Words move the eyes: Spatial cueing without targets

Abstract Semantic information can influence spatial attention, but it remains unclear whether spatially meaningful words can directly orient overt attention without a subsequent target or response requirement. The present study investigated whether explicit and implicit spatial words induce spontaneous gaze shifts before target presentation and whether these shifts reflect bottom-up word meaning or top-down task instructions. Across two experiments, 99 native Hebrew-speaking adults completed a go/no-go spatial cueing task while eye movements were recorded. Experiment 1 used explicitly spatial words (e.g., “up,” “down”), whereas Experiment 2 used words implicitly associated with spatial locations (e.g., “sky,” “carpet”). In go trials, both word types produced spatial congruency effects in reaction times and progressively larger gaze shifts toward semantically associated locations with increasing cue-target intervals. Critically, no-go trials demonstrated meaning-driven gaze shifts even without required responses or targets, particularly for explicitly spatial cues. Overall, the findings indicate that semantic processing alone can automatically bias overt visual attention, with linguistic meaning exerting a predominantly bottom-up influence on gaze allocation.