Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the facilitatory versus inhibitory effects of dynamic non-predictive central cues presented in a realistic environment. Realistic human-avatars initiated eye contact and then dynamically looked to the left, right or centre of a table. A moving stick served as a non-social control cue and participants localised (Experiment 1) or discriminated (Experiment 2) a contextually relevant target (teapot/teacup). The cues movement took 500 ms and stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA, 150 ms/300 ms/500 ms/1000 ms) were measured from movement initiation. Similar cuing effects were seen for the social avatar and non-social stick cue across tasks. Results showed facilitatory processes without inhibition, though there was some variation by SOA and task. This is the first time facilitatory versus inhibitory processes have been directly investigated where eye contact is initiated prior to gaze shift. These dynamic stimuli allow a better understanding of how attention might be cued in more realistic environments.
Highlights
Joint attention, i.e. the shared focus of two individuals on an object, person, or event is an important aspect of human communication and humans generally cannot help but follow other people’s eye gaze (Frischen et al, 2007a, 2007b; Kampis & Southgate, 2020; Stephenson et al, 2021)
A repeated measures ANOVA with cue type, validity and SOA (150, 300, 500, 1000) as within subject factors was conducted on the median reaction times data
Reaction times were significantly faster when the target was validly cued (421 ms) as compared to invalidly cued (436 ms), t(58) = − 7.989, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = − 1.040 (Bonferroni corrected), further, reaction times were significantly faster when the target was validly cued as compared to when the cue stayed central t(58) = − 6.957, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = − 0.906 (Bonferroni corrected) and there was no significant difference between reaction times when the target was invalidly cued as compared to neutral t(58) = 1.032, p = 0.912, Cohen’s d = 0.134 (Bonferroni corrected)
Summary
I.e. the shared focus of two individuals on an object, person, or event is an important aspect of human communication and humans generally cannot help but follow other people’s eye gaze (Frischen et al, 2007a, 2007b; Kampis & Southgate, 2020; Stephenson et al, 2021). This phenomenon, known as the gaze cuing effect is studied using an adapted Posner cuing task (e.g. Posner, 1980). Joint attention has been found to be an important process in early learning (Striano et al, 2006; Tomasello, 1988), as well as leading to sophisticated mentalising processes, whereby we make inferences about other people’s intentions, an important aspect of social interaction (Capozzi & Ristic, 2018)
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