Do arrows and eyes looking in a specific direction guide us the same way? A team from the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC) at the University of Granada, in collaboration with the Sapienza University of Rome, has explored this question by comparing how we process social stimuli like eyes and faces versus non-social cues like arrows, especially when both conflict with their spatial location.
In these types of tasks, participants are asked to indicate the direction of a stimulus presented on a computer screen, ignoring its on-screen location. Thus, in some trials, the stimulus's direction matches its location (e.g., an arrow pointing left appearing on the left side of the screen), while in others it does not (e.g., eyes looking left but appearing on the right side). Typically, we respond better when direction and location match (i.e., we make fewer errors and are faster).
However, something curious happens with gaze cues: the opposite occurs. People respond worse when the direction of gaze matches its location. This phenomenon is known as the "reversed congruency effect," and it suggests that social stimuli activate our attention mechanisms in a distinct way.
To delve deeper into this phenomenon, the team analyzed combined data from 11 studies across different laboratories (Spain, Italy, and Japan), involving over 700 participants. They applied a technique called Conditional Accuracy Function (CAF), which allows observing how accuracy changes based on reaction time.
The results show that with arrows, errors primarily appeared in fast responses to incongruent conditions: when direction and location don't match, response accuracy drops if we respond quickly. But with faces and eyes, these errors were more frequent in both conditions, and much more so in congruent conditions (when direction and location match, contrary to what happens with arrows).
These findings indicate that in the face of social cues like gaze, our attentional mechanisms appear to be activated differently and more complexly than in response to neutral cues like arrows. Furthermore, the use of full faces intensified this pattern, suggesting that the social and visual context influences the early stages of processing.
This work helps us better understand how we adapt our attention based on the type of information we receive, especially when that information has social or communicative value, such as another person's gaze.
Reference
Ponce, R., Lupiáñez, J., González-García, C., Casagrande, M., & Marotta, A. (2025). Exploring the spatial interference effects elicited by social and non-social targets: A conditional accuracy function approach. British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953), 116(1), 69–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12735
Contact
Renato Ponce (renatojavier.ponceguerrero@uniroma1.it)
Juan Lupiáñez (jlupiane@ugr.es)
Andrea Marotta (marotta@ugr.es)