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. 2023 Jan 25;18(1):e0280955. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280955

Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrows

Jeanette A Chacón-Candia 1,2,*, Juan Lupiáñez 1, Maria Casagrande 3, Andrea Marotta 1
Editor: Avid Roman-Gonzalez4
PMCID: PMC9876282  PMID: 36696435

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that eye-gaze and arrows automatically shift visuospatial attention. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether the attentional shifts triggered by these two types of stimuli differ in some important aspects. It has been suggested that an important difference may reside in how people select objects in response to these two types of cues, eye-gaze eliciting a more specific attentional orienting than arrows. To assess this hypothesis, we examined whether the allocation of the attentional orienting triggered by eye-gaze and arrows is modulated by the presence and the distribution of reference objects (i.e., placeholders) on the scene. Following central cues, targets were presented either in an empty visual field or within one of six placeholders on each trial. In Experiment 2, placeholder-objects were grouped following the gestalt’s law of proximity, whereas in Experiment 1, they were not perceptually grouped. Results showed that cueing one of the grouped placeholders spreads attention across the whole group of placeholder-objects when arrow cues were used, while it restricted attention to the specific cued placeholder when eye-gaze cues were used. No differences between the two types of cues were observed when placeholder-objects were not grouped within the cued hemifield, or no placeholders were displayed on the scene. These findings are consistent with the idea that socially relevant gaze cues encourage a more specific attentional orienting than arrow cues and provide new insight into the boundary conditions necessary to observe this dissociation.

Introduction

The capacity to follow the focus of attention of another individual is of great importance for the development of social communication [1, 2].

In order to understand what others are paying attention to, we usually rely on information provided through non-verbal communication, such as gestures, postures, and the direction of the gaze [3]. The perception, interpretation and evaluation of the information obtained through these sources help us inquire about other people’s intentions and mental states and, consequently, anticipate their next step and increase the probability of successfully building social interactions [4–6]. Together with other biologically relevant stimuli [3, 7] averted gaze of another person can shift the observer’s attention in the same direction as the observed gaze (e.g., [8, 9], see [10] for review), allowing the establishment of “joint attention” [11]. This behaviour has been considered highly beneficial to individuals and has been a crucial step in the development of social-communicative skills [2, 12, 13]. For this reason, many studies have investigated the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon.

Friesen and Kingstone [14] were the first to demonstrate that looking at eye-gaze will trigger the shift of our attentional focus into the gazed-at location. They used a variant of the classic visuospatial cueing paradigm [15] in which, at the centre of the screen, a schematic face appeared, gazing either straight ahead, left or right. The participants’ task was to detect, locate or discriminate a target that would appear congruently at the gazed location or incongruently at the opposite one. They found that targets appearing at the congruent location were detected, located, or discriminated more quickly than targets appearing at the incongruent one. Since then, an increasing number of researchers have further studied this effect using the same or slight variations of this cueing paradigm. Results repeatedly demonstrated that even when gaze direction is not predictive of target location (e.g., [16–19]) or is counterpredictive (e.g., [8]), the gaze shift automatically directs the observer’s attention to the same location indicated by it (see [6, 10] for a review).

Based on these behavioural findings and the evolutionary and social significance of eye gaze [5], several authors have suggested that the attentional orienting triggered by the eye-gaze direction may represent a unique attentional process that can be differentiated from that produced by directional stimuli with no biological relevance, such as arrows (e.g. [9, 18, 20]), which have proven as well to facilitate attentional orienting, even if they are non-predictive [21]. In this regard, many studies have tried to answer whether arrow and gaze cues produce the same or different behavioural or neural effects, leading to mixed results, with some of them finding a significant difference between the two stimuli and others suggesting that the effect triggered by them is indistinguishable (e.g., [22–26]).

However, clarifying this debate, recent meta-analytical evidence [27] has shown no behavioural differences between the attentional orienting triggered by eye-gaze and arrow cues. For instance, it remains unclear whether the attentional shifts induced by these two types of cues differ in some other important aspects. Recently, a study by Marotta, Lupiáñez, Martella, and Casagrande [18] suggested that the source of a possible difference between eye-gaze and arrow attentional cues may lie in the dissimilar way people select objects in response to these two types of cues. In particular, they speculated that “biologically and socially relevant gaze cues may encourage more specific attentional orienting, compared to arrow cues, since a specific intention may be automatically attributed to gaze and not to arrows” ([18], p. 333). Consistent with this view, they found that when using eye-gaze as a cue, attention is directed specifically to the location or part of the object being looked at. In contrast, when using an arrow, attention spreads across the entire cued object.

The property of gaze cues to induce “specific” attentional orienting has also been corroborated by Wiese, Zwickel, and Müller [28], showing that when previewed location placeholders were used, gaze cues induced a facilitation effect only when targets appeared inside the exact placeholder pointed at, but not when targets appeared in different spatially located objects within the cued hemifield. However, when no placeholders were presented, gaze cueing effects were detectable in response to the specific cued location but also spread across the entire cued hemifield. In light of these findings, another person’s gaze may trigger a specific attentional orienting only when an object is presented in the visual scene.

Considering the importance of orienting attention to the same object of others’ attentional direction to establish a social joint attention episode, this makes perfect sense. In other words, another person’s gaze may induce a specific attentional orienting only when an object is present in the environment and can be interpreted as the goal of the gaze. However, this should not be observed in response to arrow cues since arrows have a directional property, like gaze, but no biological or social significance. However, to date, no studies have directly compared the attentional selection produced by these two types of stimuli in the presence or absence of placeholders within the visual field. To accomplish this aim, in the present study, we have used a paradigm very similar to that used by Wiese and colleagues [28], in which, in response to gaze and arrow cues, participants had to respond to targets presented in one of three possible locations within a cued hemifield: 0° and +/-60° from the horizontal meridian. Placeholder objects for the targets will be presented on half the trials (placeholder-present condition), while on the other half, no placeholders will be presented (placeholder-absent condition).

In the placeholder-present condition, we expected that gaze cues would elicit a specific attentional orienting benefit only for targets presented within the object (i.e., placeholder) looked at, but not for targets appearing in different spatial locations within the cued hemifield. Arrows should elicit a more general attentional benefit across the entire cued hemifield. As mentioned above, the cued object should be interpreted as the goal of another person’s attention only in response to gaze cues (i.e., looked at object) but not in response to arrows. On the other hand, no difference between gaze and arrow attentional effect should be observed when no objects are presented on the scene (placeholder-absent condition), cueing effects spreading across the entire cued hemifield with both gaze and arrow cues.

Experiment 1

Method

Participants

Thirty-seven undergraduate students (24 female; mean age: 22 years) gave their informed consent before voluntarily participating in this research. There was no clear experiment of reference for computing the needed sample size in our first experiment, as this was the first time our paradigm was used. We could use as reference the study by Wiese et al., [28], but they did not compare arrows and gaze, which was critical for our experiment. Instead, we could use Marotta et al. [18] experiments, in which objects instead of group of objects (i.e., placeholders) were used, but they did compare gaze with arrow cues. Marotta et al. [18] used samples of 24 and 30 participants, so we decided to use a minimum of 36 participants for Experiment 1. Because the sample size was not computed a priori based on the effect size of a previous study, we used G*Power [29] to compute sensitivity of our specific relevant analyses regarding the orienting effects (t-test). With our sample size (37 participants) the minimum effect size that could be detected for α = 0.5, and 1−β = 0.80, is Cohen’s dz = 0.417, which is higher than most effect sizes of interest.

All participants had normal or corrected to normal vision and were unaware of the purpose of the experiment. In this and the following experiments, participants received course credits for their participation. All experiments were approved by the Ethical Committee of the University of Granada (175/CEIH/2017) and conducted in conformity with the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Apparatus and stimuli

The cueing-discrimination task used in this experiment was presented on a 21-inch VGA colour monitor of a computer running E-Prime software [30] to control the presentation of the stimuli, timing operations, and data collection.

On the hemifield placeholder-present condition, the fixation display consisted of three placeholder boxes presented within each hemifield at 0° and +/-60° from the horizontal meridian; the central fixation stimuli changed depending on the cue type. For the arrow trials, a horizontal line was presented at the centre of the screen, and for the gaze trials, the display was a schematic face with the eyes looking straight. During experimental trials, the face pupils, or the appearance of an arrowhead, signalled left or right from fixation. Target stimuli were the letters “X” or “O”. The background of the screen was white, and all the stimuli were black.

Procedure

After giving their informed consent, participants were seated at about 55cm from a computer screen in a quiet, dimly lit room. Trials started with a fixation display that differed depending on the cue type. In gaze cueing trials, a schematic face with a straight gaze was presented as fixation, whereas, in arrow cueing trials, the fixation stimulus was a horizontal line centred on the screen. This display was presented for 700ms; then, a change was made to the arrow or eye gaze fixation points to indicate left or right on the horizontal meridian (importantly, no other position or placeholder was directly cued). Following the presentation of the cue, a target (either the letter “X” or “O”) appeared unpredictably in one of six possible locations (see Fig 1).

Fig 1. Schematic view of a trial sequence for both the gaze cue and the arrow cue conditions.

Fig 1

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The example represents: A) gaze-cue/placeholder-absent/same-hemifield condition, and B) arrow-cue/placeholder-present/same-location/same-hemifield condition.

Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was 300ms. Cue and target remained on the screen until a response was given or for 1500ms in case of no response. Then, a blank display was presented for 700ms. Targets appeared either in one of the three placeholder boxes presented within each hemifield (placeholder-present condition) or at one of the same positions in an empty space when no placeholder boxes were presented (placeholder-absent condition).

Participants were required to discriminate the letter “X” or “O” by pressing either the “M” key (with the right hand) or the “Z” key (with the left hand) on the computer keyboard, depending on the target letter that was presented. Half of the participants pressed “M” for target “X” and “Z” for target “O”, whereas the other half received the reversed mapping. They were also instructed to respond as quickly and accurately as possible and maintain central fixation throughout all trials. They were informed that the direction of the central stimuli did not predict the location of the target, so they should ignore it.

Cue direction, target stimuli, target location, and placeholder presence were randomly interspersed within each block of trials, whereas cue type was manipulated between blocks in a counterbalanced order. There were two experimental blocks of 288 trials each (one for each cuetype), each preceded by a practice block of eight trials (where participants received feedback for their performance), summing up 592 trials in total.

Design

Three-factor repeated measure design was used to analyse an overall effect in this experiment, 2 (cue-type) x 2 (placeholder-condition) x 4 (validity). The cue-type had two levels, arrow and eye-gaze; placeholder-condition consisted of placeholder-present and placeholder-absent conditions, and the four validity levels were same-location/same-hemifield, opposite-location/opposite-hemifield, same-hemifield and opposite-hemifield trials.

Given our main interest on specific attentional orienting mechanisms, t-test analyses were performed to analyse specific effects of validity (general-cueing and hemifield-effects), and its modulation by relevant variables. For the general-cueing effect, the comparison of cue-target relations consisted of same-location/same-hemifield trials vs opposite-location/opposite-hemifield trials; for the hemifield-effect, the cue-target relation consisted of same-hemifield vs opposite-hemifield trials (see Fig 2).

Fig 2. Illustration of the four types of cue-target relation of Experiment 1.

Fig 2

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The images represent the gaze-cue in a placeholder-present condition. The cue-target relation for the placeholder-absent condition was the same, with the exception that no placeholder boxes were presented on the scene.

Results

For the reaction time analysis, trials with correct responses faster than 100ms or slower than 1200ms (0.5%), and incorrect response trials (5.69%) were excluded. Mean RT, standard deviations, and error percentage for all conditions are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Mean reaction times (RT), standard deviation (SD), and percentage of incorrect responses (%IR) as a function of the placeholder-condition, type of cue, and cue-target (CT) relation in Experiment 1.

Placeholder-Present Condition Placeholder-Absent-Condition
Arrow Gaze Arrow Gaze
CT relation RT SD %IR RT SD %IR RT SD %IR RT SD %IR
Same-Location/ Same-Hemifield 486 69.02 5.89 486 61.11 6.70 487 67.06 5.97 471 57.97 4.38
Opposite-Location/ Opposite-Hemifield 507 77.57 7.03 493 59.54 5.73 495 72.09 6.68 486 60.05 4.95
Same-Hemifield 514 70.52 6.07 506 55.6 5.65 493 64.92 5.22 482 58.93 4.91
Opposite-Hemifield 513 70.29 7.30 512 62.79 5.88 492 64.76 4.88 493 62.55 5.31
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A cue-type (arrows vs. gaze) x placeholder-condition (placeholder-present vs. placeholder-absent) x validity (same-location/same-hemifield, opposite-location/opposite-hemifield, same-hemifield and opposite-hemifield) repeated measures ANOVA was performed to analyse an overall effect.

The analysis reported a main effect of placeholder-condition (F1,36 = 21.33, p = < .001, η2p = 0.372), showing that overall reaction times were faster when no placeholders were presented on the scene (M = 487, SD = 63.36) than when placeholders were presented (M = 502, SD = 66.28). A main effect of validity was also found (F3,108 = 30.24, p = < .001, η2p = 0.457), showing that reaction times were faster when the target appeared at the same-location/same-hemifield (M = 483, SD = 63.65), followed by opposite-location/opposite-hemifield (M = 495, SD = 67.51), same-hemifield (M = 499, SD = 63.26) and opposite-hemifield (M = 502, SD = 65.27) respectively.

The placeholder-condition X validity interaction was also significant (F3,108 = 6.20, p = < .001, η2p = 0.147). Partial ANOVAs for each validity condition showed that when the targets appeared at the same-location/same-hemifield, there were no differences related to the presence or absence of placeholders in the scene (p>.05). However, when targets appeared at opposite-location/opposite-hemifield, same-hemifield and opposite-hemifield participants were significantly faster when no placeholder objects were presented (all ps < .05).

More importantly, separate t-test analyses were conducted to analyse, on the one hand, the general-cueing effect (same-location/same-hemifield vs. opposite-location/opposite-hemifield) and, on the other, the hemifield-effect (same-hemifield vs opposite-hemifield), in both the placeholder-absent and the placeholder-present conditions. The results revealed that the general-cueing effect was significant for both the placeholder absent (t(36) = -3.889, p = < .001, d = -0.639) and the placeholder-present conditions (t(36) = -4.719, p = < .001, d = -0.776), showing that in general, reaction times were faster when targets appeared at the same-location/same-hemifield trials than at the opposite-location/opposite-hemifield trials regardless the presence of placeholders on the scene (see Fig 3). When analysing the hemifield-effect, no significant effect was found for any of the placeholder conditions (all ps>.05).

Fig 3. Reaction times (RTs) results from Experiment 1.

Fig 3

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Results are shown separately for the general-cueing effect (Same-Location/Same Hemifield vs. Opposite-Location/Opposite Hemifield) and the hemifield-effect (Same-Hemifield vs. Opposite Hemifield). Mean RTs presented for each type of cue as a function of the cue-target relation in the placeholder-present and placeholder-absent conditions. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean, computed following Cousineau’s [31] method to eliminate variability between participants.

Importantly, neither the main effect of cue-type, nor its interaction with any other variable reached significance (all ps >.05).

Discussion

This experiment tested whether eye-gaze attentional cues trigger more specific attentional orienting than arrows when placeholder objects are presented on the signalled hemifield. However, the results of this experiment showed that arrows and eyes triggered very similar attentional cueing effects in both placeholder-absent and present conditions. In particular, with both cues, a significant attentional benefit was only observed for targets appearing at the specifically cued location but not for targets appearing in different spatial locations within the cued hemifield.

At first sight, these findings seem to suggest that attention triggered by social and non-social cues is not modulated by the presence of placeholders on the scene, and they are consistent with the literature, which has generally reported similar behavioural cueing effects for gaze and arrows in the normotypical population (for review, see [32]). On the other hand, they seem to contrast with our hypothesis according to which attentional benefits should be observed only for targets presented in the specific object (or part of an object) when signalled by eye-gaze cues, and for all the targets, independently from their position in the cued hemifield, when signalled by arrows.

Indeed, we assumed that arrows should elicit a more general attentional benefit spreading across the cued hemifield, based on our previous findings showing that arrows, but not eye-gaze, allow attentional shifts to spread through to the entire surface of an object presented in the cued visual field. Nevertheless, given the specific paradigm we used in our previous experiment, an alternative explanation could be plausible. As shown in Fig 2, the six objects were equidistant and distributed across the circle of objects that served as a background fixation display. Then it makes sense that only a general-cueing effect is observed for both arrows and gaze. It could then be possible that arrows trigger attentional orienting spreading the cued object’s entire surface but not across the entire cued hemifield. This would explain why in the present experiment, an attentional effect was observed only for targets appearing at the specifically cued location or object, as both arrows and gaze similarly orient attention to the specifically cued signalled object. In the following experiments, we decided to modify the proximity between the objects within each hemifield so that participants would perceive one easily segregated group of objects.

Experiment 2

The goal of experiment 2 was to investigate whether, by manipulating the distribution of placeholders within the hemifield (i.e., following the gestalt’s law of proximity [33, 34]), cues would trigger attention not only to the specific cued object but also towards the entire group of signalled placeholder objects. In particular, since there is evidence that the attention system similarly treats perceptually grouped objects [35, 36], we expected that by grouping by proximity the placeholders, the attentional effect would be similar to the one found by Marotta and colleagues [18]: attention would spread to the whole group of placeholder objects only when using an arrow, while, when using eye-gaze, attention would be directed just to the specific cued placeholder. Moreover, we did not expect such an effect when no placeholders were presented on the scene.

Method

Participants

A new sample of seventy-five undergraduate volunteers (64 females; 18–35 years) were recruited through an experimental online platform from the University of Granada. Participants followed the protocol equally and had the same characteristics as those in experiment 1. Given the online collection of data we decided to double the sample size.

Again, as in experiment 1, because the sample size was not computed a priori based on the effect size of the previous study, we used G*Power [29] to compute sensitivity of our specific relevant analyses regarding the orienting effects (t-test). With our sample size (75 participants) the minimum effect size that could be detected for α = 0.5, and 1−β = 0.80, is Cohen’s dz = 0.290, which is higher than most effect sizes of interest.

