Attentional orienting induced by arrows and eye-gaze compared with an endogenous cue

Abstract

Exogenous orienting has been widely studied by using peripheral cues whereas endogenous orienting has been studied with directional central cues. However, recent evidence has shown that centrally presented eye-gaze and arrows may produce an automatic rather than voluntary orienting of attention. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the behavioural and electrophysiological (event-related potentials-ERP) correlates of the attentional shift induced by arrows and eye-gaze. In order to have a control condition, we compared arrows and eye-gaze with a purely endogenous cue, i.e., a texture arbitrarily coding one direction. We analyzed the ERP components (P1, N1, P2a, P2p, P3) elicited by the cue stimuli and the early lateralised attentional effect (early directing attention negativity-EDAN). In addition, in order to investigate the topography of the neural mechanisms underlying the cortical activity in each cueing condition, we applied a temporal segmentation procedure. The results showed that the three cueing conditions induced a different strength of activation within the same cortical network. Occipito-parietal regions were involved in the early processing of visual information, followed by an involvement of frontal areas, likely implicated in learning associations. These data confirm the assumption that, in contrast to purely endogenous cues, arrows and eye-gaze induce a very fast attentional shift. However, the similarity of the ERP components and of the topographical cortical maps among conditions suggest that this early orienting of attention is more likely related to an overlearned association mechanism rather than to a real exogenous attentional process.

Fearful, surprised, happy, and angry facial expressions modulate gaze-oriented attention: Behavioral and ERP evidence

“…The choice of the task was based on the idea that, in real life, we most often use eye gaze to localize the source of the emotion before discriminating it. Our results are consistent with studies suggesting that attention orienting by gaze and arrows may recruit similar neural networks (e.g., Brignani et al, 2009), although to be conclusive, prospective studies will need to directly compare EDAN and ADAN components to arrow and gaze cues in the same paradigm. It is also important to note the larger Gaze laterality effect at ADAN than at EDAN.…”

“…It was suggested that the processes at play in gaze-oriented attention are similar to those involved in arrow-oriented attention (e.g., Brignani, Guzzon, Marzi, & Miniussi, 2009). Thus, the two stages of attention, i.e., orienting toward a cued location and holding attention at that location, indexed, respectively, by EDAN and ADAN components in arrow cuing paradigms were expected.…”

Mental state attribution and the gaze cueing effect

“…With respect to social attention, we propose that repeated association between observed gaze direction and relevant stimuli leads to the formation of a gaze cueing schema that allows very rapid orienting of spatial attention to the gazed-at location. This idea is a more formal expression of the view that social attention is the consequence of learned associations, rather than an innate response to biological stimuli (e.g., Brignani, Guzzon, Marzi, & Miniussi, 2009). The advantage of placing gaze cueing in this framework is that the factors that mediate the selection/deselection of schemas have been precisely specified by Cooper and Shallice (2000).…”

Additive effects of emotional, endogenous, and exogenous attention: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

“…Taken together, these results suggest that, while both low-level physical properties of a stimulus and its emotional value influence the rapid allocation of attention, two separate mechanisms may be operating in parallel to increase neural processing of these different types of behaviorally relevant stimuli. Effects of exogenous attention may begin rapidly and primarily influence early stages of processing (fast attention orienting effect, see, e.g., Brignani, Guzzon, Marzi, & Miniussi, 2009), but be more short-lived; whereas the effects of emotional attention may be expressed at a slightly later onset and mainly impact on the visual encoding of the subsequent target T. Brosch et al / Neuropsychologia xxx (2011) xxx-xxx 7 as a function of the preceding emotional information at the same location (gain control effect, see Hillyard et al, 1998).…”