Beliefs about the Minds of Others Influence How We Process Sensory Information

Attending where others gaze is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of social cognition. The present study is the first to examine the impact of the attribution of mind to others on gaze-guided attentional orienting and its ERP correlates. Using a paradigm in which attention was guided to a location by the gaze of a centrally presented face, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the gazer: gaze behavior was believed to result either from operations of a mind or from a machine. In Experiment 1, beliefs were manipulated by cue identity (human or robot), while in Experiment 2, cue identity (robot) remained identical across conditions and beliefs were manipulated solely via instruction, which was irrelevant to the task. ERP results and behavior showed that participants' attention was guided by gaze only when gaze was believed to be controlled by a human. Specifically, the P1 was more enhanced for validly, relative to invalidly, cued targets only when participants believed the gaze behavior was the result of a mind, rather than of a machine. This shows that sensory gain control can be influenced by higher-order (task-irrelevant) beliefs about the observed scene. We propose a new interdisciplinary model of social attention, which integrates ideas from cognitive and social neuroscience, as well as philosophy in order to provide a framework for understanding a crucial aspect of how humans' beliefs about the observed scene influence sensory processing

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The Intentional Stance Model (ISM) of social attention.

<p>A visual stimulus (the robot face, bottom) is processed in the visual pathway from the lowest-level (early visual areas box) to higher-level areas (e.g., STS). The Attentional Network (IPS) is involved in orienting attention to the stimulus (the letter F) that is cued by the gaze. One of the core claims of ISM is that mentalizing is dependent on the Intentional Stance (IS), because it logically and functionally presupposes the adoption of the IS. Adopting the IS (or DS) occurs most probably in the anterior paracingulate cortex (36) and feeds back to the parietal attentional mechanisms, subsequently modulating the sensory gain control in the extrastriate visual areas (right). When observing an entity's gaze behavior while adopting the IS, this higher-order belief modulates the sensory gain control in the extrastriate areas, increasing the priority of an item cued by the gaze (represented by a higher peak of neural activity on the right; the other peak depicts an invalidly cued object). This additional prioritization does not occur when the brain adopts the DS. Thus, beliefs about the mind of others influence one's own mind. LGN =  lateral geniculate nucleus, V1 =  primary visual cortex, STS =  superior temporal sulcus, IPS =  intraparietal sulcus, mPFC =  medial prefrontal cortex, TPJ =  temporo-parietal junction. Processes of social cognition and perception that are the focus of this paper and are essential for the core claims of the ISM are highlighted in black and color, while gray boxes represent other processes of social perception/cognition that are not in the focus of this paper.</p

Grand average ERP waveforms time-locked to target onset in Experiment 2.

<p>The depicted waveforms represent ERPs for the pool of O1/O2/PO7/PO8 electrodes, as a function of cue validity (solid lines: valid trials; dashed lines: invalid trials) and instruction (black: human-controlled, gray: pre-programmed). The two types of targets (F and T) as well as left/right sides of visual field were averaged together. The displayed ERPs are the subtracted waveforms (target present-target absent) and filtered with a 30-Hz high-cutoff filter (Butterworth zero phase, 24 dB/Oct) for illustration purposes.</p

Mean RTs, error rates and mean amplitude of the P1 component (100–140 ms time window) for the neutral cue condition (gaze straight-ahead) as a function of type of cue provider (human vs. robot).

<p>Standard errors of the mean are provided in brackets.</p

Grand average ERP waveforms time-locked to target onset and voltage distributions in Experiment 1.

<p>The depicted waveforms (left) represent ERPs for the pool of O1/O2/PO7/PO8 electrodes, as a function of cue validity (solid lines: valid trials; dashed lines: invalid trials) and type of cue provider (red: human faces, green: robot faces), in Experiment 1. The two types of targets (F and T) as well as left/right sides of visual field were averaged together. The displayed ERPs are the subtracted waveforms (target present–target absent) and filtered with a 30-Hz high cut-off filter (Butterworth zero phase, 24 dB/Oct) for illustration purposes.</p

An example trial sequence.

<p>Participants first fixated on a fixation dot for 850(Experiment 1) or always a robot face (Experiment 2) gazing straight-ahead was presented for another 850 ms. Next, the gaze direction changed to either the left or the right for another 600 ms, which was then followed by target presentation (30 ms) either at the gazed-at location (valid-cue trial) or the opposite location (invalid-cue trials). Participants were then asked to respond to target identity, with a blank screen presented until the response. On catch trials, the display with a face gazing to the left/right was presented for another 30 ms. The stimuli are depicted as presented on the computer screen, with black outline squares representing the screen. The face stimuli were always presented with eyes at the level of the vertical midline of the screen, and at the same level as the target stimulus.</p