Apparatus and stimuli

Unlike Experiment 1, the cueing discrimination task was designed using the graphical experiment builder OpenSesame [37]. As shown in Fig 4, the stimuli in this experiment were nearly the same as those used in the previous experiment, except for the placeholder boxes distribution. This time in the displays of the placeholder-present condition, the three placeholder boxes subtending within each hemifield were located at 0°, +/- 45° and +/-90° from the horizontal meridian and were randomly presented in two possible distributions (+/-45° from the vertical meridian). No other changes were made to the stimuli.

Fig 4. Schematic view of a trial sequence for both the gaze cue and the arrow cue conditions of Experiment 2.

Fig 4

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The example represents: A) gaze/placeholder-absent/same-location/same-group condition, B) arrow/placeholder-present/opposite-group condition.

Procedure

Participants completed this experiment online. They were provided with a link to a survey (using the Lime Survey platform; https://www.limesurvey.org/) to complete the informed consent, receive instructions and be redirected to the online behavioural task (hosted on a JATOS server). All participants were given a clear indication of using a computer to complete the task in order to prevent them from utilising a different device (e.g., smartphone or tablet). Furthermore, the experiment was programmed in a way that a keyboard was needed for the correct recording of responses.

Furthermore, the procedure of this experiment was similar to the one used in experiment 1, although some changes were made. First, the presentation of the placeholder-condition (present and absent) was separated into two blocks. Second, the order of spatial cues (arrow and gaze) was randomly interspersed within each block of trials. Third, as stated above, in the placeholder-present condition, the positions of the six placeholder boxes were grouped into quadrants, appearing at radial distances of 0°, +/- 45° and +/- 90° from the horizontal axis of a central stimulus (see, Fig 4) and were randomly positioned in two possible distributions (+/-45° from the vertical meridian). Finally, the six possible target positions were adapted as the distribution of the placeholder boxes described above (0°, +/- 45° and +/- 90° from the horizontal axis) for both placeholder-present and placeholder-absent conditions. The four critical cue-target relations for the analysis were almost equal to the previous experiment but just adapted to the new possible target positions (see, Fig 5). The remaining characteristics of the procedure were the same as in experiment 1.

Fig 5. Illustration of the four types of cue-target relation of Experiments 2.

Fig 5

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The placeholder-group tilted orientation shown here is -45˚ from vertical. The top images represent an example of gaze cue in a placeholder-present condition; the bottom images represent the arrow cue in a placeholder-present condition. The cue-target relation for the placeholder-absent condition was the same, with the exception that no placeholder boxes were presented on the scene.

Design

As in experiment 1, in this experiment, an overall effect was analysed by using a three-factor repeated measure design, 2 (cue-type) x 2 (placeholder-condition) x 4 (validity). Similar to experiment 1, the cue-type had two levels, arrow and eye-gaze; placeholder-condition had two levels, placeholder-present and placeholder-absent, and validity had four levels, now-called same-location/same-group, opposite-location/opposite-group, same-group and opposite-group. To analyse the general-cueing effect and the now called grouping-effect (targets appearing at +/- 45° and, +/- 90° from the horizontal meridian of the cue), T-test analyses were performed separately for each placeholder condition. For the general-cueing effect, the comparison of cue-target relations consisted of same-location/same-group trials vs opposite-location/opposite-group trials; for the grouping-effect, the cue-target relation consisted of same-group vs opposite-group trials. When no placeholders were presented, the cue-target relations corresponding to same-group and opposite-group conditions were created by distributing the up and down trials between those two types of cue-target relations. The order of blocks of each placeholder condition (present/absent) was counterbalanced across participants.

Results

Correct response trials with RT faster than 100ms or slower than 1200ms (0.8%) and incorrect response trials (6.29%) were excluded from the RT analysis. Mean RT, standard deviations, and error percentage for all conditions are shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Mean reaction times (RT), standard deviation (SD), and percentage of incorrect responses (%IR) as a function of placeholder-condition, type of cue, and cue-target (CT) relation in Experiment 2.

Placeholder-Present Condition Placeholder-Absent-Condition
Arrow Gaze Arrow Gaze
CT relation RT SD %IR RT SD %IR RT SD %IR RT SD %IR
Same-Location/Same-Group 519 76 6.00 536 77.65 6.73 520 69.33 5.81 516 66.47 6.14
Opposite-Location/Opposite-Group 553 81.69 8.78 547 77.32 7.97 529 74.38 5.25 529 68.18 6.86
Same-Group 559 80.34 6.00 563 78.59 6.58 529 65.22 5.53 532 70.07 5.37
Opposite-Group 571 82.13 6.92 565 75.63 6.92 529 65.43 5.60 535 70.72 5.71
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A cue-type (arrows vs. gaze) x placeholder-condition (placeholder-present vs. placeholder-absent) x validity (same-location/same-group, opposite-location/opposite-group, same-group and opposite-group) repeated measures ANOVA was performed to analyse an overall effect.

The analysis reported a main effect of placeholder-condition (F1,74 = 26.86, p = < .001, η2p = 0.266), showing that overall reaction times were faster when no placeholders were presented on the scene (M = 527, SD = 68.63) than when placeholders were presented (M = 552, SD = 79.88). A main effect of validity was also found (F3,222 = 61.25, p = < .001, η2p = 0.087), showing that reaction times were faster when the target appeared at the same-location/same-group (M = 523 SD = 72.56), followed by opposite-location/opposite-group (M = 540, SD = 75.96), same-group (M = 546, SD = 75.04) and opposite-group (M = 550, SD = 75.59) respectively.

The placeholder x validity interaction was also significant (F3,222 = 18.07 p = < .001, η2p = 0.196). Partial ANOVAs showed that when the targets appeared at the same-location/same-group, no differences related to the presence or absence of placeholders in the scene were found (p>.05); nonetheless, when targets appeared at the opposite-location/opposite-group, same-group, and opposite-group, participants were significantly faster when no placeholder objects were presented (all ps < .001).

The main effect of cue-type, nor its interaction with the variables placeholder condition or validity reached significance (all ps >.05). Nonetheless, a three-way interaction of placeholders x cue type x validity was found (F3,222 = 7.11 p = < .001, η2p = 0.088), showing that when no placeholders were presented, as expected, only the main effect of validity was significant (F3,222 = 9.75, p = < .001, η2p = 0.016), whereas when placeholders were presented both the main effect of validity (F3,222 = 72.99, p = < .001, η2p = 0.496), and the cue type x validity interaction (F3,222 = 6.73, p = < .001, η2p = 0.083), were significant.

Indeed, T-test analyses, separately conducted for placeholder absent and present conditions and for each cue type, revealed that when placeholders were absent, it was possible to observe a general-cueing effect for both gaze (t(74) = -2.376, p = 0.02, d = -0.274) and arrows (t(74) = -2.027, p = 0.046, d = -0.234); in this condition, no grouping effect was found for any of the cue types (all ps>.05). When placeholders were presented on the scene, the general-cueing effect was also observed for both gaze (t(74) = -2.472, p = 0.016, d = -0.285) and arrows (t(74) = -6.247, p = < .001, d = -0.721). Nevertheless, and importantly, in this condition, the analysis revealed a main effect of grouping but this was observed only when arrows were used as cue (t(74) = -3.618, p = < .001, d = -0.418); when gaze was used as cue, no grouping-effect was observed (t(74) = -0.769, p = .445, d = -0.089; see Fig 6).

Fig 6. Reaction times (RTs) results from Experiment 2.

Fig 6

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Results are shown separately for the general-cueing effect and the grouping-effect. Mean RTs presented for each type of cue as a function of the cue-target relation in the placeholder-present and placeholder-absent conditions. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean, computed following Cousineau’s [31] method to eliminate variability between participants.

Discussion

As in the previous experiment, no facilitation effect was observed for any cue beyond the specifically cued location when no placeholder objects were presented. However, experiment 2 was conducted to assess whether attention would spread to an entire group of placeholders within a hemifield when using a central non-informative arrow cue and whether eye-gaze will trigger attention just to the specific location or placeholder of the group that is being signalled. Results showed that both arrow and gaze cues provoke attentional facilitation when targets appear at the exact object/location that is being pointed at (general-cueing effect). On the other hand, only arrows, but not eye-gaze, seemed to orient attention to targets appearing in the same group of objects but in a different position than the one indicated by the cue (grouping-effect/placeholder-present condition).

These findings can lead us to speculate that biologically relevant stimuli such as eye-gaze may trigger more specific attentional orienting than arrows due to the particular intention that we may attribute to the others’ focus of attention. However, this specific gaze effect is only observed when measuring attentional facilitation beyond the specifically cued location/object, where a general-cueing effect is observed for arrows and gaze, consistently with the literature. Furthermore, in order for attention to spread to close objects, these must be perceptually organized into distinct groups of objects, as in this experiment, and differently from the previous one. Interestingly, attention spread to nearby objects within the group only with arrow cues even under these conditions. Conversely, when a gaze cue was used, attention was restricted to the specifically cued object within the group.

General discussion

The present study aimed to explore through a series of two experiments whether the attentional orienting in response to non-predictive arrow and eye-gaze cues differs when placeholder objects are presented on the scene.

