Article

Research points to a right hemisphere bias for processing social stimuli. Hemispheric specialization for
attention shifts cued by social stimuli, however, has been rarely studied.Weexamined the capacity of each
hemisphere to orient attention in response to social and nonsocial cues using a lateralized spatial cueing
paradigm. We compared the up/down orienting effects of eye gaze cues, arrow cues, and peripheral cues
(change in luminance). Results revealed similar cueing effects in each visual field for nonsocial cues, but
asymmetric effects for social cues. At both short (150 ms) and long (950 ms) cue-target intervals, gaze
cueing was significant in the LVF, but not in the RVF. Thus, there is a right hemisphere bias for attentional
orienting cued by social stimuli, but not for attentional orienting cued by nonsocial stimuli. This supports
a theory of a separate neural system for socially cued orienting of attention, as well as a theory of separate
parallel and simultaneous neural systems for attention in the two cerebral hemispheres.

Langue : ANGLAIS