Increased gaze following for fearful faces. It depends on what you’re looking for!

An oculomotor visual search task was used to investigate how participants follow the gaze of a non-predictive and task irrelevant distractor gaze, and the way in which this gaze following is influenced by the emotional expression (fearful vs. happy) as well as participants' goal. Previous research has suggested that fearful emotions should result in stronger cueing effects than happy faces. Our results demonstrated that the degree to which the emotional expression influenced this gaze following varied as a function of the search target. When searching for a threatening target, participants were more likely to look in the direction of eye gaze on a fearful compared to a happy face. However, when searching for a pleasant target, this stronger cueing effect for fearful faces disappeared. Therefore, gaze following is influenced by contextual factors such as the emotional expression, as well as the participant's goal.     

Does facial expression affect attention orienting by gaze direction cues?

In 6 experiments, the authors investigated whether attention orienting by gaze direction is modulated by the emotional expression (neutral, happy, angry, or fearful) on the face. The results showed a clear spatial cuing effect by gaze direction but no effect by facial expression. In addition, it was shown that the cuing effect was stronger with schematic faces than with real faces, that gaze cuing could be achieved at very short stimulus onset asynchronies (14 ms), and that there was no evidence for a difference in the strength of cuing triggered by static gaze cues and by cues involving apparent motion of the pupils. In sum, the results suggest that in normal, healthy adults, eye direction processing for attention shifts is independent of facial expression analysis.     

The effectiveness of a gaze cue depends on the facial expression of emotion: Evidence from simultaneous competing cues

The gaze of a fearful face should be a particularly effective cue to attention; it allows one to rapidly allocate attention to potential threats. Prior data from investigations of this issue have been mixed. We report a novel method in which the gazes of two faces simultaneously cued different directions. Across trials, the emotion expressed by each face varied between happy, neutral, and fearful. Results showed that attention followed a fearful gaze when it competed with a neutral gaze but did not consistently follow a happy gaze when it competed with a neutral gaze. These results suggest that fear moderates the effectiveness of gaze cuing, and we present a parsimonious account that reconciles previously inconsistent data. We also found that presenting a fearful and a happy face simultaneously eliminates this effect, suggesting that emotional expressions interact in ways that may be important for understanding how emotional stimuli influence attention in more complex environments.     

Anxiety and sensitivity to eye gaze in emotional faces

This paper reports three studies in which stronger orienting to perceived eye gaze direction was revealed when observers viewed faces showing fearful or angry, compared with happy or neutral, emotional expressions. Gaze-related spatial cueing effects to laterally presented fearful faces and centrally presented angry faces were also modulated by the anxiety level of participants, with high- but not low-state anxious individuals revealing enhanced shifts of attention. In contrast, both high- and low-state anxious individuals demonstrated enhanced orienting to averted gaze when viewing laterally presented angry faces. These results provide novel evidence for the rapid integration of facial expression and gaze direction information, and for the regulation of gaze-cued attention by both the emotion conveyed in the perceived face and the degree of anxiety experienced by the observer.     

注视方向和面部表情对注意朝向的影响

摘 要 本文以三种表情面孔为材料,运用事件相关电位（ERP）方法探讨表情线索在注意朝向中与注视转移发生的交互及两者如何共同影响观察者的反应。结果发现：（1）线索效应在三种表情面孔的两种SOA中都出现了;（2）SOA较长时,注视线索效应量间的显著差异出现在中性和恐惧面孔、高兴和恐惧面孔间;（3）面部表情的效应出现在了表情线索诱发的P1成分上;（4）目标诱发的P1和N1说明了注视线索效应的存在及与表情间的交互。结论：表情线索先对观察者的朝向反应产生影响,随后是注视线索及其与表情线索发生的交互。     

Anxiety and sensitivity to gaze direction in emotionally expressive faces

This study investigated the role of neutral, happy, fearful, and angry facial expressions in enhancing orienting to the direction of eye gaze. Photographs of faces with either direct or averted gaze were presented. A target letter (T or L) appeared unpredictably to the left or the right of the face, either 300 ms or 700 ms after gaze direction changed. Response times were faster in congruent conditions (i.e., when the eyes gazed toward the target) relative to incongruent conditions (when the eyes gazed away from the target letter). Facial expression did influence reaction times, but these effects were qualified by individual differences in self-reported anxiety. High trait-anxious participants showed an enhanced orienting to the eye gaze of faces with fearful expressions relative to all other expressions. In contrast, when the eyes stared straight ahead, trait anxiety was associated with slower responding when the facial expressions depicted anger. Thus, in anxiety-prone people attention is more likely to be held by an expression of anger, whereas attention is guided more potently by fearful facial expressions.     

The combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression on cueing spatial attention

Empirical evidence shows an effect of gaze direction on cueing spatial attention, regardless of the emotional expression shown by a face, whereas a combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression has been observed on individuals' evaluative judgments. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether gaze direction and facial expression affect spatial attention depending upon the presence of an evaluative goal. Disgusted, fearful, happy, or neutral faces gazing left or right were followed by positive or negative target words presented either at the spatial location looked at by the face or at the opposite spatial location. Participants responded to target words based on affective valence (i.e., positive/negative) in Experiment 1 and on letter case (lowercase/uppercase) in Experiment 2. Results showed that participants responded much faster to targets presented at the spatial location looked at by disgusted or fearful faces but only in Experiment 1, when an evaluative task was used. The present findings clearly show that negative facial expressions enhance the attentional shifts due to eye-gaze direction, provided that there was an explicit evaluative goal present.     

Processing emotional facial expressions: The role of anxiety and awareness

In this paper, the role of self-reported anxiety and degree of conscious awareness as determinants of the selective processing of affective facial expressions is investigated. In two experiments, an attentional bias toward fearful facial expressions was observed, although this bias was apparent only for those reporting high levels of trait anxiety and only when the emotional face was presented in the left visual field. This pattern was especially strong when the participants were unaware of the presence of the facial stimuli. In Experiment 3, a patient with right-hemisphere brain damage and visual extinction was presented with photographs of faces and fruits on unilateral and bilateral trials. On bilateral trials, it was found that faces produced less extinction than did fruits. Moreover, faces portraying a fearful or a happy expression tended to produce less extinction than did neutral expressions. This suggests that emotional facial expressions may be less dependent on attention to achieve awareness. The implications of these results for understanding the relations between attention, emotion, and anxiety are discussed.     

The world smiles at me: self-referential positivity bias when interpreting direction of attention

Recent research suggests that eye-gaze direction modulates perceived emotional expression. Here we explore the extent to which emotion affects interpretation of attention direction. We captured three-dimensional face models of 8 actors expressing happy, fearful, angry and neutral emotions. From these 3D models 9 views were extracted (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, 8° to the left and right). These stimuli were randomly presented for 150 ms. Using a forced-choice paradigm 28 participants judged for each face whether or not it was attending to them. Two conditions were tested: either the whole face was visible, or the eyes were covered. In both conditions happy faces elicited most "attending-to-me" answers. Thus, emotional expression has a more general effect than an influence on gaze direction: emotion affects interpretation of attention direction. We interpret these results as a self-referential positivity bias, suggesting a general preference to associate a happy face with the self.     

Both fearful and happy expressions interact with gaze direction by 200 ms SOA to speed attention orienting

Attention orienting towards a gazed-at location is fundamental to social attention. Whether gaze cues can interact with emotional expressions other than those signalling environmental threat to modulate this gaze cueing, and whether this integration changes over time, remains unclear. With four experiments we demonstrate that, when perceived motion inherent to dynamic displays is controlled for, gaze cueing is enhanced by both fearful and happy faces compared to neutral faces. This enhancement is seen with stimulus-onset asynchronies ranging from 200–700?ms. Thus, gaze cueing can be reliably modulated by positive expressions, albeit to a smaller degree than fearful ones, and this gaze–emotion integration impacts behaviour as early as 200?ms post-cue onset.     

The world smiles at me: Self-referential positivity bias when interpreting direction of attention

Recent research suggests that eye-gaze direction modulates perceived emotional expression. Here we explore the extent to which emotion affects interpretation of attention direction. We captured three-dimensional face models of 8 actors expressing happy, fearful, angry and neutral emotions. From these 3D models 9 views were extracted (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, 8° to the left and right). These stimuli were randomly presented for 150 ms. Using a forced-choice paradigm 28 participants judged for each face whether or not it was attending to them. Two conditions were tested: either the whole face was visible, or the eyes were covered. In both conditions happy faces elicited most “attending-to-me” answers. Thus, emotional expression has a more general effect than an influence on gaze direction: emotion affects interpretation of attention direction. We interpret these results as a self-referential positivity bias, suggesting a general preference to associate a happy face with the self.     

Gaze direction differentially affects avoidance tendencies to happy and angry faces in socially anxious individuals

Increasing evidence indicates that eye gaze direction affects the processing of emotional faces in anxious individuals. However, the effects of eye gaze direction on the behavioral responses elicited by emotional faces, such as avoidance behavior, remain largely unexplored. We administered an Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) in high (HSA) and low socially anxious (LSA) individuals. All participants responded to photographs of angry, happy and neutral faces (presented with direct and averted gaze), by either pushing a joystick away from them (avoidance) or pulling it towards them (approach). Compared to LSA, HSA were faster in avoiding than approaching angry faces. Most crucially, this avoidance tendency was only present when the perceived anger was directed towards the subject (direct gaze) and not when the gaze of the face-stimulus was averted. In contrast, HSA individuals tended to avoid happy faces irrespectively of gaze direction. Neutral faces elicited no approach-avoidance tendencies. Thus avoidance of angry faces in social anxiety as measured by AA-tasks reflects avoidance of subject-directed anger and not of negative stimuli in general. In addition, although both anger and joy are considered to reflect approach-related emotions, gaze direction did not affect HSA's avoidance of happy faces, suggesting differential mechanisms affecting responses to happy and angry faces in social anxiety.     

Detection of emotional faces is modulated by the direction of eye gaze

Emotionally expressive faces have shown enhanced detectability over neutral faces, but little is known about the effect of eye gaze on detecting the presence of emotional faces. Emotional expressions and gaze direction are both cues to the intentions of another person, and gaze direction has been shown to affect recognition accuracy and perceived intensity of emotional faces. The current study showed that fearful faces were detected more frequently with an averted gaze than with a direct gaze in an attentional blink task, whereas angry and happy faces were detected more frequently with a direct gaze than with an averted gaze. The results are in line with the shared signal hypothesis and appraisal theory and suggest that selection for awareness was based on a rapid evaluation of the intentions of another person as conveyed by their facial expression and gaze direction.     

Emotional expression affects the accuracy of gaze perception

Emotional facial expressions are powerful social cues. Here we investigated how emotional expression affects the interpretation of eye gaze direction. Fifty-two observers judged where faces were looking by moving a slider on a measuring bar to the respective position. The faces displayed either an angry, happy, fearful or a neutral expression and were looking either straight at the observer, or were rotated 2°, 4°, 6° or 8° to the left and right. We found that happy faces were interpreted as directed closer to the observer, while fearful and angry faces were interpreted as directed further away. Judgments were most accurate for neutral faces, followed by happy, angry and fearful faces. These findings are discussed on the background of the “self-referential positivity bias”, suggesting that happy faces are preferably interpreted as directed towards the self while negative emotions are interpreted as directed further away.     

Memory-based attentional biases: Anxiety is linked to threat avoidance

The purpose of the present research was to examine if anxiety is linked to a memory-based attentional bias, in which attention to threat is thought to depend on implicit learning. Memory-based attentional biases were defined and also demonstrated in two experiments. A total of 168 university students were shown a pair of faces that varied in their emotional $ content (angry, neutral, and happy), with each type of emotion being consistently preceded by a particular neutral cue face, appearing in the same position. Eye movements were measured during these cue faces and during the emotional faces. The results of two experiments indicated that anxiety was connected with a tendency to avert one's gaze from the positions of angry faces to the positions of happy faces, before these were shown on the screen. This, in turn, caused a reduced perception of angry relative to happy faces. In Experiment 2, participants were also not aware of having a memory-based attentional bias.     

