Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

One of the core components of non-verbal communication and joint attention is gaze cuing – our tendency to shift attention in the direction of another's gaze. While extensively studied, little is known about whether and how internal states like the sense of agency influence sensitivity to gaze cues. In this study, we investigate whether control over action (action-outcome consistency) modulates gaze cuing effect in a color discrimination task. Participants viewed a synthetic face with lateral (left/right) pupil motion, followed by the appearance of a colored target to the left/right of the face. During each trial, participants either passively observed the gaze movement (control condition), or actively initiated it by selecting a gaze direction and pressing a corresponding button. Crucially, in active trials, the gaze direction could be consistent or inconsistent with the chosen direction. The results showed a larger in magnitude gaze cuing effect in action-outcome consistent condition; moreover, time distribution analyses suggested that the effect appeared early on, in contrast to control and action-outcome inconsistent conditions. Together, these data point towards a possible link between action control and social attentional orienting.