ERPs reveal similar effects of social gaze orienting and voluntary attention, and distinguish each from reflexive attention

Abstract

Spatial attention can be reflexively captured by a physically salient stimulus, effortfully directed toward a relevant location, or involuntarily oriented in the direction of another person's gaze (i.e., social gaze orienting). Here, we used event-related potentials to compare the effects of these three types of orienting on multiple stages of subsequent target processing. Although gaze orienting has been associated more strongly with reflexive capture than with voluntary attention, the present data provide new evidence that the neural effects of social gaze orienting are markedly different from the effects of reflexive attentional capture by physically salient stimuli. Specifically, despite their similar behavioral effects, social gaze orienting and reflexive capture produce different effects on both early sensory processing (~120 ms; P1/N1 components) and later, higher-order processing (~300 ms; P3 component). In contrast, the effects of social gaze orienting were highly similar to those of voluntary orienting at these stages of target processing.

Shifts of spatial attention cued by irrelevant numbers: Electrophysiological evidence from a target discrimination task

“…We used colour discrimination rather than detection in order to test whether spationumerical congruency effects would also be observed when the task requires subjects to focus on the visual features of the target, rather than simply reporting its presence at two potential spatial locations. In line with previous behavioural (Casarotti et al, 2007;Dodd et al, 2008) and ERP (Chanon & Hopfinger, 2011) reports, we reasoned that this more complex feature-oriented task might be an optimal paradigm for highlighting attentional amplitude enhancements of early target-evoked components (P1 and N1) in occipital electrodes. In line with the previous studies on number-space interactions (Ranzini et al, 2009;Salillas et al, 2008), we predicted that the attentional shifts induced by the centrally presented numbers should lead to amplitude enhancements of cue-and target-evoked electrophysiological components, when left/right targets are preceded by small/large digits, respectively.…”

“…Hillyard, Vogel, & Luck, 1998;Luck, Woodman, & Vogel, 2000), as well as orienting induced by central nonpredictive cues such as eye gaze (e.g. Schuller & Rossion, 2001, 2004; but see Chanon & Hopfinger, 2011;Fichtenholtz, Hopfinger, Graham, Detwiler, & LaBar, 2007Magnée, Kahn, Cahn, & Kemner, 2011). Using a target detection task might have weakened the numberrelated attentional modulations that are recorded over occipital electrodes, as has been observed with voluntary orienting paradigms (Handy & Mangun, 2000).…”

“…It has indeed been reported that target-related early visual event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with (voluntary) attentional orienting are weaker with localisation than feature-discrimination tasks (Chanon & Hopfinger, 2011). Consequently, it is possible that similar task-related modulations might also occur in attentional paradigms with non-predictive central number cues.…”

The role of the oculomotor system in covert social attention

“…The issue has remained contentious partly because the neuroimaging data are conflicting. For example, some imaging studies suggest that arrow cueing and gaze cueing have very similar psychophysiological correlates (Brignani, Guzzon, Marzi, & Miniussi, 2009;Chanon & Hopfinger, 2011;Guzzon, et al, 2010), whereas others argue that the neural correlates of arrows and gaze cueing are different (Hietanen, Leppanen, Nummenmaa, & Astikainen, 2008;Hietanen, Nummenmaa, Nyman, Parkkola, & Hamalainen, 2006).…”

Aparición y desarrollo de la atención conjunta en la infancia

“…En este sentido, Campbell (2002) afirma que la Atención Conjunta debe estar recíprocamente supervisada: esto es, ambos interlocutores tienen que estar pendientes de lo que está atendiendo la otra persona y además los dos participan activamente en esta labor. Dichas propuestas se han visto confirmadas recientemente por investigaciones (Chanon y Hopfinger, 2011) que han comparado los potenciales evocados producidos por la atención refleja a un estímulo llamativo, la atención voluntaria, y la atención involuntaria que sigue la mirada de otra persona. Sus resultados demuestran que, pese a su similitud conductual, el seguimiento visual de la mirada de una persona produce diferentes efectos neurológicos que la atención refleja a un estímulo.…”