social attention

Question 1

social attention meaning

Answer 1

predisposition to attend to social info in our environment

e.g. eye tracking on pictures show attending to faces and social info
e.g. attention to body parts that give info about intention e.g. face, hands, body language

Question 2

eye trackers - what they measure and what is inferred

Answer 2

records:
- saccades and microsaccades
- fixations
- pupil dilation (altered by emotion, light levels and more - careful inferring)
- glissade (small movement/curve after saccade to focus on exact point aimed for)

infer:
- what captures attention
- what is viewed as important
- underlying cognitions

Question 3

social cues

Answer 3

help learning social skills
evolutionary - interpreting social behaviour and scenarios allows integration into social group

Question 4

Kuhl et al (2003) - american infants learning chinese words

Answer 4

32 american infants with english as first language
exposed to chinese words either live or on a TV - audio-visual or just audio
measured ability to learn words measured - using eye tracking to see whether they learnt word pairings with pictures

results = only showed signs of learning chinese words in live - not over a TV
- social interaction

Question 5

babies and eye focus
first weeks
3 months
12 months

sensitivity to gaze

Answer 5

first weeks = direct attention to eyes in a face
3 months = follow gaze
12 months = direct attention to location of a gaze

study shows newborns sensitivity to gaze
24-120 hour-old babies shown static images of faces
babies gazed longer at face with direct gaze as opposed to averted gaze

Question 6

eye focus in adulthood

Answer 6

monsters are people too - preference for looking at eyes

Question 7

role of eyes

Answer 7

high contrast - causes attention in animals
evolved to communicate with eyes
eyes receive and send info
insight into what partners are paying attention to to understand thought processes

Question 8

reversed polarity and eye gaze

Answer 8

study whether people can still gauge direction of gaze with reversed polarity (e.g. pupil is white and eye is black)

normal polarity = high performance in all conditions of head rotations
reversed polarity = bad judging if gaze is directed at them when face is pointing the other way

Question 9

gaze cueing

Answer 9

seeing someone moving their gaze we move our gaze so we look the same way - automatic

Question 10

cueing paradigms

Answer 10

posner-type cueing paradigms
fixate on a face on the screen which will look one of 4 directions ( a gaze cue)
this cue will not actually determine which direction the flash of light will be in, and yet people still follow gaze cues
this slows down response as it misdirects attention even when they consciously know it isn’t correct = gaze cueing effect

Question 11

real world implications of gaze cues

Answer 11

direct attention to important info
helps plan actions
insight into others intentions
reciprocal eye contact and attention to social info = fit in as member of social group
joint attention = communicate desires and alert to important things, facilitates language acquisition, precursor to ToM development

Question 12

EEG and ERP to assess social attention

Answer 12

specific ERPs (event related potentials) are associated with certain stimulus
N170 = associated with faces
when shown a face, greater N170 than if shown a house for example

Question 13

brain regions for social attention (from fMRI)
* attention (3)
* gaze direction (1)
* eye contact and emotion (2)
* facial identity (1)
* ToM (3)

Answer 13

pSTS (posterior superior temporal sulcus), SPL (superior parietal lobule), FEF (frontal eye field
= attention network - areas implicated in goal directed and exogenous attention

aSTS = coding gaze direction

amygdala and hippocampus = eye contact and emotional responses

fusiform gyrus = facial identify recognition

MPFC (medial prefrontal cortex), pSTS, TPJ (temporoparietal junction) = theory of mind processing

Question 14

fMRI in direct vs averted gaze

Answer 14

when looking at portrait paintings, greater activation in fusiform gyrus to direct vs averted gaze (fusiform face area)
eye tracking shows greater attention to eyes and mouth with direct gaze

Question 15

eye movements in autism study

Answer 15

different stimuli used: static images, videos, interaction
measures total fixation duration to faces

results = difference in interactive stimuli only between autistic and non - not seen in static images
autistic children don’t prioritise social info whilst non-autistic do this immediately

important for research to consider live situation

Question 16

direct vs averted gaze in conversations study

Answer 16

track eye movements during conversation
more fixations in person than in video
look at face more when being asked than when replying
more fixations on face and background than body in both states

reasoning:
cognitive load is reduced by averting gaze
turn taking - averted gaze indicates we haven’t finished speaking, direct gaze indicates listening to social partners
social norms - taught to look when someone is speaking to you

Question 17

social attention and fixations in adult conversation - autism

Answer 17

neurotypical modulate attention whether they’re speaking or listening - flick between looking at them or away to balance socially acceptably
autistic people do this too - similar pattern - but with less face looking overall

Question 18

factors influencing eye contact and social attention

Answer 18

conversational phase - e.g. talking or listening, asking or replying
social partner eye contact- mimicking them
autism diagnosis
live vs pre-recorded stimulus

Question 19

Freeth et al (2020) gaze following in real world with autism

Answer 19

experimenter sat across table from participant with a grid of shapes on the table
participant judges where the experimenter was looking on grid - they’d look for 1 second or 5 seconds
measured accuracy by distance from correct block

results:
NT did better on average than autistic but all did better than chance
length of gaze (1 vs 5 seconds) didn’t help either group more or less
both groups had big outliers in both directions