{"id":1736,"date":"2014-11-23T20:10:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T01:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1736"},"modified":"2017-09-06T09:18:53","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T13:18:53","slug":"the-powerful-pull-of-the-face-how-human-faces-capture-and-hold-our-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/11\/23\/the-powerful-pull-of-the-face-how-human-faces-capture-and-hold-our-attention\/","title":{"rendered":"The powerful pull of the face: how human faces capture and hold our attention"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent\u2026It is the one that is most adaptable to change. In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.\u201d Sound at all familiar to you? It might if you have ever heard of a man named Charles Darwin. (High-speed sixth-grade science class recap: Darwin was that brilliant, illustriousnaturalistaccredited with the theory of \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d\u2014the natural selection tagline, if you will.) In 21st<\/sup>-century vernacular, one might say that he was \u201ckind of a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Thus we as a human species adapt over time, leaving behind the traits that aren\u2019t so useful and taking with us into the biological future those that are most advantageous to our survival. So what are some of these mechanisms most crucial to our survival? And, moreover, how do they relate to the field of cognitive psychology?<\/p>\n

One of the innumerable fascinating things about the brain is its ability to direct our attention to the things that matter most. Not only this, it does so without any conscious effort<\/em> on our part! Thank goodness for the both of these cognitive characteristics. Take a minute to think about all of the potentially distracting things, or stimuli, that are present in the environment around you at any given point in time. The world simply has too much stuff<\/em> to pay attention to all at once! If there wasn\u2019t a cognitive system in place to allocate our attention in pertinent ways, we would be constantly distracted by things that didn\u2019t necessarily matter\u2014not to mention overwhelmed, frustrated, and consequently incapable of functioning sanely in everyday life. (So thank you, cognitive processes; I owe you one.) Not only this, attention, just like oil and coal, is a limited resource. As a result, it must be used not only effectively (i.e., in ways that best enhance our chances of survival) but also efficiently.<\/p>\n

One of the key ways in which the brain directs our attention both effectively and efficiently is through its innate categorizing of stimuli into \u201ccrucial-to-attend-to\u201d and \u201cnot-crucial-to-attend-to\u201d groups. So, you may ask, what differentiates a \u201ccrucial\u201d stimulus from a \u201cnot-crucial\u201d one? Stimuli that make it into the \u201ccrucial\u201d group are the things that have, evolutionarily speaking, posed potential threats to our survival. So, things like loud sounds, bright light, and people (the faces of whom we will discuss later) get grouped into this \u201ccrucial-to-attend-to\u201d category\u2014a category of attentional directing known in the world of cognitive psychology as exogenous orienting. (The other category of attentional directing is endogenous orienting, but we will not discuss this type here.) \u201cExogenous\u201d can be defined as: \u201cof, relating to, or developing from external factors.\u201d This definition helps to clarify that the stimuli prompting exogenous orienting of attention are those that may signal some sort of survival threat. In other words, they are worth<\/em> paying attention to\u2014perhaps even vital.<\/p>\n

So, we have established which<\/em> stimuli are attended to with exogenous attentional orienting. But how<\/em> are they attended to? That is, by what means are these stimuli treated with such cognitive care? Exogenous stimuli are attended to by means of attentional capture, wherein the stimulus \u201ccaptures\u201d your attention unconsciously (or automatically) and spontaneously redirects it to focus on this new, significant stimulus. In this case we do not have control over whether or not our attention is diverted; exogenous orienting is an automatic process, meaning that it occurs outside of our conscious control or awareness. Attentional capture is therefore an efficient process, for automatic processes require fewer cognitive resources than do conscious, controlled, and more effortful processes. So we can see that exogenous stimuli are prioritized by our attentional system: they will always be attended to whenever they appear. How nice it is to know that our cognitive systems are constantly on the lookout for us! Our own personal watchdogs, they have our backs, ready to bark at any potential threat in order to reorient our attention.<\/p>\n

But what about after this barking stops? That is, what happens to our redirected attention once it has been captured initially? Does the exogenous stimulus lead to a holding<\/em> of our attention (i.e., attentional distraction) or merely a capture? Earlier this year (in 2014), three researchers set out to discover whether or not there was a distinction between the initial capture or orienting of attention and the subsequent holding of attention. Put in psychology terms, they wanted to dissociate <\/em>these steps in order to see if distraction was made up of two independent<\/em> attentional mechanisms.<\/p>\n

Awesome research idea! But with what exogenous stimulus to test such a question? Let\u2019s think: what distracting stimulus in our world both captures our attention fairly consistently and is highly significant as a cue? I know that I am constantly<\/em> distracted by people, particularly by their unique faces. This makes sense when we consider that faces are an incredibly important stimulus in our world: they serve as excellent social cues, capable of expressing a multitude of meanings through a multitude of expressions. We can all probably attest to the sometimes-misleading nature of facial expressions (I\u2019m sure we all know people who have perfected their poker face!). Generally speaking, however, the face is (at least in our culture) a very reliable indicator of different social and biological circumstances, and as a result is highly relevant\u2014highly salient\u2014as a stimulus. In fact, faces are so important in our everyday lives that our brains supposedly have an entire area dedicated to facial recognition processes. (See Talia\u2019s awesome post<\/a> about this for more information.) You might also want to check out Gemma\u2019s post<\/a> about social status and facial processing to see just how integrated the face is with larger contexts of social behavior.<\/p>\n

