On the coupling and decoupling of mind wandering and perception: a shared metabolism account.

Introduction: Mind wandering (MW) has been associated with reduced responsiveness to external stimuli ("perceptual decoupling"). Conversely, increased perceptual demands of a task result in reduced MW. Here we propose a neurobiological account attributing the mutually-limiting relationship of MW and perception to brain-wide limits on cerebral metabolism.

Sustained selective attention in adolescence: Cognitive development and predictors of distractibility at school.

Despite much research into the development of attention in adolescence, mixed results and between-task differences have precluded clear conclusions regarding the relative early or late maturation of attention abilities. Moreover, although adolescents constantly face the need to pay attention at school, it remains unclear whether laboratory measures of attention can predict their ability to sustain attention focus during lessons. Therefore, here we devised a task that was sensitive to measure both sustained and selective attention and tested whether task measures could predict adolescents' levels of inattention during lessons.

Establishing gaze markers of perceptual load during multi-target visual search.

Highly-automated technologies are increasingly incorporated into existing systems, for instance in advanced car models. Although highly automated modes permit non-driving activities (e.g.

Alpha oscillations reflect suppression of distractors with increased perceptual load.

Attention serves an essential role in cognition and behavior allowing us to focus on behaviorally-relevant objects while ignoring distraction. Perceptual load theory states that attentional resources are allocated according to the requirements of the task, i.e.

Perceptual load and enumeration: Distractor interference depends on subitizing capacity.

Attention is limited, both in processing capacity (leading to phenomena of "inattentional blindness") and in the capacity for selective focus (leading to distraction). Load theory (e.g.