We explore the relationship between the 'theory of mind' (ToM) and 'central coherence' difficulties of autism. We introduce covariation between hierarchically-embedded categories and social information--at the local level, the global level, or at both levels simultaneously--within a category confusion task. We then ask participants to infer the mental state of novel category members, and measure participants' autism-spectrum quotient (AQ). Results reveal a positive relationship between AQ and the degree of local/global social categorization, which in turn predicts the pattern of mental state inferences. These results provide preliminary evidence for a causal relationship between central coherence and ToM abilities. Implications with regard to ToM processes, social categorization, intervention, and the development of a unified account of autism are discussed.

Gaze direction is a powerful social cue, and there is considerable evidence that we preferentially direct our attentional resources to gaze-congruent locations. While a number of individual differences have been claimed to modulate gaze-cueing effects (e.g., trait anxiety), the modulation of gaze cueing for different emotional expressions of the cue has not been investigated in social anxiety, which is characterised by a range of attentional biases for stimuli perceived to be socially threatening (e.g., Mansell et al., 1999). Therefore, in this study, we examined whether social anxiety modulates gaze-cueing effects for angry, fearful, and neutral expressions, while controlling for other individual-differences variables that may modulate gaze cueing: trait anxiety, depression, and autistic-like traits. In a sample of 100 female participants, we obtained large and reliable gaze-cueing effects; however, these effects were not modulated by social anxiety, or by any of the other individual-differences variables. These findings attest to the social importance of gaze cueing, and also call into question the replicability of individual differences in the effect.

Objectives The present study provides a meta-analytic assessment of how gaze-cued attention – a core social-cognitive process – is influenced by normal adult ageing. Method A multi-level meta-analysis of standardized mean changes was conducted on gaze-cueing effects. Age effects were quantified as standardized mean differences in gaze-cueing effect sizes between young and older adult samples. Results We identified 82 gaze-cueing effects (k = 26, N = 919 participants). Of these, 37 were associated with young adults (k = 12, n = 438) and 45 with older adults (k = 14, n = 481). Relative to younger adults, older adults had a reduced gaze-cueing effect overall, g = -0.59, with this age effect greater when the cues were predictive, g = -3.24, rather than nonpredictive, g = -0.78. Discussion These results provide the clearest evidence to date that adult ageing is associated with a reduction in gaze-cued attention. The results also speak to potential mechanisms of this age effect. In line with cognitive decline models of ageing, it was demonstrated that when gaze cues were predictive, only younger adults seem to benefit, suggesting that older adults exhibit a particularly reduced capacity to use gaze cues volitionally.

An important mechanism used to selectively process relevant information in the environment is spatial attention. One fundamental way in which spatial attention is deployed is attentional scalingthe process of focusing attentional resources either narrowly or broadly across the visual field. Although early empirical work suggested that narrowing attention improves all aspects of visual processing, recent studies have demonstrated that narrowing attention can also have no effect or even a detrimental impact when it comes to vision that is thought to be mediated via the magnocellular pathway of the visual system. Here, for the first time, we synthesize empirical evidence measuring the behavioral effects of attentional scaling on tasks gauging the contribution of the major neural pathways of the visual system, with the purpose of determining the potential factors driving these contradictory empirical findings. This analysis revealed that attentional scaling could be best understood by considering the unique methodologies used in the research literature to date. The implications of this analysis for theoretical frameworks of attentional scaling are discussed, and methodological improvements for future research are proposed.

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