Attention and Social Attention

Question 1

What is attention and fixation

Answer 1

covert, without eye movement
overt, with eye movement
fixation, looking at something specific and can’t attend to other things

Question 2

Herman von Helmholtz (1894)

(covert attention)

Answer 2

A screen with random array of letters is shown, the screen is very large.
Letters are reported better when briefly lit up
When gaze is held in centre of the screen, they can choose where to attend

Question 3

Visual attention

Answer 3

We can only attend to limited parts of environment.
Processing environment visually

Question 4

Posner’s classic study (1980)

Answer 4

Participants look at cross in centre of screen (fixate)
when cued the box turns yellow
They respond by pressing key
measures reaction time

Results:
rt faster when cued
rt slower when target is opposite to where cued

Question 5

Posner’s exogenous and endogenous attention

Answer 5

exogenous cue, external i.e. external flash
endogenous cue, internal i.e. arrow

exogenous attract attention and faster reaction time
endogenous are under voluntary control and slower reaction time

exogenous can’t be ignored but endogenous can be ignored

Question 6

Posner’s attentional cueing paradigm

Answer 6

two groups: attended group and ignore cue group
8 letters in imaginary circle
targets are L or R
arrow used as cue (peripheral = close to letter0
when told to ignore cue, no affect with central arrows but large affect for peripheral cues
peripheral cues had automatic effects on attention

Question 7

Posner’s ‘spotlight’ of attention

(theories of visual attention)

Answer 7

Disengage, move, engage
propositions
- Attentional system separate from data processing
- attention carried out by network of anatomical areas
- areas carry out different functions
major functions
- orienting to sensory events
- detecting stimuli
- maintaining a vigilant alert state

Question 8

Orienting - spotlight of attention

Answer 8

Dorsal system, shifts attention
Ventral system, respond to external events

Question 9

detection - spotlight of attention

Answer 9

Frontoparietal control system- implementing task
Cingulo-opercular system - task maintenance

Question 10

Alerting

Answer 10

NE system, sends warning signal and diffuse connections including frontal areas

Question 11

Zoom-lens (Eriksen & St James, 1986)

Theories of visual attention

Answer 11

Zoomed in is better as visual attention system is not spread wide.

Five letter words
1) categorise (attend to) the central letter
2) Categorise (attend to) the whole word

the number 7 was a probe placed in different positions

• There was no difference in reaction time when attending to whole word

Question 12

Pre motor theory (Rizzolatti et al, 1987, 1994)

Theories of visual attention

Answer 12

1) covert attention affects arise out of same neural system involved in programming a saccade

2) A single system produces covert and overt movements

Question 13

Eye movements

Answer 13

• Saccadic eye movements compensate for the decrease in visual acuity across visual fields
• An example of visual acuity is a eye test

Question 14

Independence account (Klein, 1980)

Answer 14

Covert and overt attention systems are separate

Findings:
preparing a saccade reduces saccade rt
Preparing a saccade did not influence manual rt
Thus, preparing to make eye movement didn’t affect key press = two separate systems

Question 15

Sequential attentional mode (Henderson, 1992)

Answer 15

Functional relationship between covert and overt attention
when scanning objects, time fixating is reduced when all 4 are presented together
covert attention can only be in one place at a time and only one saccade can be programmed at a time

Question 16

Evidence
Premotor theory of attention (Rizzolatti et al, 1987)

Answer 16

saccade trajectory effects
- attending to a location, causes vertical saccade to curve away from that location.
- Eye movement programme influences by covert attention

Question 17

Evidence
Premotor theory of attention (Rizzolatti et al, 1987)

Answer 17

Neurophysiological evidence
- regions of brain involved in eye movements and shifts of attention
FEFs
LIP
SC
- imaging stuccoes show same areas of brain used for covert and overt attention deHann et al (2008)

Question 17

Micro-stimulation study

Answer 17

Mild electrical stimulation of FEFs
produced enhancement of firing rate for neurons

Question 18

Social attention

Answer 18

• Attention guided by others
• body orientation
• eye gazes
• Evolutionary, survival background
• Learning and language

Question 19

Social brain (Baron Cohen)

Answer 19

• 2 month old infants spend more timing looking at eyes than anywhere else
• theory of mind of others leads to our own self
• Eye direction detector, eyes and their direction
• artistic children have worse tom

Question 20

Social network size effects of neural social circuits

(Sallet et al, 2011)

Answer 20

• imaged 23 monkeys living in different size groups
• Grey matter in Sts and amygdala was correlated with social network size

Question 21

Superior temporal sulcus (STS)

Answer 21

• sensitive to gaze direction
• responsible for theory of mind

Question 22

Social attention, gaze direction and attention

Answer 22

• gaze direction is a cue for what people are attending to
• social understanding is facilitated by effectively attending to other people

Question 23

Mindreading
Baron cogen 1994

Answer 23

Intentionality detector, understand others intentions
Eye direction detector, direction of attention and gaze

Langton et al review
- EDD, detects direction of gaze
- Shared attention module, identifies when self and others attend to same thing
- TOM explains others behaviour

Question 24

Does eye gaze shift attention
(Friesen and Kingston, 1998)

Answer 24

• cartoon faces on screen
• eyes on faces are left or right and this is the cue
• reaction time recorded fir identification of letter
• reaction time faster when cued
• gaze direction shifted covert attention and improved performance

Question 25

Gaze triggers reflexive (automatic) orienting
Driver et al (1999)

Answer 25

• Uses real faces rather than cartoons
• rt faster when eyes oriented to the side of target.
• eye gaze produces an automatic (reflective) shift of attention

Question 26

Enhanced orienting with fearful expressions
(Tipples, 2006)

Answer 26

• Fearful and neutral faces used a cues
• there was a larger cueing effect for fearful faces than neutral faces
• fear enhances shift of attention

Question 27

Eye gaze and arrow cues
Kuhn and Kingstone, 2009

Answer 27

• eye and arrow cues have similar effect
• they both produce an automatic reflexive shift of attention

Question 28

Brain response to eyes and arrows

Tipper et al (2008)

Answer 28

• ps were either told or not told about arrow and face cues, its faster in cued direction with eyes and arrows
• eye gaze and eye cues engaged similar neural network of dorsal and ventral regions
• larger response in some frontal lobe regions for eye gaze cues
• social cues don’t involve brain network