Following gaze: gaze-following behavior as a window into social cognition

Shepherd, Stephen V.

doi:10.3389/fnint.2010.00005

Cited by 228 publications

(255 citation statements)

References 200 publications

(242 reference statements)

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“…One neuroimaging study suggested human TPJ may be homologous with the posterior STS in monkeys, based on patterns of resting-state connectivity measured using fMRI. Identifying where others are looking appears to be accomplished by neurons along the STS [100] and in the amygdala [101] that respond to the sight of another individual looking in a particular direction. Inactivation of neurons in the STS using a drug to block neuronal spiking impairs gaze-following in rhesus macaques, consistent with a role in identifying the locus of other animals' attention [102].…”

Section: Cognitive and Neural Boundaries Of Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Platt

Seyfarth

Cheney

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits'. Studies of the factors affecting reproductive success in group-living monkeys have traditionally focused on competitive traits, like the acquisition of high dominance rank. Recent research, however, indicates that the ability to form cooperative social bonds has an equally strong effect on fitness. Two implications follow. First, strong social bonds make individuals' fitness interdependent and the 'free-rider' problem disappears. Second, individuals must make adaptive choices that balance competition and cooperation-often with the same partners. The proximate mechanisms underlying these behaviours are only just beginning to be understood. Recent results from cognitive and systems neuroscience provide us some evidence that many social and nonsocial decisions are mediated ultimately by abstract, domain-general neural mechanisms. However, other populations of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, amygdala and parietal cortex specifically encode the type, importance and value of social information. Whether these specialized populations of neurons arise by selection or through developmental plasticity in response to the challenges of social life remains unknown. Many brain areas are homologous and show similar patterns of activity in human and nonhuman primates. In both groups, cortical activity is modulated by hormones like oxytocin and by the action of certain genes that may affect individual differences in behaviour. Taken together, results suggest that differences in cooperation between the two groups are a matter of degree rather than constituting a fundamental, qualitative distinction.

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Section: Cognitive and Neural Boundaries Of Cooperationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Platt

Seyfarth

Cheney

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Certainly further work is required to establish the case for mirror neurons in areas responsible for the control of attention and eye movements. The suggestion that processing eye-gaze direction and wider social orienting mechanisms could occur via mirroring or direct mapping processes has, however, attracted growing interest (Frischen, Loach, & Tipper, 2009;Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010;Shepherd, 2010). One recent fMRI study has already identified mirror neuron areas which may be responsive to averted and direct gaze in humans (Coudé et al, 2016).…”

Section: The Neural Basis Of Attention To Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

2017

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Despite considerable interest in both action perception and social attention over the last 2 decades, there has been surprisingly little investigation concerning how the manual actions of other humans orient visual attention. The present review draws together studies that have measured the orienting of attention, following observation of another's goal-directed action. Our review proposes that, in line with the literature on eye gaze, action is a particularly strong orienting cue for the visual system. However, we additionally suggest that action may orient visual attention using mechanisms, which gaze direction does not (i.e., neural direct mapping and corepresentation). Finally, we review the implications of these gaze-independent mechanisms for the study of attention to action. We suggest that our understanding of attention to action may benefit from being studied in the context of joint action paradigms, where the role of higher level action goals and social factors can be investigated.

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“…Social attention is an essential ability for obtaining an empathic contact with others and to discover potentially relevant information in the environment [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social status gates social attention in humans

et al. 2011

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).Humans tend to shift attention in response to the averted gaze of a face they are fixating, a phenomenon known as gaze cuing. In the present paper, we aimed to address whether the social status of the cuing face modulates this phenomenon. Participants were asked to look at the faces of 16 individuals and read fictive curriculum vitae associated with each of them that could describe the person as having a high or low social status. The association between each specific face and either high or low social status was counterbalanced between participants. The same faces were then used as stimuli in a gaze-cuing task. The results showed a greater gaze-cuing effect for high-status faces than for low-status faces, independently of the specific identity of the face. These findings confirm previous evidence regarding the important role of social factors in shaping social attention and show that a modulation of gaze cuing can be observed even when knowledge about social status is acquired through episodic learning.Keywords: attention; gaze cuing; social cognition INTRODUCTIONResearch has shown that individuals belonging to several species, including humans, tend to shift their attention in the direction gazed by conspecifics, a phenomenon reflecting orienting of social attention known as gaze cuing [1 -3]. Social attention is an essential ability for obtaining an empathic contact with others and to discover potentially relevant information in the environment [3].Although gaze cuing is a robust phenomenon that can be considered automatic in several regards [4,5], evidence is accumulating showing that it is sensitive to several social modulators. A pioneer animal study reported that submissive macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) showed a generalized gaze-cuing effect independently of whether the face stimulus depicted a high-or a low-status individual, whereas dominant macaque monkeys selectively followed the gaze of high-status individuals ([6], cf. [7] for a non-significant effect of social ranking on gaze following). Dominant-like exemplars, who are likely to have elevated testosterone levels, are more closely attended to and trigger stronger gaze-cuing effects. A related modulation has recently been demonstrated also in humans, who show greater gaze-cuing effects for

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Following gaze: gaze-following behavior as a window into social cognition

Cited by 228 publications

References 200 publications

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

Social status gates social attention in humans

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