Humans are sensitive to attention control when predicting others’ actions

Abstract

Studies of social perception report acute human sensitivity to where another's attention is aimed. Here we ask whether humans are also sensitive to how the other's attention is deployed. Observers viewed videos of actors reaching to targets without knowing that those actors were sometimes choosing to reach to one of the targets (endogenous control) and sometimes being directed to reach to one of the targets (exogenous control). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that observers could respond more rapidly when actors chose where to reach, yet were at chance when guessing whether the reach was chosen or directed. This implicit sensitivity to attention control held when either actor's faces or limbs were masked (experiment 3) and when only the earliest actor's movements were visible (experiment 4). Individual differences in sensitivity to choice correlated with an independent measure of social aptitude. We conclude that humans are sensitive to attention control through an implicit kinematic process linked to empathy. The findings support the hypothesis that social cognition involves the predictive modeling of others' attentional states.social perception | attention | action prediction | autism spectrum | action observation

The ability to predict actions of others from distributed cues is still developing in six- to eight-year-old children

“…By occluding large, non-overlapping sections of the Attacker's body, we replicated the previous finding that adults can use distributed information in the body for action prediction (Pesquita et al, 2016;Vaziri-Pashkam et al, 2017). Children were not able to use the distributed information in the body as efficiently as adults.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that adults predict the target of an action and make anticipatory eye movements to that location (Flanagan & Johansson, 2003). These predictions are likely based on kinematic cues (Cavallo et al, 2016;Diaz, Fajen, & Phillips, 2012) that are widely distributed across body of the actor (McMahon et al, 2019;Pesquita, Chapman, & Enns, 2016;Vaziri-Pashkam, Cormiea, & Nakayama, 2017). Adults can use this distributed information to make predictions even when the locus of the information is far from the body part performing the action.…”

“…Adults can use this distributed information to make predictions even when the locus of the information is far from the body part performing the action. For example, when only viewing the head, neck, and shoulders, adults can predict where someone will reach with their finger (Pesquita, Chapman, & Enns, 2016;Vaziri-Pashkam, Cormiea, & Nakayama, 2017).…”

Models, movements, and minds: bridging the gap between decision making and action

“…If movement is the result of competition between internally represented choice options, then our movements broadcast our evolving decision process to the world. Others are able to pick up on these decision‐making signals simply by observing our movements and are able to use them to guide their own actions . This is a key aspect of body language, gesturing, and coordination, and might have been an important mechanism for the evolution of humans as a social species.…”

“…Others are able to pick up on these decision-making signals simply by observing our movements and are able to use them to guide their own actions. 174,175 This is a key aspect of body language, gesturing, and coordination, and might have been an important mechanism for the evolution of humans as a social species.…”