Social modulators of gaze-mediated orienting of attention: A review
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THEORETICAL REVIEW
Social modulators of gaze-mediated orienting of attention: A review Mario Dalmaso 1 & Luigi Castelli 1 & Giovanni Galfano 1
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract Humans tend to shift attention according to others’ eye-gaze direction. This is a core ability as it permits to create pervasive relationships among individuals and with the environment around them. In the beginning, this form of social orienting was considered a reflexive phenomenon, but in recent years evidence has shown that it is also permeable to several social factors related to the observer, the individual depicted in the cueing face, and the relationship between them. The major goal of this work is to provide a comprehensive overview concerning the role that social variables can play in shaping covert gaze cueing in healthy adults, critically examining both the modulatory social factors for which evidence is more robust and those for which evidence is mixed. When available, overt attention studies will also be discussed. Finally, a novel theoretical framework linking these social and attention domains will be also introduced. Keywords Gaze cueing . Social variables . Eye-gaze processing . Visual attention . Social attention . Social cognition
Human societies are heavily based on social interactions, which allow individuals to exchange information about both themselves and the environment around them. These communicative exchanges are performed through many different channels, such as spoken language and bodily signals. As concerns bodily signals, humans seem particularly sensitive to eye-gaze direction, likely because it generally provides a rapidly extracted and reliable index of others’ focus of attention over space (see Capozzi & Ristic, 2018; Emery, 2000; Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper, 2007). A great bulk of evidence corroborates the crucial relevance of eye-gaze direction for humans. First, humans are the only primate species with a white sclera. The high chromatic contrast between this white area and the darker area of the iris would have evolved as it facilitates a fast evaluation of others’ eye-gaze direction (e.g., Kobayashi & Kohshima, 2001; but see Perea-García, Kret, Monteiro, & Hobaiter, 2019). Second, several studies confirmed that the most attended area during face-scanning tasks is the eye region (Yarbus, 1967, see also, e.g., Birmingham, Bischof, & Kingstone, 2008; Tatler, Wade, Kwan, Findlay, &
* Mario Dalmaso [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy
Velichkovsky, 2010). Inferring the focus of attention of our conspecifics from their eye-gaze direction is an essential ability not only to navigate within social and natural contexts around us (e.g., Capozzi & Ristic, 2018) but also for neurocognitive development (e.g., Nummenmaa & Calder, 2009). Moreover, evidence is rapidly accumulating showing that eye-gaze stimuli can have a deep impact on different mechanisms of human cogniti
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