To Follow or Not to Follow Your Gaze: The Interplay Between Strategic Control and the Eye Contact Effect on Gaze-Induced Attention Orienting

Eye contact constitutes a strong communicative signal in human interactions and has been shown to modulate various cognitive processes and states. However, little is known about its impact on gaze-mediated attentional orienting in the context of its interplay with strategic top-down control. Here, we aimed at investigating how the social component of eye contact interacts with the top-down strategic control. To this end, we designed a gaze cuing paradigm with the iCub humanoid robot, in which iCub either established eye contact with the participants before averting its gaze or avoided their eyes. Across four experiments, we manipulated gaze cue validity to either elicit strategic top-down inhibitory activity (25% validity) or to allow for relaxing the control mechanisms (50% validity). Also, we manipulated the stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) to examine the dynamics of the top-down modulatory effects. Our results showed that eye contact influenced the gaze cuing effect when the strategic control was not required, by prolonging the prioritized processing of the gazed-at locations. Thus, the effect was observed only when the measurement was taken after a sufficient amount of time (1,000 ms SOA). However, when inhibitory control was necessary (25% validity), the social component was not potent enough to exert influence over the gaze cuing effect independently. Overall, we propose that strategic top-down control is the primary driving force over the gaze cuing effect and that the social aspect plays a modulatory effect by prolonging prioritized processing of gazed-at locations.