Increased gaze cueing of attention during COVID-19 lockdown.
Open accessAbstract
Affiliation with others is a basic human need. The lockdown implemented for counteracting the COVID-19 pandemic has determined an unprecedented situation of social deprivation, forcing individuals to dramatically reduce face-to-face interactions. This, in turn, has caused relevant consequences on psychological well-being. However, the impact of lockdown-related social isolation on basic cognitive processes is still largely unknown. Here, we focus on social attention and address gaze cueing, namely the ability to shift attention in response to the gaze of others. This is a hard-wired cognitive mechanism critically supporting the establishment of social interactions and pervasive relationships among individuals. Our results show a stronger gaze-cueing effect during, rather than after, the lockdown, whose magnitude was positively correlated with social isolation distress. These findings indicate that, in a condition of prolonged social deprivation, orienting of attention may be shaped by hypersensitivity to social cues, likely due to the strive to reconnect with others.
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COVID-19-related anxiety is associated with increased attention toward social cues.
“as well as increased attention toward social cues (56).”
From The Evolution of Psychological and Behavioral Consequences of Self-Isolation During Lockdown: A Longitudinal Study Across United Kingdom and Italy (2022) · cites this paper as [56]
The Results and Discussion report that distress about lockdown-related social isolation was positively correlated with gaze cueing, a measure of attention to others’ gaze. The paper does not establish the same association for COVID-19-related anxiety more broadly; its measure concerned distress about restrictions and reduced social interaction. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.85)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe discrepancy between our findings and previous literature showing poorer cognitive performance and increased attention toward social cues likely reflects the specific components investigated and the measures used.
“Previous literature showed that the COVID-19 lockdown was associated with poorer cognitive performance (54, 55) and increased attention toward social cues (56). Our findings seem to go against these results; this discrepancy likely reflects the specific components investigated and the measures used, since previous studies primarily focused on working memory (especially using n-back tasks) or gaze”
From The Evolution of Psychological and Behavioral Consequences of Self-Isolation During Lockdown: A Longitudinal Study Across United Kingdom and Italy (2022) · cites this paper as [56]
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References 36 · Cited by 31
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- WHO World Health Organization: Virtual Press Conference on COVID-19 - 11 March 2020 2020 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-full-and-final-11mar2020.pdf?sfvrsn=cb432bb3_2
- Authors
- Dalmaso, M., Castelli, L., & Galfano, G.
- Affiliations
- University of Padua (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Dalmaso, Mario
- Venue
- iScience
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-11
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 103283
- ISSN
- 2589-0042 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8516435
- OpenAlex
- W3205329262
- Cited by
- 31
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 3.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- iScience (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Università degli Studi di Padova (DPSS-SID2019)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- gaze cueing, social attention, COVID-19 lockdown, social isolation, social deprivation, attentional orienting, social cues, psychological distress, face-to-face interaction
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