Reflexive Shifts Research Articles

Stretching the limits of automated symbolic orienting

Arrows trigger reflexive shifts of attention and instantiate the prototypical example of automated symbolic orienting. We conducted four experiments to further test the boundary conditions of this phenomenon. Participants discriminated a peripheral target while spatially uninformative arrows, pointing leftwards or rightwards, appeared at fixation. In all experiments, arrow direction could either randomly vary (intermixed condition) or be kept constant within a block of trials (blocked condition). Moreover, in Experiments 3 and 4, a direction word presented at the beginning of the trial informed participants about the target location with 100% certainty. Overall, the results highlighted a significant arrow-driven orienting effect in both the blocked and the intermixed conditions. The present findings support the notion that automated symbolic orienting is resistant to suppression in that it endures even when the context should stress the uninformative nature of the arrows while also creating ideal conditions to boost participants’ tendency to ignore them.

A catalyst for change: Developing a collaborative reflexive ethnographic approach to research with hospital doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The understanding of what ethnography looks like, and its purpose, is continuously evolving. COVID-19 posed a significant challenge to ethnographers, particularly those working in health-related research. Researchers have developed alternative forms of ethnography to overcome some of these challenges; we developed the Mobile Instant Messaging Ethnography (MIME) adaptation to ethnography in 2021 to overcome restrictions to our own research with hospital doctors. However, for ethnographic innovations to make a substantial contribution to methodology, they should not simply be borne of necessity, but of a dedicated drive to expand paradigms of research, to empower participant groups and to produce change - in local systems, in participant-collaborators and in researchers and the research process itself. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences using MIME, involving collaborative remote observation and reflection with 28 hospital doctors in Ireland from June to December 2021. After reviewing literature on ethnography in COVID-19 and general epistemological developments in ethnography, we detail the MIME approach and illustrate how MIME presents an evolution of the ethnographic approach, not only practically but in terms of its reflexive shift, its connected and co-creative foundations, and its ability to drive change in research approaches, participant life-worlds and real-world improvement.

Humans Can't Resist Robot Eyes - Reflexive Cueing With Pseudo-Social Stimuli.

Joint attention is a key mechanism for humans to coordinate their social behavior. Whether and how this mechanism can benefit the interaction with pseudo-social partners such as robots is not well understood. To investigate the potential use of robot eyes as pseudo-social cues that ease attentional shifts we conducted an online study using a modified spatial cueing paradigm. The cue was either a non-social (arrow), a pseudo-social (two versions of an abstract robot eye), or a social stimulus (photographed human eyes) that was presented either paired (e.g. two eyes) or single (e.g. one eye). The latter was varied to separate two assumed triggers of joint attention: the social nature of the stimulus, and the additional spatial information that is conveyed only by paired stimuli. Results support the assumption that pseudo-social stimuli, in our case abstract robot eyes, have the potential to facilitate human-robot interaction as they trigger reflexive cueing. To our surprise, actual social cues did not evoke reflexive shifts in attention. We suspect that the robot eyes elicited the desired effects because they were human-like enough while at the same time being much easier to perceive than human eyes, due to a design with strong contrasts and clean lines. Moreover, results indicate that for reflexive cueing it does not seem to make a difference if the stimulus is presented single or paired. This might be a first indicator that joint attention depends rather on the stimulus' social nature or familiarity than its spatial expressiveness. Overall, the study suggests that using paired abstract robot eyes might be a good design practice for fostering a positive perception of a robot and to facilitate joint attention as a precursor for coordinated behavior.

Visual attentional orienting by eye gaze: A meta-analytic review of the gaze-cueing effect.

Given limitations in the amount of visual information that a person can simultaneously process through to conscious perception, selective visual attention is necessary. Visual signals in the environment aid this selection process by triggering reflexive shifts of covert attention to locations of potential importance. One such signal appears to be others' eye gaze. Indeed, a gaze-cueing effect, whereby healthy adults respond faster to targets that are presented at locations cued rather than miscued by eye gaze has been consistently observed in the empirical literature. Critically though, the influences of task and cue features on this effect are not well understood. To address this gap, we report a meta-analytic integration of 423 gaze-cueing effects using a multilevel approach. A gaze-cueing effect emerged across all levels of the assessed task and cue features, indicating that others' eye gaze reliably directs observers' attention. We found that the magnitude of the gaze-cueing effect was moderated by whether direct gaze cues preceded directional gaze cues or not; the cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), whether participants had to detect, localize, or categorize targets; and the cue's facial expression. Whether or not the gaze cue remained on screen after the target appeared, and whether schematic faces, computer-generated faces, or images of real faces were used as cues, did not appear to reliably function as moderators. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, particularly in relation to the social attention system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Affective priming enhances gaze cueing effect.

Other's gaze direction triggers a reflexive shift of attention known as the gaze cueing effect. Fearful facial expressions are further reported to enhance the gaze cueing effect, but it remains unclear whether this facilitative effect is specific to gaze cues or the result of more general increase in attentional resources resulting from affective arousal. We examined the effects of affective priming on the cueing effects of gaze and arrow stimuli in the Posner cueing task. Participants were primed with two types of briefly presented affective stimuli (neutral, threatening), and the target location was cued either by an arrow or a gaze cue in a neutral face. Gaze cues were preceded by the same face with its eyes closed or directed to the viewer. Study 1 (n = 26) assessed the cueing effect using manual key press, and Study 2 (n = 30) employed gaze-contingent eye tracking techniques to assess the cueing effect using time to first fixate the cued target location. Both studies found that threatening priming significantly enhanced the cueing effects of eye gaze but not arrow stimuli. The results therefore suggest that affective priming does not facilitate general attentional orienting, but the facilitation is more specific to social cues such as eye gaze. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Deporte. Entre su génesis epistémica, su tensión con la forma escolar y su inclusión pedagógica

El presente trabajo está enmarcado dentro del curso “Problemas Epistemológicos en la transmisión y enseñanza del deporte: más allá de la cultura y la forma escolar” del Programa de Maestría en Educación Física del ISEF - UdelaR, llevado a cabo en el mes de septiembre del 2019. El mismo intenta realizar de forma breve un posible recorrido epistémico e histórico por el cual ha transcurrido el deporte, abordando en principio al fenómeno a partir de una perspectiva sociológica. Luego, se propone problematizar -a partir del giro reflexivo de la enseñanza y la corriente crítica de la Educación Física- la “deportivización de las prácticas de Educación Física en la escuela”. Por tanto, el objetivo del trabajo será evidenciar en esto un problema a la hora de pensar en las prácticas de enseñanza del deporte como un contenido contextualizado y reconstruido política, social y culturalmente a nivel nacional e institucional.

Eye movement performance and clinical outcomes among female athletes post-concussion

ABSTRACT Background Most post-concussion eye movement (EM) research involves predominantly male samples. We evaluated pro- (PRO; reflexive shift of visual attention to target) and anti- (ANTI; executive control of visual attention away from target) computer-based saccade task performance among female, collegiate athletes with recent concussion (CON) versus healthy-control athletes (HC). We evaluated the relationship between EM performance and post-concussion outcomes. We hypothesized ANTI performance would differ among CON and HC due to greater executive control demands, and that EM performance (both tasks) would be associated with clinical outcomes in CON. Methods 16 CON (assessed 4–10 days post-injury [M = 6.87, SD = 2.15 days]) and 16 age-matched HC athletes were recruited. General linear mixed modeling and Pearson’s correlations were used. Results On ANTI, CON demonstrated higher error rate [F(1,2863) = 12.650, p<.001] and shorter latency on error trials [F(1,469) = 5.976, p=.015] relative to HC. Multiple EM measures were associated with clinical outcomes: PRO duration predicted days to symptom remission (r=.44, p <.05); ANTI error rate was associated with symptom burden on the day of testing (r=.27, p <.05). Conclusion This study demonstrates promising utility of EM measures to detect cognitive control and sensorimotor effects of concussion among female athletes and their use as a prognostic indicators of recovery.

