Early saccade planning cannot override oculomotor interference elicited by gaze and arrow distractors
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BRIEF REPORT
Early saccade planning cannot override oculomotor interference elicited by gaze and arrow distractors Mario Dalmaso 1
&
Luigi Castelli 1 & Giovanni Galfano 1
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract Humans tend to perform reflexive saccades according to the eye-gaze direction of other individuals. Here, in two experiments, we tested whether preparing a saccade before the onset of a task-irrelevant averted-gaze stimulus can abolish this form of gazefollowing behavior. At the beginning of each trial, participants received the instruction to prepare for a leftward or a rightward saccade. This was provided either on a trial-by-trial basis (Experiment 1) or was maintained constant within a whole block of trials (Experiment 2). Then, a central fixation spot changed in color, acting as a “go” signal to perform the saccade. Simultaneously with the go-signal onset, a task-irrelevant distractor face looked either leftwards or rightwards. In so doing, no temporal overlapping was likely to occur between saccade preparation and the presentation of the distractor. Arrows were also employed as non-social control stimuli. In both experiments – and regardless of the distractor type – saccadic latencies were smaller when both the instruction and the distractor conveyed the same spatial vector, rather than the opposite. Taken together, these results suggest that an early preparation of saccades is not sufficient to override the oculomotor interference effects elicited by both social and non-social distractors. Keywords Gaze distractor . Arrow distractor . Saccades . Eye movements . Social attention
Introduction The notion that our oculomotor system can be profoundly shaped by the presence of eye-gaze stimuli has been known since the pioneering works of Yarbus (1967). In his most classic studies, Yarbus reported the presence of an intense fixational activity focused on the eye region of the individuals depicted in different social scenes (see also, e.g., Tatler, Wade, Kwan, Findlay, & Velichkovsky, 2010). Another stream of studies has also reported that avertedgaze faces can elicit, in an observer, an eye movement towards the gazed-at spatial location. Looking where another individual is looking represents an essential ability to establish productive and meaningful relationships with both our conspecific and the environment around us (e.g., Capozzi & Ristic, 2018; Dalmaso, Castelli, & Galfano, 2020b). In the lab, this
* Mario Dalmaso [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy
form of overt gaze-following behavior has been mainly documented by adopting the instructed-saccade task developed by Ricciardelli, Bricolo, Aglioti, and Chelazzi (2002). In this task, participants are typically asked to perform a leftward or a rightward saccade according to an instruction cue (e.g., a change in color of the fixation spot, such as blue vs. orange for eliciting a leftward vs. a rightward saccade, respectivel
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