title: Spatial orienting of tactile attention induced by social cues.
abstract: Several studies have established that humans orient their visual attention reflexively in response to social cues such as the direction of someone else's gaze. However, the consequences of this kind of orienting have been addressed only for the visual system. We investigated whether visual social attention cues can induce shifts in tactile attention by combining a central noninformative eye-gaze cue with tactile targets presented to participants' fingertips. Data from speeded detection, speeded discrimination, and signal detection tasks converged on the same conclusion: Eye-gaze-based orienting facilitates the processing of tactile targets at the location of the gazed-at body location. In addition, we examined the effects of other directional cues, such as conventional arrows, and found that they can be equally effective. This is the first demonstration that social attention cues have consequences that reach beyond their own sensory modality.
authors.affiliation: ICREA and Parc Científic de Barcelona, Spain. salvador.soto@icrea.es
authors.forename: Salvador
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Soto-Faraco
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sinnett
authors.forename: Agnès
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alsius
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kingstone
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D012931:Social Environment; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception