Musical minds: attentional blink reveals modality-specific restrictions.

BACKGROUND: Formal musical training is known to have positive effects on attentional and executive functioning, processing speed, and working memory. Consequently, one may expect to find differences in the dynamics of temporal attention between musicians and non-musicians. Here we address the question whether that is indeed the case, and whether any beneficial effects of musical training on temporal attention are modality specific or generalize across sensory modalities. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: When two targets are presented in close temporal succession, most people fail to report the second target, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). We measured and compared AB magnitude for musicians and non-musicians using auditory or visually presented letters and digits. Relative to non-musicians, the auditory AB was both attenuated and delayed in musicians, whereas the visual AB was larger. Non-musicians with a large auditory AB tended to show a large visual AB. However, neither a positive nor negative correlation was found in musicians, suggesting that at least in musicians, attentional restrictions within each modality are completely separate. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: AB magnitude within one modality can generalize to another modality, but this turns out not to be the case for every individual. Formal musical training seems to have a domain-general, but modality-specific beneficial effect on selective attention. The results fit with the idea that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB lies in modality-specific, independent sensory systems rather than a central amodal system. The findings demonstrate that individual differences in AB magnitude can provide important information about the modular structure of human cognition.

The effect of a patient-oriented treatment decision aid for risk factor management in patients with diabetes (PORTDA-diab): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: To improve risk factor management in diabetes, we need to support effective interactions between patients and healthcare providers. Our aim is to develop and evaluate a treatment decision aid that offers personalised information on treatment options and outcomes, and is intended to empower patients in taking a proactive role in their disease management. Important features are: (1) involving patients in setting goals together with their provider; (2) encourage them to prioritise on treatments that maximise relevant outcomes; and (3) integration of the decision aid in the practice setting and workflow. As secondary aim, we want to evaluate the impact of different presentation formats, and learn more from the experiences of the healthcare providers and patients with the decision aid. METHODS AND DESIGN: We will conduct a randomised trial comparing four formats of the decision aid in a 2 × 2 factorial design with a control group. Patients with type 2 diabetes managed in 18 to 20 primary care practices in The Netherlands will be recruited. Excluded are patients with a recent myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure, angina pectoris, terminal illness, cognitive deficits, > 65 years at diagnosis, or not able to read Dutch. The decision aid is offered to the patients immediately before their quarterly practice consultation. The same decision information will be available to the healthcare provider for use during consultation. In addition, the providers receive a set of treatment cards, which they can use to discuss the benefits and risks of different options. Patients in the control group will receive care as usual. We will measure the effect of the intervention on patient empowerment, satisfaction with care, beliefs about medication, negative emotions, health status, prescribed medication, and predicted cardiovascular risk. Data will be collected with questionnaires and automated extraction from medical records in 6 months before and after the intervention. DISCUSSION: This decision aid is innovative in supporting patients and their healthcare providers to make shared decisions about multiple treatments, using the patient's data from electronic medical records. The results can contribute to the further development and implementation of electronic decision support tools for the management of chronic diseases. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Dutch Trial register NTR1942.

A quick mind with letters can be a slow mind with natural scenes: individual differences in attentional selection.

BACKGROUND: Most people show a remarkable deficit in reporting the second of two targets (T2) when presented 200-500 ms after the first (T1), reflecting an 'attentional blink' (AB). However, there are large individual differences in the magnitude of the effect, with some people, referred to as 'non-blinkers', showing no such attentional restrictions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we replicate these individual differences in a task requiring identification of two letters amongst digits, and show that the observed differences in T2 performance cannot be attributed to individual differences in T1 performance. In a second experiment, the generality of the non-blinkers' superior performance was tested using a task containing novel pictures rather than alphanumeric stimuli. A substantial AB was obtained in non-blinkers that was equivalent to that of 'blinkers'. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The results suggest that non-blinkers employ an efficient target selection strategy that relies on well-learned alphabetic and numeric category sets.