Gaze Cueing Effects and Preference Bias in Older Adults

To what extent old individuals are able to automatically shift their attention based on observed direction eye-gaze, and whether the emotional expression and age of the central face-cue modulate gaze cueing effects and preference acquisition was investigated. Thirty-nine 70-80 year old individuals completed a non- predictive gaze cueing task with happy, angry and neutral faces of old and young individuals gazing left or right. Targets were kitchen and garage objects and, at the end of the experiment, participants rated their preferences toward each target-object. Findings showed typical gaze cueing effects, F (1, 38)= 71.24, p< .001, η2 = .65 with faster RTs on trials with valid cues (M= 707; SE= 34) than invalid cues (M=742; SE= 33). There was no evidence of larger cueing effects for emotional faces, [expression x cue: F (2, 76)= 1.69, ns)] or for own-age faces, [face-age x cue: F (1, 38)= .96, ns]. However, participants liked more objects looked at by old faces than by young faces, F (1, 38)= 10.09, p= .003, η2 = .21), suggesting an own-age preference bias for objects looked at by older faces.