Do cognitive load and ADHD traits affect the tendency to prioritise social information in scenes?

Abstract

We report two experiments investigating the effect of working memory (WM) load on selective attention. Experiment 1 was a modified version of Lavie et al. (2004) and confirmed that increasing memory load disrupted performance in the classic flanker task. Experiment 2 used the same manipulation of WM load to probe attention during the viewing of complex scenes, while also investigating individual differences in ADHD traits. In the image viewing task, we measured the degree to which fixations targeted each of two crucial objects: (1) a social object (a person in the scene) and (2) a non-social object of higher or lower physical salience. We compared the extent to which increasing WM load would change the pattern of viewing of the physically salient and socially salient objects. If attending to the social item requires greater default voluntary top-down resources, then the viewing of social objects should show stronger modulation by WM load compared to viewing of physically salient objects. The results showed that the social object was fixated to a greater degree than the other object (regardless of physical saliency). Increased saliency drew fixations away from the background leading to slightly increased fixations on the non-social object, without changing fixations on the social object. Increased levels of ADHD-like traits were associated with fewer fixations on the social object, but only in the high salient, low load condition. Importantly, WM load did not affect number of fixations on the social object. Such findings suggest rather surprisingly that attending to a social area in complex stimuli is not dependent on the availability of voluntary topdown resources.

Social prioritisation in scene viewing and the effects of a spatial memory load

“…Our aim was to examine whether the social prioritisation effect would remain undiminished in the face of competition for perceptual processing resources, or competing demands on eye movements and attention, in the two tasks. In general, observers spent much of their time fixating on the social object in our pictures, consistent with previous reports (Birmingham et al, 2009 ; End & Gamer, 2019 ; Martinez-Cedillo et al, 2022 ). In all conditions, the social object was fixated much more often than the non-social object.…”

“…In general, observers spent much of their time fixating on the social object in our pictures, consistent with previous reports (Birmingham et al, 2009;Martinez-Cedillo et al, 2022). In all conditions, the social object was fixated much more often than the non-social object.…”

“…This model selected the high-saliency object early (the first three simulated fixations) and the low-saliency object on later simulated fixations. Further details of these stimuli can be found in Martinez-Cedillo et al ( 2022 ).…”

“…Recent research has begun to investigate the behavioural characteristics of this prioritisation of social objects. We recently investigated whether the social prioritisation effect was reduced when verbal working memory resources were taxed (Martinez-Cedillo, Dent & Foulsham, 2022 ). Increasing verbal working memory load is a technique known to disrupt goal-based control of attention in the face of a salient distractor (e.g., Boot et al, 2005 ; Burnham, 2010 ; Lavie & De Fockert, 2005 ).…”

“…Furthermore, in the study of Bianchi et al (2020), a cognitive load condition is compared against a condition involving no load, meaning that a high cognitive load is confounded with other more general dual-task scheduling processes. In contrast, the study by Martinez-Cedillo et al (2022) compares low and high cognitive load conditions, meaning that only the amount of load differs between conditions, and other more general dual-task processes are held constant. In addition, in the study of Martinez-Cedillo et al, the scene-viewing task was restricted to the retention interval of the memory task, meaning that monitoring for memory stimuli would not disrupt scene viewing.…”