Elisa Martín-Arévalo

• PhD
• PhD at Brain, Mind, and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC) University of Granada

The N2pc is widely employed as an electrophysiological marker of an attention allocation. This interpretation was largely driven by the observation of an N2pc elicited by an isolated relevant target object, which was reported as Experiment 2 in Eimer (1996). All subsequent refined interpretations of the N2pc had to take this crucial finding into ac...

Sustained attention is crucial for daily functioning, yet research on vigilance development has yielded inconsistent findings. These discrepancies arise partly from the use of tasks with different vigilance demands and from limitations in the indices of sensitivity and response criterion used. This study examines vigilance development in a large sa...

Perceptual load theory (Forster & Lavie, 2008) is a key framework in visual attention research, demonstrating that under high-load conditions, fully irrelevant distractors are no longer processed and do not disrupt task performance. In our recent work (Manini et al., 2025), we replicated this effect. However, we also found that under high load, the...

To successfully perform everyday activities, cognitive functions such as working memory (WM) and selective attention are necessary. Specifically, when environmental demands are dynamic, exogenous attention is crucial. However, its ability to select and prioritize not only perceptual spatial locations, but also novel stimulus-response (S-R) bindings...

Perceptual load theory (Forster & Lavie, 2008) is a key framework in visual attention research, demonstrating that under high-load conditions, fully irrelevant distractors are no longer processed and do not disrupt task performance. In our recent work (Manini et al., 2025), we replicated this effect. However, we also found that under high load, the...

This study aimed to investigate the effects of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) on conflict resolution, focusing on behavioral performance, neural activity, and subjective experience. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to anodal, cathodal, or sham HD-tDCS groups and completed a 30-minute flanker task during s...

This study aimed to investigate the effects of high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) on conflict resolution, focusing on behavioral performance, neural activity, and subjective experience. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to anodal, cathodal, or sham HD-tDCS groups and completed a 30-minute flanker task during s...

The N2pc is widely employed as an electrophysiological marker of an attention allocation. This interpretation was largely driven by the observation of an N2pc elicited by an isolated relevant target object, which was reported as Experiment 2 in Eimer (1996). All subsequent refined interpretations of the N2pc had to take this crucial finding into ac...

Entrainment theories propose that attention inherently oscillates between moments of attentional enhancement and disengagement. Consequently, perceptual and response benefits have been reported in tasks with a rhythmic structure. In the present study, we report two preregistered auditory experiments attempting to replicate previous supporting behav...

Real-world environments are complex, demanding a diverse set of cognitive functions such as attention and working memory (WM) to perform adaptive behaviors. However, exogenous attention, characterized as automatic and involuntary, has primarily been studied by focusing on spatial perception. In particular, the ability of pure exogenous retro-cues t...

Entrainment theories, such as the Dynamic Attending Theory, extend this idea by proposing that attention acts as an oscillatory system that alternates between moments of attentional enhancement and instants of attentional disengagement. Consequently, perceptual and response benefits have been reported in tasks with a rhythmic structure, presumably...

Access to musical training depends on various factors, such as socioeconomic status and musical background of families, and the child's interest in learning music (related to their openness to experience). In the present study, we show an additional source of selection bias that has gone unnoticed: the relative age of children within the same cohor...

To successfully perform everyday activities, cognitive functions such as working memory (WM) and selective attention must be triggered. Specifically, when environmental demands are dynamic, exogenous attention is crucial. However, its ability to select and prioritize not only perceptual spatial locations, but also novel stimulus-response (S-R) bind...

Recent evidence suggests that musical practice could be a promising cognitive training activity that could promote attentional functioning. However, findings with adult samples have shown that musical training might have a specific impact only over some attentional processes (e.g., phasic alertness, sustained attention, and vigilance). On the other...

Máster Universitario en Profesorado de Enseñanza Secundaria Obligatoria, Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanza de Idiomas (MAES - UNIA). Esta publicación incluye solamente el módulo genérico y el prácticum de la colección. El Título de Máster de Profesorado en la Universidad Internacional de Andalucía atiende a la demanda de estudiantes q...

Maintaining vigilance is essential for many everyday tasks, but over time, our ability to sustain it inevitably decreases, potentially entailing severe consequences. High-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) has proven to be useful for studying and improving vigilance. This study explores if/how cognitive load affects the mi...

