Abstract
Others’ gaze direction and traffic arrow signal lights play significant roles in guiding observers’ attention in daily life. Previous studies have shown that gaze and arrow cues can direct attention to the cued location. However, it is ambiguous where gaze and arrow cues guide attention: the cued location or a broader cued region. Therefore, the present study adopted a primary cue-target task and manipulated possible target locations to explore this issue. The results revealed that due to the different physical characteristics of non-predictive gaze and arrow cues, physically unfocused-pointing gaze cues guided attention to a broader cued region, whereas focused-pointing arrow cues guided attention to the exact cued location. Furthermore, gaze cues could also direct attention to the exact cued location when observers’ attention was focused in a top-down manner (with highly predictive probability). These findings suggest that where gaze and arrow cues direct attention depends on whether observers’ attention is focused by the cues, either in a bottom-up or top-down manner. Accordingly, a preliminary framework called the “Focused-Diffused Attentional Orienting Model” is proposed to explain how gaze and arrow cues direct humans’ attention. The present study enhances our understanding of human attentional orienting systems from a behavioral perspective.
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The data and the codes are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Young Talent Fund of University Association for Science and Technology in Shaanxi, China (20210206) and the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (22YJC190030).
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Conceptualization: TZ, JZ, YW. Methodology: TZ, JZ, YW. Software: TZ, ZC. Formal analysis: TZ, YG. Investigation: TZ, YG, SH, LX, ZC, YT. Data curation: TZ, SH. Visualization: TZ, YG, LX. Writing-original draft: TZ. Writing-review & editing & supervision: JZ, YW.
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Zhang, T., Gao, Y., Hu, S. et al. Focused attention: its key role in gaze and arrow cues for determining where attention is directed. Psychological Research 87, 1966–1980 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-022-01781-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-022-01781-w