A novel variation of the Stroop task reveals reflexive supremacy of peripheral over gaze stimuli in pro and anti saccades.

A long-standing controversy in social attention debates whether gaze-of-another induces reflexive shifts of one's own attention. In attempting to resolve this controversy, we utilized a novel Stroop task, the PAT Stroop, in which pro- and anti-saccade (PAT) responses are made to competing gaze and peripheral stimuli. The first experiment demonstrated a "Stroop effect" for peripheral stimuli, i.e. peripheral distractors interfered with gaze triggers, but gaze distractors did not interfere with peripheral triggers. These results were replicated in the second experiment, which also negated the possibility that the mere display and practice of the "clean PAT" influenced the results. Thus, the use a new PAT Stroop task demonstrated reflexive supremacy of peripheral stimuli over gaze stimuli. This novel variant of the Stroop task demonstrated similar characteristics to the classic color naming Stroop - i.e. an asymmetrical pattern, and again showed the utility and versatility of stoop-like tasks in probing mental tasks.

"TUPI, OR NOT TUPI THAT IS THE QUESTION": PERSPECTIVISMO AMERÍNDIO E ESTUDOS ORGANIZACIONAIS

RESUMO Esse ensaio discorre sobre as possibilidades que o conceito de perspectivismo ameríndio de Viveiros de Castro oferece aos Estudos Organizacionais. O "Manifesto antropófago" de Oswald de Andrade é o fio condutor de nossa investigação. O perspectivismo ameríndio sugere um deslocamento reflexivo para a posição ocupada pelo objeto de investigação que, assim, se torna o sujeito a partir do qual devemos questionar nossas próprias premissas. O que importa saber é como nosso sujeito/ex-objeto percebe nossas categorias/conceitos criadas para descrevê-lo. Para Viveiros de Castro, o deslocamento reflexivo deve ocorrer considerado-se uma equivocidade intencional. Portanto, devemos refletir sobre as consequências que nossas escolhas ontoepistemológicas terão sobre nossa pesquisa a partir do ponto de vista do Outro. Os conceitos de deslocamento reflexivo e equivocidade intencional têm muito a contribuir com a construção do Outro em EOR e com o conceito de border thinking nos estudos decolonais.

Face stimulus eliminates antisaccade-cost: gaze following is a different kind of arrow.

When a person suddenly looks in a certain direction, others seem to shift their attention to the same, looked-at, location. This common observation, that gaze-of-another seems to trigger reflexive shifts of attention within an observer, has been demonstrated in various studies. Yet just how reflexive it truly is, is an on-going controversy. Unlike most studies in which gaze cues were distractors in a cueing paradigm, the current study used gaze cues as triggers in a mixed pro- and anti-saccade task and a Posner-like discrimination task. In a set of two experiments, we investigated whether attention triggered by gaze-of-another differs from attention triggered by peripheral (exogenous) and arrow stimuli. In the first experiment, gaze cues resulted in slowed saccadic responses and in the elimination of the anti-saccade-cost associated with reflexive orienting. Pro-saccades triggered by peripheral cues had significantly fewer errors and shorter reaction times than anti-saccades. However, there was no significant difference between pro and anti-saccades triggered by gaze cues. Thus, counter to expectations, gaze did not produce reflexive shifts of overt attention. The second experiment showed that attention triggered by gaze cues is no different from attention triggered by biologically irrelevant arrow cues. They both eliminated the anti-saccade-cost and displayed prolonged reaction times. However, manual discrimination RTs showed no significant differences between gaze and peripheral cues. Together, these results suggest that neither gaze nor arrow cues trigger reflexive shifts of overt attention.