Results suggest that when several placeholders are grouped into a perceptual object as a function of Gestalt principles of proximity (Experiment 2), gaze and arrows cues elicit attentional effects similar to those first reported by Marotta and colleagues ([18], see [38] for replication). In particular, they showed that when objects were present in the display, eye-gaze cues directed attention to the specific part of the cued object, while arrow cues spread attention to the entire signalled object. Here, we extend these results to new displays in which no entire objects but groups of placeholders, grouped according to their proximity, were presented. In particular, it was observed that attention spread to the whole group of placeholder objects only when using an arrow, while it was restricted to the specific cued placeholder when eye-gaze cues were used. This pattern of results has been replicated in a different on-line study with a larger sample size in which we investigated the modulation of gender/sex over the orienting effects observed with arrows and gaze [39].

On the other hand, when placeholder objects were not grouped within a cued hemifield, as in Experiment 1, arrows and eyes triggered very similar attentional cueing effects with a significant attentional benefit only for targets appearing at a specifically cued location or placeholder, but not for targets appearing in other spatial locations or placeholders. The fact that with arrow cues, the RT advantage for targets presented in the placeholders of the cued hemifield is not present when placeholders are not grouped suggests that arrows trigger attentional orienting spreading to the entire surface of a cued perceptual object but not across the entire cued hemifield, neither when different ungrouped objects are spread out in the hemifield (i.e., in the placeholders present condition in Experiment 1), nor in the absence of any object (in the placeholders absent condition in Experiments 1 and 2).

As a potential limitation, it is important to note that for the arrow cues, the horizontal line is present and then the arrowhead appears at cue onset, whereas for the gaze cues, the pupils are present and then move to the left or the right at cue onset. Also, eye movements were not controlled, which could allow for the differences observed between cue types. Note, however, that if these differences were due to these factors, they would be observed independently of the presence or absence of placeholders, and whether they could be easily grouped or not into two objects. However, the differences seem to be related to how the two cue types interact with attention to groups of objects.

Indeed, the present results have important implications for the perceptual grouping literature, as well as the social attention literature. Interestingly, the influence of Gestalt principles in attentional selection tasks had been previously established in earlier research using peripheral cues (e.g., [36, 40]). The offered results extend these findings to central non-predictive non-social cues. It has been previously suggested that cueing a portion of an object spreads attention across the entire object when arrow cues are used, while it restricts attention at the specific portion of the cued object when eye-gaze cues are used. The present results extend this notion, suggesting that this attentional dissociation is also observed when grouped objects are cued by eye-gaze and arrow cues. The boundary conditions for this effect seem to be related to Gestalt laws of perceptual grouping, as no grouping-effect was observed in Experiment 1 when distance and similarity perhaps led to the perceptual segregation of the display on a single group of objects (i.e., the six placeholders) rather than into two groups of objects (one cued and the other uncued) as in Experiment 2.

Therefore, both peripheral cueing and the effects of symbolic non-predictive non-social cues seem to be triggered automatically and mediated by object-based processes. Importantly, although social directional cues like gaze might produce an effect of a similar nature, as the common effect observed with the standard gaze cueing paradigm and the general-cueing effect observed in our experiments, they must produce an extra effect that restricts attention to the specifically looked-at location. The idea that gaze triggers both an effect similar to the one induced by non-social cues [27] and an extra specific effect has also been shown with other paradigms. Indeed, Marotta and colleagues [41], in a study in which both behavioural and electrophysiological data were collected, observed that arrows and gaze produce a similar effect at earlier event-related components (P1 and N1) but opposite effects at later components (N2 and P300).

Thereby, the present results seem to argue in favour of the idea that biologically relevant stimuli such as eye-gaze may trigger a unique attentional process, qualitatively distinct from the attentional process triggered by non-biologically relevant stimuli such as arrows. Marotta and colleagues [18] suggested that this specific attentional orienting effect of eye-gaze might be mediated by the automatic attribution of intention to gaze and not to arrows. This notion seems to be supported by the present study results and by the observations of Vuilleumier [42] and Wiese et al., [28], showing that when reference objects are presented on the scene, gaze cues trigger a facilitation effect but only to the specific gaze-at object.

For decades, an eye-gaze major role in social communication has been of interest to many researchers (see [5, 43, 44] for reviews). In particular, literature explains how eye-gaze is likely to be used to perceive and understand the emotional and mental states of others and subsequently how it may be a reliable source to anticipate their actions. Thus, rather than gaze-cue not being able to direct attention to a place other than the signalled location, participants may attribute a specific intention to the eye-gaze by retaining their attention specifically at the inferred-at location or the signalled placeholder and not to the entire hemifield or nearby placeholders. Consequently, if these social mechanisms are involved in the specific attentional orienting triggered by eye-gaze, it seems logical to expect that when the spatial cue is non-biologically relevant as an arrow, such a mechanism would not be activated, and attention would be rather spread to nearby objects or the other extreme of the object when larger objects are used [18] following perceptual grouping laws.

Therefore, in order to investigate social attention, paradigms that measure qualitative rather than quantitative differences between biologically and non-biologically relevant stimuli should be used, since the standard gaze-cueing paradigm has proven not to be suitable to capture differences in the attentional orienting effect elicited by social and non-social cues [27]. It will be interesting for future research to explore whether the aforementioned qualitative differences between eye-gaze and arrow cues can be observed in populations with reduced social abilities, such as people with autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia. Perhaps, in these populations, no difference between social and non-social attentional cues may be observed.

Data Availability

All data for the conduction of this study are publicly available via Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/xmq9v.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by a research project (PID2020-114790GB-I00) by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/AEI (https://www.ciencia.gob.es/) to JL, a research project (B-SEJ-572-UGR20) by the Regional Government of Andalusia (https://www.juntadeandalucia.es/) to AM and a Ph.D. fellowship in Psychology and Cognitive Science by "La Sapienza" The University of Rome (https://www.uniroma1.it) to JACH-C. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Decision Letter 0

Nuala Brady

20 Apr 2022

PONE-D-22-03696Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrowsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chacón Candia,

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Reviewer #1: I was a little confused by some of your statistical analyses. It sounds like you did separate analyses for general cueing effects and hemifield effects, for each of the placeholder-present and placeholder-absent conditions. Why were these conditions analyzed separately? It seems like the conclusion that shifts of attention to gaze and arrow cues differ in the specificity of their attentional focus (which is modulated by the placeholders) necessitates directly testing these interactions. For example, in Experiment 1, you really have 4 cue-target relations (same location, opposite location, same hemifield, opposite hemifield), 2 cue types (gaze, arrow), and 2 placeholder conditions (present, absent), which could/should be analyzed in one ANOVA. There are some interesting patterns in the data that are not being addressed by analyzing these separately (e.g., in Exp. 2, for gaze cues the opposite-location/opposite-group RTs are faster than both same group and opposite group, and for arrow cues the opposite location is faster than the opposite group, both of which are unexpected).

It appears that eye movements were not monitored (understandable, given the shift to online data collection), but is it possible that there are differences in eye movements to the two cue types that could explain the patterns of results? Do gaze cues elicit more overt orienting, which could account for the greater specificity of the attentional allocation?

I have a minor concern about the cues themselves and how that might affect the observed pattern. For the arrow cues, the horizontal line is present and then the arrowhead appears at cue onset, whereas for the gaze cues the pupils are present and then move to the left or the right at cue onset (which may be programmed as the appearance of a new object, but I imagine to the participant is perceived as the movement of the pupils). How does appearance of a new object vs. movement of an existing object affect cueing and the orienting of attention? I.e., is the difference observed really between gaze and arrows, or is it because of lower-level differences in object processing?

The final paragraph at the end of the conclusion either needs to be removed or expanded to include citations and a more thorough discussion of why understanding different mechanisms for gaze and arrow cues is important. Right now it is too vague and doesn’t add anything to the paper.

Although not a major concern, to fully understand the differences between these tasks it might be useful to dig into the data in Exp. 2 and 3 further:

1) Were there distance effects in Exp. 2 or 3? In both these experiments the cued/opposite placeholder is on the horizontal meridian and then the two within-group placeholders are at a graded distance above or below this location. It appears that both locations within the group were combined together for analysis, but one would imagine a differential “spread” of attention to nearby and more distant placeholders. It might be useful to directly assess this.

2)Were there differences between visual fields (upper/lower and left/right)? When one group is in the lower VF, the opposite group is always in upper VF (and vice versa). There might be asymmetries in how attention is allocated (i.e., easier to shift attention downward than upward, might see less of a group effect when attention is directed upward and then more easily shifts downward on invalidly cued trials). Similarly, you might see effects of left vs. right (easier to shift attention from left to right), or an interaction between left/right and up/down, such that effects when cued group is in upper left will be very different when it is in lower right.

There are some typographical and grammatical errors throughout the manuscript. These are generally minor and don’t impede understanding of the paper, but a thorough proof-reading is recommended. Here are a few examples:

p. 2, ln. 23 – remove ‘the’ before others

p. 2, ln. 34 – missing ‘e’ on Kingstone

p. 6, ln. 117 – sited should be seated

p. 7, ln. 154 – remove ‘so call’

Reviewer #2: The study includes three experiments that examined whether the inclusion of a placeholder would modulate orienting of attention in a Posner cueing paradigm to socially relevant versus socially non -relevant directional cues. Experiment 2 and 3 were conducted online and Experiment 1 was an in-person laboratory experiment. Results support previous findings that have shown that when an object is present eye-gaze cueing facilitates attention to object part whereas arrows to the entire object.

