title: Humans are sensitive to attention control when predicting others' actions.
abstract: Studies of social perception report acute human sensitivity to where another's attention is aimed. Here we ask whether humans are also sensitive to how the other's attention is deployed. Observers viewed videos of actors reaching to targets without knowing that those actors were sometimes choosing to reach to one of the targets (endogenous control) and sometimes being directed to reach to one of the targets (exogenous control). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that observers could respond more rapidly when actors chose where to reach, yet were at chance when guessing whether the reach was chosen or directed. This implicit sensitivity to attention control held when either actor's faces or limbs were masked (experiment 3) and when only the earliest actor's movements were visible (experiment 4). Individual differences in sensitivity to choice correlated with an independent measure of social aptitude. We conclude that humans are sensitive to attention control through an implicit kinematic process linked to empathy. The findings support the hypothesis that social cognition involves the predictive modeling of others' attentional states.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4; anapesquita@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pesquita
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2H9;
authors.forename: Craig S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Chapman
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4; Department of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
authors.forename: James T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Enns
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: action observation; action prediction; attention; autism spectrum; social perception