Fearful faces modulate looking duration and attention disengagement in 7-month-old infants

The present study investigated whether facial expressions modulate visual attention in 7-month-old infants. First, infants' looking duration to individually presented fearful, happy, and novel facial expressions was compared to looking duration to a control stimulus (scrambled face). The face with a novel expression was included to examine the hypothesis that the earlier findings of greater allocation of attention to fearful as compared to happy faces could be due to the novelty of fearful faces in infants' rearing environment. The infants looked longer at the fearful face than at the control stimulus, whereas no such difference was found between the other expressions and the control stimulus. Second, a gap/overlap paradigm was used to determine whether facial expressions affect the infants' ability to disengage their fixation from a centrally presented face and shift attention to a peripheral target. It was found that infants disengaged their fixation significantly less frequently from fearful faces than from control stimuli and happy faces. Novel facial expressions did not have a similar effect on attention disengagement. Thus, it seems that adult-like modulation of the disengagement of attention by threat-related stimuli can be observed early in life, and that the influence of emotionally salient (fearful) faces on visual attention is not simply attributable to the novelty of these expressions in infants' rearing environment.     

The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention

We investigated whether a fearful expression enhances the effect of another's gaze in directing the attention of an observer. Participants viewed photographs of faces whose gaze was directed ahead, to the left or to the right. Target letters then appeared unpredictably to the left or right. As expected, targets in the location indicated by gaze were detected more rapidly. In nonanxious volunteers the effects of fearful gaze did not differ from neutral gaze, but fearful expression had a more powerful influence in a selected high anxious group. Attention is thus more likely to be guided by the direction of fearful than neutral gaze, but only in anxiety-prone individuals.     

The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention

We investigated whether a fearful expression enhances the effect of another's gaze in directing the attention of an observer. Participants viewed photographs of faces whose gaze was directed ahead, to the left or to the right. Target letters then appeared unpredictably to the left or right. As expected, targets in the location indicated by gaze were detected more rapidly. In nonanxious volunteers the effects of fearful gaze did not differ from neutral gaze, but fearful expression had a more powerful influence in a selected high anxious group. Attention is thus more likely to be guided by the direction of fearful than neutral gaze, but only in anxiety-prone individuals.     

Task-irrelevant direct gaze facilitates visual search for deviant facial expression

The detection of emotional expression is important particularly when the expression is directed towards the viewer. Therefore, we conjectured that the efficiency in visual search for deviant emotional expression is modulated by gaze direction, which is one of the primary clues for encoding the focus of social attention. To examine this hypothesis, two visual search tasks were conducted. In Emotional Face Search, the participants were required to detect an emotional expression amongst distractor faces with neutral expression; in Neutral Face Search they were required to detect a neutral target among emotional distractors. The results revealed that target detection was accelerated when the target face had direct gaze compared to averted gaze for fearful, angry, and neutral targets, but no effect of distractor gaze direction was observed. An additional experiment including multiple display sizes has shown a shallower search slope in search for a target face with direct gaze than that with averted gaze, indicating that the advantage of a target face with direct gaze is attributable to efficient orientation of attention towards target faces. These results indicate that direct gaze facilitates detection of target face in visual scenery even when gaze discrimination is not the primary task at hand.     

Effects of anxiety and attention control on processing pictorial and linguistic emotional information

This study investigated the role of executive attention control in modulating selective processing of emotional information in anxiety. It was hypothesized that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control would be associated with greater difficulty in ignoring task-irrelevant threat-related information. The study included both faces and words as stimuli. Cognitive interference effects were assessed using two emotional Stroop tasks: one with angry, fearful, happy and neutral faces, and one with threat-related, positive, and neutral words. An objective measure of attention control was obtained from the Attention network task. There were four participant groups with high/low trait anxiety and high/low attention control. Results indicated that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control was associated with greater cognitive interference by emotional faces (including angry faces), compared to neutral faces. This interference effect was not evident in participants with high anxiety and high attentional control, or in low-anxious individuals. There was no evidence of associations between anxiety, attention control, and the interference effect of emotional words. Results indicate that high anxiety and poor attention control together predict enhanced processing of emotionally salient information, such as angry facial expressions. Implications for models of emotion processing are discussed.