The neural correlates of social attention: automatic orienting to social and nonsocial cues

Previous evidence suggests that directional social cues (e.g., eye gaze) cause automatic shifts in attention toward gaze direction. It has been proposed that automatic attentional orienting driven by social cues (social orienting) involves a different neural network from automatic orienting driven by nonsocial cues. However, previous neuroimaging studies on social orienting have only compared gaze cues to symbolic cues, which typically engage top-down mechanisms. Therefore, we directly compared the neural activity involved in social orienting to that involved in purely automatic nonsocial orienting. Twenty participants performed a spatial cueing task consisting of social (gaze) cues and automatic nonsocial (peripheral squares) cues presented at short and long stimulus (cue-to-target) onset asynchronies (SOA), while undergoing fMRI. Behaviorally, a facilitation effect was found for both cue types at the short SOA, while an inhibitory effect (inhibition of return: IOR) was found only for nonsocial cues at the long SOA. Imaging results demonstrated that social and nonsocial cues recruited a largely overlapping fronto-parietal network. In addition, social cueing evoked greater activity in occipito-temporal regions at both SOAs, while nonsocial cueing recruited greater subcortical activity, but only for the long SOA (when IOR was found). A control experiment, including central arrow cues, confirmed that the occipito-temporal activity was at least in part due to the social nature of the cue and not simply to the location of presentation (central vs. peripheral). These results suggest an evolutionary trajectory for automatic orienting, from predominantly subcortical mechanisms for nonsocial orienting to predominantly cortical mechanisms for social orienting.     

Anxiety and attention to threatening pictures

Previous research using attentional search tasks has revealed an anxiety-related bias favouring attention to threatening words when they are presented simultaneously with emotionally neutral words. In Experiment 1, using a similar task, a related effect was found here with emotionally threatening pictures. When pictures were used as location cues in a second experiment, high-trait anxious individuals were slower than less anxious controls when responding to targets requiring attentional disengagement from threat, and they were slower in general with pictures judged to be highly threatening. In a third experiment using the same task but with a longer cue exposure, a related disengagement difficulty occurred across both groups, although the more general slowing with severe threat was again confined to the anxious group. We conclude that attentional bias involves both a specific difficulty in disengaging attention from the location of any threat and a more general interference effect that is related to threat level.     

Spatial orienting of tactile attention induced by social cues

Several studies have established that humans orient their visual attention reflexively in response to social cues such as the direction of someone else’s gaze. However, the consequences of this kind of orienting have been addressed only for the visual system. We investigated whether visual social attention cues can induce shifts in tactile attention by combining a central noninformative eye-gaze cue with tactile targets presented to participants’ fingertips. Data from speeded detection, speeded discrimination, and signal detection tasks converged on the same conclusion: Eye-gaze-based orienting facilitates the processing of tactile targets at the location of the gazed-at body location. In addition, we examined the effects of other directional cues, such as conventional arrows, and found that they can be equally effective. This is the first demonstration that social attention cues have consequences that reach beyond their own sensory modality.     

Rejection sensitivity and disruption of attention by social threat cues

Two studies tested the hypothesis that Rejection Sensitivity (RS) increases vulnerability to disruption of attention by social threat cues, as would be consistent with prior evidence that it motivates individuals to prioritize detecting and managing potential rejection at a cost to other personal and interpersonal goals. In Study 1, RS predicted disruption of ongoing goal-directed attention by social threat but not negative words in an Emotional Stroop task. In Study 2, RS predicted attentional avoidance of threatening but not pleasant faces in a Visual Probe task. Threat-avoidant attention was also associated with features of borderline personality disorder. This research extends understanding of processes by which RS contributes to a self-perpetuating cycle of interpersonal problems and distress.     

