Social attention directs working memory maintenance

Nie, Qi-Yang; Ding, Xiaowei; Chen, Jianyong; Conci, Markus

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.10.025

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…It is important to note that the effect of social attention on working memory in this study was re ected only in RT and did not affect the accuracy of the memory. This is not entirely consistent with the ndings of Nie et al [30] on the effect of social cues on working memory. They also set cues with 50% validity and found that memory performance was better with valid social cues than with invalid social cues, while dot cues did not show a cueing effect on memory performance.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 70%

“…This indicates that social cues can modulate the maintenance of working memory content. Compared with this study, the pictures used by Nie et al [30] were faces with different gaze orientations. Faces have been found to produce strong interference with cognitive tasks [50].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…With reference to the experiment by Nie et al [30], gaze cues were used as social cues in this study, wherein six images of real faces taken by a digital camera were processed by FaceGen Modeler version 3.4 to form faces that gazed left, right, or straight ahead. Then, the images were processed using Photoshop CS4 to retain only the eye region.…”

Section: Materials and Apparatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, we examined whether the JA characteristics of individuals with high autistic traits may further affect the maintenance of visual working memory. With reference to the experimental paradigm by Nie et al [30], which combines cueing and change detection, two types of cues were introduced in this study, with social cues set as the eye region of the face and non-social cues as dots. Cue validity was set at 50%.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Autistic Trait-Related Joint Attention on Visual Working Memory

Wang¹,

Xuan²,

S³

2020

Preprint

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Background: Social attention deficits have been found in individuals with high autistic traits in the non-clinical population However, the eye movement patterns triggered by gaze direction still need to be explored in individuals with different levels of autistic traits, and it remains unknown whether autistic traits can modulate the relationship between joint attention and visual working memory. The aims of this study were to investigate the effect of autistic traits on joint attention and whether autistic traits could further influence visual working memory performance through joint attention. Methods: A total of 46 participants who scored in the top and bottom 20% on the Chinese version of the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) were divided into high- and low-AQ groups. We used a combination of the cueing paradigm, change detection task, and eye-tracking technique to explore behavioral performance and eye movement patterns. The 50% validity gaze and dot cues were set as social and nonsocial cues, respectively. Results: The low-AQ group showed shorter reaction times for the gaze-cued location but not for the dot condition and not for the high-AQ group. The low-AQ group had a higher fixation proportion, more fixation counts both in the gaze-cued and dot-cued locations, and shorter entry time into the target ROI under the valid gaze condition. The high-AQ group only showed a dot cueing effect with a higher fixation proportion and more fixation counts in dot-cued location.Limitations: The small number of memory items may have led participants to encode polygons into long-term memory, which limits the only interpretation of results on visual working memory. In addition, participants in this study were all undergraduates or graduate students, which may limit the generalizability of our findings to a broader population.Conclusions: This finding suggest that autistic traits influence the pattern of attention triggered by gaze and dot cues. Individuals with low-AQ were more adept at using gaze cues to direct attention, while high-AQ individuals were less sensitive to gaze cues and preferred non-social cues. The difference in joint attention further affected the speed of visual working memory.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 70%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Materials and Apparatusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Autistic Trait-Related Joint Attention on Visual Working Memory

Wang¹,

Xuan²,

S³

2020

Preprint

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“…This influence of direct gaze is especially apparent when considering how eye contact influences working memory for other objects in a scene. When asked to detect changes between two consecutive arrays of geometric shapes (for example when one shape changes from a circle to a hexagon), performance is impaired by the presence of (utterly task irrelevant) eyes looking at us (vs. looking away, or at one of the other shapes; Nie et al, 2018;Wang & Apperly, 2017).…”

Section: Direct Gaze Distraction and Working Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Intentionally distracting: Working memory is disrupted by the perception of other agents attending to you — even without eye-gaze cues

2018

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Of all the visual stimuli you can perceive, perhaps the most important are other people's eyes. And this is especially true when those eyes are looking at you: direct gaze has profound influences, even at the level of basic cognitive processes such as working memory. For example, memory for the properties of simple geometric shapes is disrupted by the presence of other eyes gazing at you. But are such effects really specific to direct gaze per se? Seeing eyes is undoubtedly important, but presumably only because of what it tells us about the "mind behind the eyes"i.e., about others' attention and intentions. This suggests that the same effects might arise even without eyes, as long as an agent's directed attention is conveyed by other means. Here we tested the impact on working memory of simple "mouth" shapeswhich in no way resemble eyes, yet can still be readily seen as intentionally facing you (or not). Just as with gaze cues, the ability to detect changes in geometric shapes was impaired by direct (compared to averted) mouthsbut not in very similar control stimuli that were not perceived as intentional. We conclude that this disruption of working memory reflects a general phenomenon of "mind contact," rather than a specific effect of eye contact.

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Effects of a partner's task on memory for content and source

Elekes

Sebanz²

2020

Cognition

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Social attention directs working memory maintenance

Cited by 14 publications

References 48 publications

Effects of Autistic Trait-Related Joint Attention on Visual Working Memory

Effects of Autistic Trait-Related Joint Attention on Visual Working Memory

Intentionally distracting: Working memory is disrupted by the perception of other agents attending to you — even without eye-gaze cues

Effects of a partner's task on memory for content and source

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