Investigating age differences in the influence of joint attention on working memory

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults make limited use of social cuesas compared to younger adults. This has been investigated by testing the influence of gazecues on attentional processes, with findings showing significantly smaller gaze cuing effectsfor older than younger adults. Here we aimed to investigate whether this would also result inage related differences in the influence of gaze cues on working memory. We therefore testedthe effects of gaze cues from realistic human avatars on working memory across twoexperiments using dynamic head turns and more subtle eye gaze movements. We comparedworking memory for items looked at by the cue (congruent), looked away from by the cue(incongruent), and items shown when the cue looked down (neutral). Results demonstratedthat for both older and younger adults, gaze cues influenced working memory processes,though there were some important differences related to the nature of the cue. When the cuemade a dynamic head turn both younger and older adults showed an equivalent effect of gazeon attention. However, when only the eyes moved, while both the younger and older adultsshowed an effect of gaze on working memory, there appeared to be a difference in how theparticipants interpreted the neutral cue, with the older adults appearing to interpret the neutralcues in a similar way to the congruent cues. Overall, we provide important evidence thatsharing attention benefits cognition across the lifespan.Keywords: gaze; social; attention; gaze cuing, joint attentio