The Role of Perspective Taking on Attention: A Review of the Special Issue on the Reflexive Attentional Shift Phenomenon

Abstract

Attention is a process that alters how cognitive resources are allocated, and it allows individuals to efficiently process information at the attended location. The presence of visual or auditory cues in the environment can direct the focus of attention toward certain stimuli even if the cued stimuli are not the individual’s primary target. Samson et al. demonstrated that seeing another person in the scene (i.e., a person-like cue) caused a delay in responding to target stimuli not visible to that person: “alter-centric intrusion.” This phenomenon, they argue, is dependent upon the fact that the cue used resembled a person as opposed to a more generic directional indicator. The characteristics of the cue are the core of the debate of this special issue. Some maintain that the perceptual-directional characteristics of the cue are sufficient to generate the bias while others argue that the cuing is stronger when the cue has social characteristics (relates to what another individual can perceive). The research contained in this issue confirms that human attention is biased by the presence of a directional cue. We discuss and compare the different studies. The pattern that emerges seems to suggest that the social relevance of the cue is necessary in some contexts but not in others, depending on the cognitive demand of the experimental task. One possibility is that the social mechanisms are involved in perspective taking when the task is cognitively demanding, while they may not play a role in automatic attention allocation.

Investigating facilitatory versus inhibitory effects of dynamic social and non-social cues on attention in a realistic space

“…It is possible that for the localisation task, the primed motor response to the stick cue is eventually inhibited, causing the slowed motor response to the previously cued location (Taylor & Klein, 2000), with this taking longer than is seen in peripheral cuing studies due to the central nature of the task. This inhibition effect may also act upon the avatar cue, however, while the primed motor response may be inhibited, the response to the gaze direction may remain due to the powerful nature of the gaze cuing effect (Frischen et al, 2007a(Frischen et al, , 2007bPesimena et al, 2019), thus countering the inhibited motor response results in a weak or absent effect of the cue. Indeed, inhibition of return is rarely found for social gaze cues (McKee et al, 2007).…”

The effectiveness of a brief video-based intervention in reducing gender bias in Korea

“…This could be attributed to the relationship between the intervention time and the participants' sustained attention. Perspective-taking occurs when the cognitive and emotive information of others can be obtained, and adequate attention aids in efficient processing of information (Gehlbach, 2004;Pesimena et al,…”

Investigating facilitatory versus inhibitory effects of dynamic social and non-social cues on attention in a realistic space.

“…This inhibition effect may also act upon the avatar cue, however while the primed motor response may be inhibited, the response to the gaze direction may remain due to the powerful nature of the gaze cuing effect (Frischen, Bayliss, et al, 2007;Pesimena, Wilson, Bertamini, & Soranzo, 2019), thus countering the inhibited motor response results in a weak or absent effect of the cue. Indeed, inhibition of return is rarely found for social gaze cues (McKee, Christie, & Klein, 2007).…”