Perceptual sensitivity is modulated by what others can see.

ABSTRACT: Previous work has established that social cues such as the direction of others' gaze or their perspective on a scene may influence one's own perceptual judgments. However, up until now it has remained unclear whether such influences are exerted at a perceptual or decisional locus, as most previous studies have used response times as their primary dependent measure. Here, we asked whether perceptual sensitivity is also dependent on social cognition. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants to evaluate whether low-contrast Gabor patterns embedded in noise were visible from either their own or an avatar's perspective. Across three experiments, we found that observers' detection performance was increased if an avatar also shared perception of the stimulus location. By leveraging signal d

SUBMITTER: Seow T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6675914 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature