Partially Different Mechanisms of Social and Nonsocial Attention: Evidence From Changes in Cueing Effects and Underlying Frontal Cortex Processing Over Time

TL;DR

This study shows that social cues like gaze and nonsocial cues like arrows use partly different brain mechanisms for attention, with gaze cues showing stronger effects over time.

Contribution

This is among the first studies to demonstrate partially distinct psychological and neural mechanisms for social and nonsocial attention over time.

Findings

Gaze cues showed a greater alerting effect than arrow cues in the second session.

Gaze cues led to significantly greater activation in the left posterior dorsomedial frontal cortex compared to arrow cues in Session 2.

Behavioral and neural findings suggest partially different mechanisms for gaze and arrow cueing over time.

Abstract

Gaze conveys important information about one's intentions and likely object of reference. Because processes of attention may change over time, for reasons including fatigue or experience, this study aimed to compare mechanisms of gaze and arrow cueing effects by measuring across sessions. On two separate occasions, 39 young adults underwent a cueing paradigm with valid or invalid gaze or arrow cues, as well as neutral cues. Activation in frontal cortex regions implicated in the dorsal and ventral attention networks was examined during task performance using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy. Behavioral results showed comparable orienting (valid vs. neutral) and reorienting (invalid vs. valid) responses following gaze and arrow cues, which did not significantly change over sessions. However, the gaze cue elicited a significantly greater alerting effect (i.e., more benefits from the presence of the cue on reaction time) than the arrow cue in Session 2. Parallel to these behavioral findings, neuroimaging results indicated robust (de‐)activation during orienting and reorienting. Aligning with the greater alerting effect, target detection elicited significantly greater activation in the left posterior dorsomedial frontal cortex following gaze cues as opposed to arrow cues in Session 2. Therefore, insofar as changes over time are concerned, our findings offer converging evidence that gaze and arrow cues follow partially different attentional and neural mechanisms.

By observing changes over time, this study was among the first to demonstrate that social and nonsocial attention, assessed through gaze and arrow cueing, involve partially distinct psychological and neural mechanisms. Our findings suggest that social attention may be unique, with important implications for understanding social attention deficits. Additionally, the results support using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to further investigate the neural mechanisms underlying social attention.

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