IntroductionThe Competitive Attention Test (CAT) assesses distractibility as a multidimensional construct derived from cognitive neuroscience models of attention, capturing voluntary and involuntary attentional processes and their underlying mechanisms using ecologically relevant stimuli. To validate its psychometric properties, we conducted two experiments examining construct-relevant reliability and validity evidence in a lifespan sample (ages 6–89).MethodsExperiment 1 assessed internal consistency (N = 520) and inter-rater reliability (N = 114) of indices related to speed, variability, phasic arousal, and accuracy. Experiment 2 evaluated short-term test–retest reliability (N = 79), convergent validity with established attention measures (TAP-M, KiTAP; n = 38), and divergent validity with respect to broader cognitive abilities assessed using Wechsler intelligence scales.ResultsExperiment 1 confirmed coherent clustering and examiner stability of the CAT indices. In Experiment 2, most indices showed temporal stability, meaningful associations with attention-specific constructs, and minimal overlap with reasoning abilities.ConclusionThese findings support the CAT as a reliable, theoretically informed measure of attentional control, with an ecologically valid design suited to research and potential clinical assessments of distractibility from 6 to 89-year-old.

Theoretical models of attention propose that norepinephrine (NE) can induce both a global boost of arousal and selective amplification of high-priority stimuli, yet few tasks have tested these dual effects in humans. Here, we used pupillometry in an auditory detection task, the Competitive Attention Test (CAT), previously performed in large cohort studies, to examine how task engagement (active vs. passive) and stimulus relevance (informative vs. uninformative cues) modulate arousal. Results showed that both relevant and irrelevant sounds elicited larger pupil dilation under active conditions, indicating a global arousal effect. Crucially, only relevant sounds benefited from an additional dilation when preceded by an informative cue, demonstrating a selective arousal mechanism associated to top-down attention. These findings illustrate the NE's dual role in boosting overall alertness while selectively enhancing high-priority stimuli. Beyond theoretical implications, this work highlights that the CAT captures measurable arousal components, reinforcing its utility for clinical assessments of attention-arousal clinical disruptions.

Abstract Attentional control requires the fine-tuned interaction of attentional networks supporting alertness, orienting and higher-level executive control. This study examined the interaction of executive attention, comprising inhibition, and involuntary orienting towards unexpected deviant sounds in children (6–8-years, N=30), adolescents (10–12-years, N=39) and adults (18–34-years, N=35). An auditory equiprobable Go/Nogo-Oddball paradigm was employed to investigate executive (Go/Nogo) and involuntary (Oddball) attention and their interaction. Event-related potentials (ERP) in the EEG, pupil dilation and behavioral data were analyzed using Bayesian statistics. Deviant sounds evoked an involuntary attentional orienting reflected by the ERP component P3a and decreased performance in all age groups. The distraction effect diminished with age. Pupil dilation in response to deviant and target sounds were modulated by involuntary and executive attention but showed no interaction. In the EEG, frontal Nogo-N2 and Nogo-P3 effects, which reflect response inhibition, appeared in standard trials but not in deviant trials. This interaction suggests that response inhibition is reduced by involuntary attention orienting. While all age groups showed similar amplitudes of the Nogo-N2 effect, the subsequent Nogo- P3 effect, which has been associated to motor inhibition, was absent in the 6–8-year-olds. Age differences observed in latencies of the Nogo-N2 effect but not in the latencies of the Nogo- P3 effect (between adolescents and adults) indicate distinct developmental trajectories of the response inhibition mechanisms underlying the Nogo-N2 and Nogo-P3 effects throughout childhood and adolescence. The present data provide novel insights into the interaction between executive and orienting attention networks in the auditory modality during development.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is typically described as an ‘attention problem’, yet attention is not unitary. This ambiguity limits clinical interpretation because the same label can reflect different processes, including failures of voluntary orienting, exaggerated involuntary capture of attention, unstable sustained attention, or dysregulated arousal. These different facets of attention have been rarely simultaneously investigated in a same protocol. Here, we used the Competitive Attention Test (CAT) to dissociate and measure within a single paradigm voluntary attention orienting, involuntary attention, sustained attention, and phasic arousal. The performance of children and adolescents with ADHD were compared with those of age- and sex-matched typically developing (TD) peers previously tested and included in a normative database (N=50). The CAT revealed a selective profile. Voluntary attention orienting seemed preserved in patients with ADHD, and involuntary capture of attention was not increased relative to TD peers. However, patients with ADHD presented difficulties in sustained attention reflected by enhanced reaction time variability, as well as increased phasic arousal responses to unexpected stimuli. Beyond attentional measures, patients with ADHD also expressed more impulsive and hyperactive response patterns during task performance. Taken together, these results suggest that, in this sample, ADHD-related attention deficits are better characterized as a combination of sustained attention instability and arousal dysregulation than as impairments in the balance between voluntary and involuntary attention. By mapping multiple attentional processes onto dissociable behavioral measures within one task, this work provides an initial proof of concept that the CAT is particularly valuable for evaluating the ADHD population.

