End Albert, Gamer Matthias
Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
R Soc Open Sci. 2019 Mar 6;6(3):180596. doi: 10.1098/rsos.180596. eCollection 2019 Mar.
Previous research demonstrated that humans rapidly and reflexively prioritize social features (especially heads and faces) irrespective of their physical saliency when freely viewing naturalistic scenes. In the current study, we investigated whether this preference for social elements already occurs maximally fast during free exploration or whether it is possible to additionally accelerate it by means of top-down instructions. To examine this question, we presented participants with colour photographs of naturalistic scenes containing social features (e.g. heads and bodies) while recording their eye movements. For half of the stimuli, observers were instructed to freely view the images; for the other half of the stimuli, their task was to spot depicted people as fast as possible. We replicated that social elements (especially heads) were rapidly preferred over physically salient image parts. Moreover, we found the orienting towards social elements to be additionally enhanced and accelerated when participants were instructed to detect people quickly. Importantly, this effect was strongest for heads and already evident at the very first fixation. Thus, the present study not only corroborates that the prioritization of social features in naturalistic scenes partially relies on reflexive processes, but also demonstrates that these mechanisms can be additionally accelerated by top-down instructions.
先前的研究表明，人类在自由观看自然场景时，会迅速且自发地优先关注社会特征（尤其是头部和面部），而不考虑其物理显著性。在当前的研究中，我们调查了这种对社会元素的偏好是在自由探索过程中已经以最快速度出现，还是可以通过自上而下的指令进一步加速。为了研究这个问题，我们向参与者展示了包含社会特征（如头部和身体）的自然场景彩色照片，同时记录他们的眼动。对于一半的刺激物，观察者被指示自由观看图像；对于另一半刺激物，他们的任务是尽快找出所描绘的人物。我们重复验证了社会元素（尤其是头部）比物理上显著的图像部分更受迅速青睐。此外，我们发现当参与者被指示快速检测人物时，对社会元素的定向会进一步增强和加速。重要的是，这种效应在头部最为明显，并且在首次注视时就已经显现。因此，本研究不仅证实了自然场景中社会特征的优先排序部分依赖于反射性过程，还表明这些机制可以通过自上而下的指令进一步加速。
