Attentional State Research Articles

The politics of attention in the paintings of René Tavares

René Tavares’s artistic production actively engages with political themes like migration and racism, simultaneously reflecting and inviting the deconstruction of the ‘alert attentional regime’. This term refers to our digital era's characteristic heightened state of alertness and fragmented attention, which scatters our focus across multiple streams of information. Rather than simply mirroring society’s fragmented attentional state, his work fosters more mindful and intentional engagement, encouraging viewers to transcend the transient attentiveness inherent in contemporary society. Central to his practice is the concept of rhythm, symbolizing the velocity of modern life and facilitating a shift to more sustained attention. This is achieved through patterns and colours that mimic swift information cycles, inherent to our times, captivating the viewer’s attention while setting the stage for a deeper, more mindful engagement with the artwork. Tavares intertwines elements like the ‘floating mark’, representing ephemeral meanings in our digital era; ‘polyfocality’, reflecting and addressing society’s fragmented attention through multiple focal points, and ‘pictorial syncretism’, which refers to the amalgamation of different painterly registers such as stains, graphic registers, splatters, layer overlay, word insertion and scrapings, blending visual traditions to highlight the fluid cultural boundaries in our globalized world. By doing so, it potentially opens up the possibility for a redistribution of the sensible, prompting critical thinking and an inherently political understanding of our place within a broader societal context.

The relations between hyperfocus and similar attentional states, adult ADHD symptoms, and affective dysfunction

The relations between hyperfocus and similar attentional states, adult ADHD symptoms, and affective dysfunction

Exploratory Development of Algorithms for Determining Driver Attention Status.

Varying driver distraction algorithms were developed using vehicle kinematics and driver gaze data obtained from a camera-based driver monitoring system (DMS). Distracted driving characteristics can be difficult to accurately detect due to wide variation in driver behavior across driving environments. The growing availability of information about drivers and their involvement in the driving task increases the opportunity for accurately recognizing attention state. A baseline for driver distraction levels was developed using a video feed of 24 separate drivers in varying naturalistic driving conditions. This initial assessment was used to develop four buffer-based algorithms that aimed to determine a driver's real-time attentiveness, via a variety of metrics and combinations thereof. Of those tested, the optimal algorithm included ungrouped glance locations and speed. Notably, as an algorithm's performance of detecting very distracted drivers improved, its accuracy for correctly identifying attentive drivers decreased. At a minimum, drivers' gaze position and vehicle speed should be included when designing driver distraction algorithms to delineate between glance patterns observed at high and low speeds. Distraction algorithms should be designed with an understanding of their limitations, including instances in which they may fail to detect distracted drivers, or falsely notify attentive drivers. This research adds to the body of knowledge related to driver distraction and contributes to available methods to potentially address and reduce occurrences. Machine learning algorithms can build on the data elements discussed to increase distraction detection accuracy using robust artificial intelligence.

Neural oscillations reflect the individual differences in the temporal perception of audiovisual speech.

Multisensory integration occurs within a limited time interval between multimodal stimuli. Multisensory temporal perception varies widely among individuals and involves perceptual synchrony and temporal sensitivity processes. Previous studies explored the neural mechanisms of individual differences for beep-flash stimuli, whereas there was no study for speech. In this study, 28 subjects (16 male) performed an audiovisual speech/ba/simultaneity judgment task while recording their electroencephalography. We examined the relationship between prestimulus neural oscillations (i.e. the pre-pronunciation movement-related oscillations) and temporal perception. The perceptual synchrony was quantified using the Point of Subjective Simultaneity and temporal sensitivity using the Temporal Binding Window. Our results revealed dissociated neural mechanisms for individual differences in Temporal Binding Window and Point of Subjective Simultaneity. The frontocentral delta power, reflecting top-down attention control, is positively related to the magnitude of individual auditory leading Temporal Binding Windows (auditory Temporal Binding Windows; LTBWs), whereas the parieto-occipital theta power, indexing bottom-up visual temporal attention specific to speech, is negatively associated with the magnitude of individual visual leading Temporal Binding Windows (visual Temporal Binding Windows; RTBWs). In addition, increased left frontal and bilateral temporoparietal occipital alpha power, reflecting general attentional states, is associated with increased Points of Subjective Simultaneity. Strengthening attention abilities might improve the audiovisual temporal perception of speech and further impact speech integration.

Attention preserves the selectivity of feature-tuned normalization.

