1 - social attention

Question 1

what information do eye trackers provide?

Answer 1

• what captures attention
• what we deem as important
• insight into underlying cognitive processes
• how eye movements differ on different tasks

Question 2

why are social cues important?

Answer 2

social cues aid in learning key social skills

evolutionary perspective: interpreting and understanding social cues assist integration into a social group

Question 2

what is social attention?

Answer 2

attending to social information in out environment

Question 3

how do babies focus on eyes?

Answer 3

• first week babies direct their attention to the eyes in a fact
• follow gaze by 3 months
• 12 months can orient attention to the location of a gaze

Question 4

are newborn babies (24-120h old) sensitive to eye gaze?

Answer 4

infants look longer at images with direct eye gaze, and are more likely to go back, compared to images with averted eye gaze

Question 5

what happens when the polarity of the eyes is reversed?

Answer 5

reduced ability to judge visual direction/

Question 6

why are our eyes important?

Answer 6

gives an insight into what our partners are paying attention to and help us understand their thought processes

can both send and receive information, important for communication

Question 7

what is gaze cueing?

Answer 7

when we see someone move their gaze, we move out own gaze so that we are both looking at the same location, this can happen automatically

Question 8

how is gaze cueing traditionally investigated?

Answer 8

using cueing paradigms which were originally used by Posner and then adapted to investigate gaze cueing

Question 9

what do gaze-cueing paradigms show?

Answer 9

participants are faster to detect a target if in same location shown by gaze cue

slower to detect target when in a different location shown by gaze cue

this happens even when participants know the gaze won’t predict where the target will appear

this is the gaze cueing effect

Question 10

why does the gaze cueing effect occur?

Answer 10

when we see gaze cue we move our eyes in same direction

we have to move our eyes away from where the gaze is looking to find the target in a different location

Question 11

what are real world implications of social attention and gaze cueing?

Answer 11

• direct attention to important info in environment
• help plan our own actions
• gives an insight into other’s intentions
• reciprocal eye contact and attention to social information allows us to fit in a social group

Question 12

why is joint attention important?

Answer 12

• communicates attention and desires
• alerts us to important aspects of environment
• facilitates language acquisition
• pre-cursor to ToM development

Question 13

what can an EEG tell us about social attention?

Answer 13

brain responds differently to faces compared to other stimuli

greater change in electrical signal when presented with faces compared to other stimuli

greater and delayed brain activity to eyes vs face, suggests different underlying processes

Question 14

what can an fMRI tell us about social attention?

Answer 14

many brain regions are implicated in social attention

Question 15

what happens in brain when looking at direct vs averted gaze?

Answer 15

greater activation in fusiform gyrus ‘fusiform face area’ to direct vs averted gaze

eye tracking data shows greater attention to eyes and mouth with direct gaze

Question 16

can eye movements predict whether a person has autism?

Answer 16

Chevalier et al
yes, autistic children have less urgency to attend to faces straight away

Question 17

what affects social attention?

Answer 17

live vs pre-recorded - more likely to look at face live compared to a video

eye contact - looked more to area when experimenter made eye contact

autism diagnosis

conversational phase - more likely to look at face when being asked a question compared to when answering

Question 18

why do we direct or avert our gaze in conversations?

Answer 18

• reduced cognitive load by averting gaze
• turn taking: averted gaze indicates we haven’t finishes speaking, direct indicates listening
• social norms “look at me when I’m talking”

Question 19

how does autism effect social attention?

Answer 19

autistic people more likely to look away if social partner makes direct eye contact

autistic people don’t display strong eye preference which is seen in neurotypical people

Question 20

how good are neurotypical adults at detecting exact gaze location compared to autistic adults?

Answer 20

autistic adults can effectively follow real-life gaze cues but now quite as well as neurotypicals

duration of glance has limited effect on accuracy

Question 21

what methods can be used to assess social attention processes?

Answer 21

• behavioural assessment (e.g. accuracy and reaction time)
• eye-tracking
• EEG
• fMRI