Overall, the manuscript is well presented. I suggest the authors redraft the introduction to include a more comprehensive yet description of relevant research in the field ( see recommendations below). More importantly is the issue of sample size selection, composition and justification ( or lack thereof). I have some reservations about the the joined analysis of exp 2 and 3 which I detail below

Review Comments to the Author

Introduction:

The comparison of biologically/socially relevant attentional cues (e.g eye-gaze, pointed hands, head orientation and body orientation) versus non-social cues ( e.g arrows) has a rich history in the field of attention and more generally social cognition and perception. The introduction would benefit from a more in-depth description of some of the research in the field. Below are some references to relevant papers that the authors may wish to include. These are papers that have compared attentional orienting to social vs. non-social directional cues as well as papers that have examined perceptual representation of these directional cues. And more broadly, paper that have discuss how individual differences may account for the results we see in social attention with respect to cue type.

• Capozzi, F., & Ristic, J. (2018). How attention gates social interactions. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1426(1), 179-198.

• Dalmaso, M., Castelli, L., & Galfano, G. (2020). Social modulators of gaze-mediated orienting of attention: A review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27(5), 833-855.

• Guzzon, D., Brignani, D., Miniussi, C., & Marzi, C. A. (2010). Orienting of attention with eye and arrow cues and the effect of overtraining. Acta Psychologica, 134(3), 353-362.

• Cooney SM, O’Shea A, Brady N (2015) Point Me in the Right Direction: Same and Cross Category Visual Aftereffects to Directional Cues. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141411.

Sample size, Composition & Statistical Power

How was the sample size estimated for the three experiments? 37 experiment 1,75 experiment 2, 26 for experiment 3. Justification for sample size needs to be given.

The majority of the sample in all three experiments is female. Please comment on this as a limitation with reference to previous research that has identified sex differences in spatial orienting of attention in similar Posner cueing experiments know differences in how males and female orient their attention (see Cooney, Brady & Ryan 2017; Bayliss, di Pellegrino & Tipper, 2005, Mitsuda, T., Otani, M., & Sugimoto, S. (2019).

Exp 3 is a replication but with less than half the sample of experiment. The author’s then go on to run a combined analysis for experiment 2 & 3. Further justification is required here. Presumably, the combined analysis was conducted because Exp 3 contained a very small sample size. However, it’s important to note that the participants in Exp 3 only took part in one condition. While the authors mention this choice they do not justify it – why did the participants only do the placeholder present condition? The authors need to justify this choice in relation to the power of the sample in Exp 3. In general, the power and justification for sample size in all 3 experiments requires justification and discussion.

I have reservations about the combined analysis as it does not follow best research practice. Given that the result of the cue-type ( arrow, eye gaze) * cue-target relation (same-location/same-hemifield vs. opposite-location/opposite- hemifield) changes (i.e. it becomes statistically significant) when the sample size is increased in the combined analysis and the study does not seem to be pre-registered, I recommend removing the combined analysis. Or at the very least detailing the choice and the possible limitations of this approach.

Method: for the arrow trials a horizontal line was placed…presumably this was a horizontal line with an arrowhead – this need to be specified.

Experiment 1 - Method

Please report the size and dimensions of the computer screen/monitor.

How was ‘unpredictability’ of the target X and O operationalized? Was there an equal amount of trials for X and O targets?

SOA: Would the authors expect different results if the SOA was manipulated?

Why was 300ms chosen?

Instead of describing three studies refer to each as Experiment 1, Experiment 2, Experiment 3.

Exp 2 and 3 are online experiments whereas Exp 1 was in-person. As Exp 2 & 3 were online, considerably less control over the way the stimuli were viewed., i.e did all participant take part on laptop/Pc’s?

Post-hocs should be reported for significant interactions. The authors refer to figures to make inferences about the interactions – at the very least the post- hocs should be in the supplementary.

There are several grammatical and spelling errors

For example - Page 2 line 39. Sentence beginning 'They found is.. '

should read 'They found that'

Line 117 'sited' should read 'seated'

**********

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PLoS One. 2023 Jan 25;18(1):e0280955. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280955.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

13 Jul 2022

Dear Academic Editor,

I hereby enclose the revised version of manuscript number PONE-D-22-03696R1 titled “Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrows”.

We very much appreciate your comments as well as the reviewers’ suggestions; we have tried to address all of them in this new version of the manuscript. We agree that the points raised by you and by the reviewers have contributed to strengthening the document. Below we detail the changes in the manuscript in response to the reviewers’ comments.

We hope that after these final changes the manuscript is suitable for publication. Furthermore, we are willing to make any new change if requested.

Thank you again for the opportunity, and for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

J CH-C (on behalf of the other authors)

Reviewer #1

� I was a little confused by some of your statistical analyses. It sounds like you did separate analyses for general cueing effects and hemifield effects, for each of the placeholder-present and placeholder-absent conditions. Why were these conditions analyzed separately?. It seems like the conclusion that shifts of attention to gaze and arrow cues differ in the specificity of their attentional focus (which is modulated by the placeholders) necessitates directly testing these interactions. For example, in Experiment1, you really have 4 cue-target relations (same location, opposite location, same hemifield, opposite hemifield), 2 cue types (gaze, arrow), and 2 placeholder conditions (present, absent), which could/should be analyzed in one ANOVA. There are some interesting patterns in the data that are not being addressed by analyzing these separately (e.g., in Exp. 2, for gaze cues the opposite-location/opposite-group RTs are faster than both same group and opposite group, and for arrow cues the opposite location is faster than the opposite group, both of which are unexpected).

Response: Thank you for your comments. The analyses you suggested are now reported in the revised version of the paper (See Experiment 1 & 2, Results section).

� It appears that eye movements were not monitored (understandable, given the shift to online data collection), but is it possible that there are differences in eye movements to the two cue types that could explain the patterns of results? Do gaze cues elicit more overt orienting, which could account for the greater specificity of the attentional allocation?

Response: Several studies have suggested that there are no differences between the overt attention produced by eye-gaze and arrow stimuli (Khun & Benson, 2007; Khun et al., 2010; Khun & Kingstone, 2009). However, even if such a difference between the two cue types does exist, we would expect it to affect in the same manner in both, the placeholder-present and the placeholder-absent conditions. Nevertheless, our patter of results shows a difference between the two stimuli, but only when placeholder objects are presented in the scene, suggesting that the observed differences are not due to the over attention produced by eye-gaze and arrows, but may be due to the distinct ways in which people select objects in response to them.

References

Kuhn, G., & Benson, V. (2007). The influence of eye-gaze and arrow pointing distractor cues on voluntary eye movements. Perception & psychophysics, 69(6), 966-971.

Kuhn, G., Benson, V., Fletcher-Watson, S., Kovshoff, H., McCormick, C. A., Kirkby, J., & Leekam, S. R. (2010). Eye movements affirm: automatic overt gaze and arrow cueing for typical adults and adults with autism spectrum disorder. Experimental Brain Research, 201(2), 155-165.

Kuhn, G., & Kingstone, A. (2009). Look away! Eyes and arrows engage oculomotor responses automatically. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 71(2), 314-327.

� I have a minor concern about the cues themselves and how that might affect the observed pattern. For the arrow cues, the horizontal line is present and then the arrowhead appears at cue onset, whereas for the gaze cues the pupils are present and then move to the left or the right at cue onset (which may be programmed as the appearance of a new object, but I imagine to the participant is perceived as the movement of the pupils). How does appearance of a new object vs. movement of an existing object affect cueing and the orienting of attention? I.e., is the difference observed really between gaze and arrows, or is it because of lower-level differences in object processing?

Response: This is an interesting point that we have now commented on as a limitation in the revised version of the paper (see, General discussion section). Nonetheless, if this phenomenon influenced orienting of attention, the same influence should be observed in the placeholder-absent condition. However, no gaze-arrow differences exist when no placeholders are presented on the scene.

� The final paragraph at the end of the conclusion either needs to be removed or expanded to include citations and a more thorough discussion of why understanding different mechanisms for gaze and arrow cues is important. Right now, it is too vague and doesn’t add anything to the paper.

Response: Thank you for the observation. This point has been re-address in the revised version of the paper.

� Although not a major concern, to fully understand the differences between these tasks it might be useful to dig into the data in Exp. 2 and 3 further:

1) Were there distance effects in Exp. 2 or 3? In both these experiments the cued/opposite placeholder is on the horizontal meridian and then the two within-group placeholders are at a graded distance above or below this location. It appears that both locations within the group were combined together for analysis, but one would imagine a differential “spread” of attention to nearby and more distant placeholders. It might be useful to directly assess this.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion; this is an interesting issue. Although we did not include this analysis in the revised version of the paper, we explored, as you suggested, the data related to the cue-target distance when the placeholder-present grouping effect was to be analysed. By doing this analysis in experiment 2, we indeed found an effect of distance (near vs fare; F1,74=36.76, p=<.001,η2p=0.332), showing that, in general, reaction times were faster when targets appeared at the grouping-near location than on the grouping-far location. The interaction cue-type X validity X distance (F1,74=5.38, p=.023,η2p=0.068) was also significant, revealing that when arrows were used as a cue, beside a main effect of validity (F1,74=13.09, p=<.001,η2p=0.150; lower reaction times for valid [M=559, SD=80.34] than for invalid [M=571, SD=82.13] trials), participants responded faster when the target appeared at the near than at the fare location in both the valid (M=548 SD=76.24 vs M=570 SD=88.86) and invalid trials (M=566 SD=85.27 vs M=575 SD=85.25). Importantly, no interaction of validity X distance was found when analysing the arrow-grouping effect (p>.05). When eye gaze was used, the distance effect was also significant (F1,74=19.16, p=<.001,η2p=0.206), showing again that participants responded faster when the target appeared at the nearest than at the furthest location in both the valid (M=558 SD=82.73 vs M=569 SD=80.40) and invalid trials (M=556 SD=72.97 vs M=575 SD=82.73). However, nor the validity nor the interaction of validity X distance were significant (p>.05).