Attention and divisive normalization both contribute to making visual processing more efficient. Attention selectively increases the neural gain of relevant information in the early visual cortex, resulting in stronger perceived salience for attended regions or features. Divisive normalization improves processing efficiency by suppressing responses to homogeneous inputs and highlighting salient boundaries, facilitating sparse coding of inputs. Theoretical and empirical research suggest a tight link between attention and normalization, wherein attending to a stimulus results in a release from normalization, thereby allowing for an increase in neural response gain. In the present study, we address whether attention alters the qualitative properties of normalization. Specifically, we examine how attention influences the feature-tuned nature of normalization, whereby suppression is stronger between visual stimuli whose orientation contents are similar, and weaker when the orientations are different. Ten human observers viewed stimuli that varied in orientation content while we acquired fMRI BOLD responses under two attentional states: attending toward or attending away from the stimulus. Our results indicate that attention does not alter the specificity of feature-tuned normalization. Instead, attention seems to enhance visuocortical responses evenly, regardless of the degree of orientation similarity within the stimulus. Since visuocortical responses exhibit adaptation to statistical regularities in natural scenes, we conclude that while attention can selectively increase the gain of responses to attended items, it does not appear to alter the ecologically relevant correspondence between orientation differences and strength of tuned normalization.NEW & NOTEWORTHY The magnitude of visuocortical BOLD responses scales with orientation differences in visual stimuli, with the strongest response suppression for collinear stimuli and least suppression for orthogonal, in a way that appears to match natural scene statistics. We examined the effects of attention on this feature-tuned property of suppression and found that while attending to a stimulus increases the overall gain of visuocortical responses, the qualitative properties of feature-tuning remain unchanged, suggesting attention preserves tuned normalization properties.

Neurophysiological Assessment of An Innovative Maritime Safety System in Terms of Ship Operators' Mental Workload, Stress, and Attention in the Full Mission Bridge Simulator.

The current industrial environment relies heavily on maritime transportation. Despite the continuous technological advances for the development of innovative safety software and hardware systems, there is a consistent gap in the scientific literature regarding the objective evaluation of the performance of maritime operators. The human factor is profoundly affected by changes in human performance or psychological state. The difficulty lies in the fact that the technology, tools, and protocols for investigating human performance are not fully mature or suitable for experimental investigation. The present research aims to integrate these two concepts by (i) objectively characterizing the psychological state of mariners, i.e., mental workload, stress, and attention, through their electroencephalographic (EEG) signal analysis, and (ii) validating an innovative safety framework countermeasure, defined as Human Risk-Informed Design (HURID), through the aforementioned neurophysiological approach. The proposed study involved 26 mariners within a high-fidelity bridge simulator while encountering collision risk in congested waters with and without the HURID. Subjective, behavioral, and neurophysiological data, i.e., EEG, were collected throughout the experimental activities. The results showed that the participants experienced a statistically significant higher mental workload and stress while performing the maritime activities without the HURID, while their attention level was statistically lower compared to the condition in which they performed the experiments with the HURID (all p < 0.05). Therefore, the presented study confirmed the effectiveness of the HURID during maritime operations in critical scenarios and led the way to extend the neurophysiological evaluation of the HFs of maritime operators during the performance of critical and/or standard shipboard tasks.

The Synergy Zone: Connecting the Mind, Brain, and Heart for the Ideal Classroom Learning Environment.

This paper proposes a new perspective on implementing neuroeducation in the classroom. The pandemic exacerbated the mental health issues of faculty and students, creating a mental health crisis that impairs learning. It is important to get our students back in "the zone", both cognitively and emotionally, by creating an ideal learning environment for capturing our students and keeping them-the Synergy Zone. Research that examines the classroom environment often focuses on the foreground-instructors' organizational and instructional aspects and content. However, the emotional climate of the classroom affects student well-being. This emotional climate would ideally exhibit the brain states of engagement, attention, connection, and enjoyment by addressing the mind, brain, and heart. This ideal learning environment would be achieved by combining proposed practices derived from three areas of research: flow theory, brain synchronization, and positive emotion with heart engagement. Each of these enhances the desired brain states in a way that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. I call this the Synergy Zone. A limitation of this proposed model is that implementation of some aspects may be challenging, and professional development resources might be needed. This essay presenting this perspective provides the relevant scientific research and the educational implications of implementation.

Influence of acute fasting on pain tolerance in healthy subjects: a randomised crossover study.

