).Humans tend to shift attention in response to the averted gaze of a face they are fixating, a phenomenon known as gaze cuing. In the present paper, we aimed to address whether the social status of the cuing face modulates this phenomenon. Participants were asked to look at the faces of 16 individuals and read fictive curriculum vitae associated with each of them that could describe the person as having a high or low social status. The association between each specific face and either high or low social status was counterbalanced between participants. The same faces were then used as stimuli in a gaze-cuing task. The results showed a greater gaze-cuing effect for high-status faces than for low-status faces, independently of the specific identity of the face. These findings confirm previous evidence regarding the important role of social factors in shaping social attention and show that a modulation of gaze cuing can be observed even when knowledge about social status is acquired through episodic learning.Keywords: attention; gaze cuing; social cognition INTRODUCTIONResearch has shown that individuals belonging to several species, including humans, tend to shift their attention in the direction gazed by conspecifics, a phenomenon reflecting orienting of social attention known as gaze cuing [1 -3]. Social attention is an essential ability for obtaining an empathic contact with others and to discover potentially relevant information in the environment [3].Although gaze cuing is a robust phenomenon that can be considered automatic in several regards [4,5], evidence is accumulating showing that it is sensitive to several social modulators. A pioneer animal study reported that submissive macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) showed a generalized gaze-cuing effect independently of whether the face stimulus depicted a high-or a low-status individual, whereas dominant macaque monkeys selectively followed the gaze of high-status individuals ([6], cf. [7] for a non-significant effect of social ranking on gaze following). Dominant-like exemplars, who are likely to have elevated testosterone levels, are more closely attended to and trigger stronger gaze-cuing effects. A related modulation has recently been demonstrated also in humans, who show greater gaze-cuing effects for

Humans tend to shift attention according to others' eye-gaze direction. This is a core ability as it permits to create pervasive relationships among individuals and with the environment around them. In the beginning, this form of social orienting was considered a reflexive phenomenon, but in recent years evidence has shown that it is also permeable to several social factors related to the observer, the individual depicted in the cueing face, and the relationship between them. The major goal of this work is to provide a comprehensive overview concerning the role that social variables can play in shaping covert gaze cueing in healthy adults, critically examining both the modulatory social factors for which evidence is more robust and those for which evidence is mixed. When available, overt attention studies will also be discussed. Finally, a novel theoretical framework linking these social and attention domains will be also introduced.

Extant models of visual attention predict that a salient element should produce a bottom-up activation leading to a stimulus-driven attentional capture (e.g. Cave, 1999). However, apart from onset, previous works manipulating set-size in visual search failed to provide empirical evidence for this kind of capture. By varying target-singelton distance method, based on a single set-size, we explored whether, in a serial search task, an attentional capture is triggered by static discontinuities such as those generated through the manipulation of color, form, and luminance. The results suggest that those physical properties are indeed able to capture attention automatically.

In this study, we investigate whether attentional focusing, like attentional orienting, comprises two independent mechanisms. We provide direct empirical evidence in favor of the existence of two mechanisms--one exogenous, or automatic, and one endogenous, or voluntary-that playa role in adjusting the size of the focus of attention. Whena new object suddenly occurs in the visual field, the focus is first automatically fitted to it, and then an endogenous effort has to be exerted to maintain attention in the focused mode. Also, we provide evidence that voluntary focusing needs a perceptual object in order to operate.

Viewing a face with averted gaze results in a spatial shift of attention in the corresponding direction, a phenomenon defined as gaze-mediated orienting. In the present paper, we investigated whether this effect is influenced by social factors. Across three experiments, White and Black participants were presented with faces of White and Black individuals. A modified spatial cueing paradigm was used in which a peripheral target stimulus requiring a discrimination response was preceded by a noninformative gaze cue. Results showed that Black participants shifted attention to the averted gaze of both ingroup and outgroup faces, whereas White participants selectively shifted attention only in response to individuals of their same group. Interestingly, the modulatory effect of social factors was context-dependent and emerged only when group membership was situationally salient to participants. It was hypothesized that differences in the relative social status of the two groups might account for the observed asymmetry between White and Black participants. A final experiment ruled out an alternative explanation based on differences in perceptual familiarity with the face stimuli. Overall, these findings strengthen the idea that gaze-mediated orienting is a socially-connoted phenomenon.