The role of task-irrelevant configural and featural face processing in the selective attention to gaze

In face processing theories, it is commonly proposed that structural and social information of faces are processed through different pathways. Recent research suggests that the type of face processing (i.e., configural/featural) can influence how social information is processed. However, the influence of face processing type on the perception of gaze, a crucial social cue, remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate how task-irrelevant face processing influences attentional selection to gaze. Using a visual search paradigm, the study examined participants' ability to detect direct and averted gaze in arrays of configural or featural faces. The rectangular array was adopted in Experiment 1 and the diamond array was adopted in Experiment 2. Behavioral results of two experiments showed that detecting averted gaze among direct gazes was more efficient than the reverse, particularly in featural faces. The ERP findings showed that task-irrelevant face processing types influence attention selection to gaze in a rectangular array (Experiment 1), but not in a diamond array (Experiment 2). Averted gaze captures more attention than direct gaze in both configural and featural processing when presented in the right visual field, while direct gaze in featural processing exhibits more attentional suppression than averted gaze in the left visual field. Overall, this study underscores the dynamic interplay of different types of information during face perception.