Face masks do not hinder gaze-triggered joint attention

Previous studies using gaze-cueing tasks have reported mixed findings regarding how face masks affect gaze-triggered joint attention. However, in those tasks, participants were explicitly instructed to ignore gaze and face stimuli, which may have minimized or even eliminated the effect of the face mask on gaze-related behavior. To address this limitation, the present study revisited the effect of face masks on joint attention using a spatial Stroop task, in which participants explicitly judged the gaze direction of a lateralized face. We compared the reversed congruency effect elicited by masked and unmasked faces, which has been attributed to joint attention. Across three experiments and a combined analysis, face masks did not affect the magnitude of the reversed congruency effect. These results reinforce the idea that gaze-triggered joint attention is robust enough to override the presence of face masks, highlighting the stability of human social attention even under conditions of limited facial visibility.