Although chronic pain and obesity are global health crises with substantial healthcare costs, little is known about the relationship between pain perception and eating behaviours. Food consumption has been reported to provide an analgesic effect by the release of neurotransmitters modulating the pain network. However, whether short-term (acute) fasting affects pain perception remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effect of acute fasting on pain perception and whether attention and mood changes drove the observed changes. The cold pressor test (CPT) was used to investigate the pain tolerance of 25 healthy participants in both non-fasting and 12-h fasting sessions. They were randomised to either session with a crossover to the other after at least 24 h, with the experimenter blinded to the sessions. The pain tolerance was measured using a Stroop task in both attentive and distracted states. The Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaire was used to capture the mood, and a 10-point hunger scale was used to measure hunger. Mixed-effects models were used to investigate the influence of fasting and distraction on pain perception, accounting for the repeated measures. Fasting reduced CPT pain tolerance, with fasting participants twice as likely to withdraw their hands early (hazard ratio = 2.4, 95% CI: 1.3-4.5). Though men tolerated CPT pain longer than women, there was no evidence that men responded to fasting differently than women (p = 0.9). In addition, no evidence supporting that fasting affected attention or mood was found. Nonetheless, it increased hunger scores by 2.7 points on a 10-point scale (95% CI: 1.2-4.2) and decreased blood glucose concentration levels by 0.51 mmol/L (95% CI: 0.19-0.84). Acute fasting reduces pain tolerance in the healthy participants, and this effect is independent of gender and attention or mood changes.

Rhythmic attentional sampling in autism.

Individuals diagnosed with autism often display alterations in visual spatial attention toward visual stimuli, but the underlying cause of these differences remains unclear. Recent evidence has demonstrated that covert spatial attention, rather than remaining constant at a cued location, samples stimuli rhythmically at a frequency of 4-8 Hz (theta). Here we tested whether rhythmic sampling of attention is altered in autism. Participants were asked to monitor three locations to detect a brief target presented 300-1200 ms after a spatial cue. Visual attention was oriented to the cue and modified visual processing at the cued location, consistent with previous studies. We measured detection performance at different cue-target intervals when the target occurred at the cued location. Significant oscillations in detection performance were identified using both a traditional time-shuffled approach and a new autoregressive surrogate method developed by Brookshire in 2022. We found that attention enhances behavioral performance rhythmically at the same frequency in both autism and control group at the cued location. However, rhythmic temporal structure was not observed in a subgroup of autistic individuals with co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Our results imply that intrinsic brain rhythms which organize neural activity into alternating attentional states is functional in autistic individuals, but may be altered in autistic participants who have a concurrent ADHD diagnosis.

Establishing gaze markers of perceptual load during multi-target visual search

Highly-automated technologies are increasingly incorporated into existing systems, for instance in advanced car models. Although highly automated modes permit non-driving activities (e.g. internet browsing), drivers are expected to reassume control upon a ‘take over’ signal from the automation. To assess a person’s readiness for takeover, non-invasive eye tracking can indicate their attentive state based on properties of their gaze. Perceptual load is a well-established determinant of attention and perception, however, the effects of perceptual load on a person’s ability to respond to a takeover signal and the related gaze indicators are not yet known. Here we examined how load-induced attentional state affects detection of a takeover-signal proxy, as well as the gaze properties that change with attentional state, in an ongoing task with no overt behaviour beyond eye movements (responding by lingering the gaze). Participants performed a multi-target visual search of either low perceptual load (shape targets) or high perceptual load (targets were two separate conjunctions of colour and shape), while also detecting occasional auditory tones (the proxy takeover signal). Across two experiments, we found that high perceptual load was associated with poorer search performance, slower detection of cross-modal stimuli, and longer fixation durations, while saccade amplitude did not consistently change with load. Using machine learning, we were able to predict the load condition from fixation duration alone. These results suggest monitoring fixation duration may be useful in the design of systems to track users’ attentional states and predict impaired user responses to stimuli outside of the focus of attention.

Effects of Acute Long- versus Short-Interval High-Intensity Interval Training on Attention and Psychological States in a Sample of Male and Female Adolescents: A Pilot Study.