It makes perfect sense, then, that the researchers decided to use faces as the distractor item in their study, which consisted of two main experiments. The methods and procedures across the two experiments were very similar, with only minor (but crucial) variations. Participants in both experiments were students aged 17 to 23. They were presented with a series of gray frames; in the middle of each frame was a small fixation point upon which participants were instructed to stay fixated. The upper right corner of the frame was where the target item, the letter \u201cT,\u201d appeared, randomly switching its orientation every second. Participants\u2019 task was to categorize the letter\u2019s orientation after each switch it made (e.g., \u201cPress button 1 if the T was oriented in the vertical\/horizontal direction and button 2 if it was oriented in the diagonal direction.\u201d). This distractor item was completely neutral, which is important considering that overlap between distractor and target sets can affect the extent of attentional hold (Sy & Giesbrecht, 2011). Meanwhile, the distractor items would appear at the fixation point at 4-second intervals. (This substantial 4-second duration ensured that the distractor was fully processed and that any attentional holding could confidently be attributed to the stimulus itself, rather than to the effects of any transient attentional capture). Across all of the experiments, participants were told that the distractors were task irrelevant and should be ignored. The distractors were also not new to participants, which is important due to the fact that a stimulus\u2019s familiarity can affect attentional dwell time (Pars & Hopfinger, 2008).<\/p>\n

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It is in their distractor items that the experiments differed. Let\u2019s start with Experiment 1, which actually had two phases. In phase A, the distractors were grayscale images of either places or fearful faces; participants were presented with an equal number of each type. Reaction times to the \u201cT\u201d target item were slowed at the initial onset of both the fearful face and place distractors. However, in subsequent frames, reaction times were slower after a fearful face was shown than after a place was shown. This evidence showed that while both distractor types initially <\/em>captured attention, only fearful face distractors continued to hold <\/em>attention and distract participants (as evidenced by the slowed reaction times on later targets).<\/p>\n

In Phase B of Experiment 1 the researchers wanted to refine the results of Phase A. They wanted to make sure that the attentional holding observed was a result of the face and not the emotion itself (in this case, fear). So, in Phase B the distractor items were either places or neutral <\/em>faces. If attentional hold was indeed dependent on the faces themselves (and not their emotional expression), then here we would expect to see the same pattern of attentional hold for the neutral faces. And was this the case? Yes! Participants were still distracted by the neutral face distractors in later frames (as evidenced by slower target response times), and not by the place distractors. These results provided evidence that task-irrelevant (i.e., distracting) faces, regardless<\/em> of their emotional expression, hold attention past an initial attentional capture.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>Lastly, Experiment 2 wanted to further hone the results from all components of Experiment 1 by clarifying the following question: Might the face distractors result in attentional hold because of the distractor context in which they are presented? Thus Experiment 2 wanted to see if the attentional holding by faces is automatic or dependent on context. In this experiment, the two types of distractor items were fearful faces and neutral faces. If the results of Experiment one were independent of the distractors\u2019 context, then here too we should observe a holding of attention by both the fearful and neutral faces. But what did the researchers observe? They found that while both types of faces resulted in an initial capture of attention (consistent with earlier findings), they also both produced an equal<\/em> amount<\/em> of distraction (i.e., an equal degree of attentional hold)! These results can be explained in terms of context. In Experiment 1, participants couldn\u2019t expect the presence of a face, leading to an extended holding of attention as a result of the lack of anticipation. However, in Experiment 2 participants knew <\/em>that a face was going to appear no matter what. This expectation prevented participants\u2019 extended holding of attention in allowing them to sufficiently disengage from each distractor item (so as to avoid distraction on subsequent trials). Here we can see just how powerful a tool context can become: thanks to top-down cognitive processes (processes in which prior knowledge and expectations result in efficient perception), we can exploit the familiar to escape distraction! (Easier said than done, of course: focus <\/em>is quite another issue\u2026)<\/p>\n

We now know that task-irrelevant faces, regardless of their emotional expression, result in initial attentional capture and in a context-dependent attentional holding. Because the initial orienting of attention occurred in the absence of attentional holding in Experiment 2, the researchers were able to satisfy their hypothesis that distraction is composed of two distinct mechanisms of attention (capturing and holding).<\/p>\n

Thanks, Mr. Darwin, for setting these types of inquiries in motion.<\/p>\n

And thanks, cognitive guard dogs, for your protective services.<\/p>\n

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To read the article for yourself, click here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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References<\/p>\n

Parks, E. L., & Hopfinger, J. B. (2008). Hold it! Memory affects attentional dwell time<\/em>, Psychonomic, 6<\/em>, 1128\u20131134.<\/p>\n

Parks, E. L., Kim, S.-Y., &\u00a0Hopfinger, J. B. (2014). The Persistence of distraction: A study of attentional biases by fear, faces, and context Parks<\/em>, 21<\/em>, 1501\u20131508.<\/p>\n

Sy, J., & Giesbrecht, B. (2011). The influence of target-distractor similarity on perceptual distraction<\/em>, 11<\/em>, 247.<\/p>\n

Images<\/p>\n

Charles Darwin: http:\/\/www.macroevolution.net\/charles-darwins-autobiography-7.html#.VHJic1appuY<\/p>\n

Fearful Emoji:\u00a0http:\/\/www.emojistickers.com\/products\/fearful-face<\/p>\n

Neutral Emoji:\u00a0http:\/\/www.emojistickers.com\/products\/neutral-face<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent\u2026It is the one that is most adaptable to change. In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.\u201d Sound at all familiar to you? It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3779,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/3779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}