The CALM Lab’s research is organized around three interconnected areas that together aim to understand attention across contexts of life and mind.

Cognitive Mechanisms

How do differences in the ability to control attention relate to cognition and well-being?

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Neural Mechanisms

What are the neural mechanisms underlying the ability to control attention?

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Mindfulness

How do mindfulness and contemplative practices strengthen attention control and well-being?

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Individual Differences and Cognitive Mechanisms

How do differences in the ability to control attention relate to cognition and well-being?

People differ in their ability to control attention, and these differences are a fundamental aspect of human cognition. We investigate how individual differences in attention control play a role in shaping our perception, memory, reasoning, and well-being.

The measurement of attention control forms a fundamental part of our research in this area. We investigate how to best measure attention control, including the development of new tasks and approaches to measuring attention control in the lab and in real-world contexts.

View and Download Attention Tasks →

The ability to sustain the control of attention over time is a critical aspect of attention control. Using behavioral, physiological, and self-report measures, we examine how this ability varies across individuals and contexts.

Publications

Cognitive Mechanisms

Neural Mechanisms

Mindfulness

Individual Differences and Cognitive Mechanisms

Publications

Sustaining the focus of attention and how it relates to performance in complex cognitive tasks

Attention control measures improve the prediction of performance in Navy trainees

Climate anxiety impairs sustained attention: Objective evidence of a cognitive cost

Examining the association between vigilance and mind wandering

Faster, smarter, and more attentive: The control of attention is about more than just conflict resolution

Knowledge, attention, and psychomotor ability: A latent variable approach to understanding individual differences in simulated work performance

Replication and extension of the toolbox approach to measuring attention control

Nature and measurement of attention control

Measuring individual differences in working memory capacity and attention control and their contribution to language comprehension

Attention control and process overlap theory: Searching for cognitive processes underpinning the positive manifold

Understanding the relationship between rationality and intelligence: A latent-variable approach

The visual arrays task: Visual storage capacity or attention control?

A toolbox approach to improving the measurement of attention control

Differential and experimental approaches to studying intelligence in humans and non-human animals

Individual differences in attention control: Implications for the relationship between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence

Attention control: The missing link between sensory discrimination and intelligence

Neural Mechanisms

Publications

Attention control ability is associated with frontoparietal control network interactions

Catching the drift: EEG microstate dynamics resemble time‑on‑task changes in sustained attention and mind wandering

Fluid intelligence and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system

Baseline pupil size is related to fluid intelligence: A reply to Unsworth et al. (2021)

Pupil Size Is a Marker of Intelligence

Is baseline pupil size related to cognitive ability? Yes (under proper lighting conditions)

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation via tragus or cymba conchae: Are its psychophysiological effects dependent on the stimulation area?

The relationship between baseline pupil size and intelligence

Mindfulness and Contemplative Practices

Publications