The Mediating Effects of Facial Expression on Spatial Interference Between Gaze Direction and Gaze Location

Jones, Steve

doi:10.1080/00221309.2015.1009822

Cited by 23 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…As in Experiment 1, participants were faster to discriminate leftward and rightward gaze presented in the periphery when that gaze was directed inward towards the central fixation object, over multiple visual eccentricities, thereby also replicating and extending prior investigations (Cañadas & Lupiáñez, 2012;Jones, 2015;Marotta et al, 2018). However, this pattern of response was reversed when participants fixated a more peripheral object, with outward rather than inward gaze being discriminated more rapidly.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Joint attention facilitates observed gaze direction discrimination

Edwards

Seibert

Bayliss

2019

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Efficiently judging where someone else is looking is important for social interactions, allowing us a window into their mental state by establishing joint attention. Previous work has shown that judging the gaze direction of a non-foveally presented face is facilitated when the eyes of that face are directed towards the centre of the scene. This finding has been interpreted as an example of the human bias for misattributing observed ambiguous gaze signals as self-directed eye-contact. To test this interpretation against an alternative hypothesis that the facilitation is instead driven by the establishment of joint attention, we conducted two experiments in which we varied the participants’ fixation location. In both experiments, we replicated the previous finding of facilitated gaze discrimination when the participants fixated centrally. However, this facilitation was abolished when participants fixated peripheral fixation crosses (Experiment 1) and reversed when participants fixated peripheral images of real-world objects (Experiment 2). Based on these data, we propose that the facilitation effect is consistent with the interpretation that gaze discrimination is facilitated when joint attention is established. This finding therefore extends previous work showing that engaging in joint attention facilitates a range of social cognitive processes.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Joint attention facilitates observed gaze direction discrimination

Edwards

Seibert

Bayliss

2019

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…This dissociation is difficult to reconcile with the domain-general view of attentional processes. The opposite congruency effects for gaze and arrows have been replicated in subsequent experiments in our laboratory (Roman-Caballero, Marotta, Martin-Arevalo, & Lupiañez, 2017), and other studies have found that the reversed congruency effect is modulated by the emotional expression of a face when the whole face instead of just the eyes is used as the target (Jones, 2015;Torres-Marín, Carretero-Dios, Acosta, & Lupiáñez, 2017), thus supporting the social nature of the effect.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 70%

Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

2018

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Eye gaze conveys rich information concerning the states of mind of others, playing a critical role in social interactions, signaling internal states, and guiding others' attention. On the basis of its social significance, some researchers have proposed that eye gaze may represent a unique attentional stimulus. However, contrary to this notion, the majority of the literature has shown indistinguishable attentional effects when eye gaze and arrows have been used as cues. Taking a different approach, in this study we aimed at finding qualitative attentional differences between gazes and arrows when they were used as targets instead of as cues. We used a spatial Stroop task, in which participants were required to identify the direction of eyes or arrows presented to the left or the right of a fixation point. The results showed that the two types of stimuli led to opposite spatial interference effects, with arrows producing faster reaction times when the stimulus direction was congruent with the stimulus position (a typical spatial Stroop effect), and eye gaze producing faster reaction times when it was incongruent (a "reversed" spatial Stroop effect). This reversed Stroop is interpreted as an eye-contact effect, therefore revealing the unique nature of eyes as special social-attention stimuli.

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“…It may be possible for gelotophobes to respond to happy faces in the same way they would respond to fear faces, that is, as an avoidance-oriented emotion. Additionally, to corroborate the adequacy of the “approach or avoidance oriented emotions” interpretation for the reverse congruency (i.e., eye contact) effect that Jones (2015) proposed, and to extend our understanding of the role of emotional expression in the modulation of gaze discrimination, we decided to incorporate faces portraying sadness into our experiment. In accordance with Jones (2015) , we expected to replicate the previous results in happiness, anger, neutral, and fear stimuli; regarding sadness, we expected to find a pattern similar to fearful faces and different from angry or happy faces.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…This reverse congruency effect—classical results with non-social stimuli, such as arrows, show faster responses for congruency trials—was interpreted in terms of eye contact (e.g., responses are faster when a face located to the left looks to the right, i.e., at us). Moreover, further investigation revealed that the emotional charge of the facial expression modulated this eye contact effect ( Jones, 2015 ). More specifically, Jones’s results indicated that the effect was stronger for happy and angry faces (approach-oriented emotions) than for neutral faces, and it was non-existent for fearful faces (avoidance-oriented emotions).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the contrary, avoidance-oriented emotions (i.e., fear and sadness) are those that are recognized more quickly when the faces feature averted gazes vs. direct gazes. In this sense, Jones (2015) pointed out that the differences in the observed eye contact effect could be due to the differential facilitation of the processing of each emotion depending on the eye contact condition (e.g., a direct gaze would facilitate the processing of anger or happiness, and an adverted gaze would facilitate the processing of fear or sadness).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Eye Contact and Fear of Being Laughed at in a Gaze Discrimination Task

et al. 2017

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Current approaches conceptualize gelotophobia as a personality trait characterized by a disproportionate fear of being laughed at by others. Consistently with this perspective, gelotophobes are also described as neurotic and introverted and as having a paranoid tendency to anticipate derision and mockery situations. Although research on gelotophobia has significantly progressed over the past two decades, no evidence exists concerning the potential effects of gelotophobia in reaction to eye contact. Previous research has pointed to difficulties in discriminating gaze direction as the basis of possible misinterpretations of others’ intentions or mental states. The aim of the present research was to examine whether gelotophobia predisposition modulates the effects of eye contact (i.e., gaze discrimination) when processing faces portraying several emotional expressions. In two different experiments, participants performed an experimental gaze discrimination task in which they responded, as quickly and accurately as possible, to the eyes’ directions on faces displaying either a happy, angry, fear, neutral, or sad emotional expression. In particular, we expected trait-gelotophobia to modulate the eye contact effect, showing specific group differences in the happiness condition. The results of Study 1 (N = 40) indicated that gelotophobes made more errors than non-gelotophobes did in the gaze discrimination task. In contrast to our initial hypothesis, the happiness expression did not have any special role in the observed differences between individuals with high vs. low trait-gelotophobia. In Study 2 (N = 40), we replicated the pattern of data concerning gaze discrimination ability, even after controlling for individuals’ scores on social anxiety. Furthermore, in our second experiment, we found that gelotophobes did not exhibit any problem with identifying others’ emotions, or a general incorrect attribution of affective features, such as valence, intensity, or arousal. Therefore, this bias in processing gaze might be related to the global processes of social cognition. Further research is needed to explore how eye contact relates to the fear of being laughed at.

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The Mediating Effects of Facial Expression on Spatial Interference Between Gaze Direction and Gaze Location

Cited by 23 publications

References 12 publications

Joint attention facilitates observed gaze direction discrimination

Joint attention facilitates observed gaze direction discrimination

Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

Eye Contact and Fear of Being Laughed at in a Gaze Discrimination Task

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