Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrows
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemEditorial
Public Library of Science
Fecha
2023-01-05Referencia bibliográfica
Chacón-Candia JA, Lupiáñez J, Casagrande M, Marotta A (2023) Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrows. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0280955. [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280955]
Patrocinador
Research project (PID2020-114790GB-I00) by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/AEI; Research project (BSEJ- 572-UGR20) by the Regional Government of AndalusiaResumen
Numerous studies have shown that eye-gaze and arrows automatically shift visuospatial
attention. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether the attentional shifts triggered by these
two types of stimuli differ in some important aspects. It has been suggested that an important
difference may reside in how people select objects in response to these two types of
cues, eye-gaze eliciting a more specific attentional orienting than arrows. To assess this
hypothesis, we examined whether the allocation of the attentional orienting triggered by
eye-gaze and arrows is modulated by the presence and the distribution of reference objects
(i.e., placeholders) on the scene. Following central cues, targets were presented either in an
empty visual field or within one of six placeholders on each trial. In Experiment 2, placeholder-
objects were grouped following the gestalt’s law of proximity, whereas in Experiment
1, they were not perceptually grouped. Results showed that cueing one of the grouped
placeholders spreads attention across the whole group of placeholder-objects when arrow
cues were used, while it restricted attention to the specific cued placeholder when eye-gaze
cues were used. No differences between the two types of cues were observed when placeholder-
objects were not grouped within the cued hemifield, or no placeholders were displayed
on the scene. These findings are consistent with the idea that socially relevant gaze
cues encourage a more specific attentional orienting than arrow cues and provide new
insight into the boundary conditions necessary to observe this dissociation.