Uncovering the cognitive mechanisms underlying the gaze cueing effect.

The gaze cueing effect is the tendency for people to respond faster to targets appearing at locations gazed at by others, compared with locations gazed away from by others. The effect is robust, widely studied, and is an influential finding within social cognition. Formal evidence accumulation models provide the dominant theoretical account of the cognitive processes underlying speeded decision-making, but they have rarely been applied to social cognition research. In this study, using a combination of individual-level and hierarchical computational modelling techniques, we applied evidence accumulation models to gaze cueing data (three data sets total, N = 171, 139,001 trials) for the first time to assess the relative capacity that an attentional orienting mechanism and information processing mechanisms have for explaining the gaze cueing effect. We found that most participants were best described by the attentional orienting mechanism, such that response times were slower at gazed away from locations because they had to reorient to the target before they could process the cue. However, we found evidence for individual differences, whereby the models suggested that some gaze cueing effects were driven by a short allocation of information processing resources to the gazed at location, allowing for a brief period where orienting and processing could occur in parallel. There was exceptionally little evidence to suggest any sustained reallocation of information processing resources neither at the group nor individual level. We discuss how this individual variability might represent credible individual differences in the cognitive mechanisms that subserve behaviourally observed gaze cueing effects.

Enhancing ecological validity of gaze-cueing stimuli is associated with increased gaze following for older but not younger adults.

Gaze following is a core social-cognitive capacity. Previous work has shown that older adults have reduced gaze following relative to younger adults. However, all previous studies have exclusively used stimuli with low ecological validity, leaving room for alternative explanations for the observed age effects. Motivational models suggest that, relative to younger adults, older adults expend cognitive resources more selectively, such that they are less motivated to engage in tasks that are not meaningful or personally relevant. This may explain why their gaze following is reduced when stimuli are low in ecological validity. An expertise-based account suggests that older adults will have enhanced gaze following owing to their greater experience with gaze cues but that this enhancement may only emerge when stimuli are naturalistic and match those that they have more experience with. In the present study, younger (N = 63) and older adults (N = 68) completed a standard gaze-cueing task (static images) and a gaze-cueing task with enhanced ecological validity (videos of shifting gaze). In contrast to past research, both groups showed equivalent gaze following. Notably, in line with motivational model theorizing and experience-based accounts, ecological validity was associated with enhanced gaze following for older but not younger adults. These findings highlight the importance of considering stimulus ecological validity in social-cognitive aging research and provide information regarding the specific types of gaze cues that may be most effective in producing the cognitive and perceptual benefits associated with gaze cues for older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Subjective and objective sleep quality does not predict behavioural episodic foresight in younger or older adults.

Episodic foresight refers to one's capacity to use imagined scenarios to guide future-directed behaviors. It is important in facilitating complex activities of daily living, such as managing finances. Broader literature shows that older adults perform more poorly on tests of episodic foresight relative to their younger counterparts. At the same time, age-related changes in sleep often contribute to age-related decline in other cognitive abilities known to support episodic foresight, such as memory. No study to date has tested whether sleep quality is associated with episodic foresight when it is measured behaviorally; or whether this relationship is moderated by age. To address this, in the present study healthy younger (n = 39) and older (n = 41) adults were asked to wear an actigraphy watch and self-report their sleep quality for seven nights. Participants then completed the virtual-week foresight task-a behavioral assessment of episodic foresight. Neither objective or subjective sleep quality predicted episodic foresight outcomes, and this was not moderated by age group. Bayesian analyses provided evidence in favour of the null hypotheses. These results suggest that sleep quality (at least in healthy adult populations) may not be linked to episodic foresight.

Measuring Empathy Across the Adult Lifespan: A Comparison of Three Assessment Types.

