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Neural Patterns of the Implicit Association Test

Overview of attention for article published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, November 2015
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Title
Neural Patterns of the Implicit Association Test
Published in
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, November 2015
DOI 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00605
Pubmed ID
Authors

Graham F. Healy, Lorraine Boran, Alan F. Smeaton

Abstract

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a reaction time based categorization task that measures the differential associative strength between bipolar targets and evaluative attribute concepts as an approach to indexing implicit beliefs or biases. An open question exists as to what exactly the IAT measures, and here EEG (Electroencephalography) has been used to investigate the time course of ERPs (Event-related Potential) indices and implicated brain regions in the IAT. IAT-EEG research identifies a number of early (250-450 ms) negative ERPs indexing early-(pre-response) processing stages of the IAT. ERP activity in this time range is known to index processes related to cognitive control and semantic processing. A central focus of these efforts has been to use IAT-ERPs to delineate the implicit and explicit factors contributing to measured IAT effects. Increasing evidence indicates that cognitive control (and related top-down modulation of attention/perceptual processing) may be components in the effective measurement of IAT effects, as factors such as physical setting or task instruction can change an IAT measurement. In this study we further implicate the role of proactive cognitive control and top-down modulation of attention/perceptual processing in the IAT-EEG. We find statistically significant relationships between D-score (a reaction-time based measure of the IAT-effect) and early ERP-time windows, indicating where more rapid word categorizations driving the IAT effect are present, they are at least partly explainable by neural activity not significantly correlated with the IAT measurement itself. Using LORETA, we identify a number of brain regions driving these ERP-IAT relationships notably involving left-temporal, insular, cingulate, medial frontal and parietal cortex in time regions corresponding to the N2- and P3-related activity. The identified brain regions involved with reduced reaction times on congruent blocks coincide with those of previous studies.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 103 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Germany 1 <1%
Italy 1 <1%
Singapore 1 <1%
Brazil 1 <1%
Unknown 99 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 21 20%
Student > Master 14 14%
Student > Doctoral Student 12 12%
Researcher 10 10%
Student > Bachelor 9 9%
Other 15 15%
Unknown 22 21%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 51 50%
Neuroscience 10 10%
Sports and Recreations 3 3%
Engineering 3 3%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 2 2%
Other 9 9%
Unknown 25 24%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 December 2015.
All research outputs
#18,430,915
of 22,833,393 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
#6,072
of 7,155 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#278,914
of 386,693 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
#131
of 151 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,833,393 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 151 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.