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of acute short- versus long-interval high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on cognitive performance and psychological states in secondary school students. Fifteen secondary school students (nine males and six females: mean age = 16.2 ± 0.4 years, mean Body Mass Index = 21.2 ± 1.5 kg/m2, and maximum oxygen uptake = 42.2 ± 5.9 mL/kg/min) participated in the current study. They performed one of the following three sessions in a randomized order: (i) a long-interval HIIT (LIHIIT), (ii) a short-interval HIIT (SIHIIT), and (iii) a control condition (CC). Cognitive performance and perceived exertion were assessed pre and immediately post each condition using the d2 test and the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) tool, respectively. Mood state was quantified using the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS) questionnaire immediately post each condition. The findings reported higher concentration performance in the SIHIIT compared to the LIHIIT condition (p = 0.043) and the CC (p < 0.001) and in the LIHIIT compared to the CC (p = 0.023). Moreover, the total count of errors was higher in the CC than in the LIHIIT (p = 0.01) and in the SIHIIT conditions (p < 0.001) and in the LIHIIT than in the SIHIIT condition (p = 0.03). RPE value was higher in the LIHIIT and SIHIIT conditions than in the CC (both p < 0.001), whereas no statistically significant difference between LIHIIT and SIHIIT conditions (p = 0.24) was found. Regarding the BRUMS, a significant difference between conditions in the fatigue subscale was found, being higher in LIHIIT with respect to SIHIIT (p = 0.03) and CC (p < 0.05). Vigor differed between conditions, with a higher value than in the LIHIIT (p = 0.04) and CC (p < 0.001). All the remaining subscales did not significantly differ between conditions (p > 0.05). Practitioners may implement short-interval HIIT prior to any tasks that require high levels of visual attention.

Constructing a spatiotemporal situational awareness framework to sense the dynamic evolution of online public opinion on social media

PurposeThe paper aims to construct a spatiotemporal situational awareness framework to sense the evolutionary situation of public opinion in social media, thus assisting relevant departments in formulating public opinion control measures for specific time and space contexts.Design/methodology/approachThe spatiotemporal situational awareness framework comprises situational element extraction, situational understanding and situational projection. In situational element extraction, the data on the COVID-19 vaccine, including spatiotemporal tags and text contents, is extracted. In situational understanding, the bidirectional encoder representation from transformers – latent dirichlet allocation (BERT-LDA) and bidirectional encoder representation from transformers – bidirectional long short-term memory (BERT-BiLSTM) are used to discover the topics and emotional labels hidden in opinion texts. In situational projection, the situational evolution characteristics and patterns of online public opinion are uncovered from the perspective of time and space through multiple visualisation techniques.FindingsFrom the temporal perspective, the evolution of online public opinion is closely related to the developmental dynamics of offline events. In comparison, public views and attitudes are more complex and diversified during the outbreak and diffusion periods. From the spatial perspective, the netizens in hotspot areas with higher discussion volume are more rational and prefer to track the whole process of event development, while the ones in coldspot areas with less discussion volume pay more attention to the expression of personal emotions. From the perspective of intertwined spatiotemporal, there are differences in the focus of attention and emotional state of netizens in different regions and time stages, caused by the specific situations they are in.Originality/valueThe situational awareness framework can shed light on the dynamic evolution of online public opinion from a multidimensional perspective, including temporal, spatial and spatiotemporal perspectives. It enables decision-makers to grasp the psychology and behavioural patterns of the public in different regions and time stages and provide targeted public opinion guidance measures and offline event governance strategies.

Nonverbal behavioral patterns predict social rejection elicited aggression

Aggression elicited by social rejection is costly, prevalent, and often lethal. Attempts to predict rejection-elicited aggression using trait-based data have had little success. This may be because in-the-moment aggression is a complex process influenced by current states of attention, arousal, and affect which are poorly predicted by trait-level characteristics. In a study of young adults (N = 89; 18–25 years), machine learning tested the extent to which nonverbal behavioral indices of attention (eye gaze), arousal (pupillary reactivity), and affect (facial expressions) during a novel social interaction paradigm predicted subsequent aggression towards rejecting and accepting peers. Eye gaze and pupillary reactivity predicted aggressive behavior; predictions were more successful than measures of trait-based aggression and harsh parenting. These preliminary results suggest that nonverbal behavior may elucidate underlying mechanisms of in-the-moment aggression.

Monitoring Inattention in Construction Workers Caused by Physical Fatigue Using Electrocardiograph (ECG) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) Sensors.

