The role of visual processes in modulating social interactions

Conspiracy Theory as Individual and Group Behavior: Observations from the Flat Earth International Conference

Conspiratorial thinking has been with humanity for a long time but has recently grown as a source of societal concern and as a subject of research in the cognitive and social sciences. We propose a three-tiered framework for the study of conspiracy theories: (1) cognitive processes, (2) the individual, and (3) social processes and communities of knowledge. At the level of cognitive processes, we identify explanatory coherence and faulty belief updating as critical ideas. At the level of the community of knowledge, we explore how conspiracy communities facilitate false belief by promoting a contagious sense of understanding, and how community norms catalyze the biased assimilation of evidence. We review recent research on conspiracy theories and explain how conspiratorial thinking emerges from the interaction of individual and group processes. As a case study, we describe observations the first author made while attending the Flat Earth International Conference, a meeting of conspiracy theorists who believe the Earth is flat. Rather than treating conspiracy belief as pathological, we take the perspective that is an extreme outcome of common cognitive processes.

Viewing social scenes: a visual scan-path study comparing fragile X syndrome and Williams syndrome

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Williams syndrome (WS) are both genetic disorders which present with similar cognitive-behavioral problems, but distinct social phenotypes. Despite these social differences both syndromes display poor social relations which may result from abnormal social processing. This study aimed to manipulate the location of socially salient information within scenes to investigate the visual attentional mechanisms of: capture, disengagement, and/or general engagement. Findings revealed that individuals with FXS avoid social information presented centrally, at least initially. The WS findings, on the other hand, provided some evidence that difficulties with attentional disengagement, rather than attentional capture, may play a role in the WS social phenotype. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinct social phenotypes of these two disorders.

Attention to faces in Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is associated with distinct social behaviours. One component of the WS social phenotype is atypically prolonged face fixation. This behaviour co-exists with attention difficulties. Attention is multi-faceted and may impact on gaze behaviour in several ways. Four experiments assessed (i) attention capture by faces, (ii) interference from facial stimuli, (iii) face bias, and (iv) attention disengagement. Individuals with WS were compared to typically developing participants of comparable nonverbal ability and chronological age. The first three experiments revealed no atypicality of attention to faces in WS. However, in experiment 4 there was a suggestion that individuals with WS (compared to those developing typically) found it much more time consuming to disengage from faces than objects. The results are discussed in terms of attention abnormalities and possible face disengagement difficulties in WS.

Socioemotional Information Processing in Human Infants: From Genes to Subjective Construals

This article examines infant attachment styles from the perspective of cognitive and emotional subjectivity. We review new data that show that individual differences in infants’ attachment behaviors in the traditional Strange Situation are related to (a) infants’ subjective construals of infant—caregiver interactions, (b) their attention to emotional expressions, and (c) polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene. We use these findings to argue that individual differences in infants’ attachment styles reflect, in part, the subjective outcomes of objective experience as filtered through genetic biases in socioemotional information processing.

Body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies

OBJECTIVE

Evidence for attentional biases to weight- and shape-related information in women with eating concerns is inconclusive.

METHOD

We investigated whether body dissatisfaction is associated with an attentional bias toward thin bodies using a modified dot probe task.

RESULTS

In three studies, we found that undergraduate females were faster to discriminate the direction of an arrow cue when it appeared in the location previously occupied by a thin than a fat body. This attentional bias toward thin bodies was found using extreme stimuli (thin and fat bodies) presented for 500 ms (Experiment 1), extreme stimuli presented for 150 ms (Experiment 2), and less extreme stimuli that were equated for perceived extremity, presented for 150 ms (Experiment 3). When the stimuli were equated on perceptual extremity, the more dissatisfied a woman was with her body, and the larger her own BMI, the less of an attentional bias she showed toward thin bodies.

DISCUSSION

Our results indicate that women have an attentional bias to thin bodies, which appears to be automatic. Contrary to prediction, this bias was weaker in women with greater BMI and body dissatisfaction. This result offers no support for the view that selective attention to thin bodies is causally related to body dissatisfaction.