title: From body shadows to bodily attention: automatic orienting of tactile attention driven by cast shadows.
abstract: Body shadows orient attention to the body-part casting the shadow. We have investigated the automaticity of this phenomenon, by addressing its time-course and its resistance to contextual manipulations. When targets were tactile stimuli at the hands (Exp.1) or visual stimuli near the body-shadow (Exp.2), cueing effects emerged regardless of the delay between shadow and target onset (100, 600, 1200, 2400ms). This suggests a fast and sustained attention orienting to body-shadows, that involves both the space occupied by shadows (extra-personal space) and the space the shadow refers to (own body). When target type became unpredictable (tactile or visual), shadow-cueing effects remained robust only for tactile targets, as visual stimuli showed no overall reliable effects, regardless of whether they occurred near the shadow (Exp.3) or near the body (Exp.4). We conclude that mandatory attention shifts triggered by body-shadows are limited to tactile targets and, instead, are less automatic for visual stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Italy; Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Italy. Electronic address: francesco.pavani@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pavani
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Italy.
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rigo
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padua, Italy; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Padua, Italy.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Galfano
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001828:Body Image; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Body perception; Multisensory; Shadow; Spatial attention; Touch; Vision