Are you looking at me? Impact of eye contact on object-based attention.

Abstract

Eye contact plays an important role in social interaction and can capture and hold attention. However, it is unclear whether and how objects that can also guide attentional allocation interact with eye contact in guiding attention. Therefore, the current study adapted a well-established two-rectangle paradigm and used faces depicting different gaze directions (direct and averted) or rectangles overlaid with eyes as stimuli. In Experiment 1, we simultaneously presented two faces (one direct gaze, one averted gaze) to participants, manipulating cue location (direct-gaze face, averted-gaze face). The results revealed a larger object-based effect when the cue appeared on the direct-gaze face compared to the averted-gaze face. In Experiment 2, inverted faces were presented, and the results mirrored those of Experiment 1. Interestingly, rectangles overlaid with eyes were presented in Experiment 3, and the results showed that the object-based effect was larger when the cue appeared on the direct-gaze rectangle compared to the averted-gaze rectangle. These findings suggest that eye contact can interact with objects in guiding attention and that this effect is not reliant on the presence of the face. Our results can support attentional prioritization theory and may provide a new approach for diagnosing social-cognitive impairments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).