Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition

Something to Consider • 109

Something to Consider

Attention in Social Situations—

The Case of Autism

Attention is a crucial component of social situations. We pay

attention not only to what others are saying, but also to facial

expressions and body language that provide information about

the person’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Recent research

has shown, for example, that the direction of another person’s

gaze is a determinant of attention. When Alan Kingstone and

coworkers (2003) presented pictures of eyes looking in differ-

ent directions, participants shifted their attention toward the

direction the eyes were looking. Eyes, according to Kingstone,

infl uence attention because the perception of someone else’s

eye movements is a powerful social signal.

The link between attention and social interactions becomes

especially evident when we consider a situation in which that

link is disturbed, as occurs in people with autism. Autism is

a serious developmental disorder in which one of the major

symptoms is withdrawal of contact from other people. People with autism typically do

not make eye contact with others and have diffi culty telling what emotions others are

experiencing in social situations.

Research has revealed many differences in both behavior and brain processes

between autistic and nonautistic people (Grelotti et al., 2002). Ami Klin and cowork-

ers (2003) point out the following paradox: Even though people with autism can often

solve reasoning problems that involve

social situations, they cannot func-

tion when placed in an actual social

situation. One possible reason for this

involves differences in the way autistic

people observe what is happening. Klin

and coworkers demonstrated this by

comparing eye fi xations of autistic and

nonautistic people as they watched the

fi lm Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

● Figure 4.40 shows fi xations on

a shot of George Segal’s and Sandy

Dennis’s faces. The shot occurs just

after another character in the fi lm,

played by Richard Burton, has smashed

a bottle. The nonautistic observers fi x-

ated on Segal’s eyes in order to access

his emotional reaction, but the autistic

observers looked near Sandy Dennis’s

mouth or off to the side.

Another difference between how

autistic and nonautistic observers direct

their attention is related to the tendency

to direct their eyes to the place where a

person is pointing. ● Figure 4.41 com-

pares the fi xations of a nonautistic per-

son (shown in white) and an autistic

person (shown in black). In this scene,

● FIGURE 4.39 Areas that are associated with diff erent kinds of
attention. (Source: From M. I. Posner & M. K. Rothbart, “Research on Attention
Networks as a Model for the Integration of Psychological Science,” Annual Review
of Psychology, 58, 1–23, Figure 2, p. 6, 2007. Reprinted by permission.)

Parietal

lobe

Frontal
lobe

Occipital

lobe

Temporal

lobe

Alerting

Orienting

Executive

● FIGURE 4.40 Where people look when viewing this image from the fi lm Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Nonautistic viewers: white crosses; autistic viewers: black
crosses. (Source: A. Klin, W. Jones, R. Schultz, & F. Volkmar, “The Enactive Mind, or From Actions to
Cognition: Lessons From Autism.” The Royal Society, 2003. Published online.)

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