Reflexive Orienting Of Attention Research Articles

Happy is stronger than sad: Emotional information modulates social attention.

Social directional cues (e.g., gaze direction; walking direction) can trigger reflexive attentional orienting, a phenomenon known as social attention. Here, we examined whether this reflexive social attention could be modulated by the emotional content embedded in social cues. By introducing emotional (happy and sad) biological motion (BM) stimuli to the modified central cuing paradigm, we found that the happy but not the sad emotional gait could significantly boost attentional orienting effect relative to the neutral gait. Critically, this "happiness advantage" effect could be extended to social attention induced by gaze. Furthermore, the observed differential emotional modulations could not be simply explained by low-level physical differences between the emotional stimuli, as inverted social cues (i.e., BM and face) failed to produce such modulation effects. Overall, these findings highlight the role of emotional information in modulating the processing of social signals, and further suggest the existence of a general emotional modulation on social attention triggered by different types of social signals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Attentional capture mediates the emergence and suppression of intrusive memories.

Intrusive memories hijack consciousness and their control may lead to forgetting. However, the contribution of reflexive attention to qualifying a memory signal as interfering is unknown. We used machine learning to decode the brain's electrical activity and pinpoint the otherwise hidden emergence of intrusive memories reported during a memory suppression task. Importantly, the algorithm was trained on an independent attentional model of visual activity, mimicking either the abrupt and interfering appearance of visual scenes into conscious awareness or their deliberate exploration. Intrusion of memories into conscious awareness were decoded above chance. The decoding accuracy increased when the algorithm was trained using a model of reflexive attention. Conscious detection of intrusive activity decoded from the brain signal was central to the future silencing of suppressed memories and laterforgetting. Unwanted memories require the reflexive orienting of attention and access to consciousness to be suppressed effectively by inhibitory control.

The Neurobiological Correlates of Gaze Perception in Healthy Individuals and Neurologic Patients.

The ability to adaptively follow conspecific eye movements is crucial for establishing shared attention and survival. Indeed, in humans, interacting with the gaze direction of others causes the reflexive orienting of attention and the faster object detection of the signaled spatial location. The behavioral evidence of this phenomenon is called gaze-cueing. Although this effect can be conceived as automatic and reflexive, gaze-cueing is often susceptible to context. In fact, gaze-cueing was shown to interact with other factors that characterize facial stimulus, such as the kind of cue that induces attention orienting (i.e., gaze or non-symbolic cues) or the emotional expression conveyed by the gaze cues. Here, we address neuroimaging evidence, investigating the neural bases of gaze-cueing and the perception of gaze direction and how contextual factors interact with the gaze shift of attention. Evidence from neuroimaging, as well as the fields of non-invasive brain stimulation and neurologic patients, highlights the involvement of the amygdala and the superior temporal lobe (especially the superior temporal sulcus (STS)) in gaze perception. However, in this review, we also emphasized the discrepancies of the attempts to characterize the distinct functional roles of the regions in the processing of gaze. Finally, we conclude by presenting the notion of invariant representation and underline its value as a conceptual framework for the future characterization of the perceptual processing of gaze within the STS.

Cross-cultural asymmetries in oculomotor interference elicited by gaze distractors belonging to Asian and White faces

The averted gaze of others triggers reflexive attentional orienting in the corresponding direction. This phenomenon can be modulated by many social factors. Here, we used an eye-tracking technique to investigate the role of ethnic membership in a cross-cultural oculomotor interference study. Chinese and Italian participants were required to perform a saccade whose direction might be either congruent or incongruent with the averted-gaze of task-irrelevant faces belonging to Asian and White individuals. The results showed that, for Chinese participants, White faces elicited a larger oculomotor interference than Asian faces. By contrast, Italian participants exhibited a similar oculomotor interference effect for both Asian and White faces. Hence, Chinese participants found it more difficult to suppress eye-gaze processing of White rather than Asian faces. The findings provide converging evidence that social attention can be modulated by social factors characterizing both the face stimulus and the participants. The data are discussed with reference to possible cross-cultural differences in perceived social status.

