1 - social attention Flashcards
what information do eye trackers provide?
- what captures attention
- what we deem as important
- insight into underlying cognitive processes
- how eye movements differ on different tasks
why are social cues important?
social cues aid in learning key social skills
evolutionary perspective: interpreting and understanding social cues assist integration into a social group
what is social attention?
attending to social information in out environment
how do babies focus on eyes?
- first week babies direct their attention to the eyes in a fact
- follow gaze by 3 months
- 12 months can orient attention to the location of a gaze
are newborn babies (24-120h old) sensitive to eye gaze?
infants look longer at images with direct eye gaze, and are more likely to go back, compared to images with averted eye gaze
what happens when the polarity of the eyes is reversed?
reduced ability to judge visual direction/
why are our eyes important?
gives an insight into what our partners are paying attention to and help us understand their thought processes
can both send and receive information, important for communication
what is gaze cueing?
when we see someone move their gaze, we move out own gaze so that we are both looking at the same location, this can happen automatically
how is gaze cueing traditionally investigated?
using cueing paradigms which were originally used by Posner and then adapted to investigate gaze cueing
what do gaze-cueing paradigms show?
participants are faster to detect a target if in same location shown by gaze cue
slower to detect target when in a different location shown by gaze cue
this happens even when participants know the gaze won’t predict where the target will appear
this is the gaze cueing effect
why does the gaze cueing effect occur?
when we see gaze cue we move our eyes in same direction
we have to move our eyes away from where the gaze is looking to find the target in a different location
what are real world implications of social attention and gaze cueing?
- direct attention to important info in environment
- help plan our own actions
- gives an insight into other’s intentions
- reciprocal eye contact and attention to social information allows us to fit in a social group
why is joint attention important?
- communicates attention and desires
- alerts us to important aspects of environment
- facilitates language acquisition
- pre-cursor to ToM development
what can an EEG tell us about social attention?
brain responds differently to faces compared to other stimuli
greater change in electrical signal when presented with faces compared to other stimuli
greater and delayed brain activity to eyes vs face, suggests different underlying processes
what can an fMRI tell us about social attention?
many brain regions are implicated in social attention