Sex differences in attentional object selection triggered by gaze and arrows

Sex differences in attentional object selection triggered by gaze and arrows Jeanette Alicia Chacón Candia, Juan Lupiáñez Castillo and Andrea Marotta Several studies have shown that gaze and arrow cues trigger reflexive shift of visuospatial attention, although it is not yet clear whether the attentional shifts induced by these cues differ in some important aspects. In a recent study, Marotta, Lupia´n˜ez, Martella, and Casagrande (2012) found a clear dissociation showing that attentional orienting spread to the entire object when arrow cues pointing to one end of the object was used as cue, while attention was selectively directed to the specific location or part of the object looked at, when gaze cues were used. According to the authors, the attribution of mental states (Theory of Mind abilities, ToM) may account for the ‘‘specific’’ attentional orienting triggered by the eye-gaze direction, thus explaining the dissociation observed between gaze and arrow cues. Since it has been reported that women show greater ToM abilities than men, we investigated whether this arrow-gaze dissociation can be extended to the male population. We replicated the pattern of results observed by Marotta et al. (2012), again dissociating between gaze and arrows cues. However, no sex differences regarding attentional selection triggered by gaze versus arrows were observed. Although this finding seems to run counter the intuition that theory of mind abilities can account for the dissociation observed between gaze and arrow, it must be interpreted with caution since no differences in ToM abilities and autistic quotient scores were neither observed between male and female in our sample. Further research is needed to shed light upon this issue.