Eye contact and attentional holding: A cross-cultural perspective

Previous studies have reported that direct gaze can hold attention in an observer (Dalmaso et al., 2020; Senju & Hasegawa, 2005; Syrjämäki & Hietanen, 2020). More specifically, participants were generally slower to respond manually to a peripheral target stimulus in the presence of a task irrelevant central face with direct gaze compared to averted gaze or closed eyes. The present study aims to investigate this attentional holding effect within a cross-cultural perspective and test it in Asian (i.e., Japanese) and European (i.e., Italian) samples. Two experiments with Japanese participants were conducted in July 2025, although they were not preregistered. In the first experiment (Experiment 1), a face of a Japanese individual displaying either direct gaze, closed eyes, or upward gaze was presented as a task-irrelevant distractor stimulus. In the second experiment (Experiment 2), a face with downward gaze was presented instead of upward gaze. Across the two experiments, the attentional holding effect by direct gaze was absent, as RTs were comparable between the direct gaze condition and the other gaze conditions. The current preregistration (Experiments 3 and 4) therefore aims to run the same experiment using Italian face stimuli in an Italian sample. Similarly to Experiments 1 and 2, a face of an Italian displaying either direct gaze, closed eyes, or upward gaze (Experiment 3) or downward (Experiment 4) will be presented as a task-irrelevant distractor. Participants will respond manually to a peripheral target stimulus while ignoring the face stimulus. We expect responses to the target stimulus to be slower in the direct gaze condition than in the other two conditions.