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When the rhythm disappears and the mind keeps dancing: sustained effects of attentional entrainment

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Abstract

Research has demonstrated that the human cognitive system allocates attention most efficiently to a stimulus that occurs in synchrony with an established rhythmic background. However, our environment is dynamic and constantly changing. What happens when rhythms to which our cognitive system adapted disappear? We addressed this question using a visual categorization task comprising emotional and neutral faces. The task was split into three blocks of which the first and the last were completed in silence. The second block was accompanied by an acoustic background rhythm that, for one group of participants, was synchronous with face presentations, and for another group was asynchronous. Irrespective of group, performance improved with background stimulation. Importantly, improved performance extended into the third silent block for the synchronous, but not for the asynchronous group. These data suggest that attentional entrainment resulting from rhythmic environmental regularities disintegrates only gradually after the regularities disappear.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Peta Mills for the helping with the data acquisition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

    Sabrina Trapp, Ondrej Havlicek & Annett Schirmer

  2. Department of Cognitive Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Sabrina Trapp

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Sabrina Trapp

  4. General and Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychology, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

    Ondrej Havlicek

  5. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Annett Schirmer

  6. The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Peter E. Keller

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  1. Sabrina Trapp
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  2. Ondrej Havlicek
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Correspondence to Sabrina Trapp.

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Research involving human and animal participants

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Trapp, S., Havlicek, O., Schirmer, A. et al. When the rhythm disappears and the mind keeps dancing: sustained effects of attentional entrainment. Psychological Research 84, 81–87 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-0983-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-0983-x

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