What are you looking at?: Impaired ‘social attention’ following frontal-lobe damage

Abstract

Humans are able to predict the behavior of others. Several studies have investigated this capability by determining if social cues, such as eye gaze direction, can influence the allocation of visual attention. When a viewer sees a face looking to the left, the viewer’s attention is allocated in the gazed-at direction. These ‘social attention’ studies have asked if this allocation of attention is automatic or under voluntary control. In this paper, we show that a patient with frontal-lobe damage is impaired at allocating attention to peripheral locations voluntarily, although attention can be allocated there automatically. The patient, EVR, can use peripheral cues to selectively process one location over another but cannot use symbolic cues (words) to allocate attention. EVR is also impaired in using eye gaze cues to allocate attention, suggesting that ‘social attention’ may involve frontal-lobe processes that control voluntary, not automatic, shifts of visuospatial attention.