Jinglan Wu¹ (), Qikai Zhang¹, Zaifeng Gao¹, Mowei Shen¹; ¹Zhejiang University

Social interaction pervades our daily experiences and has been a focal point of numerous studies in recent years. A pivotal inquiry revolves around whether social interaction information confers a perceptual advantage in visual search tasks. Existing evidence has previously suggested the absence of such an advantage, albeit constrained by a notable limitation—the reliance on static images that may inadequately capture social interaction nuances. We introduced dynamic biological motions into the visual search asymmetry paradigm to address this issue. And by mismatching the interactive dyads, we created the non-interactive dyads that are also presented in a face-to-face configuration. The deliberate creation facilitated the isolation of the social nature aspect for an independent investigation into the searching advantage attributed to social interaction. In experiment 1, participants were presented with sets of 3 or 5 face-to-face dynamic dyads, with one dyad differing in interactive properties from the rest. They were required to search for an interactive dyad among several non-interactive dyads or vice versa. Analysis of reaction time data revealed that participants exhibited heightened efficiency in detecting interactive targets over non-interactive ones across both set size conditions. To ensure the robustness of our findings, we expanded the range of set sizes from 3 and 5 to include 3, 4, and 5 conditions, and replicated the experiment, consistently yielding congruent results. These findings support the hypothesis that social interaction information confers an advantage in visual search. By introducing dynamic elements and disentangling the essence of social interaction within the experimental setup, our study provides a nuanced understanding of the inherent advantages associated with perceiving social cues in visual contexts.