ERPs reveal similar effects of social gaze orienting and voluntary attention, and distinguish each from reflexive attention.

Spatial attention can be reflexively captured by a physically salient stimulus, effortfully directed toward a relevant location, or involuntarily oriented in the direction of another person's gaze (i.e., social gaze orienting). Here, we used event-related potentials to compare the effects of these three types of orienting on multiple stages of subsequent target processing. Although gaze orienting has been associated more strongly with reflexive capture than with voluntary attention, the present data provide new evidence that the neural effects of social gaze orienting are markedly different from the effects of reflexive attentional capture by physically salient stimuli. Specifically, despite their similar behavioral effects, social gaze orienting and reflexive capture produce different effects on both early sensory processing (~120 ms; P1/N1 components) and later, higher-order processing (~300 ms; P3 component). In contrast, the effects of social gaze orienting were highly similar to those of voluntary orienting at these stages of target processing.