Looking ahead: Anticipatory cueing of attention to objects others will look at

Abstract

Seeing a face gaze at an object elicits rapid attention shifts toward the same object. We tested whether gaze cueing is predictive: do people shift their attention toward objects others are merely expected to look at? Participants categorized objects while a face either looked at this object, at another object, or straight ahead. Unbeknownst to participants, one face would only look at drinks and the other at foods. We tested whether attention was drawn toward objects “favored” by a face even when currently looking straight ahead. Indeed, while gaze expectations initially had a disruptive effect, participants did shift attention to the faces’ favored objects once learning had been established, as long as emotional expressions had indicated personal relevance of the object to the individual. These data support predictive models of social perception, which assume that predictions can drive perception and action, as if these stimuli were directly perceived.

KEYWORDS:

• Gaze cueing
• Joint attention
• Predictive coding
• Prediction
• attention

Acknowledgements

We thank Steven P. Tipper, University of York, for helpful comments during data collection and interpretation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplementary (Figure/Table/content) is available via the “Supplementary” tab on the article’s online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2015.1053443) For access to data and stimuli, please contact the corresponding author, [email protected]

Additional information

Funding

Patric Bach’s work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/J019178/1].