OBJECTIVES/BACKGROUND:There is growing evidence that migraine is associated with attentional abnormalities, both during and between attacks, potentially affecting the cognitive processing of sensory stimulation. However, the underlying neurophysiological mechanism remains poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate whether top-down and bottom-up attentional mechanisms, as indexed by alpha- and gamma-band oscillatory activity measured with magnetoencephalography are altered in patients with episodic migraine without aura during the interictal phase. METHODS:In a cross-sectional study (conducted in 2016-2017 in Lyon area of France) with a comparison of matched groups, 19 patients with migraine without aura and 19 healthy participants performed an attentional task involving visually cued auditory targets and distracting sounds to evaluate conjointly top-down and bottom-up attention mechanisms. Magnetoencephalography was used to record anticipatory alpha activity (power increase and decrease) and distractor-induced gamma activity as markers for top-down (inhibition and facilitation) and bottom-up attention, respectively. RESULTS:Compared to healthy participants, patients with migraine exhibited a significantly less prominent alpha power increase in visual areas in anticipation of the auditory target (permutation tests, cluster significance p = 0.043), indicating a reduced inhibition of task-irrelevant visual areas. In contrast, there was no significant group difference regarding the alpha power decrease in the relevant auditory cortices in anticipation of the target (permutation tests, cluster significance, p > 0.310), nor regarding the distractor-induced gamma power increase in the ventral attention network (permutation tests, cluster significance p > 0.999). CONCLUSION:These results suggest an impairment of top-down attentional inhibitory processes in migraine, as reflected by the altered alpha modulation in the visual cortex. This relative inability to suppress irrelevant sensory information may underlie the self-reported increased distractibility and contribute to sensory disturbances in migraine.

Working memory and attention are jointly needed in most everyday life tasks and activities. They have however mostly been studied separately. Here we investigate how auditory working memory-in a delayed-matching-to-sample task-and selective attention interact using a recently introduced paradigm (MEMAT, for MEMory and ATtention) and MEG (Magneto-encephalographic) recordings in twenty-two participants. We manipulate the difficulty of the memory task and attentional filtering. When memory task difficulty increases, accuracy decreases, CNV (Contingent Negative Variation) amplitude in anticipation of the melody to encode increases, and the decrease in alpha power during encoding and maintenance in a left fronto-temporal network is reduced. When attentional filtering difficulty increases, accuracy decreases, the amplitude of the sustained evoked response during encoding increases, whereas the differential processing of relevant and irrelevant sounds in auditory areas is less pronounced, and frontal theta power during encoding and maintenance is higher. In the left auditory cortex, we directly observe the result of the interaction between auditory memory and attention: the facilitation of relevant sound processing in the easy filtering condition reduces when the memory task difficulty increases. This pattern mirrors the observed behavioural effects: a smaller difference in accuracy between attention conditions when the memory task difficulty increases. Overall brain dynamics highlight reciprocal influences of working memory and selective attention processes, in keeping with shared cognitive resources between them.

The Competitive Attention Test (CAT) assesses distractibility by capturing both top-down and bottom-up attentional control using ecologically relevant stimuli. To validate its psychometric properties, we conducted two experiments examining construct-relevant reliability and validity evidence in a lifespan sample (ages 6-89). Experiment 1 assessed internal consistency (N = 520) and inter-rater reliability (N = 114), confirming coherent clustering and examiner stability of indices related to speed, variability, phasic arousal, and accuracy. Experiment 2 evaluated short-term test-retest reliability (N = 79), concurrent validity (N = 38) with established attention measures (TAP-M, KiTAP) and divergent validity relative to broader cognitive abilities (WISC, WAIS). Most indices showed temporal stability, meaningful associations with attention-specific constructs and minimal overlap with reasoning abilities. These findings support the CAT as a reliable, theoretically informed measure of attentional control, with an ecologically valid design suited to research and potential clinical assessments of distractibility from 6 to 90-year-old.

