Probing the time course of facilitation and inhibition in gaze cueing of attention in an upper-limb reaching task

Abstract

Previous work has revealed that social cues, such as gaze and pointed fingers, can lead to a shift in the focus of another person's attention. Research investigating the mechanisms of these shifts of attention has typically employed detection or localization button pressing tasks. Because indepth analyses of the spatio-temporal characteristics of aiming movements can provide additional insights into the dynamics of the processing of stimuli, the current study used a reaching paradigm to further explore the processing of social cues. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants aimed to a left or right location after a non-predictive eye gaze cue towards one of the target locations. Seven stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between 100 and 2400 ms were used. Both temporal (reaction time-RT) and spatial (initial movement angle-IMA) characteristics of the movements were analysed. RTs were shorter for cued (gazed-at) targets than to uncued targets across most SOAs. There were, however, no statistical differences in IMA between movements to cued and uncued targets suggesting action planning was not affected by the gaze cue. In Experiment 3, the social cue was a finger pointing to one of the two target locations. Finger pointing cues generated significant cuing effects in both RT and IMA. Overall, these results indicate that eye gaze and finger pointing social cues are processed differently. Perception-action coupling (i.e., a tight link between the response and the social cue that is presented) may play a role in the generation of action, and deviation of trajectories towards cued and uncued targets.

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

“…In addition, many studies have found that for peripheral cues, when the SOA is around 300 ms, the RT for the cued target is signi cantly longer than for the uncued target, that is, the inhibition of return (IOR), whereas the cueing effect of central cues is longer in duration and IOR occurs later, especially for gaze cues [46,47]. Frischen and Tipper [48] found that the IOR was only exhibited under gaze cues when the SOA was 2400 ms. Yoxon et al [49] also used a 50% validity gaze cue and set up seven SOAs: 100, 250, 400, 700, 1000, 1700, and 2400 ms. They found that at SOAs of 250, 400, 700, and 1000 ms, signi cant cueing effects were observed.…”

Social Gaze Cueing Elicits Facilitatory and Inhibitory Effects on Movement Execution when the Model might Act on an Object

“…Most existing research on the orienting of attention in social cueing uses discrete buttonpressing tasks and, as such, has only been able to examine RTs and/or response accuracy in choice tasks. Deviating from this tradition, Yoxon et al (2019) used an upper-limb reaching task to examine the facilitatory and inhibitory effects of gaze cues on attention and action execution.…”

“…In Experiment 1 of Yoxon et al (2019), the centrally presented model head remained fixating on the target until the end of the participant's reaching movement. In contrast, in Experiment 2, the gaze cue only lasted for 150 ms before the eyes of the model returned to a neutral gaze direction.…”

“…The differences in the patterns of trajectory deviations between the eye gaze and pointing cues could be attributed to the compatibility between the cue and the effector involved in the task (Welsh & Pratt, 2008;Welsh & Zbinden, 2009;Yoxon et al, 2019). In the case of Yoxon et al (2019), the finger pointing cue is similar to the hand used in the manual aiming task, allowing the cue to become salient to the attention/action system that underlies the aiming movement, which, consequently, affected the movement.…”

“…The differences in the patterns of trajectory deviations between the eye gaze and pointing cues could be attributed to the compatibility between the cue and the effector involved in the task (Welsh & Pratt, 2008;Welsh & Zbinden, 2009;Yoxon et al, 2019). In the case of Yoxon et al (2019), the finger pointing cue is similar to the hand used in the manual aiming task, allowing the cue to become salient to the attention/action system that underlies the aiming movement, which, consequently, affected the movement. Taken a step further, this conjecture implies that if the model which provides the cue manifests the potential to interact with the target locations through the same effectors as the participant uses in the response, the saliency of the cue to the underlying attention/action system should remain.…”