Functional_Consequences_of_Social_Attention_Adult_EEG

Social attention when viewing natural social (compared to non-social) images has functional consequences on contextual memory in healthy human adults. In addition to attention affecting memory performance, strong evidence suggests that memory in turn affects attentional orienting. Here we ask whether the effects of social processing on memory alter subsequent memory-guided attention orienting, and corresponding anticipatory dynamics of 8-12 Hz alpha-band oscillations as measured with EEG. Eighteen young adults searched for targets in scenes that contained either social or non-social distracters and their memory precision tested. Subsequently, reaction time was measured as participants oriented to targets appearing in those scenes at either valid (previously learned) locations or invalid (different) locations. Memory precision was poorer for target locations in social scenes. In addition, distractor type moderated the validity effect during memory-guided attentional orienting, with a larger cost in reaction time when targets appeared at invalid (different) locations within scenes with social distractors. The poorer memory performance was also marked by reduced anticipatory dynamics of spatially lateralized 8-12 Hz alpha-band oscillations for scenes with social distractors. The functional consequences of a social attention bias therefore extend from memory to memory-guided attention orienting, a bi-directional chain that may further reinforce attentional biases.

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The Functional Consequences of Social Attention for Memory-guided Attention Orienting and Anticipatory Neural Dynamics

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01379 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 (5) ◽

pp. 686-698 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Brianna Ruth Doherty ◽

Freek van Ede ◽

Alexander Fraser ◽

Eva Zita Patai ◽

Anna Christina Nobre ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Memory Performance ◽

Social Attention ◽

Attentional Orienting ◽

Alpha Band ◽

Healthy Human ◽

Attention Orienting ◽

Functional Consequences ◽

Human Adults ◽

Memory Precision ◽

Target Locations

Social attention when viewing natural social (compared with nonsocial) images has functional consequences on contextual memory in healthy human adults. In addition to attention affecting memory performance, strong evidence suggests that memory, in turn, affects attentional orienting. Here, we ask whether the effects of social processing on memory alter subsequent memory-guided attention orienting and corresponding anticipatory dynamics of 8–12 Hz alpha-band oscillations as measured with EEG. Eighteen young adults searched for targets in scenes that contained either social or nonsocial distracters and their memory precision tested. Subsequently, RT was measured as participants oriented to targets appearing in those scenes at either valid (previously learned) locations or invalid (different) locations. Memory precision was poorer for target locations in social scenes. In addition, distractor type moderated the validity effect during memory-guided attentional orienting, with a larger cost in RT when targets appeared at invalid (different) locations within scenes with social distractors. The poorer memory performance was also marked by reduced anticipatory dynamics of spatially lateralized 8–12 Hz alpha-band oscillations for scenes with social distractors. The functional consequences of a social attention bias therefore extend from memory to memory-guided attention orienting, a bidirectional chain that may further reinforce attentional biases.

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The functional consequences of social attention on memory precision and on memory-guided orienting in development

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100625 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 36 ◽

pp. 100625 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Brianna Ruth Doherty ◽

Alexander Fraser ◽

Anna Christina Nobre ◽

Gaia Scerif

Keyword(s):

Social Attention ◽

Functional Consequences ◽

Memory Precision

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Pre-exposure to ambiguous faces modulates top-down control of attentional orienting to counterpredictive gaze cues

10.31234/osf.io/7ezpb ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Abdulaziz Abubshait ◽

Ali Momen ◽

Eva Wiese

Keyword(s):

Social Attention ◽

Cognitive Resources ◽

Attentional Orienting ◽

Negative Consequences ◽

Top Down ◽

Gaze Cueing ◽

Mind Perception ◽

Attention Orienting ◽

Human Likeness ◽

Gaze Cues

Understanding and reacting to others’ nonverbal social signals, such as changes in gaze direction (i.e., gaze cue), is essential for social interactions, as its important for processes such as joint attention and mentalizing. Although attentional orienting in response to gaze cues has a strong reflexive component, accumulating evidence shows that it can be top-down controlled by context information regarding the signals’ social relevance. For example, when a gazer is believed to be an entity “with a mind” (i.e., mind perception), people exert more top-down control on attention orienting. Although increasing an agent’s physical human-likeness can enhance mind perception, it could have negative consequences on top-down control of social attention when a gazer’s physical appearance is categorically ambiguous (i.e., difficult to categorize as human or nonhuman), as resolving this ambiguity would require using cognitive resources that otherwise could be used to top-down control attention orienting. To examine this question, we used mouse-tracking to explore if categorically ambiguos agents are associated with increased processing costs (Experiment 1), whether categorically ambiguous stimuli negatively impact top-down control of social attention (Experiment 2) and if resolving the conflict related to the agent’s categorical ambiguity (using exposure) would restore top-down control to orient attention (Experiment 3). The findings suggest that categorically ambigious stimuli are associated with cognitive conflict, which negatively impact the ability to exert top-down control on attentional orienting in a counterpredicitive gaze cueing paradigm; this negative impact, however, is attenuated when being pre-exposed to the stimuli prior to the gaze cueing task. Taken together, these findings suggest that manipulating physical human-likeness is a powerful way to affect mind perception in human-robot interaction but has a diminishing returns effect on social attention when it is categorically ambiguous due to drainage of cognitive resources and impairment of top-down control.

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Relation between zinc content in saliva and blood in healthy human adults

Scandinavian Journal of Clinical and Laboratory Investigation ◽

10.3109/00365517709091509 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 37 (5) ◽

pp. 469-472 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

A. Mathur ◽

K. Wallenius ◽

M. Abdulla

Keyword(s):

Zinc Content ◽

Healthy Human ◽

Human Adults

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Retrospective prioritization of multiple items during working memory storage

10.31234/osf.io/3my2a ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Ashley DiPuma ◽

Kelly Rivera ◽

Edward Ester

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Memory Item ◽

Neutral Condition ◽

Memory Storage ◽

Single Item ◽

Incorrect Item ◽

Memory Precision ◽

Neutral Conditions ◽

Directing Attention

Working memory (WM) performance can be improved by an informative cue presented during storage. This effect, termed a retro-cue benefit, can be used to explore mechanisms of attentional prioritization in WM. Directing attention to a single item stored in memory is known to increase memory precision while decreasing the likelihood of incorrect item reports and random guesses, but it is unclear whether similar benefits manifest when participants direct attention to multiple items stored in memory. We tested this possibility by quantifying memory performance when participants were cued to prioritize one or two items stored in working memory. Consistent with prior work, cueing participants to prioritize a single memory item yielded higher recall precision, fewer swap errors, and fewer guesses relative to a neutral cue condition. Conversely, cueing participants to prioritize two memory items yielded fewer swap errors relative to a neutral condition, but no differences in recall precision or guess rates. Although swap rates were less likely during the cue-two vs. neutral conditions, planned comparisons revealed that when participants made swap errors during cue-two trials they were far more likely to confuse two prioritized stimuli than they were to confuse a prioritized stimulus vs. a non-prioritized stimulus. Our results suggest that it is possible to prioritize multiple items stored in memory, with the caveat that doing so may increase the probability of confusing prioritized items.

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