Do I Have My Attention? Speed of Processing Advantages for the Self-Face Are Not Driven by Automatic Attention Capture

We respond more quickly to our own face than to other faces, but there is debate over whether this is connected to attention-grabbing properties of the self-face. In two experiments, we investigate whether the self-face selectively captures attention, and the attentional conditions under which this might occur. In both experiments, we examined whether different types of face (self, friend, stranger) provide differential levels of distraction when processing self, friend and stranger names. In Experiment 1, an image of a distractor face appeared centrally – inside the focus of attention – behind a target name, with the faces either upright or inverted. In Experiment 2, distractor faces appeared peripherally – outside the focus of attention – in the left or right visual field, or bilaterally. In both experiments, self-name recognition was faster than other name recognition, suggesting a self-referential processing advantage. The presence of the self-face did not cause more distraction in the naming task compared to other types of face, either when presented inside (Experiment 1) or outside (Experiment 2) the focus of attention. Distractor faces had different effects across the two experiments: when presented inside the focus of attention (Experiment 1), self and friend images facilitated self and friend naming, respectively. This was not true for stranger stimuli, suggesting that faces must be robustly represented to facilitate name recognition. When presented outside the focus of attention (Experiment 2), no facilitation occurred. Instead, we report an interesting distraction effect caused by friend faces when processing strangers’ names. We interpret this as a “social importance” effect, whereby we may be tuned to pick out and pay attention to familiar friend faces in a crowd. We conclude that any speed of processing advantages observed in the self-face processing literature are not driven by automatic attention capture

Oculomotor Guidance and Capture by Irrelevant Faces

Even though it is generally agreed that face stimuli constitute a special class of stimuli, which are treated preferentially by our visual system, it remains unclear whether faces can capture attention in a stimulus-driven manner. Moreover, there is a long-standing debate regarding the mechanism underlying the preferential bias of selecting faces. Some claim that faces constitute a set of special low-level features to which our visual system is tuned; others claim that the visual system is capable of extracting the meaning of faces very rapidly, driving attentional selection. Those debates continue because many studies contain methodological peculiarities and manipulations that prevent a definitive conclusion. Here, we present a new visual search task in which observers had to make a saccade to a uniquely colored circle while completely irrelevant objects were also present in the visual field. The results indicate that faces capture and guide the eyes more than other animated objects and that our visual system is not only tuned to the low-level features that make up a face but also to its meaning

Social presence and dishonesty in retail

Self-service checkouts (SCOs) in retail can benefit consumers and retailers, providing control and autonomy to shoppers independent from staff, together with reduced queuing times. Recent research indicates that the absence of staff may provide the opportunity for consumers to behave dishonestly, consistent with a perceived lack of social presence. This study examined whether a social presence in the form of various instantiations of embodied, visual, humanlike SCO interface agents had an effect on opportunistic behaviour. Using a simulated SCO scenario, participants experienced various dilemmas in which they could financially benefit themselves undeservedly. We hypothesised that a humanlike social presence integrated within the checkout screen would receive more attention and result in fewer instances of dishonesty compared to a less humanlike agent. This was partially supported by the results. The findings contribute to the theoretical framework in social presence research. We concluded that companies adopting self-service technology may consider the implementation of social presence in technology applications to support ethical consumer behaviour, but that more research is required to explore the mixed findings in the current study.<br/

Subliminal versus supraliminal stimuli activate neural responses in anterior cingulate cortex, fusiform gyrus and insula:a meta-analysis of fMRI studies

Background: Non-conscious neural activation may underlie various psychological functions in health and disorder. However, the neural substrates of non-conscious processing have not been entirely elucidated. Examining the differential effects of arousing stimuli that are consciously, versus unconsciously perceived will improve our knowledge of neural circuitry involved in non-conscious perception. Here we conduct preliminary analyses of neural activation in studies that have used both subliminal and supraliminal presentation of the same stimulus. Methods: We use Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) to examine functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that uniquely present the same stimuli subliminally and supraliminally to healthy participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We included a total of 193 foci from 9 studies representing subliminal stimulation and 315 foci from 10 studies representing supraliminal stimulation. Results: The anterior cingulate cortex is significantly activated during both subliminal and supraliminal stimulus presentation. Subliminal stimuli are linked to significantly increased activation in the right fusiform gyrus and right insula. Supraliminal stimuli show significantly increased activation in the left rostral anterior cingulate. Conclusions: Non-conscious processing of arousing stimuli may involve primary visual areas and may also recruit the insula, a brain area involved in eventual interoceptive awareness. The anterior cingulate is perhaps a key brain region for the integration of conscious and non-conscious processing. These preliminary data provide candidate brain regions for further study in to the neural correlates of conscious experience

