Social stimuli are a highly salient source of information, and
seem to possess unique qualities that set them apart from
other well-known categories. One characteristic is their ability
to elicit spatial orienting, whereby directional stimuli like eye-
gaze and pointing gestures act as exogenous cues that trigger
automatic shifts of attention that are difficult to inhibit. This
effect has been extended to non-social stimuli, like arrows,
leading to some uncertainty regarding whether spatial
orienting is specialized for social cues. Using a standard
spatial cueing paradigm, we found evidence that both a
pointing hand and arrow are effective cues, but that the hand
is encoded more quickly, leading to overall faster responses.
We then extended the paradigm to include multiple cues in
order to evaluate congruent vs. incongruent cues. Our results
indicate that faster encoding of the social cue leads to
downstream effects on the allocation of attention resulting in
faster orienting.