Attentional shift by eye gaze requires joint attention: Eye gaze cues are unique to shift attention1

Researchers have demonstrated that attentional shift triggered by gaze direction is reflexive. However, here we show that attentional shift by gaze direction was not always reflexive, but could be modulated by another's perspective. In Experiment 1, a schematic face's line of sight to a peripheral target was obstructed by a vertical barrier located between the face and the target under two conditions. However, the line of sight of the face was clear under another two conditions, in which the barrier was located behind the line of sight by utilizing a depth cue. The gaze cue shifted attention only when the line of sight was not blocked (i.e. joint attention was attained). The arrow cue did not shift attention regardless of the obstruction conditions in Experiment 2. These results suggest that attentional shift by gaze cues, but not arrow cues, involve a higher social cognitive process such as interpretation of the gaze.     

Selective attention to specific location cues: the peak and center of a patch are equally accessible as location cues.

Asymmetric patterns have several spatially distinct cues for spatial localization. These cues include the peak of the luminance distribution, the centroid of the contrast distribution, zero-crossings in the second derivative of the luminance profile, and the midpoint of the visible area. If these cues are represented as primitives in the visual system, the observer should be able to access them at will. To examine whether observers can selectively attend to particular cues, we measured perceived alignment for an asymmetric pattern with two distinct instructions: "align the peak", and "align the center". We found that observers could align the patterns in accord with the instructions with identical precision, suggesting that the peak and the center cues were equally accessible by the observer. We conclude that multiple localization cues are represented in and can be selectively accessed by the visual system.     

You must see the point: automatic processing of cues to the direction of social attention

Four experiments explored the processing of pointing gestures comprising hand and combined head and gaze cues to direction. The cross-modal interference effect exerted by pointing hand gestures on the processing of spoken directional words, first noted by S. R. H. Langton, C. O'Malley, and V. Bruce (1996), was found to be moderated by the orientation of the gesturer's head-gaze (Experiment 1). Hand and head cues also produced bidirectional interference effects in a within-modalities version of the task (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that both head-gaze and hand cues to direction are processed automatically and in parallel up to a stage in processing where a directional decision is computed. In support of this model, head-gaze cues produced no influence on nondirectional decisions to social emblematic gestures in Experiment 3 but exerted significant interference effects on directional responses to arrows in Experiment 4. It is suggested that the automatic analysis of head, gaze, and pointing gestures occurs because these directional signals are processed as cues to the direction of another individual's social attention.     

Effects of training on attention to acoustic cues

Learning new phonetic categories in a second language may be thought of in terms of learning to focus one's attention on those parts of the acoustic-phonetic structure of speech that are phonologically relevant in any given context. As yet, however, no study has demonstrated directly that training can shift listeners' attention between acoustic cues given feedback about the linguistic phonetic category alone. In this paper we discuss the results of a training study in which subjects learned to shift their attention from one acoustic cue to another using only category-level identification as feedback. Results demonstrate that training redirects listeners' attention to acoustic cues and that this shift of attention generalizes to novel (untrained) phonetic contexts.     

Priming a natural or human-made environment directs attention to context-congruent threatening stimuli

Research suggests that attention is attracted to evolutionary threats (e.g., snakes) due to an evolved "fear-module" that automatically detects biological threats to survival. However, recent evidence indicates that non-evolutionary threats (e.g., guns) capture and hold attention as well, suggesting a more general "threat-relevance" mechanism that directs attentional resources toward any potential danger in the environment. The current research measured how selective attentional resources were influenced both by the type of threat (e.g., snake vs. gun) and by the context in which the threat was encountered. Participants were primed with either natural or human-made environments to assess how these contexts influence attention to evolutionary and non-evolutionary threats, as measured by a spatial-cueing task. The results indicate that whether biological or non-biological threats receive greater attentional processing is determined by the context in which they are encountered.     

