Empathy modulates the temporal structure of social attention

Abstract

Individuals with low empathy often show reduced attention towards social stimuli. A limitation of this literature is the lack of empirical work that has explicitly characterized how this relationship manifests itself over time. We investigate this issue by analysing data from two large eye-tracking datasets (total n = 176). Via growth-curve analysis, we demonstrate that self-reported empathy (as measured by the empathy quotient—EQ) predicts the temporal evolution of gaze behaviour under conditions where social and non-social stimuli compete for attention. In both datasets, we found that EQ not only predicted a global increase in social attention, but predicted a different temporal profile of social attention. Specifically, we detected a reliable effect of empathy on gaze towards social images after prolonged viewing. An analysis of switch latencies revealed that low-EQ observers switched gaze away from an initially fixated social image more frequently and at earlier latencies than high-EQ observers. Our analyses demonstrate that modelling these temporal components of gaze signals may reveal useful behavioural phenotypes. The explanatory power of this approach may provide enhanced biomarkers for conditions marked by deficits in empathy-related processes.

Human body motion captures visual attention and elicits pupillary dilation

“…Future work could test the possibility that participants are still fully engaged with the videos at shorter SOAs, but begin to disengage at longer SOAs, leading to faster disengagement. Additionally, a previous study by Hedger, Haffey, McSorley, and Chakrabarti (2018) found that responses to social stimuli evolve over time, in similar timescales as shown here. Thus, the SOA effect found in our study could be explained by the time course of social attention presented by Hedger et al (2018).…”

To covet what we see: Autistic traits modulate the relationship between looking and choosing

“…Methodologically, our data emphasize the importance of including controls for low‐level confounds in studies of social attention—we found that a measurable portion of observer preferences were driven by low‐level properties of the stimuli (Figure 2A). This accords with an observation from a recent free‐viewing experiment, wherein gaze bias toward social images was partly explained by low‐level properties of the stimuli (Hedger, Haffey, McSorley, & Chakrabarti, 2018). Future studies of social attention should include control stimuli that allow simple low‐level influences on behavior to be characterized.…”

Keeping in time with social and non-social stimuli: Synchronisation with auditory, visual, and audio-visual cues

“…While social compared to non-social stimuli have been shown to be processed differently in multiple studies 13 – 17 , none of these studies have used synchrony based measures to examine how we physically interact with such stimuli. Most studies in this area use paradigms where observers passively observe social and non-social pictures/videos presented on a screen 14 , 16 – 19 . In contrast, interpersonal synchrony involves an active involvement with the environment, and is more typical of real-world social situations where participants are not merely passive observers.…”

“…One possibility is that individuals will be worse in synchronising to social stimuli due to their greater complexity (i.e., a face is significantly more visually complex compared to a dot). Another possibility is for individuals to show better performance in synchronizing with social stimuli, due to the greater reward value typically attributed to social stimuli 16 , 19 . The second possibility is supported by empirical and theoretical accounts suggesting greater reward response associated with motor alignment 41 – 43 .…”