Abstract
Objective:
Joint attention is a situation in which two individuals direct attention to the same location or object. Such an interaction is often initiated when one individual follows, with his or her gaze, the direction of gaze of another individual. The importance of joint attention as a social skill has been established and investigated extensively in clinical and developmental research. However, it is difficult to design a well-controlled protocol in such settings. In the laboratory gaze cueing tasks have been used to investigate mere gaze following, but paradigms studying joint attention have been lacking. Here, we modified a typical gaze cueing task to investigate joint attention and sensory processing of stimuli located in the jointly attended location.
Participants and Methods:
Healthy participants were instructed to gaze either left or right of a face that was presented centrally on a computer screen. Subsequently, the observed face changed its gaze direction to the same location (joint attention) or the opposite location (disjoint attention) relative to the participant’s own gaze direction. Then, a tactile target (vibration) was delivered to either the left or right cheek of the participant, to which the participant responded with a button press. Thereby, the target was either congruent or incongruent with observed gaze, own gaze or both. While participants performed the task we measured reaction times and electro-encephalography.
Results:
The results indicate speeding of reaction times to targets present in the jointly attended hemifield. This speeding significantly exceeded the added effects of observed gaze and own gaze per se and thus reflected an effect of jointly attending to the same location. Joint attention also influenced event-related potentials that reflect sensory processing of the observed face and the tactile target.
Conclusions:
We conclude that joint attention facilitates multi-sensory processing at the attended location.
Joint attention is a situation in which two individuals direct attention to the same location or object. Such an interaction is often initiated when one individual follows, with his or her gaze, the direction of gaze of another individual. The importance of joint attention as a social skill has been established and investigated extensively in clinical and developmental research. However, it is difficult to design a well-controlled protocol in such settings. In the laboratory gaze cueing tasks have been used to investigate mere gaze following, but paradigms studying joint attention have been lacking. Here, we modified a typical gaze cueing task to investigate joint attention and sensory processing of stimuli located in the jointly attended location.
Participants and Methods:
Healthy participants were instructed to gaze either left or right of a face that was presented centrally on a computer screen. Subsequently, the observed face changed its gaze direction to the same location (joint attention) or the opposite location (disjoint attention) relative to the participant’s own gaze direction. Then, a tactile target (vibration) was delivered to either the left or right cheek of the participant, to which the participant responded with a button press. Thereby, the target was either congruent or incongruent with observed gaze, own gaze or both. While participants performed the task we measured reaction times and electro-encephalography.
Results:
The results indicate speeding of reaction times to targets present in the jointly attended hemifield. This speeding significantly exceeded the added effects of observed gaze and own gaze per se and thus reflected an effect of jointly attending to the same location. Joint attention also influenced event-related potentials that reflect sensory processing of the observed face and the tactile target.
Conclusions:
We conclude that joint attention facilitates multi-sensory processing at the attended location.
| Original language | English |
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| Publication status | Published - 15 Sept 2017 |
| Event | Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology - Maastricht, Netherlands Duration: 13 Sept 2017 → 15 Sept 2017 |
Conference
| Conference | Federation of the European Societies of Neuropsychology |
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| Country/Territory | Netherlands |
| City | Maastricht |
| Period | 13/09/17 → 15/09/17 |