Joint attention enhances visual working memory.

Abstract

Joint attention-the mutual focus of 2 individuals on an item-speeds detection and discrimination of target information. However, what happens to that information beyond the initial perceptual episode? To fully comprehend and engage with our immediate environment also requires working memory (WM), which integrates information from second to second to create a coherent and fluid picture of our world. Yet, no research exists at present that examines how joint attention directly impacts WM. To investigate this, we created a unique paradigm that combines gaze cues with a traditional visual WM task. A central, direct gaze 'cue' face looked left or right, followed 500 ms later by 4, 6, or 8 colored squares presented on one side of the face for encoding. Crucially, the cue face either looked at the squares (valid cue) or looked away from them (invalid cue). A no shift (direct gaze) condition served as a baseline. After a blank 1,000 ms maintenance interval, participants stated whether a single test square color was present or not in the preceding display. WM accuracy was significantly greater for colors encoded in the valid versus invalid and direct conditions. Further experiments showed that an arrow cue and a low-level motion cue-both shown to reliably orient attention-did not reliably modulate WM, indicating that social cues are more powerful. This study provides the first direct evidence that sharing the focus of another individual establishes a point of reference from which information is advantageously encoded into WM. (PsycINFO Database Record

A review of joint attention and social‐cognitive brain systems in typical development and autism spectrum disorder

“…Hypothetically, the valence system involvement in joint attention also may play a role in enhancing the impact of social attention coordination on encoding and information processing that has been in numerous studies (e.g., Striano et al ., ; Becchio et al . ; Kopp & Lindenberger, ; Wu et al ., ; Kim & Mundy, ; Gregory & Jackson, ).…”

Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

“…The role of intent in gaze can also help explain the growing evidence of gaze-specific effects observed in the literature when a Bqualitative^rather than a Bquantitative^approach has been used to dissociate between gaze and arrow attentional mechanisms. In particular, these studies have focused on effects other than the usual facilitation effect produced by gaze and arrow cues, such as object evaluation (e.g., Bayliss et al, 2006), object selection (Marotta et al, 2012), long-term memory (Dodd et al, 2012), working memory (Gregory & Jackson, 2017), and spatial interference, as we studied here.…”

“…This affective preference for cued objects was not found when arrows cues were used. Finally, combining a traditional gazecueing paradigm with a visual memory task, Dodd, Weiss, McDonnell, Sarwal, and Kingstone (2012) and Gregory and Jackson (2017) have shown that gaze cues but not arrow cues improved memory accuracy for cued information.…”

Sex Differences in Attentional Selection Following Gaze and Arrow Cues

“…For example, using a visual memory task, Dodd et al (2012) and Gregory and Jackson (2017) have studied the difference between gaze and arrow cues, showing an improvement in memory accuracy just when information is cued by a gaze but not when using an arrow. Moreover, Marotta et al (2018) observed that eye-gaze and arrows yielded opposite spatial interference effects when used as targets in a spatial interference task: whereas arrows elicited the usual spatial stroop effect, i.e., faster reaction times when its position was congruent with the direction, eye-gaze produced the opposite effect, i.e., faster responses when it was incongruent.…”