Detecting communicative intent in a computerised test of joint attention.

Nathan Caruana,Genevieve Mcarthur,Jon Brock,Alexandra Woolgar

doi:10.7717/peerj.2899

Abstract

The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties—including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In the Search task, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In the NoSearch task, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measurable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.

Highlights

Joint attention is defined as the simultaneous coordination of attention between a social partner and an object or event of interest (Bruner, 1974; Bruner, 1995)
In the prototypical joint attention episode, one person initiates joint attention (IJA) by pointing, turning their head, or shifting their eye gaze to intentionally guide their social partner to an object or event in the environment
The ability to engage in joint attention is considered critical for the normal development of language and for navigating social interactions (Adamson et al, 2009; Charman, 2003; Dawson et al, 2004; Mundy, Sigman & Kasari, 1990; Murray et al, 2008; Tomasello, 1995) and its developmental delay is a hallmark of autism spectrum disorders (Lord et al, 2000; Stone, Ousley & Littleford, 1997)

Summary

Introduction

Joint attention is defined as the simultaneous coordination of attention between a social partner and an object or event of interest (Bruner, 1974; Bruner, 1995). In the prototypical joint attention episode, one person initiates joint attention (IJA) by pointing, turning their head, or shifting their eye gaze to intentionally guide their social partner to an object or event in the environment. How to cite this article Caruana et al (2017), Detecting communicative intent in a computerised test of joint attention. The challenge for researchers, has been to develop paradigms that achieve the ecological validity of a dynamic, interactive, social experience, whilst at the same time maintaining experimental control

Results

Discussion

Conclusion