title: Spatial orienting of attention to social cues is modulated by cue type and gender of viewer.
abstract: Across three experiments, we examined the efficacy of three cues from the human body-body orientation, head turning, and eye-gaze direction-to shift an observer's attention in space. Using a modified Posner cueing paradigm, we replicate the previous findings of gender differences in the gaze-cueing effect whereby female but not male participants responded significantly faster to validly cued than to invalidly cued targets. In contrast to the previous studies, we report a robust cueing effect for both male and female participants when head turning direction was used as the central cue, whereas oriented bodies proved ineffectual as cues to attention for both males and females. These results are discussed with reference to the time course of central cueing effects, gender differences in spatial attention, and current models of how cues from the human body are combined to judge another person's direction of attention.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. sarah.cooney@ucdconnect.ie.
authors.forename: Sarah Maeve
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0165-3543
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Cooney
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
authors.forename: Nuala
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Brady
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
authors.forename: Katie
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ryan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D000072458:Orientation, Spatial / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cueing effect; Gender; Social cues; Spatial attention