Physical fatigue is frequent for heavy manual laborers like construction workers, but it causes distraction and may lead to safety incidents. The purpose of this study is to develop predictive models for monitoring construction workers' inattention caused by physical fatigue utilizing electrocardiograph (ECG) and galvanic skin response (GSR) sensors. Thirty participants were invited to complete an attention-demanding task under non-fatigued and physically fatigued conditions. Supervised learning algorithms were utilized to develop models predicting their attentional states, with heart rate variability (HRV) features derived from ECG signals and skin electric activity features derived from GSR signals as data inputs. The results demonstrate that using HRV features alone could obtain a prediction accuracy of 88.33%, and using GSR features alone could achieve an accuracy of 76.67%, both through the KNN algorithm. The accuracy increased to 96.67% through the SVM algorithm when combining HRV and GSR features. The findings indicate that ECG sensors used alone or in combination with GSR sensors can be applied to monitor construction workers' inattention on job sites. The findings would provide an approach for detecting distracted workers at job sites. Additionally, it might reveal the relationships between workers' physiological features and attention.

The role of ongoing oscillation in pain perception: Absence of modulation by a concomitant arithmetic task

Sustained nociceptive stimuli have been shown to modulate the amplitude of ongoing neural oscillations in the theta, alpha and beta frequency bands at the frequency of stimulation, suggesting a relationship between these ongoing oscillations and pain perception. Yet, whether these ongoing oscillations are actually related to the pain experience remains unclear. If it were the case, then cognitive processes that are known to affect pain intensity should also affect these ongoing oscillations. To this end, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate whether distraction – an attentional state known to affect pain perception – also modulates the amplitude of these neural oscillations. More specifically, we hypothesized that performing an unrelated arithmetic task during sustained nociceptive stimulation would lead to a decrease in the modulations of ongoing oscillations exerted by the stimulation. To assess the selectivity of this modulation for nociception, we compared the modulations of ongoing oscillations exerted by sustained periodic thermonociceptive and non-nociceptive vibrotactile stimulation (.2 Hz, 75 sec), while participants were either asked to solve an unrelated arithmetic task (distraction task) or received no specific instruction (baseline). The intensity of perception was significantly reduced by the arithmetic task in both the thermonociceptive and the vibrotactile modality, and the sustained periodic stimulation elicited a periodic response at the frequency of stimulation in both modalities. However, the distraction task did not show a differential effect for the two stimulation modalities in any of the frequency bands. The fact that, unlike pain perception, these oscillations did not appear to be affected by the task suggests that they are dissociable from pain perception. Whether a different task (leading to a stronger degree of distraction) could lead to different results is unclear.

Memory for abstract control states does not decay with increasing retrieval delays.

Recent studies have suggested that abstract control states (i.e., internal attentional states independent from concrete stimuli and responses) can be stored in episodic memory and retrieved subsequently. However, the duration of such a control state memory remains unclear. Previous research has found a quick and complete decay for stimulus-response bindings after 2000-5000ms. Here, we tested a possible decay of control state bindings with retrieval delays of 2000, 3000, or 5000ms. Five preregistered experiments used a confound-minimized prime-target task to measure the congruency sequence effect (CSE) separately for trials in which a nominally irrelevant context feature changed or repeated across trials. Analyses of the individual experiments did not result in conclusive evidence. A mega-analysis integrating the data of all experiments (Ntotal = 326) replicated evidence for binding and retrieval of control states, in that larger CSEs were found for context repetition trials. Importantly, Bayesian analysis indicated that this effect was not modulated by the length of retrieval delay. While this finding suggests that bindings of abstract control states can be relatively robust, we also discuss possible limitations of the present research.

Switching between External and Internal Attention in Hippocampal Networks.

