Mental state attribution and the gaze cueing effect

Cole, G.G.; Smith, D.T.; Atkinson, M.A.

Abstract

Theory of mind is said to be possessed by an individual if he or she is able to impute mental states to others. Recently, some authors have demonstrated that such mental state attributions can mediate the “gaze cueing” effect, in which observation of another individual shifts an observer’s attention. One question that follows from this work is whether such mental state attributions produce mandatory modulations of gaze cueing. Employing the basic gaze cueing paradigm, together with a technique commonly used to assess mental-state attribution in nonhuman animals, we manipulated whether the gazing agent could see the same thing as the participant (i.e., the target) or had this view obstructed by a physical barrier. We found robust gaze cueing effects, even when the observed agent in the display could not see the same thing as the participant. These results suggest that the attribution of “seeing” does not necessarily modulate the gaze cueing effect.

Citation

Cole, G., Smith, D., & Atkinson, M. (2015). Mental state attribution and the gaze cueing effect. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 77(4), 1105-1115. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0780-6

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 4, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Mar 4, 2015
• Publication Date: May 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Jun 26, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 4, 2016
• Journal: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics
• Print ISSN: 1943-3921
• Electronic ISSN: 1943-393X
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 77
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 1105-1115
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0780-6
• Keywords: Gaze cueing, Vision, Theory of mind, Social attention, Perspective taking.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1403057