Many people, and particularly individuals with Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder (AD(H)D), find it difficult to maintain attention during classroom learning. However, traditional paradigms used to evaluate attention do not capture the complexity and dynamic nature of real-life classrooms. Using a novel Virtual Reality platform, coupled with measurement of neural activity, eye-gaze and skin conductance, here we studied the neurophysiological manifestations of attention and distractibility, under realistic learning conditions. Individuals with AD(H)D exhibited higher neural responses to irrelevant sounds and reduced speech tracking of the teacher, relative to controls. Additional neurophysiological measures, such the power of alpha-oscillations and frequency of gaze-shifts away from the teacher, contributed to explaining variance in self-reported AD(H)D symptoms across the sample. These ecologically-valid findings provide critical insight into the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying individual differences in the capacity for sustained attention and the proneness to distraction and mind-wandering, experienced in real-life situations.

The ability to focus on relevant information while ignoring distractions is critical during childhood, as it supports learning, social interaction, and adaptation to changing environments. This attentional balance is thought to depend in part on arousal regulation, mediated by the activity of the locus coeruleus norepinephrine (LC-NE) system. Moderate levels of arousal are typically associated with optimal cognitive performance. However, the interaction between arousal and attention remains poorly understood in humans, especially during development. In this study, we investigated whether experimentally modulating tonic arousal, the baseline level of physiological alertness, affects attentional processing in children (N = 44, aged 6–8) and adults (N = 46, aged 18–35). Participants performed an active auditory three-stimulus (standard, novel, target) oddball task, designed to assess selective attention to target tones and distraction by novel sounds. Prior to each task block, tonic arousal was manipulated using music or videos varying in arousing content. Physiological responses were recorded continuously (skin conductance, pupil dilation, heart rate) to index both tonic arousal and transient, phasic changes in arousal triggered by task events. While tonic arousal modulation was successful, as confirmed by skin conductance levels, Bayesian analyses provided evidence for no effect of this modulation on subsequent attentional processing. Importantly, children generally exhibited stronger phasic arousal responses, particularly to task-irrelevant novel sounds, reflecting less mature regulation of attention and arousal. These findings show developmental differences in physiological responses to unexpected environmental stimuli and provide physiological evidence of increased distractibility during childhood. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

This study investigated the interplay between attention and arousal in humans by measuring pupil dilation as a function of task engagement and stimulus relevance. Arousal in response to task-relevant and unexpected irrelevant sounds was measured in healthy young adults during the performance of an auditory detection task, the Competitive Attention Test, and in sensory matched passive conditions. Attention was manipulated using informative and uninformative visual cues. Both relevant and irrelevant sounds elicited a larger increase in pupil dilation in the active compared to the passive condition, revealing a global effect of task engagement on arousal. Additionally, in the active condition, the pupil dilation amplitude during the anticipation and detection of the task-relevant sound was greater following an informative compared to an uninformative cue, while no cue effect was found on the pupil dilation response to distracting sounds. This finding suggests that arousal can be selectively enhanced by attention for task-relevant, but not -irrelevant, events. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Arousal and attention are pivotal brain functions for optimizing performance. Kahneman’s attention model (1973) theorizes a key interplay between attention and arousal, yet this relationship remains poorly understood. We investigated this interaction in 16 healthy young adults performing an auditory attention task that simultaneously assessed phasic arousal, voluntary attention and involuntary attention. Tonic arousal was modulated by low or high arousing music, as measured using skin conductance, pupil size, and heart rate. Pupil dilation responses to distracting sounds highlight an intricate interplay between tonic and phasic arousal. Importantly, increasing tonic arousal does not influence involuntary attention, whereas it does improve voluntary attention, as shown by shorter and less variable reaction times and larger electroencephalographic brain responses to task-relevant targets. This study provides experimental evidence in humans that tonic arousal can influence the attentional balance by improving voluntary attention in a transient and sustained manner, rather than by impacting involuntary attention. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Distractibility determines the propensity to have one's attention captured by irrelevant information; it relies on a balance between voluntary and involuntary attention. We report a cross-sectional study that uses the competitive attention test to characterize patterns of attention across the adult life span from 21 to 86 years old. Several distractibility components were measured in 186 participants distributed within seven age groups. Results indicate that distractibility components follow distinct trajectories with aging: Voluntary orienting remains stable from 21 to 86 years old, sustained attention decreases after 30 years old, distraction progressively increases between 26 and 86 years old, and impulsivity is lower in older compared to younger adults. Increased distractibility in older age thus seems to result from a dominance of involuntary over voluntary attention processes, whose detrimental effect on performance is partly compensated by enhanced motor control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Working memory and attention are jointly needed in most everyday life tasks and activities. They have however mostly been studied separately. Here we investigate how auditory working memory and selective attention interact using a recently introduced paradigm (MEMAT) that combines a classic working memory paradigm, the delayed-matching-to-sample task, and selective attention, with distractors presented during the encoding phase. All stimuli are four-tone melodies. Twenty-two participants performed the MEMAT task during MEG recordings. We manipulate the difficulty of the memory task and of attentional filtering. When memory task difficulty increases , the amplitude of the CNV in anticipation of the melody to encode increases and the decrease in alpha power during encoding and maintenance in a left fronto-temporal network is reduced. When attentional filtering difficulty increases , the amplitude of the sustained evoked response during encoding increases, whereas the differential processing of relevant and irrelevant sounds in auditory areas is less pronounced, and frontal theta power during encoding and maintenance is higher. In the left auditory cortex, we could directly observe the result of the interaction between auditory memory and attention: the facilitation of relevant sound processing in the easy filtering condition was reduced when the memory task difficulty increased. This pattern mirrors the observed behavioral effects. Overall brain dynamics highlight reciprocal influences of working memory and selective attention processes, in keeping with shared cognitive resources between them.

