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Attention neglects a stare-in-the-crowd: Unanticipated consequences of prediction-error coding.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Ramamoorthy, Nayantara 
Plaisted-Grant, Kate 
Muhl-Richardson, Alex  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5673-4052

Abstract

Direct gaze - someone looking at you - is an important and subjectively-salient stimulus. Its processing is thought to be enhanced by the brain's internalised predictions - priors - that effectively specify it as the most likely gaze direction. Current consensus holds that, befitting its presumed importance, direct gaze attracts attention more powerfully than other gazes. Conversely, some Predictive Coding (PC) models, in which exogenous attention is drawn to stimuli that violate predictions, may be construed as making the opposite claim - i.e., exogenous attention should be biased away from direct gaze (which conforms to internal predictions), toward averted gaze (which does not). Here, searching displays with salient, 'odd-one-out' gazes, we observed attentional bias (in rapid, initial saccades) toward averted gaze, as would be expected by PC models. However, this pattern obtained only when conditions highlighted gaze-uniqueness. We speculate that, in our experiments, task requirements determined how prediction influenced perception.

Description

Keywords

Averted gaze bias, Direct gaze prior, Exogenous attention, Gaze perception, Predictive coding, Attention, Fixation, Ocular, Humans, Mental Disorders

Journal Title

Cognition

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0010-0277
1873-7838

Volume Title

207

Publisher

Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
N/A
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