Cultural influences on face scanning are consistent across infancy and adulthood

The emergence of cultural differences in face scanning is thought to be shaped by social experience. However, previous studies mainly investigated eye movements of adults and little is known about early development. The current study recorded eye movements of British and Japanese infants (aged 10 and 16 months) and adults, who were presented with static and dynamic faces on screen. Cultural differences were observed across all age groups, with British participants exhibiting more mouth scanning, and Japanese individuals showing increased central face (nose) scanning for dynamic stimuli. Age-related influences independent of culture were also revealed, with a shift from eye to mouth scanning between 10 and 16 months, while adults distributed their gaze more flexibly. Against our prediction, no age-related increases in cultural differences were observed, suggesting the possibility that cultural differences are largely manifest by 10 months of age. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals adopt visual strategies in line with their cultural background from early in infancy, pointing to the development of a highly adaptive face processing system that is shaped by early sociocultural experience.     

The effect of leftward bias on visual attention for driving tasks

The leftward bias of driving visual attention has been found to explain the role of driving experience in the visual attention strategy; even though the results reported in the literature are not always consistent. This study aims to explore the driving attention characteristics and the eye movement patterns by using a simulated driving experiment in conjunction with an eye-tracker device. 31 young inexperienced drivers (undergraduate students, average age 21) and 30 old experienced drivers (taxi drivers, average age 36) took part in the experiment. Results show that the eye movement patterns of the drivers have certain similarity in the occurrence of subtle asymmetries of visual attention favouring left space (the direction of the driving in the experiment was right-side) and that they are related to the right hemisphere specialization for spatial attention. However, in the more experienced drivers the leftward eye movement tends to shift toward the centre or even rightward to pay attention to the hazard events on road. These results suggest that inexperienced drivers are initially aroused by natural biological leftward visual attention and likely to develop central and rightward eye movement strategy for safety diving purpose. The implications of this study suggest that, despite the existence of natural visual attention bias, the left asymmetries in visual scan in inexperienced drivers still can be modified by driving trainings that focus on the hazard situation on road.     

EMDR and Emotionally Oriented Couples Therapy

When reviewing past and current research on the role of emotion in couples therapy, there appeared to be a lack of articulation concerning how emotional expressions and relational dynamics are affected by emotional trauma that has not been accessed. The authors demonstrate how emotionally and experientially oriented therapy with couples can be enhanced by accessing stored trauma through the use of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This approach is called Eye Movement Relationship Enhancement (EMRE) therapy and includes key clinical areas such as accessing and tolerating previously disowned emotion, reprocessing emotional experiences, and amplifying couple intimacy. These key areas are discussed and illustrated with case examples.     

Brief mindfulness meditation intervention improves attentional control of athletes in virtual reality shooting competition: Evidence from fNIRS and eye tracking

Attentional control is a crucial cognitive ability for sports performance. The current research aimed to investigate whether a brief (20-min) pre-competition mindfulness meditation (MM) intervention enhances athletes' attentional control during competitions and alters the activity of brain regions related to attentional control. We created a virtual reality shooting competition to compare the eye-gaze indicators and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) parameters of 78 university athletes after 20 min of MM or 20 min of mind wandering (MW). Participants’ average fixation durations (AFDs) on task-relevant information (targets) were significantly longer in the MM group. In contrast, both average fixation counts (AFCs) and AFDs on task-irrelevant information (the ranking screen) were significantly lower in the MM group than in the MW group. Additionally, the MM group exhibited significantly stronger activation of the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) as well as higher levels of oxygenated haemoglobin [HbO] and greater functional connectivity (FC) of the right dlPFC, which was considered evidence of recruitment for attentional control. Moreover, the MM group achieved significantly better shooting performance than the MW group. Overall, the findings suggest that one session 20-min MM practice pre-competition facilitates focus during competition and improves athletic performance. We recommend the application of brief mindfulness practice in sports, especially in closed-skill sports that require high attention participation (e.g., shooting, archery, darts, golf, gymnastics, skating etc.).     

Soft constraints in interactive behavior: the case of ignoring perfect knowledge in-the-world for imperfect knowledge in-the-head

Constraints and dependencies among the elements of embodied cognition form patterns or microstrategies of interactive behavior. Hard constraints determine which microstrategies are possible. Soft constraints determine which of the possible microstrategies are most likely to be selected. When selection is non-deliberate or automatic the least effort microstrategy is chosen. In calculating the effort required to execute a microstrategy each of the three types of operations, memory retrieval, perception, and action, are given equal weight; that is, perceptual-motor activity does not have a privileged status with respect to memory. Soft constraints can work contrary to the designer’s intentions by making the access of perfect knowledge in-the-world more effortful than the access of imperfect knowledge in-the-head. These implications of soft constraints are tested in two experiments. In experiment 1 we varied the perceptual-motor effort of accessing knowledge in-the-world as well as the effort of retrieving items from memory. In experiment 2 we replicated one of the experiment 1 conditions to collect eye movement data. The results suggest that milliseconds matter. Soft constraints lead to a reliance on knowledge in-the-head even when the absolute difference in perceptual-motor versus memory retrieval effort is small, and even when relying on memory leads to a higher error rate and lower performance. We discuss the implications of soft constraints for routine interactive behavior, accounts of embodied cognition, and tool and interface design.     

