scholarly journals Responding to joint attention bids in schizophrenia: An interactive eye-tracking study

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (8) ◽  
pp. 2068-2083 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Kiley Seymour ◽  
Jon Brock ◽  
Robyn Langdon
Keyword(s):  
Joint Attention ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Computer Game ◽  
Oculomotor Control ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Directional Information ◽  
Communicative Intent ◽  
Gaze Cues

This study investigated social cognition in schizophrenia using a virtual reality paradigm to capture the dynamic processes of evaluating and responding to eye gaze as an intentional communicative cue. A total of 21 patients with schizophrenia and 21 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched healthy controls completed an interactive computer game with an on-screen avatar that participants believed was controlled by an off-screen partner. On social trials, participants were required to achieve joint attention by correctly interpreting and responding to gaze cues. Participants also completed non-social trials in which they responded to an arrow cue within the same task context. While patients and controls took equivalent time to process communicative intent from gaze shifts, patients made significantly more errors than controls when responding to the directional information conveyed by gaze, but not arrow, cues. Despite no differences in response times to gaze cues between groups, patients were significantly slower than controls when responding to arrow cues. This is the opposite pattern of results previously observed in autistic adults using the same task and suggests that, despite general impairments in attention orienting or oculomotor control, patients with schizophrenia demonstrate a facilitation effect when responding to communicative gaze cues. Findings indicate a hyper-responsivity to gaze cues of communicative intent in schizophrenia. The possible effects of self-referential biases when evaluating gaze direction are discussed, as are clinical implications.

scholarly journals Detecting communicative intent in a computerised test of joint attention

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Genevieve McArthur ◽  
Alexandra Woolgar ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Joint Attention ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Visual Array ◽  
Gaze Shifts ◽  
Gaze Shift ◽  
Communicative Intent ◽  
Cognitive Faculties

The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties – including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In the Search task, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In the NoSearch task, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measureable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.

scholarly journals Detecting communicative intent in a computerised test of joint attention

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e2899 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Genevieve McArthur ◽  
Alexandra Woolgar ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Joint Attention ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Visual Array ◽  
Gaze Shifts ◽  
Gaze Shift ◽  
Communicative Intent ◽  
Cognitive Faculties

The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties—including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In theSearchtask, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In theNoSearchtask, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measurable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.

scholarly journals Detecting communicative intent in a computerised test of joint attention

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Genevieve McArthur ◽  
Alexandra Woolgar ◽  
Jon Brock
Keyword(s):  
Joint Attention ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Eye Contact ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Visual Array ◽  
Gaze Shifts ◽  
Gaze Shift ◽  
Communicative Intent ◽  
Cognitive Faculties

The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties – including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In the Search task, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In the NoSearch task, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measureable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.

Observing painful events in others leads to a temporally extended general response facilitation in the self

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Michael Orquiola Galang
Keyword(s):  
Motor System ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Motor Evoked Potentials ◽  
Painful Stimulus ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
Motor Responses ◽  
Response Facilitation ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
General Response ◽  
Muscle Specificity

Excitability in the motor cortex is modulated when we observe other people receiving a painful stimulus (Avenanti et al., 2005). However, the task dependency of this modulation is not well understood, as different paradigms have yielded seemingly different results. Previous neurophysiological work employing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) suggests that watching another person’s hand being pierced by a needle leads to a muscle specific inhibition, assessed via motor evoked potentials. Results from previous behavioural studies suggest that overt behavioural responses are facilitated due to pain observation (Morrison et al., 2007a; 2007b). There are several paradigmatic differences both between typical TMS studies and behavioural studies, and within behavioural studies themselves, that limit our overall understanding of how pain observation affects the motor system. In the current study, we combine elements of typical TMS experimental designs in a behavioural assessment of how pain observation affects overt behavioural responding. Specifically, we examined the muscle specificity, timing, and direction of modulation of motor responses due to pain observation. To assess muscle specificity, we employed pain and non-pain videos from previous TMS studies in a Go/No-Go task in which participants responded by either pressing a key with their index finger or with their foot. To assess timing, we examined response times for Go signals presented at 0ms or 500ms after the video. Results indicate that observation of another individual receiving a painful stimulus leads to a non-effector specific, temporally extended response facilitation (e.g., finger and foot facilitation present at 0ms and 500ms delays), compared to observation of non-pain videos. This behavioural facilitation effect differs from the typical motor inhibition seen in TMS studies, and we argue that the effects of pain observation on the motor system are state-dependent, with different states induced via task instructions. We discuss our results in light of previous work on motor responses to pain observation.

scholarly journals Sex differences in eye gaze and symbolic cueing of attention

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew P. Bayliss ◽  
Giuseppe di Pellegrino ◽  
Steven P. Tipper
Keyword(s):  
Normal Population ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Autism Spectrum Quotient ◽  
Exogenous Orienting ◽  
Brain Theory ◽  
Attention Systems ◽  
Symbolic Cues ◽  
Extreme Male Brain Theory ◽  
Gaze Cues

Observing a face with averted eyes results in a reflexive shift of attention to the gazed-at location. Here we present results that show that this effect is weaker in males than in females (Experiment 1). This result is predicted by the ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism (Baron-Cohen, 2003), which suggests that males in the normal population should display more autism-like traits than females (e.g., poor joint attention). Indeed, participants′ scores on the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Stott, Bolton, & Goodyear, 2001) negatively correlated with cueing magnitude. Furthermore, exogenous orienting did not differ between the sexes in two peripheral cueing experiments (Experiments 2a and 2b). However, a final experiment showed that using non-predictive arrows instead of eyes as a central cue also revealed a large gender difference. This demonstrates that reduced orienting from central cues in males generalizes beyond gaze cues. These results show that while peripheral cueing is equivalent in the male and female brains, the attention systems of the two sexes treat noninformative symbolic cues very differently.

scholarly journals Early and Late Modulation of Saccade Deviations by Target Distractor Similarity

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 1451-1458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manon Mulckhuyse ◽  
Stefan Van der Stigchel ◽  
Jan Theeuwes
Keyword(s):  
Time Course ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Dependent Measure ◽  
Saccade Latency ◽  
Oculomotor Control ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Time Courses ◽  
Saccade Trajectory ◽  
Rule Out

In this study, we investigated the time course of oculomotor competition between bottom-up and top-down selection processes using saccade trajectory deviations as a dependent measure. We used a paradigm in which we manipulated saccade latency by offsetting the fixation point at different time points relative to target onset. In experiment 1, observers made a saccade to a filled colored circle while another irrelevant distractor circle was presented. The distractor was either similar (i.e., identical) or dissimilar to the target. Results showed that the strength of saccade deviation was modulated by target distractor similarity for short saccade latencies. To rule out the possibility that the similar distractor affected the saccade trajectory merely because it was identical to the target, the distractor in experiment 2 was a square shape of which only the color was similar or dissimilar to the target. The results showed that deviations for both short and long latencies were modulated by target distractor similarity. When saccade latencies were short, we found less saccade deviation away from a similar than from a dissimilar distractor. When saccade latencies were long, the opposite pattern was found: more saccade deviation away from a similar than from a dissimilar distractor. In contrast to previous findings, our study shows that task-relevant information can already influence the early processes of oculomotor control. We conclude that competition between saccadic goals is subject to two different processes with different time courses: one fast activating process signaling the saliency and task relevance of a location and one slower inhibitory process suppressing that location.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document