Detecting communicative intent in a computerised test of joint attention

Author:

Caruana Nathan123,McArthur Genevieve124,Woolgar Alexandra123,Brock Jon245

Affiliation:

1. Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

2. ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, NSW, Australia

3. Perception in Action Research Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia

4. Centre for Atypical Neurodevelopment, Sydney, NSW, Australia

5. Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Abstract

The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties—including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In theSearchtask, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In theNoSearchtask, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measurable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.

Funder

Australian Research Council

Australian Postgraduate Award

Publisher

PeerJ

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine,General Neuroscience

Reference41 articles.

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