The late positive potential indexes a role for emotion during learning of trust from eye-gaze cues. : The LPP and learning of trust from gaze

Gaze direction perception triggers rapid visuospatial orienting to the location observed by others. When this is congruent with the location of a target, reaction times are faster than when incongruent. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies suggest that the non-joint attention induced by incongruent cues are experienced as more emotionally negative and this could relate to less favorable trust judgments of the faces when gaze-cues are contingent with identity. Here, we provide further support for these findings using time-resolved event related potentials. In addition to replicating the effects of identity-contingent gaze-cues on reaction times and trust judgments, we discovered that the emotion-related late positive potential increased across blocks to incongruent compared to congruent faces before, during and after the gaze-cue, suggesting both learning and retrieval of emotion states associated with the face. We also discovered that the face-recognition-related N250 component appeared to localize to sources in anterior temporal areas. Our findings provide unique electrophysiological evidence for the role of emotion in learning trust from gaze-cues, suggesting that the retrieval of face evaluations during interaction may take around 1000 ms and that the N250 originates from anterior temporal face patches

Gaze-cueing of attention: Visual attention, social cognition and individual differences

During social interactions, people's eyes convey a wealth of information about their direction of attention and their emotional and mental states. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of past and current research into the perception of gaze behavior and its effect on the observer. This encompasses the perception of gaze direction and its influence on perception of the other person, as well as gaze-following behavior such as joint attention, in infant, adult, and clinical populations. Particular focus is given to the gaze-cueing paradigm that has been used to investigate the mechanisms of joint attention. The contribution of this paradigm has been significant and will likely continue to advance knowledge across diverse fields within psychology and neuroscience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract

Spatio-temporal judgements of observed actions : Contrasts between first- and third-person perspective after motor priming.

When observing actions, motor simulation processes aid the prediction and understanding of future events. A central issue concerns whether such action simulation serves social functions of interpreting other people, where performance is predicted to be better when third-person perspective (3PP) actions are viewed; or whether it is most beneficial to guide self actions, whereby the first-person perspective (1PP) would be advantageous. We show that in a spatio-temporal judgement task there is an advantage for the prediction of 1PP. However, this is only detected after motor priming whereby participants perform the observed actions prior to making spatio-temporal judgements. The results, firstly, confirm that we draw on our motor experience for the accurate simulation and prediction of action. Secondly, the results suggest that such experience facilitates more accurate state estimation for actions perceived in the 1PP which map more closely onto visual input of self-generated action. More forward prediction error is retained for 3PP viewed actions, which may however have the benefit of compensating for the uncertainty involved in interacting with others

Priming reveals attentional modulation of human motion sensitivity

AbstractAlthough recent fMRI and single unit recording studies have shown that attention modulates neural activity in motion sensitive areas of extrastriate cortex, these approaches cannot reveal qualitative or quantitative effects of attention on perception of motion. To investigate this, we asked observers to select one of two orthogonal directions in a brief, transparent dot display (prime) and then measured their sensitivity to global directional motion in a second uni-directional dot display (probe) presented a short time later. When probe direction matched the attended prime direction, sensitivity was degraded. But, when probe direction matched the ignored prime direction, sensitivity was enhanced, even though both components were of equal physical strength. Sensitivity was unchanged for directions opposite to either previously seen direction. Neither sensory adaptation nor opponent direction mechanisms can account for these data. Rather, processes initiated by visual selection must underlie these dramatic changes in motion sensitivity

Negative priming 1985 to 2015 : A measure of inhibition, the emergence of alternative accounts, and the multiple process challenge.

In this article, three generations of authors describe the background to the original article; the subsequent emergence of vigorous debates concerning what negative priming actually reflects, where radically different accounts based on memory retrieval were proposed; and a re-casting of the conceptual issues underlying studies of negative priming. What started as a simple observation (slowed reaction times) and mechanism (distractor inhibition) appears now to be best explained by a multiple mechanism account involving both episodic binding and retrieval processes as well as an inhibitory process. Emerging evidence from converging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and especially electroencephalography (EEG), is beginning to identify these different processes. The past 30 years of negative priming experiments has revealed the dynamic and complex cognitive processes that mediate what appear to be apparently simple behavioural effects. </jats:p

Gesturing Meaning: Non-action Words Activate the Motor System

Across cultures, speakers produce iconic gestures, which add – through the movement of the speakers’ hands – a pictorial dimension to the speakers’ message. These gestures capture not only the motor content but also the visuospatial content of the message. Here, we provide first evidence for a direct link between the representation of perceptual information and the motor system that can account for these observations. Across four experiments, participants’ hand movements captured both shapes that were directly perceived, and shapes that were only implicitly activated by unrelated semantic judgments of object words. These results were obtained even though the objects were not associated with any motor behaviors that would match the gestures the participants had to produce. Moreover, implied shape affected not only gesture selection processes but also their actual execution – as measured by the shape of hand motion through space – revealing intimate links between implied shape representation and motor output. The results are discussed in terms of ideomotor theories of action and perception, and provide one avenue for explaining the ubiquitous phenomenon of iconic gestures