The mere perception of eye contact increases arousal during a word-spelling task

Abstract

Eye contact is a highly salient and fundamentally social signal. This entails that the mere perception of direct gaze may trigger differentiated neurobehavioral responses as compared to other gaze directions. We investigated this issue using a visual word-spelling task where faces under different gaze directions and head orientations were displayed on-screen concomitantly with the words. We show evidence for automatic increase of skin conductance response (SCR), indicative of arousal, associated with the perception of direct gaze as compared to both averted gaze and closed eyes. Moreover, the perception of averted gaze was associated with an increase of electromyographic (EMG) corrugator activity. These effects were observed in two demanding word-spelling tasks, but not in a simple letter decision task. We propose to interpret these findings in terms of the social value of direct and averted gaze and conclude that some circumstances such as the task at hand may be essential for uncovering the neurobehavioral responses associated with the perception of others' gaze.

Neural mechanisms of eye contact when listening to another person talking

“…Some studies have suggested that eye contact elicits arousal/emotional responses (Kawashima et al , 1999; Conty et al , 2010; von dem Hagen et al , 2014), an important feature of the affective arousal model (for a review, see Senju and Johnson, 2009). However, in what situations an arousal/emotional response to eye contact occurs is currently unclear (Mormann et al , 2015; for a review, see Hamilton, 2016).…”

“…The first account, the ‘affective arousal model’ (Figure 1A), postulates that eye contact elicits responses in brain areas involved in arousal, particularly the amygdala (Kawashima et al , 1999; for a review, see Senju and Johnson, 2009; Conty et al , 2010; von dem Hagen et al , 2014). The second account, the ‘communicative intention detector model’ (Figure 1B), assumes that eye contact signals the intention to communicate with others and involves the theory-of-mind (ToM) network (Kampe et al , 2003; for reviews, see Senju and Johnson, 2009; von dem Hagen et al , 2014), including posterior superior temporal sulcus and/or temporoparietal junction (pSTS&TPJ), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and temporal pole (TP).…”

Affective Eye Contact: An Integrative Review

“…Moreover, in the affective priming paradigm (Chen et al, 2017a), participants were even instructed to ignore the gaze stimuli, that is, the primes. In fact, the possibility that these discrepant findings are related to attention and cognitive load during stimulus presentation was directly tested in a study by Conty et al (2010). They reasoned that direct gaze might evoke amygdala-mediated autonomic arousal response when face stimuli are presented secondary to a main task.…”

Eye contact with neutral and smiling faces: effects on autonomic responses and frontal EEG asymmetry

“…There is evidence that viewing another person with a direct gaze elicits greater autonomic arousal than viewing a person with an averted gaze (Nichols and Champness, 1971; Gale et al, 1975; Williams and Kleinke, 1993), even when the face is presented as an irrelevant stimulus during a demanding cognitive task (Conty et al, 2010). We have found enhanced skin conductance responses (SCRs), indicative of autonomic arousal, in response to eye contact with a “live” person and we have suggested that this effect may relate to increased self-awareness in the proximity of another person (Hietanen et al, 2008; Helminen et al, 2011; Pönkänen et al, 2011).…”