Experiment 3 has been removed in the revised version of the paper, which is the reason why we are not reporting the suggested analysis from that experiment.

2) Were there differences between visual fields (upper/lower and left/right)? When one group is in the lower VF, the opposite group is always in upper VF (and vice versa). There might be asymmetries in how attention is allocated (i.e., easier to shift attention downward than upward, might see less of a group effect when attention is directed upward and then more easily shifts downward on invalidly cued trials). Similarly, you might see effects of left vs. right (easier to shift attention from left to right), or an interaction between left/right and up/down, such that effects when cued group is in upper left will be very different when it is in lower right.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion; this is an interesting issue. Although we did not include this analysis in the revised version of the paper, as it was not the main goal of the study, we explored, as you suggested, the data related to the hemifields up/down and left/right.

First, the analysis reported a main effect of hemifield (up vs down) when an arrow was presented as a cue (F1,74=8.94, p=.004,η2p=0.108), showing that in this placeholder-present condition, participants responded faster when targets appeared at the upper than at the lower hemifield in both valid (M=567, SD=91.72 vs M=573, SD=92.74) and invalid trials (M=566, SD=82.67 vs M=584, SD=94.37). When eye gaze was used, no up/down hemifield effect was found (p>.05). Secondly, when analysing the left/right hemifield effect, no hemifield or any related interactions were found (all p>.05).

Experiment 3 has been removed in the revised version of the paper, which is the reason why we are not reporting the suggested analysis from that experiment.

� There are some typographical and grammatical errors throughout the manuscript. These are generally minor and don’t impede understanding of the paper, but a thorough proof-reading is recommended.

Response: Thank you for the observation. The signalled errors have been corrected in the revised version of the paper. We also have reviewed the entire manuscript again to try to point out and correct any other possible errors.

Reviewer #2

The study includes three experiments that examined whether the inclusion of a placeholder would modulate orienting of attention in a Posner cueing paradigm to socially relevant versus socially non –relevant directional cues. Experiment 2 and 3 were conducted online and Experiment 1 was an in-person laboratory experiment. Results support previous findings that have shown that when an object is present eye-gaze cueing facilitates attention to object part whereas arrows to the entire object.

Overall, the manuscript is well presented. I suggest the authors redraft the introduction to include a more comprehensive yet description of relevant research in the field (see recommendations below). More importantly is the issue of sample size selection, composition and justification (or lack thereof). I have some reservations about the joined analysis of exp 2 and 3 which I detail below.

Introduction:

� The comparison of biologically/socially relevant attentional cues (e.g eye-gaze, pointed hands, head orientation and body orientation) versus non-social cues (e.g arrows) has a rich history in the field of attention and more generally social cognition and perception. The introduction would benefit from a more in-depth description of some of the research in the field. Below are some references to relevant papers that the authors may wish to include. These are papers that have compared attentional orienting to social vs. non-social directional cues as well as papers that have examined perceptual representation of these directional cues. And more broadly, paper that have discuss how individual differences may account for the results we see in social attention with respect to cue type.

• Capozzi, F., & Ristic, J. (2018). How attention gates social interactions. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1426(1), 179-198.

• Dalmaso, M., Castelli, L., & Galfano, G. (2020). Social modulators of gaze-mediated orienting of attention: A review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,

27(5), 833-855.

• Guzzon, D., Brignani, D., Miniussi, C., & Marzi, C. A. (2010). Orienting of attention with eye and arrow cues and the effect of overtraining. Acta Psychologica, 134(3), 353-362.

• Cooney SM, O’Shea A, Brady N (2015) Point Me in the Right Direction: Same and Cross Category Visual Aftereffects to Directional Cues. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141411.

Response: Thank you for your suggestions. We have now considered the studies you have mentioned for the revised version of the paper.

Sample size, Composition & Statistical Power

� How was the sample size estimated for the three experiments? 37 experiment 1, 75 experiment 2, 26 for experiment 3. Justification for sample size needs to be given.

Response: There was no experiment of reference for our first experiment, as this was the first time our paradigm was used. We could use as reference the study by Wiese et al., (2013), but they did not compare arrows and gaze, which was critical for our experiment. Instead, we could use Marotta et al. (2012) experiments, in which objects instead of group of objects (i.e., placeholders) were used, but they did compare gaze with arrow cues. Marotta et al. (2012) used samples of 24 and 30 participants, so we decided to use a sample of 36 (37 at the end) participants for Experiment 1. For experiment 2, we duplicated the sample size because of the online modality. We agree that in experiment 3, the sample was not very big. We decide to include this experiment because was basically a replication, and could be useful for performing a joint analysis with the placeholders data from Experiment 2. However, we agree that this experiment alone was not sufficiently powered and have decided to remove it from the revised version of the paper.

Unfortunately, as we did not have a clear reference experiment, we did not perform a priori power analysis. However, a sensitivity analysis carried out now for Experiment 1, with a sample size of 37 participants, with � = .05 and a power of 1-�=.90, showed that the experiment had enough sensitivity as to detect a minimum effect size of η2p=0.0202 (f= 0.143); the same analysis carried out for Experiment 2 (75 participants) showed that the experiment was sufficiently power as to detect a minimum effect size of η2p=0.0100 (f= 0.100). Importantly, these minimum effect size that could be detected by our design were smaller than the observed effect sizes for the critical interactions.

References

Marotta, A., Lupianez, J., Martella, D., & Casagrande, M. (2012). Eye gaze versus arrows as spatial cues: Two qualitatively different modes of attentional selection. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform, 38(2), 326-335. https://doi.org/2011-12265-001 [pii] 10.1037/a0023959

Wiese, E., Zwickel, J., & Müller, H. J. (2013). The importance of context information for the spatial specificity of gaze cueing. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 75(5), 967–982. doi: 10.3758/s13414-013-0444-y

� The majority of the sample in all three experiments is female. Please comment on this as a limitation with reference to previous research that has identified sex differences in spatial orienting of attention in similar Posner cueing experiments know differences in how males and female orient their attention (see Cooney, Brady & Ryan 2017; Bayliss, di Pellegrino &Tipper, 2005, Mitsuda, T., Otani, M., & Sugimoto, S. (2019).

Response: In fact, this is one of the main goals of a study we have now in preparation. We have already collected the full sample (female: 93, male: 90) and analysed the data. Results show that neither the interaction sex X cue-type (F1,182=0.421, p=.517), sex X validity (F3,546=0.644, p=.423), nor the sex X cue-type X validity (F3,546=1.086, p=.299) was significant. This lead us to the conclusion that no differences between males and females seem to be present in our study when using this task to dissociate between social and non-social attention.

� Exp 3 is a replication but with less than half the sample of experiment. The author’s then go on to run a combined analysis for experiment 2 & 3. Further justification is required here.

Response: Experiment 3 was added in order to replicate the findings. However, we understand that the sample size was notably smaller than Exp 2, the reason why following your advice, we have removed experiment 3 and the combined analysis from the revised version of the paper. Furthermore, we are carrying out one study (in preparation) in which we have used this task (placeholders present condition only) to compare social vs non-social attention in male and female students from STEM vs social sciences/humanities careers. Therefore, we are now confident that the observed pattern of data for the placeholders condition in Exp 2 replicates. Indeed, we replicated the Cue-Type x Validity, F3,546= 13.85, p<.001. Again, t-test analyses show that the general cueing effect was significant for both arrows (p<.001) and gaze (p=.015), but the object-based effect was only significant for arrows (p<.001), not for gaze (p=.322).

� Presumably, the combined analysis was conducted because Exp 3 contained a very small sample size. However, it’s important to note that the participants in Exp 3 only took part in one condition. While the authors mention this choice they do not justify it – why did the participants only do the placeholder present condition? The authors need to justify this choice in relation to the power of the sample in Exp 3. In general, the power and justification for sample size in all 3 experiments requires justification and discussion.

Response: We have removed Exp 3 and the combined analysis in the revised version of the paper.

� I have reservations about the combined analysis as it does not follow best research practice. Given that the result of the cue-type (arrow, eye gaze) * cue-target relation (same-location/same-hemifield vs. opposite-location/opposite- hemifield) changes (i.e. it becomes statistically significant) when the sample size is increased in the combined analysis and the study does not seem to be pre-registered, I recommend removing the combined analysis. Or at the very least detailing the choice and the possible limitations of this approach.

Response: We have removed Exp 3 and the combined analysis in the revised version of the paper.

Method

� For the arrow trials a horizontal line was placed… presumably this was a horizontal line with an arrowhead – this need to be specified.

Response: Thank you for the observation. This has been specified in the revised version of the paper (See Experiment 1, Method section: “Apparatus and stimuli”).

