Eye gaze cannot be ignored (but neither can arrows)

Abstract

Recent studies have tried to shed light on the automaticity of attentional shifts triggered by gaze and arrows with mixed results. In the present research, we aimed at testing a strong definition of resistance to suppression for orienting of attention elicited by these two cues. In five experiments, participants were informed with 100% certainty about the future location of a target they had to react to by presentation of either a direction word at the beginning of each trial or instructions at the beginning of each block. Gaze and arrows were presented before the target as uninformative distractors irrelevant for the task. The results showed similar patterns for gaze and arrows-namely, an interference effect when the distractors were incongruent with the upcoming target location. This suggests that the orienting of attention mediated by gaze and arrows can be considered as strongly automatic.

The politics of attention contextualized: gaze but not arrow cuing of attention is moderated by political temperament

“…The second aim was to determine whether the lack of gaze cuing reported by Dodd et al (2011) was suggestive of a general reduced response toward central cues or a gazespecific phenomenon. To this purpose, we included also arrows, that is central cues that are known to be very effective in pushing attention and are often used as a term of comparison for eye gaze (e.g., Galfano et al 2012;Kuhn and Kingstone 2009;Tipples 2002).…”

“…In the arrow-cue block, the cue was an arrow (3.8°9 1.6°) pointing either rightward or leftward. The arrow appeared with a symmetric head and tail in order to be comparable to the two eyes conveying directional information (see also Galfano et al 2012). A PC running E-prime 1.1 handled stimulus presentation and data collection.…”

“…In order to explore this latter hypothesis, in the present study we used the procedure employed by Dodd et al (2011) and examined attention shifting in both conservatives and liberals by comparing gaze and arrow cues. Similar to gaze, arrow cues have been shown to elicit reflexive shifts of attention and are often used as a useful term of comparison for assessing the relative impact of social and symbolic cues both in normal individuals (e.g., Galfano et al 2012;Kuhn and Benson 2007;Kuhn and Kingstone 2009;Kuhn et al 2011;Marotta et al 2014;Tipples 2002) and in clinical populations (e.g., Akiyama et al 2008;Dalmaso et al 2013;Marotta et al 2013).…”

The coupling between spatial attention and other components of task-set: A task-switching investigation

“…Previous research has found both of these types of cue to be highly effective in controlling spatial attention (e.g., Hommel, Pratt, Colzato, & Godijn, 2001). Arrows have been shown to be particularly effective in eliciting what many believe to be automatic orienting to the cued location, even when they are uninformative (e.g., Ristic & Kingstone, 2012), in conflict with task instructions (e.g., Ristic & Kingstone, 2012;Galfano et al, 2012), or even outside one's conscious awareness (Gabay, Avni, & Henik, 2012).…”

Exposing the cuing task: the case of gaze and arrow cues

“…cue type and/or cue predictiveness (Brignani et al, 2009;Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004;Galfano et al, 2012;Kuhn & Kingstone, 2009), we investigated how the processes engaged by the parameters of the cuing task-tonic alertness and voluntary temporal preparation-affected orienting elicited by social and nonsocial information. The reasons for this manipulation are twofold.…”