Eating restraint is associated with reduced attentional capture by signals of valuable food reward

Previous paradigms used to examine attentional distraction by task-irrelevant food words and food images were not suited for the investigation of involuntary and automatic attentional capture. In the current experiments we adapted a well-established visual-search paradigm (with eye tracking) to investigate involuntary attentional capture by food and drink rewards. We first used a satiety procedure to manipulate relative preference for different food and drink outcomes (potato chips and water in Experiment 1 and popcorn and chocolate Smarties in Experiment 2). Participants then performed the visual-search task where a coloured distractor signalled on each trial which of the two food and drink rewards was available for successful identification of the target. The signalled reward was cancelled, however, if any eye gaze was registered on the distractor. Participants were therefore motivated to try and control the automatic orienting of attention towards cues signalling valuable outcomes, in order to earn those outcomes. In both experiments we found that attention was more often captured by the distractor signalling the valuable (non-sated) outcome, replicating previous studies using this paradigm with monetary rewards. We also found that those scoring high on eating restraint (as measured with the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire) were better at controlling reflexive orienting of attention to desirable food rewards. This paradigm offers a novel approach for understanding how reflexive attention and control relate to conflicts in everyday life around distracting food cues, and the moderating role of dietary restraint.

Cross-modal social attention triggered by biological motion cues.

Previous research has demonstrated that biological motion (BM) cues can induce reflexive attentional orienting. This BM-triggered social attention has hitherto only been investigated within visual modality. It remains unknown whether and to what extent social attention induced by BM cues can occur across different sensory modalities. By introducing auditory stimuli to a modified central cueing paradigm, we showed that observers responded significantly faster to auditory targets presented in the walking direction of BM than in the opposite direction, reflecting the notion that BM cues can trigger cross-modal social attention. This effect was not due to the viewpoint effect of the global configuration and could be extended to local BM cues without any global configuration. Critically, such cross-modal social attention was sensitive to the orientation of BM cues and completely disappeared when critical biological characteristics were removed. Our findings, taken together, support the existence of a special multimodal attention mechanism tuned to life motion signals and shed new light on the unique and cross-modal nature of social attention.

Focusing on the face or getting distracted by social signals? The effect of distracting gestures on attentional focus in natural interaction.

Attentional orienting towards others' gaze direction or pointing has been well investigated in laboratory conditions. However, less is known about the operation of attentional mechanisms in online naturalistic social interaction scenarios. It is equally plausible that following social directional cues (gaze, pointing) occurs reflexively, and/or that it is influenced by top-down cognitive factors. In a mobile eye-tracking experiment, we show that under natural interaction conditions, overt attentional orienting is not necessarily reflexively triggered by pointing gestures or a combination of gaze shifts and pointing gestures. We found that participants conversing with an experimenter, who, during the interaction, would play out pointing gestures as well as directional gaze movements, continued to mostly focus their gaze on the face of the experimenter, demonstrating the significance of attending to the face of the interaction partner-in line with effective top-down control over reflexive orienting of attention in the direction of social cues.

On the role of eye contact in gaze cueing

Most experimental protocols examining joint attention with the gaze cueing paradigm are “observational” and “offline”, thereby not involving social interaction. We examined whether within a naturalistic online interaction, real-time eye contact influences the gaze cueing effect (GCE). We embedded gaze cueing in an interactive protocol with the iCub humanoid robot. This has the advantage of ecological validity combined with excellent experimental control. Critically, before averting the gaze, iCub either established eye contact or not, a manipulation enabled by an algorithm detecting position of the human eyes. For non-predictive gaze cueing procedure (Experiment 1), only the eye contact condition elicited GCE, while for counter-predictive procedure (Experiment 2), only the condition with no eye contact induced GCE. These results reveal an interactive effect of strategic (gaze validity) and social (eye contact) top-down components on the reflexive orienting of attention induced by gaze cues. More generally, we propose that naturalistic protocols with an embodied presence of an agent can cast a new light on mechanisms of social cognition.

‘Spontaneous’ visual perspective-taking mediated by attention orienting that is voluntary and not reflexive

Experiments revealing 'spontaneous' visual perspective-taking are conventionally interpreted as demonstrating that adults have the capacity to track simple mental states in a fast and efficient manner ('implicit mentalising'). A rival account suggests that these experiments can be explained by the general purpose mechanisms responsible for reflexive attentional orienting. Here, we report two experiments designed to distinguish between these competing accounts. In Experiment 1, we assessed whether reflexive attention orienting was sufficient to yield findings interpreted as spontaneous perspective-taking in the 'avatar task' when the protocol was adapted so that participants were unaware that they were taking part in a perspective-taking experiment. Results revealed no evidence for perspective-taking. In Experiment 2, we employed a Posner paradigm to investigate the attentional orienting properties of the avatar stimuli. This revealed cue-validity effects only for longer stimulus onset asynchronies, which indicates a voluntary rather than reflexive shift in spatial attention. Taken together, these findings suggest that attentional orienting does indeed contribute to performance in the Samson et al. avatar task. However, attention orienting appears to be voluntary rather than reflexive, indicating that the perspective-taking phenomenon measured may be less spontaneous than first reported.

Testosterone influences volitional, but not reflexive orienting of attention in human males

The impact of testosterone (T) on the exogenous (Experiment 1) and endogenous (Experiment 2) orienting of visual attention in males was examined. Sixteen male participants completed both an exogenous and an endogenous cuing task on two separate days. About 2–3h prior to testing, either a placebo or a dose of T was administered. The inhibition of return (IOR) phenomenon was observed during the exogenous cuing task, but IOR was not influenced by T. During the endogenous task, participants demonstrated the expected cuing effects on both days. However, longer reaction time to invalid target locations was observed following T-administration. The manipulation of T-levels in males provides converging evidence of dissociation between reflexive and volitional orienting of attention.

Assessing early processing of eye gaze in schizophrenia: measuring the cone of direct gaze and reflexive orienting of attention

ABSTRACTIntroduction: The accurate discrimination of another person’s eye-gaze direction is vital as it provides a cue to the gazer’s focus of attention, which in turn supports joint attention. Patients with schizophrenia have shown a “direct gaze bias” when judging gaze direction. However, current tasks do not dissociate an early perceptual bias from high-level top-down effects. We investigated early stages of gaze processing in schizophrenia by measuring perceptual sensitivity to fine deviations in gaze direction (i.e., the cone of direct gaze: CoDG) and ability to reflexively orient to locations cued by the same deviations.Methods: Twenty-four patients and 26 controls completed a CoDG discrimination task that used realistic direct-face images with six fine degrees of deviation (i.e., 3, 6 or 9 pixels to the left and right) and direct gaze, and a gaze cueing task that assessed reflexive orienting to the same fine-grained deviations.Results: Our data showed patients exhibited no impairment in gaze discrimination, nor did we observe a reduced orienting response.Conclusions: These results suggest that while patients may suffer deficits associated with interpreting another person’s gaze, the earliest processes concerned with detecting averted gaze and reflexively orienting to the gazed-at location are intact.

Influences of social cognition on visuospatial attention: A neurophysiological investigation

Event Abstract Back to Event Influences of social cognition on visuospatial attention: A neurophysiological investigation Grace Wei1*, Jacqueline A. Rushby1, Christopher Sufani1 and Frances De Blasio1 1 University of New South Wales, Australia Aims: The reflexive orienting response triggered by non-predictive gaze cues is thought to be driven by a dedicated social neural network responsible for directing attention towards socially salient information. Atypical processing of eye gaze using concomitant perceptual features such as motion transients may underlie reflexive attentional orienting in groups with impairments in social cognition. Thus, reflecting the employment of qualitatively different cognitive mechanisms used to access social information. The present study examined the neurophysiological correlates of gaze processing, considering individual variability in social cognition and the relative salience of social and perceptual cues on visuospatial attention. Method: Electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and behavioural response time (RT) was recorded from 26 healthy adult participants during a spatial cueing task. Participants responded to presentations of a lateralised target on valid (congruently cued) or invalid (incongruently cued) trials across 3 conditions; social gaze, mouth motion and eye motion. Scores on the AQ, LSAS and TAS-20 were used to assess social cognitive functioning. ERP components were obtained with separate PCAs for each cue type and condition. Results: Behavioural analyses revealed cueing effects for the social gaze and mouth motion conditions. Responses did not differ significantly in the eye motion condition. In the social gaze condition, higher scores on the TAS-20 correlated with a reduction of the N2b frontal enhancement to invalid trials (r=.439, p<.05). In the mouth motion condition, higher LSAS and TAS scores were correlated with a greater overall N2b to invalid trials (r=.403, p<.05 and r=.429, p<.05 respectively). Conclusions: Findings suggest the social gaze cue is less salient for those with greater alexithymic traits. An attentional bias towards perceptual changes (mouth motion) parallel impairments in social cognitive functioning, and thus may reflect reduced sensitivity to social stimuli. Such paradigms may benefit investigations in clinical populations. Keywords: Event Related Potentials (ERPs), spatial attention, social cognition, Gaze Processing, Autism Spectrum Disorders, social anxiety, alexithymia, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), N2b Conference: ASP2017: 27th Annual Meeting for the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Parramatta, Australia, 29 Nov - 1 Dec, 2017. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Abstract (Student Award) Citation: Wei G, Rushby JA, Sufani C and De Blasio F (2019). Influences of social cognition on visuospatial attention: A neurophysiological investigation. Conference Abstract: ASP2017: 27th Annual Meeting for the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.224.00008 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 Oct 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: Ms. Grace Wei, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia, grace.wei@sydney.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio Google Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio Google Scholar Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio PubMed Grace Wei Jacqueline A Rushby Christopher Sufani Frances De Blasio Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Altered orienting of attention in anorexia nervosa

The study of cognitive processes in anorexia nervosa (AN) is largely unexplored, although recent evidence suggests the presence of impairments in both social cognition and attention processing. Here we investigated AN patients’ ability to orient attention in response to social and symbolic visual stimuli. AN patients and matched controls performed a task in which gaze and pointing gestures acted as social directional cues for spatial attention. Arrows were also included as symbolic cue. On each trial, a centrally-placed cue appeared oriented rightwards or leftwards. After either 200 or 700ms, a lateralized neutral target (a letter) requiring a discrimination response appeared in a location either spatially congruent or incongruent with the directional cue. Controls showed a reliable orienting irrespective of both temporal interval and cue type. AN patients showed a reliable orienting at both temporal intervals only in response to pointing gestures. Both gaze and arrow cues failed to orient attention at the short temporal interval, that is when attention is under reflexive control, whereas a reliable orienting emerged at the long temporal interval. These results provide preliminary evidence of altered reflexive orienting of attention in AN patients that does not extend to body-related cues such as pointing gestures.

Perceptual merging contributes to cueing effects.

An uninformative exogenous cue speeds target detection if cue and target appear in the same location separated by a brief temporal interval. This finding is usually ascribed to the orienting of spatial attention to the cued location. Here we examine the role of perceptual merging of the two trial events in speeded target detection. That is, the cue and target may be perceived as a single event when they appear in the same location. If so, cueing effects could reflect, in part, the binding of the perceived target onset to the earlier cue onset. We observed the traditional facilitation of cued over uncued targets and asked the same observers to judge target onset time by noting the time on a clock when the target appeared. Observers consistently judged the onset time of the target as being earlier than it appeared with cued targets judged as earlier than uncued targets. When the event order is reversed so that the target precedes the cue, perceived onset is accurate in both cued and uncued locations. This pattern of results suggests that perceptual merging does occur in exogenous cueing. A modified attention account is discussed that proposes reentrant processing, evident through perceptual merging, as the underlying mechanism of reflexive orienting of attention.

Does gaze cueing produce automatic response activation: A lateralized readiness potential (LRP) study

Previous research has shown that gaze cues facilitate responses to an upcoming target if the target location is compatible with the direction of the cue. Similar cueing effects have also been observed with central arrow cues. Both of these cueing effects have been attributed to a reflexive orienting of attention triggered by the cue. In addition, orienting of attention has been proposed to result in a partial response activation of the corresponding hand that, in turn, can be observed in the lateralized readiness potential (LRP), an electrophysiological indicator of automatic hand-motor response preparation. For instance, a central arrow cue has been observed to produce automatic hand-motor activation as indicated by the LRPs. The present study investigated whether gaze cues could also produce similar activation patterns in LRP. Although the standard gaze cueing effect was observed in the behavioural data, the LRP data did not reveal any consistent automatic hand-motor activation. The study suggests that motor processes associated with gaze cueing effect may operate exclusively at the level of oculomotor programming.

The feet have it: Local biological motion cues trigger reflexive attentional orienting in the brain

Most vertebrates, humans included, have a primitive visual system extremely sensitive to the motion of biological entities. Most previous studies have examined the global aspects of biological motion perception, but local motion processing has received much less attention. Here we provide direct psychophysical and electrophysiological evidence that human observers are intrinsically tuned to the characteristics of local biological motion cues independent of global configuration. Using a modified central cueing paradigm, we show that observers involuntarily orient their attention towards the walking direction of feet motion sequences, which triggers an early directing attention negativity (EDAN) in the occipito-parietal region 100–160ms after the stimulus onset. Notably, such effects are sensitive to the orientation of the local cues and are independent of whether the observers are aware of the biological nature of the motion. Our findings unambiguously demonstrate the automatic processing of local biological motion without explicit recognition. More importantly, with the discovery that local biological motion signals modulate attention, we highlight the functional importance of such processing in the brain.

Biological motion as a cue for spatial attention: Walking

Introduction: Movements of living entities in our environment are an important source of information. Here we explored walking movements as a cue for attention. A recent study reported a point-light walker (PLW) could induce reflexive attentional orienting in the direction it is facing, even when it is task irrelevant (Shi, et al., 2010). Given direction information from PLWs can be extracted without motion (Lange & Lappe, 2006) or from local motion alone (Troje & Westhoff, 2006), we wondered whether the attentional orienting effect was driven by form- or by motion-based processes. Methods: Subjects viewed PLWs that faced left or right that could also walk forward or backward (i.e., PL moonwalkers). A gabor patch was then presented either on the left or the right side of the screen. In Experiment 1, all PLWs were presented centrally and were task irrelevant. In Experiment 2, we presented occasional scrambled "catch" trials requiring subjects to attend the PLWs (even though they still did not cue target locations). We also presented the PLW cues both centrally and peripherally. Results: Experiment 1 failed to replicate Shi et al (2010): There was no evidence of attentional orienting in our data, neither for facing, nor for walking direction. In Experiment 2, where subjects had to attend the PLWs for an unrelated task, subjects were significantly more accurate in responding to targets congruent with the motion direction of the PLW. The effects were found only for central presentation of the PLWs. Conclusions: Reflexive attentional orienting effects induced by a PLW appear to be fickle. When subjects did not attend the PLW, there was no attentional effect. When subjects attended the PLW, we found a significant effect of motion direction, and not facing direction, and only when the PLW was presented centrally. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012

Reflexive orienting by central arrows: Evidence from the inattentional blindness task

It was demonstrated that central arrows produce orienting of attention even when they are nonpredictive as to the target location. This finding was suggested to indicate reflexive orienting of attention by central arrows. However, it is not clear whether central arrows can produce an attentional effect without awareness. In two experiments, using a variation of the inattentional blindness task, we examine whether orienting of attention by a central arrow can be demonstrated without conscious perception of the arrow. We found that attention could be directed to the cued location even when the arrow was not consciously perceived.

Biological motion cues trigger reflexive attentional orienting

The human visual system is extremely sensitive to biological signals around us. In the current study, we demonstrate that biological motion walking direction can induce robust reflexive attentional orienting. Following a brief presentation of a central point-light walker walking towards either the left or right direction, observers’ performance was significantly better on a target in the walking direction compared with that in the opposite direction even when participants were explicitly told that walking direction was not predictive of target location. Interestingly, the effect disappeared when the walker was shown upside-down. Moreover, the reflexive attentional orienting could be extended to motions of other biological entities but not inanimate objects, and was not due to the viewpoint effect of the point-light figure. Our findings provide strong evidence that biological motion cues can trigger reflexive attentional orienting, and highlight the intrinsic sensitivity of the human visual attention system to biological signals.

Deficits of reflexive attention induced by abduction of the eye

Attention mediates access of sensory events to higher cognitive systems and can be driven by either top-down voluntary mechanisms or in a bottom-up, reflexive fashion by the sensory properties of a stimulus. The exact mechanisms underlying these different modes of attention are controversial, but both types of attention appear to be tightly coupled to the systems used for the control of eye-movements. Indeed, recent data indicates that patients with opthalmoplegia (paralysis of the eyes) have difficulty voluntarily attending to locations to which saccades cannot be made (Craighero, Carta, & Fadiga, 2001) and experimentally induced opthalmoplegia disrupts voluntary attention in normal participants. However, the extent to which reflexive attention is mediated by the ability to make eye-movements in normal participants remains unclear. Here, we address this issue by investigating the effect of an experimentally induced opthalmoplegia on voluntary and reflexive attentional orienting during visual search. We observed that abducting the eye into the temporal hemifield elicited deficits of both voluntary and reflexive attention for targets that appeared beyond the oculomotor range. This result confirms the link between oculomotor control and voluntary attention observed in opthalmoplegic patients and demonstrates for the first time that reflexive attention is mediated by the ability to make eye-movements in normal participants.