‘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.

Green Criminology: cenário das produções científicas

Diante das mudanças reflexivas em torno da problemática recursos naturais versus dano ambiental, a criminologia emerge nas ciências ambientais percebendo os danos como uma relevante área de investigação criminológica. Este estudo objetivou investigar os estudos em green criminology, em nível global através do levantamento das publicações indexadas à base de dados disponíveis no Portal de Periódicos da Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior. A pesquisa possui natureza exploratória quanto aos seus objetivos, e, bibliográfica com relação aos procedimentos utilizados. Adotou-se como estratégia para a coleta de dados critérios bibliométricos para a elaboração de inventário das produções científicas. Os resultados evidenciaram que: as publicações foram disponibilizadas em 13 bases de dados internacionais, localizando-se em até cinco bancos diferentes; artigo foi o documento com maior ocorrência, representando 46% das publicações, disponíveis em 18 periódicos indexados; três autores perfizeram 55% do número de publicações, caracterizando-se por autorias múltiplas, o que prediz percepções diversas do objeto de análise; não há entre os autores nenhum pesquisador vinculado direta ou indiretamente a departamento da administração pública dos países; geograficamente as discussões abrangeram pesquisadores de 11 países desenvolvidos; quanto a dinâmica temporal houve crescimento progressivo nas publicações a partir de 2008. Conclui-se que a ausência de estudos em green criminology encontra limites nas questões políticas-geográficas o que inibe a diversidade de percepções espaciais sobre a temática, refletindo no amadurecimento das pesquisas em relação a teoria.

If not When, then Where? Ignoring Temporal Information Eliminates Reflexive but not Volitional Spatial Orienting

A tremendous amount of research has been devoted to understanding how attention can be committed to space or time. Until recently, relatively little research has examined how attention to these two domains combine. The present study addressed this issue. We examined how implicitly manipulating whether participants used a cue to orient attention in time impacts reflexive or volitional shifts in spatial attention. Specifically, participants made speeded manual responses to the detection of a peripherally presented target that appeared either 100, 500, or 1000 ms after the onset of a central cue. Cues were either spatially non-predictive arrows (p = 0.50) or spatially-predictive (p = 0.80) letter cues. Whereas arrow cues can reflexively orient spatial attention even when non-predictive of a target’s spatial location, letters only orient spatial attention when they reliably predict a target location, i.e., the shift is volitional. Further, in one task, a target was presented on every trial, thereby encouraging participants to use the temporal information conveyed by the cue to prepare for the appearance of the target. In another task, 25% of trials contained no target, implicitly discouraging participants from using the cue to direct attention in time. Results indicate that when temporal information is reliable and therefore volitionally processed, then spatial cuing effects emerge regardless of whether attention is oriented reflexively or volitionally. However, when temporal information is unreliable, spatial cuing effects only emerge when spatial cue information is reliable, i.e., when spatial attention is volitionally shifted. Reflexive cues do not elicit spatial orienting when their temporal utility is reduced. These results converge on the notion that reflexive shifts of spatial attention are sensitive to implicit changes in a non-spatial domain, whereas explicit volitional shifts in spatial attention are not.

P176 An EEG-TMS study investigating the oscillatory signatures underlying the time course of reflexive visuospatial attention