Early social attention impairments in autism: social orienting, joint attention, and attention to distress

This study investigated social attention impairments in autism (social orienting, joint attention, and attention to another's distress) and their relations to language ability. Three- to four-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 72), 3- to 4-year-old developmentally delayed children (n = 34), and 12- to 46-month-old typically developing children (n = 39), matched on mental age, were compared on measures of social orienting, joint attention, and attention to another's distress. Children with autism performed significantly worse than the comparison groups in all of these domains. Combined impairments in joint attention and social orienting were found to best distinguish young children with ASD from those without ASD. Structural equation modeling indicated that joint attention was the best predictor of concurrent language ability. Social orienting and attention to distress were indirectly related to language through their relations with joint attention. These results help to clarify the nature of social attention impairments in autism, offer clues to developmental mechanisms, and suggest targets for early intervention.     

Priming a natural or human-made environment directs attention to context-congruent threatening stimuli

Research suggests that attention is attracted to evolutionary threats (e.g., snakes) due to an evolved “fear-module” that automatically detects biological threats to survival. However, recent evidence indicates that non-evolutionary threats (e.g., guns) capture and hold attention as well, suggesting a more general “threat-relevance” mechanism that directs attentional resources toward any potential danger in the environment. The current research measured how selective attentional resources were influenced both by the type of threat (e.g., snake vs. gun) and by the context in which the threat was encountered. Participants were primed with either natural or human-made environments to assess how these contexts influence attention to evolutionary and non-evolutionary threats, as measured by a spatial-cueing task. The results indicate that whether biological or non-biological threats receive greater attentional processing is determined by the context in which they are encountered.     

Physiological arousal and reactions to outgroup members during competitions that implicate an important social identity

Exposure to sports competitions, especially those involving violence, can elevate physiological arousal, potentially setting the stage for transforming hostile inclinations into aggressive behavior. Personality and cognitive factors that influence the interpretation given to such competitions may influence the impact of these events. The effects of exposure to a sporting competition that had high or low importance for subjects' social identity on pre- to post-film blood pressure and evaluations of outgroups were examined. Aggression may be particularly likely when arousal levels are elevated, and such arousal was expected to be determined by the importance of the identity at stake, regardless of the outcome of the competition. Individuals who were either strongly identified with America or were less identified viewed a boxing match where the American athlete lost the competition (and the Russian contestant won), or the Russian athlete lost (and the American won). Both diastolic and systolic blood pressure measures showed an increase pre- to post-film in the highly identified persons while no such change was observed in the low identitied individuals. Cognitive measures assessing evaluations of the Russian boxer, and Russians in general, showed effects parallel to the arousal indexes with high identified persons expressing more derogation of threat-relevant targets than did those low in identification. Arousal increases in only the highly identified viewers predicted derogation of Russians. Discussion centers on the role of identification with a sports team on physiological processes and their implications for spectator aggression.     

Allocating attention to distractor locations is based on top-down expectations

Failures of selective attention may be explained by the attentional white bear (AWB) hypothesis maintaining that prior knowledge of distractor location causes attentional allocation to it. The AWB is demonstrated by embedding infrequent trials of two simultaneous dots among flanker trials. The dot at the expected distractor location is perceived as appearing before the dot at the expected empty location, indicating attentional allocation to expected distractor locations. A major requirement of the AWB hypothesis is that it occurs in a top-down manner due to expectations. We devised a variation of the original AWB experiment, which enabled us to differentiate between the top-down and bottom-up contributions. The results show that top-down expectancies, which are a critical part of the AWB characterization, occur independently of bottom-up contributions.     

The effect of gaze cues on attention to print advertisements

Print advertisements often employ images of humans whose gaze may be focussed on an object or region within the advertisement. Gaze cues are powerful factors in determining the focus of our attention, but there have been no systematic studies exploring the impact of gaze cues on attention to print advertisements. We tracked participants' eyes whilst they read an on‐screen magazine containing advertisements in which the model either looked at the product being advertised or towards the viewer. When the model's gaze was directed at the product, participants spent longer looking at the product, the brand logo and the rest of the advertisement compared to when the model's gaze was directed towards the viewer. These results demonstrate that the focus of reader's attention can be readily manipulated by gaze cues provided by models in advertisements, and that these influences go beyond simply drawing attention to the cued area of the advertisement. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neuroticism predicts reactions to cues of social inclusion