Empathy is a core component of social cognition that can be indexed via behavioral, informant-report, or self-report methods of assessment. However, concerns have been raised regarding the lack of convergence between these assessment approaches for cognitive empathy. Here, we provided the first comparison of all three measurement approaches for cognitive and affective empathy in a large adult sample (N = 371) aged 18 to 101 years. We found that poor convergence was more of a problem for cognitive empathy than affective empathy. While none of the cognitive empathy measures correlated with each other, for affective empathy, self-report was significantly associated with both behavioral and informant-report assessments. However, for both cognitive and affective empathy, there was evidence for poor discriminant validity within the measures. Out of the three assessment approaches, only the informant-report measures were consistently associated with indices of social functioning. Importantly, age did not moderate any of the tested relationships, indicating that both the strengths and the limitations of these different types of assessment do not appear to vary as a function of age. These findings highlight the variation that exists among empathy measures and are discussed in relation to their practical implications for the assessment of empathy.

How Does Aging Affect Social Attention? A Test of Competing Theories Using Multilevel Meta-Analysis.

OBJECTIVES: The present study provides a meta-analytic assessment of how gaze-cued attention-a core social-cognitive process-is influenced by normal adult aging. METHODS: A multilevel meta-analysis of standardized mean changes was conducted on gaze-cueing effects. Age effects were quantified as standardized mean differences in gaze-cueing effect sizes between young and older adult samples. RESULTS: We identified 82 gaze-cueing effects (k = 26, N = 919 participants). Of these, 37 were associated with young adults (k = 12, n = 438) and 45 with older adults (k = 14, n = 481). Relative to younger adults, older adults had a reduced gaze-cueing effect overall, g = -0.59, with this age effect greater when the cues were predictive, g = -3.24, rather than nonpredictive, g = -0.78. DISCUSSION: These results provide the clearest evidence to date that adult aging is associated with a reduction in gaze-cued attention. The results also speak to potential mechanisms of this age effect. In line with cognitive decline models of aging, it was demonstrated that when gaze cues were predictive, only younger adults seem to benefit, suggesting that older adults exhibit a particularly reduced capacity to use gaze cues volitionally.

Sleep, stress and aggression: Meta-analyses investigating associations and causality.

Prior research suggests that sleep is associated with increased subjective stress and aggression, but important questions remain about the typical magnitude of these relationships, as well as their potential moderators. We therefore conducted the first meta-analysis of this literature. Across 340 associational and experimental studies, significant associations were identified between sleep with both subjective stress (r = 0.307, p < .001) and aggression (r = 0.258, p < .001) in individuals from the general population, as well as between sleep with subjective stress (r = 0.425, p < .001) in individuals with sleep disorders. Experimental sleep restriction also led to increased subjective stress (g = 0.403, p = .017) and aggression (g = 0.330, p = .042). These findings suggest that poorer sleep is associated with - and leads to - heightened levels of subjective stress and aggression. These findings, and their implications, are discussed in relation to neurobiological literature, which highlights the complex interplay between metabolic activity in the brain, hormonal changes, and behavior.

Visual attentional orienting by eye gaze: A meta-analytic review of the gaze-cueing effect.

Given limitations in the amount of visual information that a person can simultaneously process through to conscious perception, selective visual attention is necessary. Visual signals in the environment aid this selection process by triggering reflexive shifts of covert attention to locations of potential importance. One such signal appears to be others' eye gaze. Indeed, a gaze-cueing effect, whereby healthy adults respond faster to targets that are presented at locations cued rather than miscued by eye gaze has been consistently observed in the empirical literature. Critically though, the influences of task and cue features on this effect are not well understood. To address this gap, we report a meta-analytic integration of 423 gaze-cueing effects using a multilevel approach. A gaze-cueing effect emerged across all levels of the assessed task and cue features, indicating that others' eye gaze reliably directs observers' attention. We found that the magnitude of the gaze-cueing effect was moderated by whether direct gaze cues preceded directional gaze cues or not; the cue-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), whether participants had to detect, localize, or categorize targets; and the cue's facial expression. Whether or not the gaze cue remained on screen after the target appeared, and whether schematic faces, computer-generated faces, or images of real faces were used as cues, did not appear to reliably function as moderators. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, particularly in relation to the social attention system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).