Goal saliency boosts infants’ action prediction for human manual actions,but not for mechanical claws

Previous research indicates that infants’ prediction of the goals of observed actions is influenced by own experience with the type of agent performing the action (i.e., human hand vs. non-human agent) as well as by action-relevant features of goal objects (e.g., object size). The present study investigated the combined effects of these factors on 12-month-olds’ action prediction. Infants’ (N = 49) goal-directed gaze shifts were recorded as they observed 14 trials in which either a human hand or a mechanical claw reached for a small goal area (low-saliency goal) or a large goal area (high-saliency goal). Only infants who had observed the human hand reaching for a high-saliency goal fixated the goal object ahead of time, and they rapidly learned to predict the action goal across trials. By contrast, infants in all other conditions did not track the observed action in a predictive manner, and their gaze shifts to the action goal did not change systematically across trials. Thus, high-saliency goals seem to boost infants’ predictive gaze shifts during the observation of human manual actions, but not of actions performed by a mechanical device. This supports the assumption that infants’ action predictions are based on interactive effects of action-relevant object features (e.g., size) and own action experience.     

Newborns’ attention is driven by the translational movement

The present study investigated whether 2-day-old newborns are able to discriminate two translating meaningless Point-Light Displays (PLD) videos, in which the shape of one of them changes compared to that of the other along the trajectory, independently from movement kinematics, and if this ability is present both when stimuli differed at the end or at the beginning of the movement. To manipulate the instant in which along the movement the difference between stimuli was evident, and to maintain every unspecific dissimilarity possibly determining the preference, videos were played in a loop either forward or backwards. In Experiment 1, PLD stimuli moved with natural accelerated-decelerated kinematics; in Experiment 2 they moved at constant velocity. Four groups of newborns were submitted to the preferential looking technique experiments. Results showed that newborns looked longer at natural kinematics and that, irrespective of the type of kinematics, they discriminated the two stimuli only when videos were played forward, that is, only when stimuli differed at the end of the movement. These data suggest that, independently from kinematics, movement translational components induce newborns to allocate attention at the end of the observed movement. Given the strict link between attention and eye movements, we suggest that this effect may bootstrap the system and give rise to proactive gaze, the typical gaze behaviour present during executed and observed goal-directed actions.     

场景的年龄特征会影响自闭症谱系障碍儿童的注视模式

为了探讨场景年龄特征对ASD儿童场景注视模式的影响,选取14名自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童和19名与其智力年龄匹配的正常发育（TD）儿童为被试,在被试对儿童场景和成人场景图片进行自由观看的同时记录其眼动。结果发现,ASD儿童对全图、面部、眼部和嘴部的访问均显著少于TD儿童,对背景区域的访问显著大于TD儿童;ASD和TD儿童对面部和身体的访问时间比都显著大于前景与背景兴趣区;ASD儿童对儿童场景中面部、眼部和嘴部兴趣区的访问时间比大于成人场景,而TD儿童则相反;两组儿童都表现出对儿童场景中背景的偏好。结果表明,在场景注视中,ASD与TD儿童具有相似的社会性注意倾向,对社会性信息给予更多注视,但ASD儿童表现更弱;场景的年龄特征会影响ASD儿童与TD儿童的场景注视模式,相对于成人场景,ASD儿童更偏向于注视儿童场景中的面孔和背景。     

Seductive eyes: attractiveness and direct gaze increase desire for associated objects

Recent research in neuroscience shows that observing attractive faces with direct gaze is more rewarding than observing attractive faces with averted gaze. On the basis of this research, it was hypothesized that object evaluations can be enhanced by associating them with attractive faces displaying direct gaze. In a conditioning paradigm, novel objects were associated with either attractive or unattractive female faces, either displaying direct or averted gaze. An affective priming task showed more positive automatic evaluations of objects that were paired with attractive faces with direct gaze than attractive faces with averted gaze and unattractive faces, irrespective of gaze direction. Participants' self-reported desire for the objects matched the affective priming data. The results are discussed against the background of recent findings on affective consequences of gaze cueing.     

女性选择辅助生殖技术的文化动力

在现代医学的语境中,女性的身体究竟是什么?是被当作肉体还是视作活生生的身体?这在很大程度上影响着女性的地位和命运。辅助生殖技术迎合了社会的主流需要,使女性的身体客观化为肉体,女性作为活生生的身体已被淡漠和遗忘。辅助生殖技术只有成为女性的自主选择才是合理的。     

Mutual gaze and social cognition

I examine the role of mutual gaze in social cognition. I start by discussing recent studies of joint visual attention in order to show that social cognition is operative in infancy prior to the emergence of theoretical skills required to make judgments about other people's states of mind. Such social cognition depends on the communicative potential inherent in human bodies. I proceed to examine this embodied social cognition in the context of Merleau-Ponty's views on vision. I expose some inner difficulties within Merleau-Ponty's position as well as to point out the ways of resolving them by means of combined insights from developmental psychology and the analyses of self-other relations from philosophies of dialogue.     

Orienting of attention via observed eye gaze is head-centred

Observing averted eye gaze results in the automatic allocation of attention to the gazed-at location. The role of the orientation of the face that produces the gaze cue was investigated. The eyes in the face could look left or right in a head-centred frame, but the face itself could be oriented 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise such that the eyes were gazing up or down. Significant cueing effects to targets presented to the left or right of the screen were found in these head orientation conditions. This suggests that attention was directed to the side to which the eyes would have been looking towards, had the face been presented upright. This finding provides evidence that head orientation can affect gaze following, even when the head orientation alone is not a social cue. It also shows that the mechanism responsible for the allocation of attention following a gaze cue can be influenced by intrinsic object-based (i.e. head-centred) properties of the task-irrelevant cue.