Can social stimuli held in working memory involuntary orient attention? The role of Internal Social Attention

Recent evidence shows that holding in working memory social stimuli (including the direc- tion of eye gaze) can orient someone’s attention—a phenomenon called “internal social attention.” In this study, 42 university students performed a two-phase gaze cueing task. In the first phase, a neu- tral face with averted gaze (left or right) preceded the target (Gabor patch), which could appear at the location congruent or incongruent with the gaze direction. Participants responded to the target’s position (passive viewing). In the second phase, participants were informed to maintain the neutral face in memory for later recognition (working memory, WM). To disentangle the cueing effect due to gaze direction and the working memory effects, we used a SOA of 900 msec. Results from the recognition task showed that participants held the face-cue in working memory. Importantly, results from the gaze cueing task showed no effects of gaze direction on target processing (i.e., no cueing effects). The findings are discussed in the context of the cur- rent evidence on the timing of attentional orienting by gaze direction.