Question Oscillatory brain activity in specific frequency bands has been related to cognitive processes such as attention (Foxe and Snyder (2011) Front Psychology 2:154). While in the domain of endogenous top-down control of visuospatial attention, occipito-parietal oscillations in the alpha band have been causally implicated (Romei et al. (2010) Journal of Neurosci. 30(25):8692–8697), the oscillatory signatures underlying reflexively driven orienting of spatial attention and its time course remain unclear. In this study, we employed electrophysiology (EEG) and concurrent single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during a cued visuospatial detection task, known to induce reflexive shifts of attention and inhibition-of-return (IOR). Methods Participants ( n = 13) performed an exogenously cued dot detection task while the time course of the IOR was measured at four different cue-target delays (from 105.8–705.8 ms). The cue consisted of a brief flash in the left or right visual field and was task-irrelevant and uninformative as to forthcoming target location. In one quarter of the trials a single pulse TMS was delivered over the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS) at the longest cue-target delay (705.8 ms) whilst changes in brain activity were measured with EEG. Results The behavioural analysis revealed significantly faster reaction times to targets at cued relative to uncued positions at the early cue-target delay, which reversed to significantly faster reaction times to uncued relative to cued positions (i.e, an IOR) at the later cue-target delays. Ongoing analyses of the EEG measurements focuses on identifying the key frequency bands implicated in reflexive shifts of attention in TMS-free trials, complemented by analyses of the oscillatory response to single-pulse TMS over the right parietal cortex at the maximal time of IOR. Conclusions Our behavioural findings reveal that our experimental manipulation induced a reflexive shift of attention as expected, allowing us to examine the EEG/TMS-EEG data for underlying oscillatory brain activities.

Institutional awareness - Examining agency in institutional theory

Drawing on dual-process theory and mindfulness research this article sets out to shed light on the conditions that need to be met to create “a reflexive shift in consciousness” argued to be a key foundational mechanism for agency in institutional theory. Although past research has identified different exogenous triggers to evoke shifts in consciousness, such as conflicting logics or socio-economic shocks, we argue that a reflexive shift in consciousness can also be cultivated by developing mindfulness. We develop a typology to depict conditions that need to be met to enable a reflexive shift in consciousness to emerge and argue for how the varying levels of mindfulness in the form of internal and external awareness may manifest as distinct responses to the institutional environment the actor is embedded in.

The attracting power of the gaze of politicians is modulated by the personality and ideological attitude of their voters: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Observing someone rapidly moving their eyes induces reflexive shifts of overt and covert attention in the onlooker. Previous studies have shown that this process can be modulated by the onlooker's personality, as well as by the social features of the person depicted in the cued face. Here, we investigated whether an individual's preference for social dominance orientation, in-group perceived similarity (PS), and political affiliation of the cued-face modulated neural activity within specific nodes of the social attention network. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants were requested to perform a gaze-following task to investigate whether the directional gaze of various Italian political personages might influence the oculomotor behaviour of in-group or out-group voters. After scanning, we acquired measures of PS in personality traits with each political personage and preference for social dominance orientation. Behavioural data showed that higher gaze interference for in-group than out-group political personages was predicted by a higher preference for social hierarchy. Higher blood oxygenation level-dependent activity in incongruent vs. congruent conditions was found in areas associated with orienting to socially salient events and monitoring response conflict, namely the left frontal eye field, right supramarginal gyrus, mid-cingulate cortex and left anterior insula. Interestingly, higher ratings of PS with the in-group and less preference for social hierarchy predicted increased activity in the left frontal eye field during distracting gaze movements of in-group as compared with out-group political personages. Our results suggest that neural activity in the social orienting circuit is modulated by higher-order social dimensions, such as in-group PS and individual differences in ideological attitudes.

Men’s Emotions

This article focuses on the underresearched topic of how masculinity relates to emotional forms of caring within heterosexual relationships. Both scholarly and common sense thinking, often present heterosexual male partners as unable and/or unwilling to do emotion work, leaving women burdened with this task. However, contemporary relational complexity increasingly requires emotional reflexivity. Such reflexivity entails interpretations of one’s own and others’ emotions, and acting in light of those interpretations. The question here is to what extent and how that emotional reflexivity might effect a reshaping of heteromasculinity toward more caring forms of emotionality? Drawing on interviews with heterosexual couples in distance relationships, it is argued that emotional reflexivity may produce a variety of ways of relationally gendering emotions. Those who seem to adhere to ideas of men as emotionally restricted may claim tactile forms of emotional expression. However, there may be limitations to these forms in certain circumstances, and this may prompt a reflexive reorientation of heteromasculine emotionalities toward more verbal forms of support. The point of seeking to illustrate that masculinity and emotionality are open to such reflexive shifts is to debunk essentialist views of gendered emotionality which undermine efforts to achieve greater gender equality in intimate life.