The Attentional Networks Test for Interactions and Vigilance—executive and arousal components (ANTI-Vea) is a computerized task of 32 min duration in the standard format. The task simultaneously assesses the main effects and interactions of the three attentional networks (i.e., phasic alertness, orienting, and executive control) and two dissociated...

Retrospective attention is involuntarily or voluntarily oriented to working memory (WM) contents. Previous research has not assessed voluntary attention ruling out the effects of involuntary attention. Furthermore, it is unknown whether the voluntariness of attention impacts differently on perceptual and semantic WM contents. To address this, react...

Attention boosts perception of near-threshold stimuli thanks to the influence of fronto-parietal networks over sensory regions. Previous functional Magnetic Resonance studies in our group have demonstrated that phasic alerting and spatial attention improve perception through partially overlapping fronto-parietal regions, including the left Frontal...

The Attentional Networks Test for Interactions and Vigilance–executive and arousal components (ANTI-Vea) is a computerized task of 32 min duration in the standard format. The task simultaneously assesses the main effects and interactions of the three attentional networks (i.e., phasic alertness, orienting, and executive control) and two dissociated...

La atención es un mecanismo de selección y filtrado de información que permite potenciar el procesamiento perceptivo de estímulos difíciles de detectar, como los que se sitúan en el umbral de la consciencia. Estudios previos de nuestro grupo han encontrado que esta influencia de la atención sobre la percepción consciente está relacionada con la act...

The N2pc is widely employed as an electrophysiological marker of an attention allocation. This interpretation was largely driven by the observation of an N2pc elicited by an isolated relevant target object, which was reported as Experiment 2 in Eimer (1996). All subsequent refined interpretations of the N2pc had to take this crucial finding into ac...

Vigilance is the challenging ability to maintain attention during long periods. When performing prolonged tasks, vigilance failures are often observed, reflecting a decrease in performance. Previous research has shown that changes in oscillatory rhythms are associated with states of vigilance loss. The present study aimed to investigate whether cha...

Attention is regulated by three independent but interacting networks, that is, alerting, comprising phasic alertness and vigilance, orienting, and executive control. Previous studies analyzing event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with attentional networks have focused on phasic alertness, orienting, and executive control, without an independe...

Vigilance-maintaining a prolonged state of preparation to detect and respond to specific yet unpredictable environmental changes-usually decreases across prolonged tasks, causing potentially severe real-life consequences, which could be mitigated through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The present study aimed at replicating previous...

Classical theoretical models suggest that visual short-term memory can be divided in two main memory systems: sensory memory, a short-lasting but high-capacity memory storage and working memory, a long-lasting but low-capacity memory store. Whilst, previous research has systematically shown a strong interplay between attentional mechanisms and work...

Multiple theories have used perceptual sensitivity and response criterion indices to explain the decrements in performance across time on task (i.e., vigilance decrement). In a recent study, McCarley and Yamani (2021) offered conceptual and methodological advances to this debate by using a vigilance task that parametrically manipulates noise and si...

Background Aerobic exercise (AE) may slow age-related cognitive decline. However, such cognition-sparing effects are not uniform across cognitive domains and studies. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a form of non-invasive brain stimulation and is also emerging as a potential alternative to pharmaceutical therapies. Like AE, the ef...

Previous research shows that anodal HD-tDCS over the rPPC mitigates the decrement of executive vigilance (EV)—maintaining a prolonged state of preparation to detect/respond to specific, yet unpredictable environmental changes (Luna et al., 2020). This effect seems to be mediated by the alpha:gamma power ratio (Hemmerich et al., in preparation). The...

Subtle to no attentional differences have been broadly observed when using gaze and arrows as orienting cues. However, recent studies have found opposite effects when they are used as targets in spatial interference tasks, with arrows eliciting faster responses when their position is congruent with the indicated direction and gaze producing faster...

La vigilancia está presente en un sinfín de tareas que implican mantener la atención durante periodos prolongados que conllevan una pérdida progresiva de rendimiento a lo largo del tiempo (decremento en vigilancia). Podemos distinguir entre la vigilancia de arousal (VA), que supone mantener un estado de activación para responder de manera relativam...

A decrease in vigilance over time is often observed when performing prolonged tasks, a phenomenon known as “vigilance decrement.” The present study aimed at testing some of the critical predictions of the resource-control theory about the vigilance decrement. Specifically, the theory predicts that the vigilance decrement is mainly due to a drop in...

