Shared Attention Cuts Both Ways

Source: Amazon

As I pointed out in a previous post, Hans Asperger was clear about the key role of direction of gaze in normal social interaction and the deficits which autistic children showed in this regard. Indeed, according to Simon Baron-Cohen's Mindblindness (left), shared attention mechanism (SAM), along with mechanisms for detecting intention and direction of gaze, is the third component of a set of cognitive adaptations which add up to what he calls theory of mind mechanism, effectively equivalent to what I call mentalism.

As Baron-Cohen points out, SAM is based on the perception of a triadic relationship between the self, another agent, and a third factor, for example, something that the self and the other agent have in common. In his own words, “It is like a comparator” that “allows SAM to compute that you and I are both seeing the same thing, or smelling the same thing, or touching the same thing, or tasting the same thing, or hearing the same thing.” Rembrandt’s famous painting, Belshazzar’s Feast, depicts both direction of gaze and shared attention with wonderful dramatic effect.

Source: Wikimedia commons

Essentially, shared attention is the mental mechanism which unites participants in encounters, conversations, or meetings, not to mention other even larger groups, such as audiences in theaters and concert halls; congregations in churches and temples; political parties in parliaments and campaigns—indeed followers of the same leaders, ideals, or aspirations, no matter how scattered and otherwise isolated the followers may be.

Predictably perhaps, like awareness of direction of gaze, sharing attention is symptomatically deficient in autism (and often revealed by simple tests such as asking a child to clap in time with the rest of a group). But in some circumstances, such shared attention can be objectionable to those who are not included and can seem conspiratorial.

In such situations, although shared attention may result in group participation for some, it may mean social exclusion for others who cannot or will not participate or are actively ignored. Indeed, you can see this painfully in practice when people purposefully exclude someone from their shared attention in a group by avoiding that person’s gaze, ignoring their comments, and refusing to talk to them—or still worse, exchanging knowing glances drawing attention to the victim. Such social ostracism is facilitated in such circumstances by not sharing attention with the object of the in-group’s contempt. Clearly, shared attention cuts both ways.

Where shared attention is based on individuals having a common attribute such as ethnicity, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, or religion, it can begin to look like conscious collusion to outsiders, particularly if, as is often likely, the practical effect is complicity in promoting the common interests of those sharing the focus of attention in question—and all the more so if it is at the expense of those who do not share it. All too easily, such shared attention can lead to accusations of discrimination by members of the group in favor of one another, and against outsiders. Indeed, it only needs the members of such groups to develop the right—or perhaps I should say the wrong—beliefs about themselves for the outcome to become a serious social issue. An obvious example would be a group which focuses its shared attention on being supposedly superior in some way, and therefore antagonizes non-members because of the implication of the latters’ inferiority. Alternatively, you could imagine an in-group whose members focused on being victims, with the implication that there must be an out-group guilty of crimes against them—and perhaps one inviting retribution, revenge, or retaliation.

And of course, if groups exploiting the megalomanic/messianic or persecuted/paranoid strategies were indeed further distinguished by real ethnic, social, sexual, political, or religious attributes, their shared attention to such common factors would only compound the all-too-easy reaction of outsiders to think that the members were indeed consciously conspiring in self-serving, discriminatory, and anti-social behavior. Clearly, if mentalistic skills like sharing attention facilitate social behavior, we should not conclude that all the social behaviors they facilitate are necessarily beneficial to all. On the contrary, there are circumstances where mentalism can be a menace, both to individuals and to society, and not just when it involves oxytocin.

Indeed, one of the first insights provided by the diametric model was the realization that hyper-mentalized shared attention was the origin of the delusions of conspiracy which are so common in paranoia. The same is true in erotomania, where the subject delusionally believes that she is the focus of others’ amorous attention (and I say she advisedly because sufferers are predominantly female).

Finally, shared attention, like all mentalistic skills, illustrates the chief therapeutic insight of the diametric model: That normality means having enough of it to save you from being autistic, but not so much as to make you psychotic.

With thanks to Uta Frith for bringing this to my attention.