� Experiment 1 – Method: Please report the size and dimensions of the computer screen/monitor.

Response: Thank you for the observation. This has been mentioned in the revised version of the paper (See Experiment 1, Method section: “Apparatus and stimuli”).

� How was ‘unpredictability’ of the target X and O operationalized? Was there an equal amount of trials for X and O targets?

Response: Thank you for the observation. This has been specified in the revised version of the paper (See Experiment 1, Method section: “Procedure”).

� SOA: Would the authors expect different results if the SOA was manipulated? Why was 300ms chosen?

Response: The reason why an SOA of 300 ms was chosen was that recent meta-analytic evidence (Chacón-Candia et al., 2022 [under review]) has shown that SOAs of 200 to 400 ms report a stronger magnitude of gaze and arrow cueing effects (Figure 1), therefore, in order to shorten the duration of the experiment and because it is not relevant to the issues addressed in this article, we decided only to use an overall mean duration reported in previous evidence.

Figure 1 (see on the Response to reviewers file)

Decrease of the standardized cueing effect with SOA. Filled circles represent studies using cues with long duration, whereas empty circles represent short cues (≤ 300 ms of duration). The size of the circles was proportional to the number of participants contributing to the effect. Dashed and dotted lines show the decrease in the cueing effects with long and short cue displays, respectively.

References

Chacón-Candia J A, Román-Caballero R, Aranda-Martín B, Lupiáñez J, Casagrande M, Marotta A. (2022). No quantitative differences between eye-gaze and arrow cues: A meta-analytic answer and a call for qualitative differences. [Manuscript submitted for publication].

� Instead of describing three studies refer to each as Experiment 1, Experiment 2, Experiment 3.

Response: Thank you for the observation. This issue has been re-addressed in the revised version of the paper.

� Exp 2 and 3 are online experiments whereas Exp 1 was in-person. As Exp 2 & 3 were online, considerably less control over the way the stimuli were viewed, i.e did all participant take part on laptop/Pc’s?

Response: Yes, we made sure to make it sufficiently clear in the instructions given to participants that it was necessary to use a PC/laptop to successfully complete the task (responses to the target were to be made by pressing a key on the keyboard).

� Post-hocs should be reported for significant interactions. The authors refer to figures to make inferences about the interactions – at the very least the post- hocs should be in the supplementary.

Response: All relevant comparisons are now reported in the revised version of the paper.

� There are several grammatical and spelling errors.

Response: Thank you for the observation. The signalled errors have been corrected in the revised version of the paper. We also have reviewed the entire manuscript again to try to point out and correct any other possible errors.

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file. (122.8KB, docx)

Decision Letter 1

Nuala Brady

26 Jul 2022

PONE-D-22-03696R1Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrowsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chacón Candia,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Thank you for replying to the reviewers’ comments. The MS has clearly benefited from these revisions and should have more widespread appeal given your consideration of the boarder literature on attentional cueing by socially relevant stimuli. However, as editor, I have difficulties discerning whether you have addressed the concerns of both reviewers adequately, both of whom were chosen as experts in the area. Before considering the MS for publication in PLOS ONE, I would like to see the following issues addressed. The first is general, the others are specific to Reviewer 1 and 2 respectively 1. In many instances you simply reply to the reviewers’ concerns personally but do not incorporate these issues into the revised MS. While this may be appropriate for some concerns (e.g., if a reviewer raises an issue that is not part of your design it may be appropriate to communicate privately, as it were), in many cases the issues flagged by the reviewers are ones that readers will be interested in and have identical questions to the reviewers. As an obvious one, the shift from lab based to online work brings questions as to the size of the device a participant might use (PC screen, tablet, phone) which is potentially very important to grouping and proximity – while you reply to the reviewer you do not seem to have incorporated this into the revised MS. Please provide a clean copy of the revised MS which (a) excludes removed material (i.e. all the crossed out text), (b) uses track changes to highlight revised and new material and (c) please in the reply to reviewers indicate exactly where in the revised MS the changes have been made (pXX, lines XX-XX on revised MS), and (d) where you are replying privately to a reviewer and are NOT making changes to the MS, please say so explicitly  2. Reviewer 1 raises the important issue of how the statistical analysis was preformed, recommending for Exp 1 that you start with a repeated measures ANOVA with factors of cue-type (2 levels), placeholder-condition (2 levels) and validity (4 levels) to analyse the RT data. You have now done this but it very hard to see whether the ‘separate t-tests’ that you are refer to follow directly from this main ANOVA? In presenting the results for this ANOVA you make no reference to cue-type – I assume this is because there is ‘not significant’ but as this is the crux of the research, it needs brief mention. The same issue arises for Exp 2(a) Please clarify that these analyses were post-hoc tests or planned comparisons arising from the main ANOVA. Please submit an ANOVA table for Exp 1 and Exp 2. If you do not wish to include in the MS that is fine, but it would be helpful for the evaluation of the MS to have ANOVA results to hand(b) The language used is very confusing, e.g., by a ‘general cueing effect’ do you mean a cueing effect that is independent of the cue type (arrow/gaze)? If so, please state this. You seem to have taken the Reviewer’s advice as to how to analyse the data but are sticking with the terminology from the first MS?(c) It would be helpful if you would present the statistical results with direct reference to Figure 3 (for Exp 1) and Figure 6 (for Exp 2), and use an asterisk to denote significance in the plots where this occurs. Both these figures should have a visible and labelled y-axis 3. Reviewer 2 highlights the essential issue of statistical power and sample size. For Exp 1 you justify your use of sample size with reference to published work. This is not good practice as much published work in experimental psychology is likely under-sampled. (a) Please provide a retrospective power analysis for Exp 1 as suggested by the reviewer, using conventional choices of effect size, power etc. As this is a repeated measures design you may wish to consider https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-45517-001(b) Please address how your sample size compares with that recommended by the power analysis (c) Please do the same for Exp 2. Here the sample size is considerable greater than for Exp 1 with no justification except for the ease of recruiting online. (d) Although you have removed the formal comparison between Exp 1 and Exp 2 as recommended by the reviewer, you still need to consider the implications of different sample sizes for your conclusions, e.g., is it appropriate to conclude that gaze acts differently than arrows but only in the case of grouped stimuli? Because you do see a 3-way interaction in Exp 2 but not in Exp 1? Is it possible that the difference in the results come down to sample size? Given the importance of power analyses, sample size etc and the considerable issues of moving from laboratory based to online research across the two experiments, it may be wise to discuss with your research team conducting Exp 2 in the lab with formal power analysis? Minor issues1. With regard to reference 28 (Chacón-Candia J A, Román-Caballero R, Aranda-Martín B, Lupiáñez J, Casagrande M, Marotta A.. please use the standard method of citing online publications and do not use “Manuscript submitted for publication”: You can find the correct citation at https://psyarxiv.com/2. Table 1 You refer to percent error yet use abbreviation IR (I assume this is ‘incorrect response’?). Please use either one or the other as it is confusing when the abbreviation does not match the long text.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 09 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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Nuala Brady

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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PLoS One. 2023 Jan 25;18(1):e0280955. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280955.r004

Author response to Decision Letter 1

20 Oct 2022

1. Editor

Dear Dr. Chacón Candia,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Thank you for replying to the reviewers’ comments. The MS has clearly benefited from these revisions and should have more widespread appeal given your consideration of the boarder literature on attentional cueing by socially relevant stimuli.

However, as editor, I have difficulties discerning whether you have addressed the concerns of both reviewers adequately, both of whom were chosen as experts in the area. Before considering the MS for publication in PLOS ONE, I would like to see the following issues addressed. The first is general, the others are specific to Reviewer 1 and 2 respectively

In many instances you simply reply to the reviewers’ concerns personally but do not incorporate these issues into the revised MS. While this may be appropriate for some concerns (e.g., if a reviewer raises an issue that is not part of your design it may be appropriate to communicate privately, as it were), in many cases the issues flagged by the reviewers are ones that readers will be interested in and have identical questions to the reviewers.

Response: Thank you for your comments. We have tried to address this general suggestion in the revised version of the paper.

* As an obvious one, the shift from lab based to online work brings questions as to the size of the device a participant might use (PC screen, tablet, phone) which is potentially very important to grouping and proximity – while you reply to the reviewer you do not seem to have incorporated this into the revised MS.

Response: This issue has been explained more clearly in the revised version of the manuscript in the “Procedure” section of experiment 2 (p.15; lines 329-335 on revised MS).

Please provide a clean copy of the revised MS which:

(a) excludes removed material (i.e. all the crossed out text)

Response: We have considered this in the new version of the marked-up copy of the manuscript.

(b) uses track changes to highlight revised and new material

Response: We have considered this in the new version of the marked-up copy of the manuscript.

(c) please in the reply to reviewers indicate exactly where in the revised MS the changes have been made (pXX, lines XX-XX on revised MS).

Response: We have considered this in the new version of the marked-up copy of the manuscript.

(d) where you are replying privately to a reviewer and are NOT making changes to the MS, please say so explicitly

Response: We have considered this in the new version of the marked-up copy of the manuscript.

Reviewer 1

* Reviewer 1 raises the important issue of how the statistical analysis was preformed, recommending for Exp 1 that you start with a repeated measures ANOVA with factors of cue-type (2 levels), placeholder-condition (2 levels) and validity (4 levels) to analyse the RT data. You have now done this but it very hard to see whether the ‘separate t-tests’ that you are refer to follow directly from this main ANOVA?

