When the eyes break the (naturalistic) scene: investigation on the eye-gaze following mechanisms in complex scenarios

Abstract Processing eye-gaze and aligning one’s own attention with the gaze direction of others (gaze following) is a crucial ability and it underpins several cognitive and affective mechanisms. However, we know little about how this gaze following operates in realistic scenarios in adults. The present study addresses this gap by presenting naturalistic scenes, in which models were portrayed centrally or peripherally (7°), with their eye gaze directed straight ahead, averted towards an object (valid cue) or away from it (invalid cue), while maintaining a straight head position. Eye movements were recorded while participants ( N = 60) performed two tasks: a free viewing task to assess spontaneous gaze following, and a visual search task, to assess attentional shifts based on the observed gaze direction. Findings from the free viewing task showed that participants spontaneously looked faster at validly cued objects (i.e., gaze cueing effect) and they looked longer at the cued objects independently of whether the face was present centrally or peripherally. Importantly, in the visual search task, the cueing effects were also present when face cues were presented peripherally and in absence of overt attentional orienting. This finding provides new evidence on the spontaneity of gaze following in ecological contexts and offers theoretical insights on this important social cognitive ability.