New Frontiers of Investigation in Social Attention

Abstract

It has been 50 years since the term social attention was coined to refer to a special form of social awareness signaled by physical proximity, head and body orientation to conspecifics, and dynamic gaze. Since then the research in social attention has undergone substantial changes in direction, largely driven by developments in technology and scientific methods, as well as the emergence of new disciplines such as cognitive and social neuroscience. In this book we celebrate these advances over the past 50 years, and feature research that spans mature and developing neurotypical humans, as well as individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Behavioral methods such as eye tracking give unique insights into the behavior of preverbal humans, and measurements of brain activity (ascertained either neurophysiologically or hemodynamically) have allowed investigations into how social attention is deployed in developing and mature human subjects. The field appears to be currently experiencing a paradigm shift in experimentation, with more investigators trying to use ecologically valid stimuli and naturalistic tasks. Important differences in results between standard, static traditional laboratory-based tasks and these new approaches are examined and compared. Importantly, these new research directions have implications for our understanding of disorders of social cognition.