Distinct Attentional Mechanisms for Social Information Processing as Revealed by Event-related Potential Studies

摘要

Phenomena such as the vanishing ball illusion, in which a ball seems to disappear in the atmosphere, whereas the magician is just using cues that capture social attention in order to deceive the audience, shows how human visual perception can be susceptible to social information. In this review the most recent event-related potentials (ERPs) studies of visual social information processing will be discussed. The available literature will be analysed concerning the question whether the processing of social information uniquely modulates attentional mechanisms (indexed in ERP amplitudes and latencies) compared to non-social information. The review demonstrates that ERPs show indeed functional consistency in amplitude and latency modulation on some components (e.g., P1, N170) across different types of social stimuli tested. Importantly, these unique attentional modulations in response to social stimuli as opposed to non-social stimuli were found beyond modulation by other stimulus characteristics. The attentional mechanisms reflected by these components are believed to facilitate social information processing in neurotypicals and point towards a special role of the social domain in human information processing.