In children, the ability to attend to relevant auditory information and ignore distracting information is crucial for learning and edu-cational achievement. Distractibility, the propensity to pay attention to irrelevant information, depends on multiple components of cog-nition (voluntary attention orienting, sustained attention, distrac-tion resulting from the capture of attention by a distractor, phasic arousal, impulsivity, and motor control) that may mature at different ages. Here, we used the Competitive Attention Test (CAT) to measure these components in children aged 3 to 5 years. Our goal was to characterize changes in the efficiency of attention during the preschool period and to determine whether distractibil-ity varies as a function of socioeconomic status (SES). All 3-year -olds (n = 14) and some 4-and 5-year-olds (n = 21) needed to be excluded from the sample due to noncompliance with instructions, suggesting that the CAT might not be suitable for children with poorly developed skills in sustained attention. Among 4-and 5 -year-olds who completed the CAT (n = 71), sustained attention improved with age, whereas voluntary attention orienting remained immature. Independent of age, task-irrelevant sounds induced distraction, phasic arousal, and impulsivity. There was no relationship between SES and children's distraction. Finally, children from lower SES backgrounds showed reduced sustained attention abilities and increased impulsivity. Taken together, these findings suggest that distractibility is still developing during the preschool period and is likely to vary depending on the SES background of a child's family. (c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Numerous studies showed that task-evoked pupil dilation is an objective marker of cognitive activity and listening effort. However, these studies differ in their experimental and analysis methods. Whereas most studies focus on a single method, the present study sought to compare different pupil-dilation data analysis methods, including different normalization techniques, baseline periods, and baseline durations, in order to assess their influence on the outcomes of pupillometry results obtained in an auditory task. To that purpose, we used pupillometry data recorded in response to words in noise in hearing-impaired individuals. The start-time of the baseline relative to stimulus timing turned out to have a significant influence on conclusions. In particular, a significant interaction in the effects of signal-to-noise ratio and hearing-aid use on pupil dilation was observed when the baseline period used started early relative to the word-an effect likely related to anticipatory, pre-stimulus cognitive processes, such as attention mobilization. This was the case even with only correct-response trials included in analyses, so that any confounding effect of performance in the word-repetition task was eliminated. Different normalization methods and baseline durations showed similar results, however the use of z-score transformation homogenized variability across conditions without affecting the qualitative aspect of the results. The consistency of results regardless of normalization methods, and the fact that differences in pupil dilation and subjective measures of listening effort could be observed despite perfect performance in the task, underlines the relevance of pupillometry as an objective measure of listening effort.

Listening to task-irrelevant speech while performing a cognitive task can involuntarily deviate our attention and lead to decreases in performance. One explanation for the impairing effect of irrelevant speech is that semantic processing can consume attentional resources. In the present study, we tested this assumption by measuring performance in a non-linguistic attentional task while participants were exposed to meaningful (native) and non-meaningful (foreign) speech. Moreover, based on the tight relation between pupillometry and attentional processes, we also registered changes in pupil diameter size to quantify the effect of meaningfulness upon attentional allocation. To these aims, we recruited 41 native German speakers who had neither received formal instruction in French nor had extensive informal contact with this language. The focal task consisted of an auditory oddball task. Participants performed a duration discrimination task containing frequently repeated standard sounds and rarely presented deviant sounds while a story was read in German or (non-meaningful) French in the background. Our results revealed that, whereas effects of language meaningfulness on attention were not detectable at the behavioural level, participants' pupil dilated more in response to the sounds of the auditory task when background speech was played in non-meaningful French compared to German, independent of sound type. In line with the initial hypothesis, this suggested that semantic processing of the native language required attentional resources, which lead to fewer resources devoted to the processing of the sounds of the focal task. Our results highlight the potential of the pupil dilation response for the investigation of subtle cognitive processes that might not surface when only behaviour is measured.

