Testing the effects of gaze distractors with invariant spatial direction on attention cueing

Abstract

In four experiments, we tested the boundary conditions of gaze cueing with reference to the resistance to suppression criterion of automaticity. Participants were asked to respond to peripheral targets preceded by a central gaze stimulus. In one condition, gaze direction was random and uninformative with respect to target location (intermixed condition), as in the typical paradigm. In another condition, gaze direction was uninformative and, crucially, it was also kept constant throughout the sequence of trials (blocked condition). In so doing, we aimed at maximally reducing the informative value of the gaze stimulus since gaze would not only be task-irrelevant, but it would also provide no sudden and unpredictable information. Across the four experiments, the results showed a strong gaze-cueing effect. More specifically, a comparable gaze cueing emerged in the blocked condition and in the intermixed condition. These findings are consistent with the idea that gaze cueing is resistant to suppression and are discussed in relation to current views of the automaticity of gaze cueing.