Browsing by Author "Charbonneau, Brooke"

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The Differential Impact of Mystery in Nature on Attention: An Oculometric Study
(Frontiers Media SA, 2021-12) Marois, Alexandre; Charbonneau, Brooke; Szolosi, Andrew M.; Watson, Jason M.
Nature exposure can provide benefits on stress, health and cognitive performance. According to Attention Restoration Theory (ART), the positive impact of nature on cognition is mainly driven by fascination. Fascinating properties of nature such as water or a winding hiking trail may capture involuntary attention, allowing the directed form of attention to rest and to recover. This claim has been supported by studies relying on eye-tracking measures of attention deployment, comparing exposure to urban and nature settings. Yet, recent studies have shown that promoting higher engagement with a nature setting can improve restorative benefits, hence challenging ART’s view that voluntary attention is resting. Besides, recent evidence published by Szolosi et al. (2014) suggests that voluntary attention may be involved during exposure to high-mystery nature images which they showed as having greater potential for attention restoration. The current study explored how exposure to nature images of different scenic qualities in mystery (and restoration potential) could impact the engagement of attention. To do so, participants were shown nature images characterized by either low or high mystery properties (with allegedly low or high restoration potential, respectively) and were asked to evaluate their fascination and aesthetic levels. Concurrently, an eye tracker collected measures of pupil size, fixations and spontaneous blinks as indices of attentional engagement. Results showed that high-mystery nature images had higher engagement than low-mystery images as supported by the larger pupil dilations, the higher number of fixations and the reduced number of blinks and durations of fixations. Taken together, these results challenge ART’s view that directed attention is merely resting during exposure to restorative nature and offer new hypotheses on potential mechanisms underlying attention restoration.
Once established, goal reminders provide long-lasting and cumulative benefits for lower working memory capacity individuals.
(American Psychological Association, 2022-10) Hood, Audrey V. B.; Charbonneau, Brooke; Hutchison, Keith A.
Previous research has shown that Stroop effects interact with working memory capacity (WMC) more strongly with lists of mostly congruent items. Although the predominant explanation for this relationship is goal maintenance, some research has challenged whether listwide effects truly reflect goal-maintenance abilities. The current study improved upon previous methodology by using both within-subject and between-subjects manipulations of goal reminder, increasing both the number of trials between reminders and the total length of the task to allow for greater goal neglect, and more precisely maintaining congruency proportion within each block. Participants completed the Automated Operation Span followed by a Stroop task in which they stopped every 24 trials to vocalize either a goal-reminder statement (“name the color not the word”) or a nongoal statement (“This is part of my intro to psychology class”). In the within-subject manipulation (Experiment 1), there was no consistent benefit for goal reminders over nongoal statements. However, in the between-subjects manipulation (Experiment 2), results demonstrated a strong benefit of goal reminders, such that goal reminders eliminated the relation between WMC and Stroop effects, whereas that relation was robust following nongoal statements. Moreover, the benefit of receiving goal reminders lasted for at least 24 trials and accumulated across the course of the experiment. These data provide strong evidence that goal reminders eliminate the relationship between WMC and Stroop errors and suggest goal reminders can be a useful intervention for those suffering from lapses in controlled attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Once established, goal reminders provide long-lasting and cumulative benefits for lower working memory capacity individuals.
(American Psychological Association, 2022-12) Hood, Audrey V. B.; Charbonneau, Brooke; Hutchison, Keith A.
Previous research has shown that Stroop effects interact with working memory capacity (WMC) more strongly with lists of mostly congruent items. Although the predominant explanation for this relationship is goal maintenance, some research has challenged whether listwide effects truly reflect goal-maintenance abilities. The current study improved upon previous methodology by using both within-subject and between-subjects manipulations of goal reminder, increasing both the number of trials between reminders and the total length of the task to allow for greater goal neglect, and more precisely maintaining congruency proportion within each block. Participants completed the Automated Operation Span followed by a Stroop task in which they stopped every 24 trials to vocalize either a goal-reminder statement (“name the color not the word”) or a nongoal statement (“This is part of my intro to psychology class”). In the within-subject manipulation (Experiment 1), there was no consistent benefit for goal reminders over nongoal statements. However, in the between-subjects manipulation (Experiment 2), results demonstrated a strong benefit of goal reminders, such that goal reminders eliminated the relation between WMC and Stroop effects, whereas that relation was robust following nongoal statements. Moreover, the benefit of receiving goal reminders lasted for at least 24 trials and accumulated across the course of the experiment. These data provide strong evidence that goal reminders eliminate the relationship between WMC and Stroop errors and suggest goal reminders can be a useful intervention for those suffering from lapses in controlled attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)