Multiple theories have used the indices of the signal detection theory (SDT) to explain vigilance decrement. A recent study by McCarley and Yamani offered conceptual and methodological advances to this debate by using a vigilance task that parametrically manipulates noise and signal, and analyzes the outcomes with psychometric curves. In the presen...

Previous research has shown opposite effects of dual tasking on the vigilance decrement phenomenon. We examined the executive (i.e., detecting infrequent critical signals) and arousal (i.e., sustaining a fast reaction to stimuli without much control on responses) vigilance decrements as a function of task load. Ninety-six participants performed eit...

Attention fluctuates over time. Models such as Dynamic Attending Theory propose that attention follows an oscillatory pattern that can be entrained by exogenous stimulations. Moreover, the passage of time itself when there is the certainty that the target will appear after an interval (i.e., foreperiod) can be used to support attention. As the prob...

In this study, we jointly reported in an empirical and a theoretical way, for the first time, two main theories: Lavie’s perceptual load theory and Gaspelin et al.’s attentional dwelling hypothesis. These theories explain in different ways the modulation of the perceptual load/task difficulty over attentional capture by irrelevant distractors and l...

Implicit learning refers to the incidental acquisition and expression of knowledge that is not accompanied by full awareness of its contents. Implicit sequence learning (ISL) represents one of the most useful paradigms to investigate these processes. In this paradigm, participants are usually instructed to respond to the location of a target that m...

Previous literature has shown cognitive improvements related to musical training. Attention is one cognitive aspect in which musicians exhibit improvements compared to non-musicians. However, previous studies show inconsistent results regarding certain attentional processes, suggesting that benefits associated with musical training appear only in s...

In exogenous attention, two main behavioural effects are usually observed across time: facilitation at short cue-target onset asynchronies (CTOAs), and Inhibition of Return (IOR) at longer CTOAs. The presentation of an intervening event (IE)-i.e., a cue presented at fixation between the peripheral cue and target period-favours the appearance of IOR...

Several studies have shown enhanced performance in change detection tasks when spatial cues indicating the probe’s location are presented after the memory array has disappeared (i.e., retro-cues) compared with spatial cues that are presented simultaneously with the test array (i.e., post-cues). This retro-cue benefit led some authors to propose the...

This study integrated functional connectivity measures using resting-state fMRI and behavioral data from a single-case observation of patient (PER) one year after right-hemispheric hemorrhage in the intraparietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule (IPS/SPL). PER showed no sign of clinical neglect. Her behavioral performance in the visuo-manual poi...

Nowadays, there is considerable controversy regarding the structural connectivity underlying the attentional networks system (i.e., alerting and vigilance, orienting, and executive control). The present study aimed at further examining and dissociating the white matter connectivity underlying attentional and vigilance functioning by overcoming some...

There is evidence that already in Greco-Roman times, fish with electrical properties were placed on people’s heads to relieve certain ailments, such as migraine or mood disorders. Since then, the use of electrical current as a treatment for pathological conditions or deficiencies has been progressively refined towards the development of a safe, eff...

The vigilance decrement phenomenon has been traditionally studied by simple and monotonous behavioral tasks. Nowadays, however, there is considerable interest in measuring vigilance with more complex tasks, including independent measures of other attentional functions. In the present study, we provide evidence supporting the suitability of the Atte...

Existe evidencia de que en tiempos tan remotos como la antigüedad greco-romana se colocaban peces con propiedades eléctricas sobre la cabeza de personas con el fin de aliviar ciertas dolencias, como la migraña o alteraciones del estado anímico. Desde entonces el empleo de la corriente eléctrica para tratar estados patológicos o deficiencias se ha r...

Over the past few years, there has been growing interest in using online methods for collecting data from large samples.However, only a few studies have administered online behavioral tasks to assess attention outside the lab. In the present study, we assessed the classic attentional functions and two vigilance components using two versions of the...

Previous research has demonstrated that fully irrelevant distractors – i.e., not sharing any feature with the target – capture our attention and modulate our responses. In the present study, we explored this interference by irrelevant distractors in a series of three experiments wherein the emotional valence of distractors (negative vs. neutral val...

Our environment is full of rhythms, which have an important predictive value as cues for the preparation and temporal orienting of attention. At the neurocognitive level, rhythms promote attentional entrainment, concentrating higher levels of attention at the moments in which the appearance of a critical event is more likely. This strategic use of...

Attention comprises a wide set of processes such as phasic alertness, orienting, executive control, and the executive (i.e., detecting infrequent targets) and arousal (i.e., sustaining a fast reaction) vigilance components. Importantly, the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over attentional functioning have been mostly addre...

