Are You Looking at Me? Eye Gaze and Person Perception

Social Neuroscience, 2008

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

The gaze cueing effect involves the rapid orientation of attention to follow the gaze direction of another person. Previous studies reported reciprocal influences between social variables and the gaze cueing effect, with modulation of gaze cueing by social features of face stimuli and modulation of the observer’s social judgements from the validity of the gaze cues themselves. However, it remains unclear which social dimensions can affect—and be affected by—gaze cues. We used computer-averaged prototype face-like images with high and low levels of perceived trustworthiness and dominance to investigate the impact of these two fundamental social impression dimensions on the gaze cueing effect. Moreover, by varying the proportions of valid and invalid gaze cues across three experiments, we assessed whether gaze cueing influences observers’ impressions of dominance and trustworthiness through incidental learning. Bayesian statistical analyses provided clear evidence that the gaze cueing...

Psychological bulletin, 2007

Current Biology, 2009

Gaze direction is an important social signal in both human and nonhuman primates, providing information about conspecifics' attention, interests, and intentions . Single-unit recordings in macaques have revealed neurons selective for others' specific gaze direction . A parallel functional organization in the human brain is indicated by gaze-adaptation experiments, in which systematic distortions in gaze perception following prolonged exposure to static face images reveal dynamic interactions in local cortical circuitry . However, our understanding of the influence of high-level social cognition on these processes in monkeys and humans is still rudimentary. Here we show that the attribution of a mental state to another person determines the way in which the human brain codes observed gaze direction. Specifically, we convinced observers that prerecorded video sequences of an experimenter gazing left or right were a live video link to an adjacent room. The experimenter wore mirrored goggles that observers believed were either transparent such that the person could see, or opaque such that the person could not see. The effects of adaptation were enhanced under the former condition relative to the latter, indicating that high-level sociocognitive processes shape and modulate sensory coding of observed gaze direction.

2005

Perceived gaze contact in seen faces may convey important social signals. We examined whether gaze perception affects face processing during two tasks: Online gender judgement, and later incidental recognition memory. Individual faces were presented with eyes directed either straight towards the viewer or away, while these faces were seen in either frontal or three-quarters view. Participants were slower to make gender judgements for faces with direct versus averted eye gaze, but this effect was particularly pronounced for faces with opposite gender to the observer, and seen in three-quarters view. During subsequent surprise recognitionmemory testing, recognition was better for faces previously seen with direct than averted gaze, again especially for the opposite gender to the observer. The effect of direct gaze was stronger in both tasks when the head was seen in three-quarters rather than in frontal view, consistent with the greater salience of perceived eye contact for deviated faces. However, in the memory test, face recognition was also relatively enhanced for faces of opposite gender in front views when their gaze was averted rather than direct. Together, these results indicate that perceived eye contact can interact with facial processing during gender judgements and recognition memory, even when gaze direction is task-irrelevant, and particularly for

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2008

Social Cognition, 2011

We are grateful to Ralph Adolphs, Tony Atkinson, Sam Baggott, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Thanks also to Helen Dodd for helpful discussions about the data.

Cognitive Develop, 1999

This study challenges the consensus view that children can judge what someone is looking at from infancy. In the first experiment 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children were asked to judge what a person in a drawing was looking at and which of two people was “looking at” them. Only 6% of 2-year-olds and young 3-year-olds passed both gaze-direction tasks, but over 70% passed an analogous point-direction task. Most older 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds passed all three tasks. Experiment 2 compared children's ability to judge what the experimenter was looking at with performance on the picture tasks. Three-year-olds performed significantly worse than 4-year-olds on the real life and picture gaze tasks. Performances on the two types of gaze task were highly correlated. Experiment 3 included stimuli with the additional cue of head-direction. Even the younger children performed well on these stimuli. These results suggest that, regardless of task format, children cannot judge what someone is looking at from eye-direction alone until the age of 3 years. Weaknesses in the evidence supporting the consensus view are highlighted and discussed.

2011

2017

The purpose of the present research is to further explore the relationship between social cues and memory. In particular, the influence of eye gaze on memory was examined. This is of interest because previous work has established a link between gaze cues and attention. Here, we take this a step further and examine whether memory is also impacted by eye gaze. Participants remembered word lists presented on a computer monitor. These words were presented against a background of a human face looking away from them, looking at them, or looking at them with closed eyes. By doing so, we tested how memory was affected by its embedding in a social context. The results indicate that direct gaze increases memory performance over averted gaze when tested through a recognition test. For recall, memory instead was best for words presented on a face with closed eyes. Thus, social context differentially affects memory for different depths of processing. These results are important because they further the literature for the effects of social cues on memory processing.

Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 1986

~ 7'his experiment was underiaken to test two conirasring explanations of the effects of eyegaze on socialpercepiions and outcomes. A socialmeaning modelholds that differing levels of gaze have such clear meaning that gaze alone accounts for the reactions to it. A nonverbal expectancy violations model holds that normative behaviors are expected in social interactions wiih strangers and that violating these expectations produces different results depending on whether the violator is deemed highly "rewarding" or "nonrewarding." This experiment, the ihird in a series, proposed to extend ihe violations model by incorporating the concepi of positive and negative types of violations. Subjecis (Nu 145) interviewed one offour confederate interviewees who manipulated one of three levels of eye gaze (nearly constant, normal, andnearly constant aversion)and who were assigned one of two levels of reward (highly qualijled for ihe job or highly unqualified). Differential gaze behavior resulted in varied impressions of attraction. credibility, and relational communicaiion, wiih gaze aversion producing consistently negative effecis. Interpretations and communication consequences were mediated by reward, gender, and confederate differences.

Infant and Child Development, 2006

Frontiers in …, 2012

Social gaze provides a window into the interests and intentions of others and allows us to actively point out our own. It enables us to engage in triadic interactions involving human actors and physical objects and to build an indispensable basis for coordinated action and collaborative efforts. The object-related aspect of gaze in combination with the fact that any motor act of looking encompasses both input and output of the minds involved makes this non-verbal cue system particularly interesting for research in embodied social cognition. Social gaze comprises several core components, such as gaze-following or gaze aversion. Gaze-following can result in situations of either “joint attention” or “shared attention.” The former describes situations in which the gaze-follower is aware of sharing a joint visual focus with the gazer. The latter refers to a situation in which gazer and gaze-follower focus on the same object and both are aware of their reciprocal awareness of this joint f...