Wolf and Sheep Task

Background

The Wolf and Sheep Task is a computerized visual search animacy task used to study people's agency attribution, defined as the tendency to attribute goal-directed intentional behavior, such as 'chasing', to moving shapes. The Wolf and Sheep Task (also known as the "Chasing Paradigm") was developed by Tao Gao and Brian Scholl and colleagues at the Yale Perception and Cognition Laboratory.

The Wolf and Sheep task uses simple geometric shapes to represent a "wolf" (the possible agent, e.g. a red disc) and a "sheep" (the possible target, e.g. a yellow disc) that move around the screen. Participants have to determine whether the wolf is (intentionally) chasing the sheep.

Rebekka Solvik Lisøy (2018) used the Wolf and Sheep Task to study the autism-psychosis continuum (the continuum from missing social cues to overattribution of intent) and interpreted results within a signal detection framework. Her results support that people with psychotic traits such as paranoia exhibit a liberal response bias towards agency attribution even if their sensitivity to detect actual 'chasing' isn't significantly increased. No clear results emerged for individuals on the autism spectrum.

Task Procedure

Participants watch short videos of several red dots (the 'wolves', all labeled with a different letter) and one yellow dot ('the sheep') moving around the screen. At the end of each video participants are asked whether the yellow sheep was hunted and if so, to identify the chasing wolf by letter.

The task starts out with 2 practice trials to familiarize participants with the design. Error trials get repeated at this point. The test consists of 50 videos that each present 16 'wolves' and one 'sheep'. Half of the videos present a 'chasing' wolf. There is no feedback given during the test.

What it Measures

The Wolf and Sheep Task is a measure of agency attribution.

Psychological domains

• Animacy: The perception of an object as 'alive'
• Intentionality: Assigning a plan or wants to an animate object
• Agency Attribution: Assigning intentions to actions
• Theory of Mind: Ability to interpret mental states of others, independent of one's own

Main Performance Metrics

• d' prime: Measure of sensitivity to agency (how well a person can discriminate between videos that show agents and those that do not)
• c-criterium: Measure of response style (liberal vs. conservative in deciding whether agency was probably present)

Psychiatric Conditions

Performance on the Wolf and Sheep Task tends to be impacted in the following patient groups:

• Schizophrenia
• Schizoaffective Disorder
• Subclinical Paranoia

References

Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Wolf and Sheep Task.

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Gao, T., Newman, G. E., & Scholl, B. J. (2009). The psychophysics of chasing: A case study 603 in the perception of animacy. Cogn Psychol, 59(2), 154-179. 604 doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2009.03.001

Lisøy, R.S. (2018). Seeing minds: a signal detection study of agency attribution in autism and psychosis. NTNU. (Dissertation)

Lisøy RS, Biegler R, Haghish EF, Veckenstedt R, Moritz S, Pfuhl G. Seeing minds - a signal detection study of agency attribution along the autism-psychosis continuum. Cogn Neuropsychiatry. 2022 Sep;27(5):356-372. doi: 10.1080/13546805.2022.2075721. Epub 2022 May 17. PMID: 35579601.