Social Cues Modulate Learning of Cue-Reward Association in Typically Developing Children and Adults: A Gaze-Contingent Learning Paradigm

Background: Attending to social signals is fundamental during social interactions, and failure to orient, attend and show preference for such signals is linked to atypical development of social cognition such as Autism. A possible mechanism underlying social orienting is the detection of the rewarding nature of social stimuli, as reward-related stimuli are shown to influence visual attention.

Objectives: To investigate the influence of associated reward on visual orienting to social and non-social stimuli in young typical developing children and adults, with the use of a novel gaze-contingent task to measure spontaneous orienting to these stimuli.

Methods: Sixty-four 3-4 year olds and sixty-four adults observed a stimulus display consisting of two peripherally presented dynamic cues and a centrally presented reward. Participants' eye movements were concurrently recorded with an eye-tracker, and the location of participant's fixation triggered the delivery of corresponding stimuli on-line. Fixation on each cue triggered a dynamic sequence of signals and subsequent delivery of a reward, which was a popular animated cartoon, or a penalty, a blank screen. Two different conditions were investigated. In a social condition, the videos of two persons were presented. An engaging person greeted and turned towards the centre of the screen while the other non-engaging person moaned and turned away from it. In a non-social condition, the videos of two dynamic spheres were presented. An engaging sphere was displaying an arrow associated with a winning jingle (“ding”) and moving towards the centre of the screen while the other non-engaging sphere was displaying an arrow associated with a failing jingle (“dong”) and moving away from it. Engaging cues triggered reward delivery for half the participants, and non-engaging cues for the other half of the participants.

Results: Both children and adults were able to learn the cue-reward association in all the conditions. Importantly, children learned the cue-reward association more rapidly and more efficiently in social and engaging condition than social non-engaging or non-social conditions. Similarly, adults learned the cue-reward association more rapidly and more efficiently in social and engaging condition than in social non-engaging condition. Unlike children, adults' performance did not differ between social engaging condition and in non-social conditions.

Conclusions: The results showed that the engaging nature of social cues facilitates both the speed and the efficiency of learning of cue-reward association, both in typically developing young children and in adults. It also demonstrated the utility of gaze-contingent learning paradigm to assess the role of social signal on a simulated social learning. Future research will benefit from this paradigm to study the relationship between social attention and learning in individuals with Autism.