Contemporary Research on Attention Facilitation Effect within the Dynamic Attending Theory: Issues and Perspectives

The results of recent international studies within The Dynamic Attention Theory (DAT) have opened up great prospects for the development of therapeutic methods that use temporal patterns of rhythmic stimulation to model the attention facilitation effect (AFE) in cognitive and specialized language tasks. However, research within the DAT is developing in local directions and still remains less noticeable to a wide range of researchers. In particular, no systematic review and meta-analysis of behavioral and psychophysiological studies of AFE within the DAT have been conducted. This review examined the DAT, namely, its specificity, provisions, mechanisms of attention selectivity, and main research paradigms. We reviewed current research on AFE within the DAT. Studies within the correlational approach, as well as studies of AFE in rhythmic impact paradigms, were considered. Within the latter, we identified two blocks: general cognitive functions and language processes. In the first block, we examined studies of AFE on perception, as well as on perception and memory together, and in the second block, AFE on syntax and phonology. It was found that most studies focus on children and young adults, which limits the possibility of generalizing the results to other age groups. In addition, studies within the syntactic direction have shown contradictory data regarding the syntactic and modal specificity of AFE, and have also focused only on the study of the auditory modality of AFE. The review also showed the limitations of research in constructing an experimental paradigm, which is manifested in the choice of only one mechanism of attention selectivity described in the dynamic attention theory. Thus, this work emphasizes the need for further research to gain a deeper understanding of AFE, as well as to expand the age groups and modalities included in the studies.