Mental state attribution and the gaze cueing effect

Abstract

Theory of mind is said to be possessed by an individual if he or she is able to impute mental states to others. Recently, some authors have demonstrated that such mental state attributions can mediate the Bgaze cueing^effect, in which observation of another individual shifts an observer's attention. One question that follows from this work is whether such mental state attributions produce mandatory modulations of gaze cueing. Employing the basic gaze cueing paradigm, together with a technique commonly used to assess mentalstate attribution in nonhuman animals, we manipulated whether the gazing agent could see the same thing as the participant (i.e., the target) or had this view obstructed by a physical barrier. We found robust gaze cueing effects, even when the observed agent in the display could not see the same thing as the participant. These results suggest that the attribution of Bseeing^does not necessarily modulate the gaze cueing effect.

Do humans spontaneously take the perspective of others?

“…As we suggested in the Introduction, we have set up an experiment in which the spontaneous perspective taking theory can be falsified. These data are also consistent with our previous observation that changes in perspective do not modulate the gaze-cueing effect (Cole, Smith, & Atkinson, 2015). The results of our direct tests contrast with many previous studies that have indirectly assessed spontaneous ToM processes.…”

Visual attention and action: How cueing, direct mapping, and social interactions drive orienting

“…Nonetheless, neither photographic faces nor dynamic movement in gaze cues have been shown to increase the magnitude of the gaze cueing effect with adults (Hietanen & Leppänen, 2003). Recent work has even revealed that gaze cueing in a live face-to-face situation elicits an effect comparable in magnitude to schematic eye gaze stimuli (Cole, Smith, & Atkinson, 2015;Lachat, Conty, Hugueville, & George, 2012). Interestingly, however, some evidence suggests that social manipulations of the gazecueing effect may be most powerful under conditions where gaze stimuli are dynamic and thus better approximates experience of gaze in the environment.…”

Real Person Interaction in Visual Attention Research

“…Research on gaze cueing has involved a wide range of experimental set-ups and stimuli. Some have used schematic faces (Friesen & Kingstone, 1998), others images of real faces (Driver et al, 1999) and some have even used real people (Cole, et al 2015). However, what is the appropriate level of abstraction?…”