Attention orienting by gaze and facial expressions across development.

Abstract

Processing of facial expressions has been shown to potentiate orienting of attention toward the direction signaled by gaze in adults, an important social-cognitive function. However, little is known about how this social attention skill develops. This study is the first to examine the developmental trajectory of the gaze orienting effect (GOE), its modulations by facial expressions, and its links with theory of mind (ToM) abilities. Dynamic emotional stimuli were presented to 222 participants (7-25 years old) with normal trait anxiety using a gaze-cuing paradigm. The GOE was found as early as 7 years of age and decreased linearly until 12-13 years, at which point adult levels were reached. Both fearful and surprised expressions enhanced the GOE compared with neutral expressions. The GOE for fearful faces was also larger than for joyful and angry expressions. These effects did not interact with age and were not driven by intertrial variance. Importantly, the GOE did not correlate with ToM abilities as assessed by the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test. The implication of these findings for clinical and typically developing populations is discussed.

Fearful, surprised, happy, and angry facial expressions modulate gaze-oriented attention: Behavioral and ERP evidence

“…Indeed, although fast attention orienting toward the direction of another's gaze is expected regardless of facial expression, orienting to an object eliciting fear should be even faster, given that the object being looked-at is likely to be a threat. In accordance with this idea and with previous studies, we found an increased GOE for fearful compared to neutral faces (Fox et al, 2007;Graham et al, 2010;Mathews et al 2003;Neath et al, 2013;Tipples, 2006). As outlined in the introduction, failure by some studies to find such a GOE increase for fearful compared to neutral faces could be attributed to the use of a too short SOA (e.g., Bayless et al, 2011;Galfano et al, 2011), the use of a static rather than dynamic cue (e.g., Hietanen & Leppanen, 2003), or the use of a discrimination task rather than a localization task (e.g., Mathews et al 2003 in low anxious; Holmes et al, 2010).…”

“…Most importantly, it allowed for testing the idea that anger can enhance the GOE compared to neutral faces when fear is not included in the design. At the behavioral level, in accordance with previous studies (Bayless et al, 2011;Holmes et al, 2006;Neath et al, 2013), we predicted that (i) relative to neutral faces, the GOE would be larger for fearful and surprised faces and (ii) angry faces would enhance the GOE compared to neutral and happy faces. Regarding ERP modulations, at target presentation, we expected to replicate the congruency effects on P1 and N1 components and predicted larger modulations of these effects for fearful, surprised, and angry expressions compared to neutral expressions, reflecting an enhancement of the early visual processing of the target for these emotions.…”

“…Finally, this lack of GOE modulation by fear could originate from the use of static rather than dynamic facial expressions (e.g., Hietanen & Leppänen, 2003), since emotions are better processed when seen dynamically than statically (Sato & Yoshikawa, 2004). Additionally, some studies have shown that the GOE enhancement for fearful compared to neutral or happy faces depended on participants' anxiety level (Fox et al, 2007;Mathews et al, 2003;Putman et al, 2006), while others reported such a modulation even in non-anxious participants (Bayless et al, 2011;Neath, Nilsen, Gittsovich, & Itier, 2013). Thus, it remains unclear whether modulation of attention orienting by gaze with fear is limited to highanxious individuals or can be seen in the general population.…”

“…Surprise has seldom been investigated in the gaze-orienting literature but was recently shown to increase the GOE to the same extent as fear (Bayless et al, 2011;Neath et al, 2013). Fearful and surprised facial expressions share many facial features including eye widening (Gosselin & Simard, 1999), which contributes to their facilitation of gaze-oriented attention (Bayless et al, 2011).…”

“…Although these results need to be extended to a non-anxious population, they suggest that the modulation of the GOE by emotions may rely on the relative rather than absolute valence of an emotion. That is, in the context of fearful faces, angry faces might not be perceived as negative enough to trigger a GOE enhancement.Surprise has seldom been investigated in the gaze-orienting literature but was recently shown to increase the GOE to the same extent as fear (Bayless et al, 2011;Neath et al, 2013). Fearful and surprised facial expressions share many facial features including eye widening (Gosselin & Simard, 1999), which contributes to their facilitation of gaze-oriented attention (Bayless et al, 2011).…”