In the current paper, we hypothesized that people who are high in neuroticism (N) share a motivational predisposition to react vigilantly to threatening cues, most of which tend to be social in humans. In three studies, support for this prediction was found: based on cross‐sectional and diary data, it was found that the self‐esteem (SE) of individuals high in N decreases more in response to perceptions of relationship conflict and low relationship quality than that of emotionally stable ones. In a study of people's reactions to imagined threats, neurotic individuals showed a heightened sensitivity to both nonsocial and social cues, though reactions to social cues were somewhat more pronounced. Results are consistent with principles from evolutionary and process‐oriented personality psychology. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Selective attention to facial identity and emotion in children

Three age groups of participants (6–8 years, 9–11 years, adults) performed two tasks: A face recognition task and a Garner task. In the face recognition task, the participants were presented with 20 faces and then had to recognize them among 20 new faces. In the Garner tasks, the participants had to sort, as fast as possible, the photographs of two persons expressing two emotions by taking into account only one of the two dimensions (identity or emotion). When the sorting task was on one dimension, the other dimension was varied either in a correlated, a constant or an orthogonal way in distinct subsessions. The results indicated an increase in face recognition abilities. They also showed an interference of identity in the emotion-sorting task that was similar in the three age groups. Nevertheless, an interference of emotion in the identity-sorting task was significant only for the children and was more important for the youngest group. These observations suggest that the development in face recognition ability rests on the development of the ability to attend selectively to identity, without paying attention to emotional facial expression.     

When you and I are "we," you are not threatening: the role of self-expansion in social comparison

Many theories of self-evaluation emphasize the power of social comparison. Simply put, an individual is thought to gain esteem whenever she or he outperforms others and to lose esteem when he or she is outperformed. The current research explored interdependent self-construal as a moderator of these effects. Two studies used a priming task to manipulate the level of self-construal and investigate effects of social comparison in dyadic (Study 1) and group situations (Study 2). Both studies demonstrated that when the target for comparison is construed as part of the self, his or her successes become cause for celebration rather than costs to esteem. Additionally, gender differences in chronic relational and collective self-construals moderated the patterns of social comparison in a form similar to that of priming relational and collective self-construals.     

Mere exposure has differential effects on attention allocation to threatening and neutral stimuli

The mere exposure (ME) effect is the phenomenon whereby familiar stimuli are rated more positively than their novel counterparts (e.g., Zajonc, 1968). Though the effect of mere familiarity on a variety of affective judgments is robust and well documented, relatively little research has examined the effects of ME on other non-affective outcomes. The current research addressed this issue by examining the effects of ME on selective attention to threatening and neutral stimuli. We predicted and found that threatening stimuli, which typically arouse negative affect and capture attention, were attended to less following ME; conversely, neutral stimuli, which typically do not arouse affect nor capture attention, were attended to more following ME. The implications of these findings for the literatures on mere exposure and attention are discussed as are speculations about mediators of these effects.     

Responding to negative social identity: a taxonomy of identity management strategies

Taken from literature on social identity theory and social comparison theory, 12 strategies of identity management were identified as possible responses to negative social identity. A taxonomy with two orthogonal axes is proposed as theoretical organization of these diverse strategies. While the first axis considers responses as being either individual or collective, the second axis refers to the distinction between behaviours and cognitions. It is assumed that the German unification process implied a lower status position of East Germans relative to West Germans on relevant comparison dimensions, and that East Germans have to deal with this threat to their identity. Hence, data of an East German sample are used to empirically systematize identity management strategies, and, thus, to test the proposed taxonomy. Results support the expected four-factor solution only for those strategies taken from social identity theory, while the responses derived from social comparison research build a fifth factor. In addition, the empirical assignments of strategies to cells of the taxonomy are only partly in line with the expected pattern. The empirical findings suggest some clarification and modifications of the proposed response taxonomy. The most important refers to a re-interpretation of the taxonomy's first axis, which now differentiates between responses according to the specific changes of the comparison parameters they imply. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.