From Faces to Fingers: Examining Attentional Capture of Faces and Body Parts Using Colour Singleton Paradigm

Faces and body parts play a crucial role in human social communication. Numerous studies emphasize their significance as sociobiological stimuli in daily interactions. Two experiments were conducted to examine the following: (a) whether faces or body parts are processed more quickly than other visual objects when relevant to the task and serving as targets, and (b) the effects of presenting faces or body parts as distractors on task reaction times and error rates. The first experiment focused on either faces or body parts, with five different visual objects. The second experiment examined effector body parts (e.g., hands) and core body parts (e.g., the torso), paired with the same visual objects. Thirty-six participants took part in the study, equally divided between Experiment 1 (N = 18) and Experiment 2 (N = 18). Participants were instructed to find if a target item, indicated by a green placeholder, matched a previously presented word cue, while they were instructed to keep ignoring the singleton object that was surrounded by the red placeholder. The results indicated that participants responded more quickly when finding faces but not body parts in Experiment 1. No such advantage was seen in Experiment 2 for either effector or core body parts compared to other objects. Interestingly, when faces were presented as distractors as a singleton, reaction times increased (Experiment 1), indicating that faces capture attention. This effect was not observed for effector or core body parts (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that faces capture attention more effectively than body parts.