Abstract Conceptual Feature Ratings Predict Gaze Within Written Word Arrays: Evidence From a Visual Wor(l)d Paradigm

The Abstract Conceptual Feature (ACF) framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high‐dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm” (VWP). Healthy adults (n = 20) selected the lexical item most related to a probe word in a 4‐item written word array comprising the target and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe‐target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co‐occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information (not restricted to sensorimotor and emotion information) shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension.     

Modeling Lag‐2 Revisits to Understand Trade‐Offs in Mixed Control of Fixation Termination During Visual Search

An important question about eye‐movement behavior is when the decision is made to terminate a fixation and program the following saccade. Different approaches have found converging evidence in favor of a mixed‐control account, in which there is some overlap between processing information at fixation and planning the following saccade. We examined one interesting instance of mixed control in visual search: lag‐2 revisits, during which observers fixate a stimulus, move to a different stimulus, and then revisit the first stimulus on the next fixation. Results show that the probability of lag‐2 revisits occurring increased with the number of target‐similar stimuli, and revisits were preceded by a brief fixation on the intervening distractor stimulus. We developed the Efficient Visual Sampling (EVS) computational model to simulate our findings (fixation durations and fixation locations) and to provide insight into mixed control of fixations and the perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that produce lag‐2 revisits.     

Genuine eye contact elicits self-referential processing

The effect of eye contact on self-awareness was investigated with implicit measures based on the use of first-person singular pronouns in sentences. The measures were proposed to tap into self-referential processing, that is, information processing associated with self-awareness. In addition, participants filled in a questionnaire measuring explicit self-awareness. In Experiment 1, the stimulus was a video clip showing another person and, in Experiment 2, the stimulus was a live person. In both experiments, participants were divided into two groups and presented with the stimulus person either making eye contact or gazing downward, depending on the group assignment. During the task, the gaze stimulus was presented before each trial of the pronoun-selection task. Eye contact was found to increase the use of first-person pronouns, but only when participants were facing a real person, not when they were looking at a video of a person. No difference in self-reported self-awareness was found between the two gaze direction groups in either experiment. The results indicate that eye contact elicits self-referential processing, but the effect may be stronger, or possibly limited to, live interaction.     

Eye movements can cause item-specific visual recognition advantages

Prior research suggests that spontaneous saccades localized towards blank regions of space during memory storage and recall improve memory for items at the saccade locations. In the present study, we examined whether a recognition advantage can be observed when a single, exogenously directed saccade occurs during memory maintenance. We manipulated whether participants made a saccade to an item’s previous location or maintained fixation, as well as whether tested items reappeared in their original location or not. The results of three experiments showed that visual recognition was better after a saccade to the location of a probed object than after no saccade or after a saccade to the location of a non-probed object, so long as saccades went to the to-be-tested location more often than chance. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that eye movements can elicit an item-specific recognition advantage in visual working memory.     

Saccadic eye movements: what do they tell us about aging cognition?

Although the relationship between age-related cognitive decline and saccadic eye movement (SEM) deficits has been outlined, specific cognitive alterations underlying age-related changes in saccadic performance remain unclear. This study attempted to better understand the nature of aging effects on SEMs. We compared SEMs in younger and older adults in prosaccade (PS) and antisaccade (AS) tasks under gap, step, and overlap conditions. We also examined relationships between these performances and several neuropsychological scores. Twenty-eight younger adults (YA), 24 older adults under 65 years (OA_<65) and 24 over 65 years (OA_>65) of age completed a neuropsychological evaluation, PS and AS tasks. Our results showed that latencies, AS cost, time to correct AS errors, and uncorrected AS, increased with aging. YA showed higher overlap effects than OA_>65 and OA_<65. Importantly, correlations and regressions revealed close relationships not only between latencies and processing speed measures but also between the AS cost and the inhibition process measures. Correct saccades and the time to correct AS errors were closely related to the inhibition process and cognitive flexibility measures. These findings suggest that the progressive age-related decline of processing speed and executive attention are associated with, and can be highlighted though SEMs in PS and AS tasks.