Congruency: F (1,24)=5.94; p<0.05; Auditory Signal × Congruency: F (1,24)=8.84; p<0.01 and Auditory Signal × Visual Cue: F (1,24)=17.36; p<0.0005. See Callejas et al. (2004) for an extended report of a similar study.

  9. Inhibition of return was not found in our studies. When a task is complex enough (such as our difficult discrimination task) IOR is not observed unless SOAs much longer than ours are used (Lupiáñez et al. 1997)

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ray Klein and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This research was financially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte with a predoctoral grant (FPU, AP2001-3181) to the first author, and by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología with research grants to the second and fourth authors (BSO2002-04308-C02-02 and BSO2000-1411-CO2, respectively).

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  1. Departamento de Psicología Experimental y Fisiología del Comportamiento, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Campus Universitario Cartuja s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

    Alicia Callejas, Juan Lupiàñez, María Jesús Funes & Pío Tudela

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  1. Alicia Callejas
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  2. Juan Lupiàñez
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  3. María Jesús Funes
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  4. Pío Tudela
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Correspondence to Alicia Callejas.

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Callejas, A., Lupiàñez, J., Funes, M.J. et al. Modulations among the alerting, orienting and executive control networks. Exp Brain Res 167, 27–37 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-005-2365-z

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