Integrative Mechanisms of Social Attention

Monitoring the attention of others is fundamental to social cognition.
Most of the literature on the topic assumes that our social cognitive
machinery is tuned specifically to the gaze direction of others as a proxy
for attention. This standard assumption reduces attention to an externally
visible parameter. Here we show that this assumption is wrong and a
deeper, more meaningful representation is involved. We presented subjects
with two cues about the attentional state of a face: direction of gaze and
emotional expression. We tested whether people relied predominantly on one
cue, the other, or both. If the traditional view is correct, then the gaze
cue should dominate. Instead, people employed a variety of strategies,
some relying on gaze, some on expression, and some on an integration of
cues. We also assessed people’s social cognitive ability using two,
independent, standard tests. If the traditional view is correct, then
social cognitive ability, as assessed by the independent tests, should
correlate with the degree to which people successfully use the gaze cue to
judge the attention state of the face. Instead, social cognitive ability
correlated best with the degree to which people successfully integrated
the cues together, instead of with the use of any one specific cue. The
results suggest a rethink of a fundamental component of social cognition:
monitoring the attention of others involves constructing a deep model that
is informed by a combination of cues. Attention is a rich process and
monitoring the attention of others involves a similarly rich
representation.