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

Dalmaso, Mario; Galfano, Giovanni; Castelli, Luigi · 2024 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1177/17470218231203963

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Summary

This study investigates the automaticity of gaze cueing, specifically testing whether attention shifts triggered by eye gaze are resistant to suppression when the gaze stimulus provides no novel or predictive information. The authors address the "resistance to suppression" criterion of automaticity, which posits that truly automatic processes occur even when individuals are motivated to ignore the triggering stimulus. Previous research established that gaze cueing persists when gaze direction is uninformative (50% valid) or counter-predictive. However, in those paradigms, gaze direction varied randomly from trial to trial, providing unpredictable spatial information. This study tests a more extreme condition where gaze direction is invariant (constant) throughout blocks of trials, thereby draining the stimulus of any novel informational value. The researchers conducted four experiments using a standard gaze-cueing paradigm. Participants responded to peripheral targets preceded by central face stimuli indicating gaze direction. Two conditions were compared: an "intermixed" condition where gaze direction varied randomly (left or right) across trials, and a "blocked" condition where gaze direction remained constant (always left or always right) within a block. In Experiment 1, 80 participants viewed real face stimuli. Experiment 2 replicated this design with 80 new participants but added a 100% predictive direction word ("LEFT" or "RIGHT") preceding the gaze stimulus to maximize the motivation to suppress gaze processing. Experiments 3 and 4 utilized schematic face stimuli to rule out effects specific to realistic faces. Response times (RTs) were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models, examining the effects of spatial congruency (congruent vs. incongruent gaze), stimulus onset asynchrony (200 ms vs. 700 ms), and condition (intermixed vs. blocked). The results consistently showed a robust gaze-cueing effect across all experiments. Crucially, the magnitude of the cueing effect was comparable in both the intermixed and blocked conditions. In Experiment 1, participants responded significantly slower to targets appearing in the direction opposite to the gaze (incongruent) compared to the gaze direction (congruent), regardless of whether gaze direction was random or invariant. This finding held true in Experiment 2, even when participants were provided with a 100% valid verbal cue indicating the target location, which should have rendered the gaze stimulus entirely redundant and detrimental to task performance. The effect persisted across different SOAs and stimulus types (real vs. schematic faces). These findings demonstrate that gaze cueing is resistant to suppression even when the gaze stimulus is task-irrelevant and conveys no novel spatial information. The persistence of the effect in the blocked condition suggests that the orienting of attention by eye gaze is not merely a strategic response to unpredictable cues but reflects a highly automatic, potentially obligatory process. The results support the view that gaze acts as a "superstimulus" that captures attention involuntarily, independent of its informational utility or the observer's motivation to ignore it. This contributes to the understanding of social attention mechanisms by establishing that the automaticity of gaze cueing extends to conditions where the stimulus is completely predictable and non-diagnostic.

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• gaze based attention detection