Response: Yes, t-tests are done following the interaction to analyse the general cueing and hemifield effects specifically. This has now been specified in the revised version of the paper in the "Design" section of experiment 1 (p.9; lines 202-204 on revised MS). We hope it is now clearer.

* In presenting the results for this ANOVA you make no reference to cue-type – I assume this is because there is ‘not significant’ but as this is the crux of the research, it needs brief mention. The same issue arises for Exp 2

Response: Thank you for your observation; this has now been specified in the revised version of the paper in the “Results” section for both experiment 1 (p.12; lines 253-254 on revised MS) and experiment 2 (p.18; line 400-401 on revised MS).

(a) Please clarify that these analyses were post-hoc tests or planned comparisons arising from the main ANOVA.

Response: This is now specified in the new version of the paper (p.9; lines 202-204 on revised MS). T-tests are planned comparisons always comparing the two relevant conditions for our effects of interest: general cueing and hemifield/grouping effects. When we have no specific a priori hypotheses, we performed partial ANOVAs following the significant interactions. We hope this is now clearer in the manuscript.

* Please submit an ANOVA table for Exp 1 and Exp 2. If you do not wish to include in the MS that is fine, but it would be helpful for the evaluation of the MS to have ANOVA results to hand

Response: Below you will find the complete tables of the results of the ANOVA analyses for experiments 1 and 2, respectively. We believe it is not necessary to include these tables in the manuscript.

Experiment 1.

(You can find the image at the attached document called "Response to Reviewers").

Experiment 2.

(You can find the image at the attached document called "Response to Reviewers").

(b) The language used is very confusing, e.g., by a ‘general cueing effect’ do you mean a cueing effect that is independent of the cue type (arrow/gaze)? If so, please state this.

Response: We are sorry for the confusion. The “general-cueing effect” refers to the comparisons between same-location/same-hemifield and opposite-location/opposite-hemifield conditions (p.9; line 204-206 on revised MS), and the hemifield-effect to that between same-hemifield and opposite-hemifield conditions (p.9; line 206-207 on revised MS). Depending on whether the validity effect is modulated by Cue type (Exp 2) or not (Exp1), t-tests for these effects are performed specifically for each cue-type or independently of it.

In other words, the general cueing effect is the standard effect observed when the target appears only in the placeholders located on each side of the cue. Although we understand the confusion with this term, we have used it following previous similar research (Marotta et al., 2012).

We hope this is clearer now in the manuscript.

Reference

Marotta, A., Lupiánez, J., Martella, D., & Casagrande, M. (2012). Eye gaze versus arrows as spatial cues: two qualitatively different modes of attentional selection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38(2), 326. doi: 10.1037/a0023959.

• You seem to have taken the Reviewer’s advice as to how to analyse the data but are sticking with the terminology from the first MS?

Response: Indeed, we have followed his/her advice regarding the analyses. However, for analysing the interactions of interest (regarding the variable validity), we have kept the terminology general-cueing and hemifield/grouping effects as we believe these terms are helpful to differentiate distinct types of attentional orienting. Nevertheless, we hope that the revised version of the manuscript clarifies how these effects were analysed.

(c) It would be helpful if you would present the statistical results with direct reference to Figure 3 (for Exp 1) and Figure 6 (for Exp 2), and use an asterisk to denote significance in the plots where this occurs. Both these figures should have a visible and labelled y-axis

Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We have now included the references of figures 3 and 6 in the description of the results of experiment 1 (p.12; line 251 on revised MS) and experiment 2 (p.19; line 416-417 on revised MS) on the revised version of the manuscript. We also added asterisks to the figures to denote significance in the plots where this occurs, and we have labelled the y-axis.

Reviewer 2

* Reviewer 2 highlights the essential issue of statistical power and sample size. For Exp 1 you justify your use of sample size with reference to published work. This is not good practice as much published work in experimental psychology is likely under-sampled.

Response: We have merged in one answer the critical points highlighted by Reviewer 2. You can find the complete response at the end of this comments section.

(a) Please provide a retrospective power analysis for Exp 1 as suggested by the reviewer, using conventional choices of effect size, power etc. As this is a repeated measures design you may wish to consider https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-45517-001

(b) Please address how your sample size compares with that recommended by the power analysis

(c) Please do the same for Exp 2. Here the sample size is considerable greater than for Exp 1 with no justification except for the ease of recruiting online.

(d) Although you have removed the formal comparison between Exp 1 and Exp 2 as recommended by the reviewer, you still need to consider the implications of different sample sizes for your conclusions, e.g., is it appropriate to conclude that gaze acts differently than arrows but only in the case of grouped stimuli?. Because you do see a 3-way interaction in Exp 2 but not in Exp 1? Is it possible that the difference in the results come down to sample size?.

Given the importance of power analyses, sample size etc and the considerable issues of moving from laboratory based to online research across the two experiments, it may be wise to discuss with your research team conducting Exp 2 in the lab with formal power analysis?

Response: We agree with the reviewer that it is not good practice to base sample size estimation on previous estimations. Indeed, we currently conduct a priori power analysis to estimate the needed sample size for our studies. However, the data from the experiments reported in the current paper were collected before this practice was fully established in our lab. As far as we know, the best is rather to report sensitivity analysis, showing the minimum effect size that could be detected with our sample size. Therefore, we now report sensitivity analyses for both Experiments 1 and 2 (p's.6 and 7; lines 139-143 and p.14; lines 309-313, respectively, on revised MS).

Of course, we agree that replicating in the lab with an a priori estimated sample size would be ideal. However, we have already replicated online the same pattern of data observed in Experiment 2 (placeholders present condition), in which we investigated in a large sample size of 200 men and women students from different careers (STEM vs social sciences) the effects observed for arrows and gaze. Although no differences between gender or sex were observed, the overall pattern was replicated: whereas arrows led to both general-cueing and grouping effects gaze only produced a significant general-cueing effect. We are therefore confident that the data pattern is reliable and replicable online.

Minor issues

1. With regard to reference 28 (Chacón-Candia J A, Román-Caballero R, Aranda-Martín B, Lupiáñez J, Casagrande M, Marotta A. please use the standard method of citing online publications and do not use “Manuscript submitted for publication”: You can find the correct citation at https://psyarxiv.com/

Response: Thank you for pointing this out. The citation has been corrected in the revised version of the manuscript (p.28; lines 632-635 on revised MS).

2. Table 1 You refer to percent error yet use abbreviation IR (I assume this is ‘incorrect response’?). Please use either one or the other as it is confusing when the abbreviation does not match the long text.

Response: Thank you for your observation; this issue has been corrected in both table 1 (p.10; line 219 on revised MS) and table 2 (p.17; lines: 378 on revised MS) of the revised version of the manuscript.

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file. (1.2MB, docx)

Decision Letter 2

Avid Roman-Gonzalez

12 Jan 2023

Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrows

PONE-D-22-03696R2

Dear Dr. Chacón Candia,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Avid Roman-Gonzalez, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: Partly

Reviewer #4: Partly

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #3: In the light of your method that addresses attentional shifts triggered by these different types of stimuli and trial sequence. Results are interesting and my main question is (1) whether your study may work just in trail sequence or comparing with Markov chains. Please can you clarify the following observations before giving a final feedback?

I. INTRODUCTION

(2) About RELATED WORK, authors develop methods based on "trial sequence", I believe they should introduce that term, of course related to "orienting of attention" and "eye-tracking", there are few articles.

II- METHODS

(3) Authors have compared gaze with arrow cues. They have 288 trials for each block, but they have not clearly stated by sequence is analized

III. EXPERIMENTS

(4) How many trials were used for experiment 2?

IV. GENERAL DISCUSSION.

(5) Authors have discussed about P1 & N1 and N2 & P300 by Marotta and colleagues, but my understanding of their experiment is a SOA or CTOA around 1000 ms, therefore is not clearly related to arrows at SOA or CTOA of 300 ms. I have looked briefly at Schoolar Google and some articles appeared

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22orienting+of+attention%22+%22300+ms%22+p300+ctoa&btnG= , authors should address which of these articles can be added to your discussion.

(6) Can you explain in detail your SOA or CTOA of 300 ms in the context of << social directional cues like gaze might produce an effect of a

501 similar nature, as the common effect observed with the standard gaze cueing paradigm

502 and the general-cueing effect observed in our experiments, they must produce an extra

503 effect that restricts attention to the specifically looked-at location >>

MINOUR ISSUES

(7) Standardize your writing-up, e.g. "cuetype" --- "cue-type", "300ms" --- "300 ms"

(8) Data availability, I can't find a link or a similar one.

Reviewer #4: The paper does not contain the item conclusions, it only contains the item general discussion. It would be convenient to add it

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Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

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Acceptance letter

Avid Roman-Gonzalez

16 Jan 2023

PONE-D-22-03696R2

Eye-Gaze direction triggers a more specific attentional orienting compared to arrows

Dear Dr. Chacón Candia:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Professor Avid Roman-Gonzalez

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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    Supplementary Materials

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    Data Availability Statement

    All data for the conduction of this study are publicly available via Open Science Framework and can be accessed at https://osf.io/xmq9v.

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