Hemodynamic Response Pattern of Spatial Cueing is Different for Social and Symbolic Cues.

Directional social gaze and symbolic arrow cues both serve as spatial cues, causing seemingly reflexive shifts of an observer’s attention. However, the underlying neural substrates remain a point at issue. The present study specifically addressed the differences in the activation patterns associated with non-predictive gaze and arrow cues, placing special emphasis on brain regions known to be involved in the processing of social information [superior temporal sulcus (STS), fusiform gyrus (FFG)]. Additionally, the functional connectivity of these brain regions with other areas involved in gaze processing and spatial attention was investigated. Results indicate that gaze and arrow cues recruit several brain regions differently, with gaze cues increasing activation in occipito-temporal regions and arrow cues increasing activation in occipito-parietal regions. Specifically, gaze cues in contrast to arrow cues enhanced activation in the FFG and the STS. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that during gaze cueing the STS was more strongly connected to the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the frontal eye fields, whereas the FFG was more strongly connected to the IPS and the amygdala.

Inhibition of Return, but Not Facilitation, Disappears Under Vigilance Decrease Due to Sleep Deprivation

In this study, we assessed whether unspecific attention processes signaled by general reaction times (RTs), as well as specific facilitatory (validity or facilitation effect) and inhibitory (inhibition of return, IOR) effects involved in the attentional orienting network, are affected by low vigilance due to both circadian factors and sleep deprivation (SD). Eighteen male participants performed a cuing task in which peripheral cues were nonpredictive about the target location and the cue-target interval varied at three levels: 200 ms, 800 ms, and 1,100 ms. Facilitation with the shortest and IOR with the longest cue-target intervals were observed in the baseline session, thus replicating previous related studies. Under SD condition, RTs were generally slower, indicating a reduction in the participants' arousal level. The inclusion of a phasic alerting tone in several trials partially compensated for the reduction in tonic alertness, but not with the longest cue-target interval. With regard to orienting, whereas the facilitation effect due to reflexive shifts of attention was preserved with sleep loss, the IOR was not observed. These results suggest that the decrease of vigilance produced by SD affects both the compensatory effects of phasic alerting and the endogenous component involved in disengaging attention from the cued location, a requisite for the IOR effect being observed.

The role of the oculomotor system in covert social attention.

Observing a change in gaze direction triggers a reflexive shift of attention and appears to engage the eye-movement system. However, the functional relationship between social attention and this oculomotor activation is unclear. One extremely influential hypothesis is that the preparation of a saccadic eye movement is necessary and sufficient for a covert, reflexive shift of attention (the premotor theory of attention; Rizzolatti et al., 1994). Surprisingly, this theory has not been directly tested with respect to reflexive gaze cueing. In order to address this issue, gaze cueing, peripheral cueing, and arrow cueing were examined under conditions in which some stimuli appeared at locations that could not become the goal of a saccadic eye movement. It was observed that peripheral cues failed to elicit reflexive attentional orienting when targets appeared beyond the range of eye movements. Similarly, nonpredictive arrow cues were ineffective when targets could not become the goal of a saccade. In contrast, significant gaze-cueing effects were still observed when targets were beyond the range of eye movements. These data demonstrate that the mechanisms involved in gaze cueing are dissociated from those involved in exogenous orienting to peripheral or arrow cues. Furthermore, the findings suggest that, unlike peripheral cueing and reflexive arrow cueing, gaze cueing is independent of oculomotor control. We conclude that the premotor theory does not offer a compelling explanation for gaze cueing.