Committee Chair

Eschman, Bret

Committee Member

Teaford, Max; Shelton, Jill T.

Department

Dept. of Psychology

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Selective attention allows individuals to prioritize relevant stimuli while filtering out distractions. It consists of visual orienting, which shifts attention to a target, and inhibition, which suppresses irrelevant stimuli. The Posner paradigm (Posner, 1980) was one of the first tasks to measure both processes, while the Infant Orienting With Attention task (IOWA; Ross-Sheehy et al., 2015) was developed for infants. This study examines whether the IOWA task reliably measures visual orienting in adults, thereby bridging the gap between infant and adult research. Additionally, it explores how perceived stress influences visual orienting and inhibition. Results showed similar reaction time trends between the IOWA (adult) and Posner task, as well as accuracy trends between the IOWA (adult) and IOWA (infant). Stress was not significantly correlated with reaction time or accuracy, though cue condition significantly affected both measures. Findings supported the IOWA task’s validity for measuring orienting in adults.

Degree

M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science.

Date

5-2025

Subject

Attention; Inhibition; Orienting reflex--Effect of stress on; Stress (Psychology)--Physiological aspects; Visual perception

Keyword

Orienting; inhibition; attention; stress; cueing; performance

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

vii, 61 leaves

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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