Attention AND mentalizing? Reframing a debate on social orienting of attention

ABSTRACT

People spontaneously attend where others are looking. Recently, it has been debated whether such orienting behaviour is supported by domain-general attentional processes, that involve reading the cues’ directional properties, or by processes that involve attributing mental states to agents. In this Opinion, we summarize key evidence for each position and argue that instead of favouring one or the other view, the available data point to an integrated framework in which the attribution of mental states and the operation of domain-general attentional processes both contribute to social orienting. In addition to providing a novel perspective, this view opens several fruitful future research avenues aimed at understanding how the two processes act together to influence cognitions and behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Social attention
• directional cues
• gaze following
• perspective taking
• submentalizing

Acknowledegments

Supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC; FC, JR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC; JR), William Dawson Chairs Fund (JR), and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FC).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Francesca Capozzi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0062-437X

Jelena Ristic http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6046-9682

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Nature et Technologies; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; William Dawson Chairs Fund; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.