Everyday experience requires processing external signals from the world around us and internal information retrieved from memory. To do both, the brain must fluctuate between states that are optimized for external versus internal attention. Here, we focus on the hippocampus as a region that may serve at the interface between these forms of attention and ask how it switches between prioritizing sensory signals from the external world versus internal signals related to memories and thoughts. Pharmacological, computational, and animal studies have identified input from the cholinergic basal forebrain as important for biasing the hippocampus toward processing external information, whereas complementary research suggests the dorsal attention network (DAN) may aid in allocating attentional resources toward accessing internal information. We therefore tested the hypothesis that the basal forebrain and DAN drive the hippocampus toward external and internal attention, respectively. We used data from 29 human participants (17 female) who completed two attention tasks during fMRI. One task (memory-guided) required proportionally more internal attention, and proportionally less external attention, than the other (explicitly instructed). We discovered that background functional connectivity between the basal forebrain and hippocampus was stronger during the explicitly instructed versus memory-guided task. In contrast, DAN-hippocampus background connectivity was stronger during the memory-guided versus explicitly instructed task. Finally, the strength of DAN-hippocampus background connectivity was correlated with performance on the memory-guided but not explicitly instructed task. Together, these results provide evidence that the basal forebrain and DAN may modulate the hippocampus to switch between external and internal attention.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How does the brain balance the need to pay attention to internal thoughts and external sensations? We focused on the human hippocampus, a region that may serve at the interface between internal and external attention, and asked how its functional connectivity varies based on attentional states. The hippocampus was more strongly coupled with the cholinergic basal forebrain when attentional states were guided by the external world rather than retrieved memories. This pattern flipped for functional connectivity between the hippocampus and dorsal attention network, which was higher for attention tasks that were guided by memory rather than external cues. Together, these findings show that distinct networks in the brain may modulate the hippocampus to switch between external and internal attention.

Locus coeruleus integrity predicts ease of attaining and maintaining neural states of high attentiveness

The locus coeruleus (LC), a small subcortical structure in the brainstem, is the brain’s principal source of norepinephrine. It plays a primary role in regulating stress, the sleep-wake cycle, and attention, and its degradation is associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases associated with cognitive deficits (e.g., Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s). Yet precisely how norepinephrine drives brain networks to support healthy cognitive function remains poorly understood – partly because LC’s small size makes it difficult to study noninvasively in humans. Here, we characterized LC’s influence on brain dynamics using a hidden Markov model fitted to functional neuroimaging data from healthy young adults across four attention-related brain networks and LC. We modulated LC activity using a behavioral paradigm and measured individual differences in LC magnetization transfer contrast. The model revealed five hidden states, including a stable state dominated by salience-network activity that occurred when subjects actively engaged with the task. LC magnetization transfer contrast correlated with this state’s stability across experimental manipulations and with subjects’ propensity to enter into and remain in this state. These results provide new insight into LC’s role in driving spatiotemporal neural patterns associated with attention, and demonstrate that variation in LC integrity can explain individual differences in these patterns even in healthy young adults.

Ethics and Meditation: A New Educational Combination to Boost Verbal Creativity and Sense of Responsibility.

Both creativity and responsibility are important higher-order skills to develop to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene, and both are related to attentional states of consciousness and to ethics. Meditation is a set of practices that trains attentional and emotional regulation. A few studies have shown that different kinds of meditation can foster different kinds of creative thinking, and others have begun to investigate the effect of the combination of meditation and ethics on ethical characteristics (but not yet on creativity or precisely on responsibility, so far). Here, we present a nonrandomized trial with an active control group among second-year science university students (n = 84) to test the effect of the secular Meditation-Based Ethics of Responsibility (MBER) program on creative potential, self-reported awareness, and sense of one's own responsibility. The results show a large effect of the program on sense of one's own responsibility and convergent and divergent creative writing tasks, both in conceptual-semantic and engineering-like verbal ideation. They also suggest that convergent conceptual-semantic thinking might moderate the effect of the MBER program on the awareness and sense of one's own responsibility. This work opens up new research and educational perspectives linked to necessary behavioral changes in the Anthropocene.

Bottlenose dolphins are sensitive to human attentional features, including eye functionality

The ability to attribute attentional states to other individuals is a highly adaptive socio-cognitive skill and thus may have evolved in many social species. However, whilst humans excel in this ability, even chimpanzees appear to not accurately understand how visual attention works, particularly in regard to the function of eyes. The complex socio-ecological background and socio-cognitive skill-set of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.), alongside the specialised training that captive dolphins typically undergo, make them an especially relevant candidate for an investigation into their sensitivity to human attentional states. Therefore, we tested 8 bottlenose dolphins on an object retrieval task. The dolphins were instructed to fetch an object by a trainer under various attentional state conditions involving the trainer’s eyes and face orientation: ‘not looking’, ‘half looking’, ‘eyes open’, and ‘eyes closed’. As the dolphins showed an increased latency to retrieve the object in conditions where the trainer’s head and eyes cued a lack of attention to the dolphin, particularly when comparing ‘eyes open’ vs ‘eyes closed’ conditions, we demonstrate that dolphins can be sensitive to human attentional features, namely the functionality of eyes. This study supports growing evidence that dolphins possess highly complex cognitive abilities, particularly those in the social domain.