Peer Presence Effects on Eye Movements and Attentional Performance

Abstract

Social facilitation" refers to the enhancement or impairment of performance engendered by the mere presence of others. It has been demonstrated for a diversity of behaviors. This study assessed whether it also concerns attention and eye movements and if yes, which decision-making mechanisms it affects. Human volunteers were tested in three different tasks (saccades, visual search, and continuous performance) either alone or in the presence of a familiar peer. The results failed to reveal any significant peer influence on the visual search and continuous performance tasks. For saccades, by contrast, they showed a negative or positive peer influence depending on the complexity of the testing protocol. Pro-and anti-saccades were both inhibited when pseudorandomly mixed, and both facilitated when performed separately. Peer presence impaired or improved reaction times, i.e., the speed to initiate the saccade, as well as peak velocity, i.e., the driving force moving the eye toward the target. Effect sizes were large, with Cohen's d-values ranging for reaction times (RTs) from 0.50 to 0.95. Analyzing RT distributions using the LATER (Linear Approach to Threshold with Ergodic Rate) model revealed that social inhibition of pro-and anti-saccades in the complex protocol was associated with a significant increase in the rate of rise. The present demonstration that the simple presence of a familiar peer can inhibit or facilitate saccades depending on task difficulty strengthens a growing body of evidence showing social modulations of eye movements and attention processes. The present lack of effect on visual search and continuous performance tasks contrasts with peer presence effects reported earlier using similar tasks, and future studies are needed to determine whether it is due to an intermediate level of difficulty maximizing individual variability. Together with an earlier study of the social inhibition of anti-saccades also using the LATER model, which showed an increase of the threshold, the present increase of the rate of rise suggests that peer presence can influence both the top-down and bottom-up attention-related processes guiding the decision to move the eyes.

Peer Presence Effect on Numeracy and Literacy in 4th Graders: When Working With a Schoolmate Makes Children More Adult-Like

“…Perhaps as a result, mixing pro-and anti-saccades comes at a higher cost than mixing numerosity and phonological comparisons. Namely, we observed an accuracy loss in mixed blocks (compared to separate blocks) of 14% for saccades [10], compared to only 3-6% for numerosity and phonological comparisons (Prado et al' 2014 2 nd to 7 th graders compared to the present 4 th graders: 3-4% loss; Prado et al' 2011 adults compared to the present adults; 5-6% loss). In any case, the present and earlier results converge to suggest that the benefits of peer presence could be exploited in the classroom by embedding a low-to-substantial proportion of demanding items within unchallenging ones.…”

“…Bond showed as early as 1982 that an observer's presence impairs the learning of three simple items if they are mixed with 10 difficult ones, and does not impair the learning of three complex items if they are mixed with 10 easy ones [67]. In a recent study, we showed that typical pro-saccades (to the target) are facilitated by a familiar peer's presence when performed by themselves, but inhibited when they are mixed with 50% of atypical anti-saccades (away from the target) [10]. The latter finding stands in apparent contradiction with the present study where adding 50% of demanding phonological did not prevent unchallenging numerosity comparisons from being facilitated by a familiar peer's presence.…”

“…This ubiquitous social influence, termed the social facilitation or inhibition phenomenon (SFI), occurs in humans and animals whenever others are executing the same task at the same time -coaction effect -but also when others are simply hovering nearby -mere presence or audience effect - [8,9]. SFI equally affects basic acts such as laughing or moving the eyes, physical skills such as running or dressing up, and cognitive functions such as memory or reasoning [9][10][11][12]. Strangers suffice to trigger SFI, but there is evidence that the effect increases with familiarity with the peer [13][14][15][16].…”

The role of chronotype and reward processing in understanding social hierarchies in adolescence

“…This is consistent with classic social facilitation effects, whereby the mere presence of others narrows attentional focus and results in improved performance on simple cognitive tasks (Sharma et al., 2010; Wolf et al., 2015). Research on social facilitation (or audience effects) in adolescents report performance decrements on complex tasks (Wolf et al., 2015), whereas in adults, facilitation effects in simple AS tasks have been found on processing speed but not on inhibitory control (Oliva et al, 2017; Tricoche et al., 2020). It would therefore appear social facilitation effects depend on task complexity and involve speed‐accuracy trade‐offs that undergo maturational changes from adolescence to adulthood.…”

Distinguishing Intermediate and Novice Surgeons by Eye Movements

“…New technologies offer advantages through recording the eye movements ( Atkins et al, 2013 ; Zheng et al, 2015 ; Kruger and Doherty, 2016 ; Gegenfurtner et al, 2017 ; Jian and Ko, 2017 ) of surgeons and analyzing the obtained data to provide a cost-effective, automated, and objective basis for assessing their skill levels ( Ahmidi et al, 2012 ; Tien et al, 2014 ). In this respect, eye-tracking provides objective metrics about human behavior ( Yarbus, 1967 ; Gegenfurtner and Seppänen, 2013 ; Dogusoy-Taylan and Cagiltay, 2014 ; Piccardi et al, 2016 ; Tsai et al, 2016 ; Bröhl et al, 2017 ; Jian and Ko, 2017 ; Tricoche et al, 2020 ), and these systems have many beneficial properties, making it easy to record and analyze eye-movement data ( Gegenfurtner and Seppänen, 2013 ; Tien et al, 2015 ; Zheng et al, 2015 ; Kruger and Doherty, 2016 ; Gegenfurtner et al, 2017 ). Thus, eye-tracking is used for assessing and understanding the differences between skill levels in the medical domain ( Stuijfzand et al, 2016 ; Gegenfurtner et al, 2017 ; McLaughlin et al, 2017 ; Fichtel et al, 2019 ).…”