Social attention Flashcards
often we are drawn to the ____ aspects of a scene and attend to ______ more than objects
social, people
what are used to track peoples attention?
eye trackers (earliest built in 1800s)
what are the 2 types of eye trackers?
desktop or mobile
what are the + and - to desktop eye trackers?
can track a whole range of eye movements but stuck to a lab study
what are the + and - to mobile eye trackers?
can go out in the real world but have more limited eye movement tracking
what does eye tracking software record?
eye movements, micro saccades, fixations, pupil dilation
what does eye tracking data provide info on?
what captures attention, what we deem important, insight into underlying cognitive processes, how eye movements differ on different tasks
what did Yarbus’s (earliest eye tracking study) show?
showed people a picture and found they paid most attention to other people/social information in the scene
attention to social info in our environment =
social attention
what is the importance of social cues?
interacting with others is crucial for development, aids learning key social skills,, evolutionary perspective = interpreting social partners behaviour and understanding social scenarios assists integration into a social group
what did Kuhl, Tsao Lui (2003) study show when exposing 32 infants to language either live or on a screen?
infants who received chinese language lessons showed significant effect of learning in live condition, whereas TV exposure didn’t cause children to learn as much language
what body part captures our attention more than anything else?
eyes!!
what can babies do within the first week of life?
firriest their attention to the eyes in a face
by how many months can babies follow gaze?
3 months
by how many months can babies orient their attention to the location of a gaze (gaze following)?
12 months
what were the results of Farroni et al’s study looking at gaze sensitivity in infants?
found they look significantly longer at direct gaze compared to averted gaze (suggests a preference for gaze is innate)
what were the results of Levy et al’s study that looked at eyes on human, humanoid and monsters where the eyes were located on the hands of the monster?
eyes continue to capture attention > main fixation regardless of the face. ppts looked at the monsters hands because this was where the eyes were located and is the main source of social information
why are human eyes evolved to communicate compared to non-primates eyes?
have a white sclera which makes pupils/iris pop out so easier to follow movement of pupils
what do eyes give us insight into?
what are partners are paying attention to, helps us understand their thought process
what were the results on the study on eye polarity?
ppts found it difficult to guess direction of faze when eye polarity was reversed (black outside and white inside of eyes) we recognise normally that the dark part of the eye does the looking
black centre with white surrounding =
normal polarity
white centre with black surrounding =
reversed polarity
with EEGs there are specific ___ associated with certain stimuli
ERPs
what ERP is associated with faces?
N170
there is _____ and _____ N170 to eyes vs. faces showing sensitivity to eyes and suggests different underlying processing for eyes and faces
greater, delayed
what is the insight of social attention from fMRIs?
not just one single brain region associated with social attention
automatic, unconscious attention where gaze is drawn to automatically =
exogenous attention
what 2 areas are responsible for coding gaze attention, eye contact and emotional responses from eyes?
amygdala and hippocampus
what brain area is involved with facial identity recognition?
fusiform gyrus
what brain area is involved with ToM processing?
medial prefrontal cortex
Kesner et al (2018) studied direct vs. averted gaze. what brain area was activated for direct gaze? what did eye tracking data show? what does this suggest?
fusiform gyrus, eye tracking data showed greater attention to eyes and mouth with direct gaze. suggests we attend to parts linked with communication due to it more likely to happen when someone is looking directly at you
what did Freeth, Foulsham & Kingstone (2013) find in their live vs. video on direct and averted gaze?
found looked at face when listening and averted gaze when answering, also ppts looked more when they had direct eye contact in live condition compared to video condion
why do we use direct and averted gaze in conversations?
reduces cognitive load by averting gaze (reduces resources to answer a Q), turn taking, social norms (know it is polite to look at someone when they’re speaking)
when we see someone move their gaze we move our own to look in the same direction and this happens automatically = ?
gaze cueing
how is gaze cueing traditionally investigated?
gaze cueing paradigms originally used by Posner > posner type cueing paradigms
gaze cueing paradigms found it was significantly faster to detect a target when it is in the same trial location shown by the gaze cue =
valid trials
gaze cueing paradigms found it was significantly slower to detect a target when it is in the opposite trial location shown by the gaze cue =
invalid trials
why does the gaze cueing effect happen in Posner’s paradigms?
when we see the gaze cue we move our eyes in same direction so faster to find targets that appear in that location
what are real world implications of social attention and gaze cueing?
directs attention to important info in our environment, helps us plan our own actions, gives insight into peoples intentions, allows us to fit in as a member of a group
what can affect social attention?
how we perceive others, social context, neurodevelopmental disorders (autism), neurological disorders (prosopagnosia)
what were the results by Dalmaso looking at social status and if this affects gaze following?
found larger gaze cueing effect for high status faces and ppts more likely to follow gaze of people we perceive as high social status
what were the implications from the findings of Dalmaso’s study?
suggests gaze cueing effect isn’t a bottom up perceptual process > guided by top down processing and takes other factors such as status automatically
what did the results from Foulsham et al’s study show?
pedestrians far away were more likely to be fixated on in real life compared to watching video, significantly less likely to look at pedestrians close up in real life vs. video
Klin looked at viewing patterns of highly emotional/visual video for normal and autistic people. what did he find?
autistic > less attention to eyes and more to mouths > interviews revealed they had missed lots of contextual info due to this wrong focus
what are some features of social attention in autistic patients?
reduced attention to eyes/mouths/faces in others, look less at faces when people look directly at them, evidence they don’t show spontaneous gaze cueing
autism is a ______ condition
spectrum
if autism is a spectrum condition, can neurotypical individuals display traits associated with autism spectrum diagnosis?
yes
Freeth et al manipulated their live vs. video study and measured the amount of autistic traits in neurotypical people. what were the findings from the live condition?
no relationship between autistic traits and attention to the interviewer (maybe because adults tested had learnt association to look > socially aware)
Freeth et al manipulated their live vs. video study and measured the amount of autistic traits in neurotypical people. what were the findings from the video condition?
ppts with higher amounts of autistic traits looked less at the interviewer in the direct eye contact condition
what has other research shown about autistic individuals and social info?
that some do attend to social info and show gaze cueing effects
what does it mean if autism is HETEROGENOUS?
means its different in everyone so what is difficult for 1 person may be easy for another
inability to recognise faces and have to use other cues to recognise people =
prosopagnosia
what were the findings in the case study for 1 ppt with prosopagnosia?
didn’t show gaze cueing effects in shorter duration when viewing full face. when only viewed eyes they showed gaze cueing effects and shorter duration
what does it suggest that prosopagnosia case study could show gaze cueing effects when only viewing eyes instead of whole face?
suggests they can’t globally process faces so can’t pick up eyes quickly until they work around the whole face slowly before finding the eyes to show the effect (longer more methodical process)
