Social information rapidly prioritizes overt but not covert attention in a joint spatial cueing task

Attention allocation in complementary joint action: How joint goals affect spatial orienting

When acting jointly, individuals often attend and respond to the same object or spatial location in complementary ways (e.g., when passing a mug, one person grasps its handle with a precision grip; the other receives it with a whole-hand grip). At the same time, the spatial relation between individuals' actions affects attentional orienting: one is slower to attend and respond to locations another person previously acted upon than to alternate locations ("social inhibition of return", social IOR). Achieving joint goals (e.g., passing a mug), however, often requires complementary return responses to a co-actor's previous location. This raises the question of whether attentional orienting, and hence the social IOR, is affected by the (joint) goal our actions are directed at. The present study addresses this question. Participants responded to cued locations on a computer screen, taking turns with a virtual co-actor. They pursued either an individual goal or performed complementary actions with the co-actor, in pursuit of a joint goal. Four experiments showed that the social IOR was significantly modulated when participant and co-actor pursued a joint goal. This suggests that attentional orienting is affected not only by the spatial but also by the social relation between two agents' actions. Our findings thus extend research on interpersonal perception-action effects, showing that the way another agent's perceived action shapes our own depends on whether we share a joint goal with that agent.

Visual memory of a co-actor's target during joint search

Studies on joint action show that when two actors turn-takingly attend to each other's target that appears one at a time, a partner's target is accumulated in memory. However, in the real world, actors may not be certain that they attend to the same object because multiple objects often appear simultaneously. In this study, we asked participant pairs to search for different targets in parallel from multiple objects and investigated the memory of a partner's target. We employed the contextual cueing paradigm, in which repetitive search forms associative memory between a target and a configuration of distractors that facilitates search. During the learning phase, exemplars of three target categories (i.e., bird, shoe, and tricycle) were presented among unique objects, and participant pairs searched for them. In Experiment 1, it was followed by a memory test about target exemplars. Consequently, the partner's target was better recognized than the target that nobody searched for. In Experiments 2a and 2b, the memory test was replaced with the transfer phase, where one individual from the pair searched for the category that nobody had searched for while the other individual searched for the category the partner had searched for in the learning phase. The transfer phase did not show search facilitation underpinned by associative memory between the partner's target and distractors. These results suggest that when participant pairs search for different targets in parallel, they accumulate the partner's target in memory but may not form its associative memory with the distractors that facilitates its search.

Gaze cueing, mental States, and the effect of autistic traits

The ability to interpret and follow the gaze of our social partners is an integral skill in human communication. Recent research has demonstrated that gaze following behaviour is influenced by theory of mind (ToM) processes. However, it has yet to be determined whether the modulation of gaze cueing by ToM is affected by individual differences, such as autistic traits. The aim of this experiment was to establish whether autistic traits in neurotypical populations affect the mediation of gaze cueing by ToM processes. This study used a gaze cueing paradigm within a change detection task. Participants' perception of a gaze cue was manipulated such that they only believed the cue to be able to 'see' in one condition. The results revealed that participants in the Low Autistic Traits group were significantly influenced by the mental state of the gaze cue and were more accurate on valid trials when they believed the cue could 'see'. By contrast, participants in the High Autistic Traits group were also more accurate on valid trials, but this was not influenced by the mental state of the gaze cue. This study therefore provides evidence that autistic traits influence the extent to which mental state attributions modulate social attention in neurotypical adults.

Are you paying attention to me? The effect of social presence on spatial attention to gaze and arrows

Prior research has shown that the presence of another individual and type of attention cue (social gaze vs. nonsocial arrow) can modulate attention, with little done to integrate the two. We thus investigate the role of two social presence factors when completing a joint cueing task with either social (gaze) or nonsocial (arrow) cues. Familiarity was operationalized as participants engaged in a prompted conversation either before (n = 60 dyads) or after (n = 59 dyads) the task. To determine the effect of previous responder identity on attention, we contrasted trials where participants responded twice in a row (same responder) with switch trials (different responder), along with whether the previous target was in the same or a different location. Although familiarity only affected global speed and not magnitudes of cueing, we did find that attention to gaze and arrows was differentially affected by previous responder and previous target location. Specifically, for gaze cues muted cueing effects occurred for trials where the previous responder was different, while for arrow cues there was less muting of the cueing effect regardless of previous responder. Taken together, previous responder and previous target location both modulated attention, with the effect on attention dependent on the type of cue, gaze, or arrow.

Motion or sociality? The cueing effect and temporal course of autistic traits on gaze-triggered attention

Gaze-triggered attention changes have been found in individuals with high autistic traits in the nonclinical population. However, gaze cues used in previous studies imply not only sociality of gaze but also the motion of gaze. To exclude the influence of motion, we manipulated the cue sociality by setting dot cues with similar motion characteristics as gaze cues to explore the underlying reasons of gaze-triggered attention changes in individuals with high autistic traits. We used a cueing paradigm within a visual matching task and recorded individuals' eye movements. Both the RT and eye movement of probe interface showed the benefit from gaze of the low autistic trait group was larger than that from dot and was larger than that of the high autistic trait group. While the high autistic trait group show similar benefit between gaze and dot. Eye movement results showed the dynamic changes of validity effect in two groups. The interaction between autistic traits and cue sociality was not significant within the 500 ms of cue presentation, marginally significant within 500-1,000 ms after cue presentation, but significant after 1,000 ms of cue presentation. The results demonstrated that the changes of gaze-triggered attention in individuals with high autistic traits was mainly caused by the sociality of gaze in the relative late stage.

Understanding joint action: Current theoretical and empirical approaches

Joint actions are omnipresent, ranging from a handshake between two people to the coordination of groups of people playing in an orchestra. We are highly skilled at coordinating our actions with those of others to reach common goals and rely on this ability throughout our daily lives. What are the social, cognitive and neural processes underlying this ability? How do others around us influence our task representations? How does joint action influence interpersonal interactions? How do language and gesture support joint action? What differentiates joint action from individual action? This article forms an introductory editorial to the field of joint action. It accompanies contributions to the special issue entitled "Current Issues in Joint Action Research". The issue brings together conceptual and empirical approaches on different topics, ranging from lower-level issues such as the link between perception and joint action, to higher-level issues such as language as a form of joint action.