Ricerc@Sapienza

Children shift their attention based on the gaze direction of another person but it is unclear whether they prioritize only the gaze of fearful faces over neutral ones or more generally, the gaze of emotional faces. School children performed a gaze-cueing task, in which central, non-predictive happy, angry, and neutral face-cues were briefly presented with averted gaze. Findings for 9–10-year-old children showed that the magnitude of gaze-cueing effects for happy and angry face-cues was similar and it was particularly larger with angry compared to neutral face-cues.

To what extent old individuals are able to automatically shift their attention based on observed direction eye-gaze, and whether the emotional expression and age of the central face-cue modulate gaze cueing effects and preference acquisition was investigated. Thirty-nine 70-80 year old individuals completed a non- predictive gaze cueing task with happy, angry and neutral faces of old and young individuals gazing left or right. Targets were kitchen and garage objects and, at the end of the experiment, participants rated their preferences toward each target-object.