| Popis: |
In the attention schema theory, people attribute the property of consciousness to themselves and others because it serves as a schematic model of attention. Most of the existing literature on monitoring the attention of others assumes that people primarily use the gaze direction of others. In that assumption, attention is not represented by a deeper model, but instead limited mainly to a single, externally visible parameter. Here we presented subjects with two cues about the attentional state of a face: direction of gaze and emotional expression. We tested whether people relied predominantly on one cue, the other, or both when deciding if the face was conscious of a nearby object. If the traditional view is correct, then the gaze cue should dominate. Instead, some people relied on gaze, some on expression, and some on an integration of cues, suggesting that a variety of surface strategies could inform a deeper model. We also assessed people’s social cognitive ability using two, independent, standard tests. If the traditional view of attention monitoring is correct, then the degree to which people use gaze to judge attention should correlate best with their social cognitive ability. Instead, social cognitive ability correlated best with the degree to which people successfully integrated the cues together. The results strongly suggest that when people attribute a specific state of consciousness to another, rather than simply tracking gaze, they construct a model of attention, or an attention schema, that is informed by a combination of surface cues. |
