Target object moderation of attentional orienting by gazes or arrows

Abstract

Recent studies have attempted to demonstrate the importance of the characteristics of directional cues and observers' traits in attentional orienting. This study investigated how attentional orienting is influenced by target processing. Two experiments showed the critical role played by target processing in attentional orienting that relies on eye-gaze and arrow cues. In Experiment 1, stronger attentional orienting was observed under the object-target condition compared with the scrambled-display condition, irrespective of whether gaze or arrow cues were used. The results indicated that meaningful targets produced stronger attentional orienting than did meaningless targets, regardless of the social characteristics of the target. Experiment 2, which investigated whether attentional orienting was influenced by differences in the meaningfulness of targets regardless of their perceptual features, used participants' own faces and the faces of others as target stimuli; one's own face is typically more meaningful than the face of another. The results showed stronger attentional orienting in response to one's own face than in response to another's face under both gaze and arrow conditions. These findings suggest that the use of task-irrelevant meaningful information as targets may be effective in enhancing attention, regardless of perceptual features.Keywords Attentional orienting . Gaze . Arrow . Meaningful information . Self-relevant informationIn our daily lives, we simultaneously encounter various types of information with features of varying levels of importance. Generally, the ability to focus on important information and inhibit attention to other information is vital. This process works rapidly and effectively if directional information is available in the environment. An extensive body of literature has demonstrated that humans automatically orient their attention in the direction of centrally presented cues, such as gazes and arrows. In these studies (for a review, see Birmingham & Kingstone, 2009), a central uninformative cue was used to direct attention toward the right or left of a screen, and a target was presented afterward at either the cued or the opposite location. The response times (RTs) to detect a target were faster if it appeared in the location congruent with the cue rather than in the opposite direction (i.e., cueing effect). The ability to process directional cues (e.g., a conspecific's gaze) rapidly provides an advantage for survival and would therefore be favored during the evolutionary process (Emery, 2000).The majority of studies have investigated how various types of directional cues (e.g., gazes and arrows) trigger Tianyi Yan and Shuo Zhao are first coauthors on this work.

The Influence of Self-Referential Processing on Attentional Orienting in Frontoparietal Networks

“…These authors found qualitative differences in the fMRI data between gaze and arrow cues, but no differences in the behavioral data were found under the congruent and incongruent conditions. It is possible that the different influences of self-referential processing on the neural activity associated with attentional orienting under the incongruent and congruent conditions shown in the present study would have been more evident behaviorally if they had been assessed using a more difficult paradigm; indirect evidence supports this idea (e.g., Friesen et al, 2004 ; Sui et al, 2009 ; Yan et al, 2016 ). For example, using an identification task, Sui et al ( 2009 ) asked participants to identify whether a target at a left or right location was upright or inverted when using arrows after training trials were performed to associated the arrow cues with the words “self” and “friend”.…”

Disordered high-frequency oscillation in face processing in schizophrenia patients

“…Nevertheless, studies investigating related behaviors have found that attention to an arrow is stronger than attention to a face upon guidance. [ 34 ] Thus, attention may be a necessary factor in exploring the mechanism of facial processing in the future. In summary, the present study demonstrates that healthy adults have a specific processing pattern that is more likely based on configural analysis during face processing.…”

“…[ 33 ] New evidence has shown that compared with healthy controls, schizophrenia patients exhibit a significant N170 latency sluggishness. [ 34 ] Because time-frequency (TF) analyses involve a 2-dimensional display mode to facilitate the observation of changes in the frequency components over time, TF analysis methods are frequently used to investigate nonstationary, nonlinear EEG signals. Since many brain functions are modulated by frequency specificity, many electrophysiological studies investigating face processing have focused on frequency oscillations.…”

Association Between Cerebral Hypoperfusion and Cognitive Impairment in Patients With Chronic Vertebra-Basilar Stenosis

“…Hence, the conclusions must be further confirmed with a larger sample size. In the future, we will design different experiments related to neurocognitive function ( 43 , 44 ) and use various analytical methods to explore the pathologic mechanisms of neurocognitive deficits in patients.…”