Attention operates through top-down and bottom-up processes, and a balance between these processes is crucial for daily tasks. Imperilling such balance could explain ageing-associated attentional problems such as exacerbated distractibility. In this study, we aimed to characterize this enhanced distractibility by investigating the impact of ageing upon event-related components associated with top-down and bottom-up attentional processes. MEG and EEG data were acquired from 14 older and 14 younger healthy adults while performing a task that conjointly evaluates top-down and bottom-up attention. Event-related components were analysed on sensor and source levels. In comparison with the younger group, the older mainly displayed (1) reduced target anticipation processes (reduced CMV), (2) increased early target processing (larger P50 but smaller N1) and (3) increased processing of early distracting sounds (larger N1 but reduced P3a), followed by a (4) prolonged reorientation towards the main task (larger RON). Taken together, our results suggest that the enhanced distractibility in ageing could stem from top-down deficits, in particular from reduced inhibitory and reorientation processes.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with the involuntary orientation of (bottom-up) attention toward an unexpected sound are of larger amplitude in high dream recallers (HR) than in low dream recallers (LR) during passive listening, suggesting different attentional functioning. We measured bottom-up and top-down attentional performance and their cerebral correlates in 18 HR (11 women, age = 22.7 years, dream recall frequency = 5.3 days with a dream recall per week) and 19 LR (10 women, age = 22.3, DRF = 0.2) using EEG and the Competitive Attention Task. Between-group differences were found in ERPs but not in behavior. The results show that HR present larger ERPs to distracting sounds than LR even during active listening, arguing for enhanced bottom-up processing of irrelevant sounds. HR also presented larger contingent negative variation during target expectancy and P3b to target sounds than LR, speaking for an enhanced recruitment of top-down attention. The attentional balance seems preserved in HR since their performances are not altered, but possibly at a higher resource cost. In HR, increased bottom-up processes would favor dream recall through awakening facilitation during sleep and enhanced top-down processes may foster dream recall through increased awareness and/or short-term memory stability of dream content.

You are on the phone, walking down a street. This daily situation calls for selective attention, allowing you to ignore surrounding irrelevant sounds, while trying to encode in memory the relevant information from the phone. Attention and memory are indeed two cognitive functions that are interacting constantly. However, their interaction is not yet well characterized during sound-sequence encoding. We independently manipulated both selective attention and working memory in a delayed-matching-to-sample of two tone-series, played successively in one ear. During the first melody presentation (memory encoding), weakly or highly distracting melodies were played in the other ear. Detection of the difference between the two comparison melodies could be easy or difficult, requiring low- or high-precision encoding, i.e., low or high memory load. Sixteen non-musician and 16 musician participants performed this new task. As expected, both groups of participants were less accurate in the difficult memory task and in difficult-to-ignore distractor conditions. Importantly, an interaction between memory-task difficulty and distractor difficulty was found in both groups. Non-musicians presented less difference between easy and difficult-to-ignore distractors in the difficult than in the easy memory task. On the contrary, musicians, with better performance than non-musicians, showed a greater difference between easy and difficult-to-ignore distractors in the difficult than in the easy memory task. In a second experiment including trials without a distractor, we could show that these effects are in line with the cognitive load theory. Taken together, these results speak for shared cognitive resources between working memory and attention during sound-sequence encoding.

ABSTRACT Life expectancy has steadily increased for over a century; we thus live longer and are more likely to experience cognitive difficulties such as increased distractibility which can hamper autonomy. This cross-sectional behavioral study aimed to characterize the decline of the cognitive components of distractibility during typical aging, and the onset of this decline. 191 participants from 21 to 86 years old, distributed within seven age groups, were tested using the Competitive Attention Test. Results indicate that cognitive components contributing to distractibility follow different trajectories with aging: voluntary orienting remains stable from 21 to 86 years old, sustained attention decreases while distraction increases between 26 and 86 years old, finally, impulsivity is lower in older compared to younger adults. Increased distractibility in older adults thus seems to result from a dominance of involuntary over voluntary attention processes, whose detrimental effect on performance is partly compensated by enhanced recruitment of motor control.