Attentional orienting to social cues held in working memory: a paradigm of internal social attention?

The ability to shift attention based on the observed gaze direction on another person represents the basis of social attention. Recent evidence shows that there exists also a form of internal social attention by which social stimuli held in working memory can shift attention. Here we investigated this phenomenon by asking 41 university students to perform a two-phase gaze cueing task, in which a neutral face-cue gazing left or right preceded the target (Gabor patch), which appeared left or right. In the first phase of the task, participants were instructed to respond to the target (passive viewing). In the second phase participants were instructed to remember the face for later recognition (working memory). We used a SOA of 900 msec to avoid confusing the cueing effect of the face with working memory effects. Findings from the face recognition task showed that participants retained the face-cue in working memory but that it did not affect the gaze cueing effect. The present findings are discussed with reference to the extant literature on the timing of attentional shifts based on observed gaze.