Preserved gaze cueing in Parkinson's disease: Differential temporal modulation of social and non-social attentional...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with impairments in social cognition, yet it remains unclear whether basic mechanisms of social attention are also affected. The present study examined attentional orienting to social (gaze) and non-social (arrow) cues in patients with Parkinson's disease and healthy older adults using a spatial cueing task with manual responses. Cue validity (valid vs. invalid) and stimulus onset asynchrony (100 vs. 300 ms) were manipulated. Both gaze and arrow cues elicited reliable cueing effects in both groups, with no evidence of reduced attentional orienting in Parkinson's disease. The temporal profile of cueing differed across cue types: orienting elicited by arrow cues increased at the longer interval, whereas gaze cueing remained relatively stable. This pattern was observed in both groups and was robust to individual differences in age, education, and IQ. These findings indicate that basic gaze-triggered attentional orienting is preserved in Parkinson's disease and suggest that social attentional mechanisms may remain intact despite impairments reported in higher-order social cognition.