Reflexive gaze following in common marmoset monkeys
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Citations
Gaze following requires early visual experience
Can Infants Reason About Beliefs
Acclimatizing and training freely viewing marmosets for behavioral and electrophysiological experiments in oculomotor tasks
Causal manipulation of gaze-following in the macaque temporal cortex
References
The neural basis of eye gaze processing.
Geometrical gaze following in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus).
Cross-species variation in gaze following and conspecific preference among great apes, human infants and adults
Facial expressions modulate the ontogenetic trajectory of gaze-following among monkeys
Corepresentation During Joint Action in Marmoset Monkeys ( Callithrix jacchus).
Related Papers (5)
Understanding visual access in common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus: perspective taking or behaviour reading?
Frequently Asked Questions (20)
Q2. What are the future works mentioned in the paper "Reflexive gaze following in common marmoset monkeys" ?
Yet, given the fact that the third animal exhibited a different pattern, characterized by an absence of a second gaze following peak and a constant choice at chance level after 300 ms, further studies will be needed to critically assess the possibility of periodicity. Hence, the question is why the drive to follow gaze is fully expressed in saccadic reaction times for short exposure times, arguably too short to allow a detailed scrutiny of the face whereas the choice bias increases further with exposure time for up to 300 ms. The first is fast, probably subcortical, controlling gaze following based on a rough and potentially error prone analysis of the other ’ s face, too limited to provide information on other aspects of the face like the identity or mood of the agent.
Q3. What is the effect of turning the head to the side?
Turning the head to the side will not only change the balance between paler and darker parts of the face but also disrupt the symmetry of the facial contour.
Q4. Why were saccades associated with long reaction times when presented briefly?
Neutral objects were associated with relatively long saccadic reaction times when presented briefly, probably because of the need to scrutinize the object in order to assess its significance.
Q5. What is the effect of a short exposure to the oriented face on the saccadic?
A short exposure to the oriented face can cause a profound shortening of saccadic reaction time, because the drive to follow gaze direction is already fully expressed whereas facial attraction is still building up.
Q6. What is the significance of the directional preference for the left?
For 100 ms presentation duration, the animals exhibited a significant preference for the target on the brighter side, i.e. opposite to the side preference to be expected based on a mechanism exploiting the luminance asymmetry associated with face orientation.
Q7. What is the way to measure the directional bias of the animals?
A choice bias is evident at the shortest duration time, whereas for longer exposures the animals chose the targets on the right and left at random.
Q8. What is the effect of the directional bias on the face?
A face that appears symmetric when seen in a straight ahead orientation will become asymmetric when turned to the side, an asymmetry that offers directional information.
Q9. What was the go signal for the animals to choose?
The disappearance of the conspecific’s face or the control stimuli and the simultaneous appearance of two peripheral targets was the go signal for the animals to freely choose one of two peripheral targets presented on the horizontal axis at 5° right and left of the center respectively, by means of a saccade.
Q10. How long did the triangles take to be presented?
The orientation was chosen randomly interleaved and the triangles were presented for 100 ms or 300 ms in separate blocks of trials, i.e. for the presentation durations that had provided the strongest effects of oriented marmoset faces.
Q11. How long does the other’s gaze follow?
In all three species the other’s gaze biases decisions on potential targets already after only 100 ms of exposure to the other’s gaze, too short to accommodate a more detailed scrutiny of the other’s face.
Q12. What is the role of gaze following in the study of old world monkeys?
Gaze following is a an important social skill, which enables humans, great apes and old world primates to establish joint attention on an object of interest to the other.
Q13. What is the effect of the directional gaze on the animal?
Here the directional gaze seems to suppress the buildup of attraction to the central object, facilitating the readiness to look elsewhere as determined by the resultant of the other’s gaze direction and an internal directional bias.
Q14. What is the effect of asymmetric non-face shapes on marmosets?
If marmoset gaze following relied on an ability to exploit contour asymmetries, one might expect that even asymmetric non-face shapes might redirect attention.
Q15. How did the animals choose the target?
The animals had to freely choose one of the two targets, a human face (2° × 3°extension), by making an indicative saccade into a window of 2° centered on the target within 500 ms.
Q16. What did the authors do to test the possibility of asymmetric non-face shapes?
In order to test this possibility the authors exposed their experimental animals to the vision of filled out black triangles, covering an area similar to the one covered by the portraits.
Q17. What is the directional bias in a straight ahead marmoset?
The white ear tufts on the left and right of the darker central face of a straight ahead marmoset offer a symmetric luminance profile.
Q18. What is the effect of exposure time on saccades?
latencies of saccades associated with neutral disks showed an influence of exposure time that was qualitatively opposite to the influence on saccades for congruent choices: while being similar to saccades for straight faces for short presentation durations, they became shorter with increasing exposure time (see Fig. 3).
Q19. What is the effect of the longer exposure time on the saccades?
This increased interest in the other’s face, gated by longer exposure times, can be expected to compromise the ability to quickly disengage attention at the time of the go-signal.
Q20. What is the probability of the oriented triangles?
Binomial probability: **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. (c) Bar plot of percentage of choices congruent with the side cued by the oriented triangles.