Attention and Social Attention Flashcards
What is attention and fixation
covert, without eye movement
overt, with eye movement
fixation, looking at something specific and can’t attend to other things
Herman von Helmholtz (1894)
(covert attention)
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
Visual attention
We can only attend to limited parts of environment.
Processing environment visually
Posner’s classic study (1980)
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
Posner’s exogenous and endogenous attention
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
Posner’s attentional cueing paradigm
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
Posner’s ‘spotlight’ of attention
(theories of visual attention)
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
Orienting - spotlight of attention
Dorsal system, shifts attention
Ventral system, respond to external events
detection - spotlight of attention
Frontoparietal control system- implementing task
Cingulo-opercular system - task maintenance
Alerting
NE system, sends warning signal and diffuse connections including frontal areas
Zoom-lens (Eriksen & St James, 1986)
Theories of visual attention
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
Pre motor theory (Rizzolatti et al, 1987, 1994)
Theories of visual attention
1) covert attention affects arise out of same neural system involved in programming a saccade
2) A single system produces covert and overt movements
Eye movements
- Saccadic eye movements compensate for the decrease in visual acuity across visual fields
- An example of visual acuity is a eye test
Independence account (Klein, 1980)
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
Sequential attentional mode (Henderson, 1992)
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
Evidence
Premotor theory of attention (Rizzolatti et al, 1987)
saccade trajectory effects
- attending to a location, causes vertical saccade to curve away from that location.
- Eye movement programme influences by covert attention
Evidence
Premotor theory of attention (Rizzolatti et al, 1987)
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)
Micro-stimulation study
Mild electrical stimulation of FEFs
produced enhancement of firing rate for neurons
Social attention
- Attention guided by others
- body orientation
- eye gazes
- Evolutionary, survival background
- Learning and language
Social brain (Baron Cohen)
- 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
Social network size effects of neural social circuits
(Sallet et al, 2011)
- imaged 23 monkeys living in different size groups
- Grey matter in Sts and amygdala was correlated with social network size
Superior temporal sulcus (STS)
- sensitive to gaze direction
- responsible for theory of mind
Social attention, gaze direction and attention
- gaze direction is a cue for what people are attending to
- social understanding is facilitated by effectively attending to other people
Mindreading
Baron cogen 1994
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
Does eye gaze shift attention
(Friesen and Kingston, 1998)
- 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
Gaze triggers reflexive (automatic) orienting
Driver et al (1999)
- 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
Enhanced orienting with fearful expressions
(Tipples, 2006)
- Fearful and neutral faces used a cues
- there was a larger cueing effect for fearful faces than neutral faces
- fear enhances shift of attention
Eye gaze and arrow cues
Kuhn and Kingstone, 2009
- eye and arrow cues have similar effect
- they both produce an automatic reflexive shift of attention
Brain response to eyes and arrows
Tipper et al (2008)
- 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