Early visual ERPs show stable body-sensitive patterns over a 4-week test period

Event-related potential (ERP) studies feature among the most cited papers in the field of body representation, with recent research highlighting the potential of ERPs as neuropsychiatric biomarkers. Despite this, investigation into how reliable early visual ERPs and body-sensitive effects are over time has been overlooked. This study therefore aimed to assess the stability of early body-sensitive effects and visual P1, N1 and VPP responses. Participants were asked to identify pictures of their own bodies, other bodies and houses during an EEG test session that was completed at the same time, once a week, for four consecutive weeks. Results showed that amplitude and latency of early visual components and their associated body-sensitive effects were stable over the 4-week period. Furthermore, correlational analyses revealed that VPP component amplitude might be more reliable than VPP latency and specific electrode sites might be more robust indicators of body-sensitive cortical activity than others. These findings suggest that visual P1, N1 and VPP responses, alongside body-sensitive N1/VPP effects, are robust indications of neuronal activity. We conclude that these components are eligible to be considered as electrophysiological biomarkers relevant to body representation

Neural Basis of Self and Other Representation in Autism: An fMRI Study of Self-Face Recognition

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by decreased interest and engagement in social interactions and by enhanced self-focus. While previous theoretical approaches to understanding autism have emphasized social impairments and altered interpersonal interactions, there is a recent shift towards understanding the nature of the representation of the self in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Still, the neural mechanisms subserving self-representations in ASD are relatively unexplored.We used event-related fMRI to investigate brain responsiveness to images of the subjects' own face and to faces of others. Children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children viewed randomly presented digital morphs between their own face and a gender-matched other face, and made "self/other" judgments. Both groups of children activated a right premotor/prefrontal system when identifying images containing a greater percentage of the self face. However, while TD children showed activation of this system during both self- and other-processing, children with ASD only recruited this system while viewing images containing mostly their own face.This functional dissociation between the representation of self versus others points to a potential neural substrate for the characteristic self-focus and decreased social understanding exhibited by these individuals, and suggests that individuals with ASD lack the shared neural representations for self and others that TD children and adults possess and may use to understand others

Threat captures attention, but not automatically: Top-down goals modulate attentional orienting to threat distractors

The rapid orienting of attention to potential threats has been proposed to proceed outside of top-down control. However, paradigms that have been used to investigate this have struggled to separate the rapid orienting of attention (i.e. capture) from the later disengagement of focal attention that may be subject to top-down control. Consequently, it remains unclear whether and to what extent orienting to threat is contingent on top-down goals. The current study manipulated the goal-relevance of threat distractors (spiders), whilst a strict top-down attentional set was encouraged by presenting the saliently colored target and the threat distracter simultaneously for a limited time. The goal-relevance of threatening distractors was manipulated by including a spider amongst the possible target stimuli (Experiment 1: spider/cat targets) or excluding it (Experiment 2: bird/fish targets). Orienting and disengagement were disentangled by cueing attention away from or towards the threat prior to its onset. The results indicated that the threatening spider distractors elicited rapid orienting of attention when spiders were potentially goal-relevant (Experiment 1) but did so much less when they were irrelevant to the task goal (Experiment 2). Delayed disengagement from the threat distractors was even more strongly contingent on the task goal and occurred only when a spider was a possible target. These results highlight the role of top-down goals in attentional orienting to and disengagement from threat. © 2016 The Psychonomic Society, Inc

Is That Me or My Twin? Lack of Self-Face Recognition Advantage in Identical Twins

Despite the increasing interest in twin studies and the stunning amount of research on face recognition, the ability of adult identical twins to discriminate their own faces from those of their co-twins has been scarcely investigated. One’s own face is the most distinctive feature of the bodily self, and people typically show a clear advantage in recognizing their own face even more than other very familiar identities. Given the very high level of resemblance of their faces, monozygotic twins represent a unique model for exploring self-face processing. Herein we examined the ability of monozygotic twins to distinguish their own face from the face of their co-twin and of a highly familiar individual. Results show that twins equally recognize their own face and their twin’s face. This lack of self-face advantage was negatively predicted by how much they felt physically similar to their co-twin and by their anxious or avoidant attachment style. We speculate that in monozygotic twins, the visual representation of the self-face overlaps with that of the co-twin. Thus, to distinguish the self from the co-twin, monozygotic twins have to rely much more than control participants on the multisensory integration processes upon which the sense of bodily self is based. Moreover, in keeping with the notion that attachment style influences perception of self and significant others, we propose that the observed self/co-twin confusion may depend upon insecure attachment