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In a spatial Stroop task, the eye-gaze target produces the reversed congruency effect-responses become shorter when the gaze direction and its location are incongruent than when they are congruent. The present study examined the face inversion effect on the gaze spatial Stroop task to clarify whether the holistic face processing or part-based processing of the eyes is responsible for the reversed congruency effect. In Experiment 1, participants judged the gaze direction of the upright or inverted face with a neutral expression presented either in the left or right visual field. In Experiment 2, we examined whether face inversion interacted with facial expressions (i.e., angry, happy, neutral, and sad). Face inversion disrupted holistic face processing, slowing down the overall performance relative to the performance with upright faces. However, face inversion did not affect the reversed congruency effect. These results further support the parts-based processing account and suggest that while faces are processed holistically, the reversed congruency effect, relying on the extracted local features (i.e., eyes), may be processed in a part-based manner.

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In the spatial Stroop task, an arrow target produces a spatial Stroop effect, whereas a gaze target elicits a reversed spatial Stroop effect. The reversed spatial Stroop effect has been explained by the unique attentional mechanisms of eye gaze. However, recent studies have shown that not only gaze but arrow targets produced a reversed spatial Stroop effect when embedded in a complex background. The present study investigated whether non-social targets produce a reversed spatial Stroop effect. We used the tongue, which generally does not convey social information, as a target in the spatial Stroop task, in addition to the conventional gaze and arrows. Participants judged the left/right direction of the target presented in the left or right visual field. While arrow and gaze targets replicated previous findings (spatial Stroop and reversed spatial Stroop effect, respectively), the tongue target produced a reversed spatial Stroop effect. These results are inconsistent with previous accounts emphasizing the unique status of eye gaze. We propose that temporal decay of the location code and response inhibition are responsible for the reversal of spatial interference.

Gaze cueing effects (faster responses for cued compared to uncued targets) has been attributed to an automatic shift of attention. However, gaze cueing effects can be explained by spatial conflicts between the gaze direction and the target location. In the present study, we used the gaze cueing paradigm to compare the validity of the two accounts (i.e., reflexive attentional shifts versus spatial conflicts). The cueing effects were largest at 100-ms SOA, irrespective of temporal overlap of the gaze cue and the target, the prerequisite for spatial conflicts (Experiment 1). Eye-region cues, which were used in the study supporting the spatial conflict account, reversed the gaze cueing effects when the cues were counterpredictive while typical face cues did not (Experiment 2). These results do not support the spatial conflict account and suggest the importance of the "faceness" of the cue stimuli.