The present study tests whether two different manipulations leading to an earlier appearance of Inhibition of Return might operate by setting the system in different ways. Whereas the use of a range of very long SOAs has been proposed to set the system for an early reorienting of attention (Cheal & Chastain, 2002), introducing a distractor at the l...

Previous literature has shown cognitive improvements related to musical training. Attention is one of the functions in which musicians exhibit improvements compared to non-musicians. However, previous studies show inconsistent results regarding certain attentional processes, suggesting that benefits associated with musical training appear only in s...

Eye gaze interacts in a special way with the human attentional systems, as shown through a reversed congruency effect observed with these social stimuli in the context of a Spatial Stroop paradigm. Our experiment replicated these differences between social (eye-gaze) and non-social stimuli (arrows) in an intra-block design, where the type of stimul...

According to some theoretical models, information contained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) consists of two main memory stages/storages: sensory memory, a system wherein information is stored for a brief time with high detail and low resistance to visual interference, and visual working memory, a low-capacity system wherein information is protec...

Following non-informative peripheral cues, responses are facilitated at the cued compared to the uncued location at short cue-target intervals. This effect reverses at longer intervals, giving rise to Inhibition of Return (IOR). The integration-segregation hypothesis (Lupiáñez, 2010) suggests that peripheral cues always produce an onset-detection c...

It has been proposed that attention triggered by eye-gaze may represent a unique attentional process, different from that triggered by non-social stimuli such as arrows. To investigate this issue, in the present study we compared the temporal dynamics of the conflict processing triggered by eye-gaze and arrow stimuli. We investigated the electrophy...

La afasia anómica es un síndrome neuropsicologógico que afecta a la fluidez en el lenguaje, caracterizado por: dificultad en la recuperación de la forma fonológica de las palabras habiendo accedido a su significado, habla espontánea escasa en nombres de objetos, reemplazamiento de las palabras por otras más generales y circunlocuciones (Cuetos, 199...

Unpredicted objects, i.e., those that do not fit in a specific context, have been shown to quickly attract attention as a mean of extracting more information about potentially relevant items. Whether the required semantic processing triggering the attraction of attention can occur independently of participants' awareness of the object is still a hi...

Adaptation to rightward shifting prisms (rightward prism adaptation, RPA) ameliorates neglect symptoms in patients while adaptation to leftward shifting prisms (leftward prism adaptation, LPA) induces neglect-like behaviors in healthy subjects. It has been hypothesized that prism adaptation (PA) modulates interhemispheric balance between the pariet...

Neglect patients typically show a rightward attentional orienting bias and a strong disengagement deficit, such that they are especially slow in responding to left-sided targets after right-sided cues (Posner et al., 1984). Prism adaptation (PA) can reduce diverse debilitating neglect symptoms and it has been hypothesized that PA’s effects are so g...

Rightward prism adaptation ameliorates neglect symptoms while leftward prism adaptation (LPA) induces neglect-like biases in healthy individuals. Similarly, inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) induces neglect-like behavior, whereas on the left PPC it ameliorates neglect symptom...

Different electrophysiological components have been associated with behavioural facilitation and inhibition of return (IOR), although there is no consensus about which of these components are essential to the mechanism/s underlying the cueing effects. Different spatial attention hypotheses propound different roles for these components. In this revi...

Selective visual attention enhances the processing of relevant stimuli and filters out irrelevant stimuli and/or distractors. However, irrelevant information is sometimes processed, as demonstrated by the Simon effect (Simon and Rudell, 1967). We examined whether fully irrelevant distractors (task and target-irrelevant) produce interference (measur...

Inhibition of return (IOR) consists of slower reaction times in response to stimuli appearing at previously attended or inspected locations. The exact mechanisms underlying the effect have not yet been determined. In the present work, we manipulated two variables, target duration and intervening event (fixation cue between cue and target), through...

When the time interval between two peripheral stimuli is long enough, reaction times (RTs) to targets presented at previously stimulated locations are longer than RTs to targets presented at new locations. This effect is widely known as Inhibition of Return (IOR). The effect is usually explained as an inhibitory bias against returning attention to...

Inhibition of Return (IOR) is usually explained in terms of orienting-reorienting of attention, emphasizing an underlying mechanism that inhibits the return of attention to previously selected locations. Recent data challenge this explanation to the extent that the IOR effect is observed at the location where attention is oriented to, where no reor...