Attentional Effects of Counterpredictive Gaze and Arrow Cues.

Abstract

The authors used counterpredictive cues to examine reflexive and volitional orienting to eyes and arrows. Experiment 1 investigated the effects of eyes with a novel design that allowed for a comparison of gazed-at (cued) target locations and likely (predicted) target locations against baseline locations that were not cued and not predicted. Attention shifted reflexively to the cued location and volitionally to the predicted location, and these 2 forms of orienting overlapped in time. Experiment 2 discovered that another well-learned directional stimulus, an arrow, produced a different effect: Attention was shifted only volitionally to the predicted location. The authors suggest that because there is a neural architecture specialized for processing eyes, gaze-triggered attention is more strongly reflexive than orienting to arrows.

Normal and Impaired Reflexive Orienting of Attention after Central Nonpredictive Cues

“…Previous studies that separately investigated gaze cues (e.g., Driver et al, 1999;Friesen & Kingstone, 1998) or arrow cues Tipples, 2002;Hommel et al, 2001;Eimer, 1997) found similar orienting effects, whereas studies that directly compared the two types of cue (although in separate blocks) have not provided a firm conclusion (Ristic et al, 2002(Ristic et al, , 2007Gibson & Kingstone, 2006;Friesen et al, 2004;Ricciardelli, Bricolo, Aglioti, & Chelazzi, 2002). A recent fMRI study suggested that orienting to gaze cues and arrow cues was supported by partially distinct cortical networks (Hietanen, Nummenmaa, Nyman, Parkkola, & Hämäläinen, 2006).…”

“…This calls into question the special status of social cues and suggests that a common explanation for these findings is the conveyance of a ''directional meaning,'' regardless of biological relevance (that is, independently of whether the cue consists of gazing eyes or arrows). Initial comparisons between these different cues have shown similar orienting effects in 4-year-old children (Ristic, Friesen, & Kingstone, 2002), and a selective effectiveness of gaze when cueing was counterpredictive of target position (Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004), but it is still unclear whether these forms of orienting are domain-specific and to what extent they rely on the two attentional systems discussed above.…”

“…Here we adopt the term ''reflexive orienting'' because it has been widely used in the literature. This does not imply any theoretical commitment as to the nature of this form of attentional orienting, which is indeed a controversial matter (for opposing views, see, e.g., Vecera & Rizzo, 2006;Friesen et al, 2004). Indeed, one aim of the present study is to further investigate this ambiguous form of orienting by testing right brain-damaged patients in addition to healthy participants.…”

Taking control of reflexive social attention

“…Second, it occurs even if eye direction is negatively correlated with where a target might to appear (e.g. Driver et al, 1999;Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004). Third, cells in the right inferior temporal (IT) cortex are dedicated to processing gaze direction in an obligatory fashion, which dovetails with the finding that attention is shifted rapidly to where someone else is looking (Langton, Watt, & Bruce, 2000).…”

Visual Orienting Occurs Asymmetrically in Horizontal vs. Vertical Planes

“…For example, split brain patients shift their attention reflexively only when the gaze cue was presented to the hemisphere specialized for processing upright faces (Kingstone et al, 2000) whereas they shift their attention reflexively with arrow cues, irrespective of presenting visual field (Ristic et al, 2002). Other studies have shown that gaze cues lead to more pronounced cueing effects than arrow cues (Ricciardelli, Bricolo, Aglioti, & Chelazzi, 2002;Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004). Though their underlying mechanism might differ, both gaze and arrow cues can produce similar behavioral output.…”