Publication

Social relevance drives viewing behavior independent of low-level salience in rhesus macaques

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Last modified
  • 05/15/2025
Type of Material
Authors
    James A. Solyst, University of ArizonaElizabeth Buffalo, Emory University
Language
  • English
Date
  • 2014-01-01
Publisher
  • Frontiers
Publication Version
Copyright Statement
  • © 2014 Solyst and Buffalo.
License
Final Published Version (URL)
Title of Journal or Parent Work
Volume
  • 8
Issue
  • OCT
Grant/Funding Information
  • Funding provided by: NIH Grant R01MH093807, NIH Grant R01MH080007, National Center for Research Resources P51RR165, Office of Research Infrastructure Programs/OD P51OD11132, P50MH100023.
Abstract
  • Quantifying attention to social stimuli during the viewing of complex social scenes with eye tracking has proven to be a sensitive method in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders years before average clinical diagnosis. Rhesus macaques provide an ideal model for understanding the mechanisms underlying social viewing behavior, but to date no comparable behavioral task has been developed for use in monkeys. Using a novel scene-viewing task, we monitored the gaze of three rhesus macaques while they freely viewed well-controlled composed social scenes and analyzed the time spent viewing objects and monkeys. In each of six behavioral sessions, monkeys viewed a set of 90 images (540 unique scenes) with each image presented twice. In two-thirds of the repeated scenes, either a monkey or an object was replaced with a novel item (manipulated scenes). When viewing a repeated scene, monkeys made longer fixations and shorter saccades, shifting from a rapid orienting to global scene contents to a more local analysis of fewer items. In addition to this repetition effect, in manipulated scenes, monkeys demonstrated robust memory by spending more time viewing the replaced items. By analyzing attention to specific scene content, we found that monkeys strongly preferred to view conspecifics and that this was not related to their salience in terms of low-level image features. A model-free analysis of viewing statistics found that monkeys that were viewed earlier and longer had direct gaze and redder sex skin around their face and rump, two important visual social cues. These data provide a quantification of viewing strategy, memory and social preferences in rhesus macaques viewing complex social scenes, and they provide an important baseline with which to compare to the effects of therapeutics aimed at enhancing social cognition.
Author Notes
  • James A. Solyst, University of Arizona, Life Sciences North Room 327, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA e-mail: jsolyst@email.arizona.edu
Keywords
Research Categories
  • Psychology, Cognitive
  • Biology, Neuroscience

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