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.     

Emotional attention: effects of emotion and gaze direction on overt orienting of visual attention

In the present study we considered the two factors that have been advocated for playing a role in emotional attention: perception of gaze direction and facial expression of emotions. Participants performed an oculomotor task in which they had to make a saccade towards one of the two lateral targets, depending on the colour of the fixation dot which appeared at the centre of the computer screen. At different time intervals (stimulus onset asynchronies, SOAs: 50,100,150 ms) following the onset of the dot, a picture of a human face (gazing either to the right or to the left) was presented at the centre of the screen. The gaze direction of the face could be congruent or incongruent with respect to the location of the target, and the expression could be neutral or angry. In Experiment 1 the facial expressions were presented randomly in a single block, whereas in Experiment 2 they were shown in separate blocks. Latencies for correct saccades and percentage of errors (saccade direction errors) were considered in the analyses. Results showed that incongruent trials determined a significantly higher percentage of saccade direction errors with respect to congruent trials, thus confirming that gaze direction, even when task-irrelevant, interferes with the accuracy of the observer’s oculomotor behaviour. The angry expression was found to hold attention for a longer time with respect to the neutral one, producing delayed saccade latencies. This was particularly evident at 100 ms SOA and for incongruent trials. Emotional faces may then exert a modulatory effect on overt attention mechanisms.     

The whereabouts of visual attention: Involuntary attentional bias toward the default gaze direction

This study proposed and verified a new hypothesis on the relationship between gaze direction and visual attention: attentional bias by default gaze direction based on eye-head coordination. We conducted a target identification task in which visual stimuli appeared briefly to the left and right of a fixation cross. In Experiment 1, the direction of the participant’s head (aligned with the body) was manipulated to the left, front, or right relative to a central fixation point. In Experiment 2, head direction was manipulated to the left, front, or right relative to the body direction. This manipulation was based on results showing that bias of eye position distribution was highly correlated with head direction. In both experiments, accuracy was greater when the target appeared at a position where the eyes would potentially be directed. Consequently, eye–head coordination influences visual attention. That is, attention can be automatically biased toward the location where the eyes tend to be directed.     

One-month-old infants' sensitivity to social contingency from mothers and strangers: a pilot study

Whether 1-mo.-old infants were sensitive to social contingency of their mothers and strangers via a Double Video live-replay paradigm was studied. 8 infants were tested (M age = 45.4 days, SD = 7.4) to compare behavioral changes across conditions: a first contingency (Live 1), a noncontingent (Replay), and a second contingency (Live 2). Infants showed an increase in gaze during Replay, counter to expectation. Also, these infants could detect mothers' noncontingent responses but not those of strangers. The result suggests that detection and expectancy may be subcomponents of sensitivity to social contingency. Detection appeared first and seems basic, while expectancy in social contingency appeared later.     

Emergence of joint attention: relationships between gaze following,social referencing,imitation, and naming in infancy

The authors investigated the extent to which the joint-attention behaviors of gaze following, social referencing, and object-directed imitation were related to each other and to infants' vocabulary development in a sample of 60 infants between the ages of 8 and 14 months. Joint-attention skills and vocabulary development were assessed in a laboratory setting. Split-half reliability analyses on the joint-attention measures indicated that the tasks reliably assessed infants' capabilities. In the main analysis, no significant correlations were found among the joint-attention behaviors except for a significant relationship between gaze following and the number of names in infants' productive vocabularies. The overall pattern of results did not replicate results of previous studies (e.g., M. Carpenter, K. Nagell, & M. Tomasello, 1998) that found relationships between various emerging joint-attention behaviors.     

Directing gaze: The effect of disclaimer labels on women's visual attention to fashion magazine advertisements

In an effort to combat the known negative effects of exposure to unrealistic thin ideal images, there is increasing worldwide pressure on fashion, media and advertising industries to disclose when images have been digitally altered. The current study used eye tracking technology to investigate experimentally how digital alteration disclaimer labels impact women's visual attention to fashion magazine advertisements. Participants were 60 female undergraduate students who viewed four thin ideal advertisements with either no disclaimer, a generic disclaimer, or a specific more detailed disclaimer. It was established that women did attend to the disclaimers. The nature of the disclaimer had no effect on time spent looking at particular body parts, but did affect the direction of gaze following reading of the disclaimer. This latter effect was found to be greater for women high on trait appearance comparison. Further research is paramount in guiding effective policy around the use of disclaimer labels.     

Controlling attention to gaze and arrows in childhood: an fMRI study of typical development and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine functional anatomy of attention to social (eye gaze) and nonsocial (arrow) communicative stimuli in late childhood and in a disorder defined by atypical processing of social stimuli, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Children responded to a target word ('LEFT'/'RIGHT') in the context of a distracting arrow or averted gaze pointing in a direction that was congruent, incongruent, or neutral (bar without arrowheads, central gaze) relative to the target word. Despite being irrelevant to the target task, both arrow and averted gaze facilitated responses (Congruent vs. Neutral trials) to the same extent in the two groups and led to interference (Incongruent vs. Congruent trials), which was greater from arrows in ASD than control children. In the brain, interaction between group and distracter-domain was observed in frontal-temporal regions during facilitation and frontal-striatal regions during interference. During facilitation, regions associated with attention to gaze in control children (left superior temporal sulcus, premotor) were associated with attention to arrows in ASD children; gaze was associated with medial temporal involvement in ASD children. During interference, regions associated with arrows in control children (anterior cingulate, right caudate) were activated in response to gaze in ASD children; further, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region not observed in control children, was activated during gaze-interference in ASD children. Thus, functional anatomy was atypical in ASD children during spontaneous processing of social and nonsocial communicative cues.     

A longitudinal study of the development of shifts of gaze to a peripheral stimulus in preterm infants with transient periventricular echogenicity

Shifts of gaze to peripheral targets were studied longitudinally, between 6 and 26 weeks corrected age, in full-term and very preterm infants with transient periventricular echogenicity (PVE). Before 10 weeks, simple shifts of gaze were faster and more frequent in preterms with PVE<14 days than in full-terms, suggesting these preterms profited from additional early visual experience. After 16 weeks, there were subtle differences between full- and preterm infants in the development of shifts of gaze requiring disengagement. The differences suggest that, after disengagement had become established, its fine-tuning occurred more slowly in the preterms. Slower fine-tuning of disengagement was not associated with duration of PVE, since it was more marked in preterms with PVE<14 days than in preterms with PVE> or =14 days. The differences in performance between full- and preterm infants were small. However, even small differences may affect the efficiency of visually guided behaviors.     

The spatial distribution of attention during covert visual orienting

Many studies of covert orienting of visual attention in response to informative pre-cues have focused on the spatial distribution of improved or impaired performance. One can find at least four different models in the literature, each describing a different distribution: the fixed gradient spotlight; the zoom lens spotlight; the hemifield activation hypothesis; and the flexible allocation of resources model. In previous work examining procedural details that might have led to the formulation of the hemifield activation hypothesis, it was postulated (Klein and McCormick 1989) that under conditions of uncertainty about which of two locations to attend, an observer may focus attention on a visual channel (i.e., midlocation placement of a fixed gradient spotlight) that is spatially intermediate. The present experiment was designed to distinguish among the four models of attentional distribution, and to test the midlocation placement strategy. Our findings show support for midlocation placement, demonstrate evidence against flexible allocation and hemifield activation, but could not differentiate between fixed gradient and zoom lens variants of the spotlight model.     

Cross-sectional study of coordination between infants' gaze and vocalizations towards their mothers

The study aimed at providing more precise information about infants' capacity to coordinate their vocalizations with gaze towards their mothers. A total of 32 infants were observed, four boys and four girls in each of four age groups (4, 6, 8 and 10 months), in an observational setting aimed at minimizing infants' casual looks to their mothers. Videotapes of mother-infant-toy interactions were coded separately for infants' vocalizations and gaze towards their mothers, and the difference between observed and expected cooccurrence of these two communicative behaviours was evaluated by transfromation into z-scores. Results indicate that only at 10 months of age do infants develop the ability to coordinate vocalizations and gazes towards mother. Moreover, more competent subjects show temporal relationships between gaze and vocalizations different from those observed in less competent subjects.     

Orienting attention via observed gaze shift evokes longer term inhibitory effects: implications for social interactions, attention, and memory

One component of successful social interactions is joint attention. It is now well established that when a gaze shift is observed, the observer's attention rapidly and automatically orients to the same location in space. It is also established that such attention shifts via gaze are relatively transient and do not evoke subsequent inhibition processes. In contrast to this conventional view, the authors conducted a series of studies that showed that these properties of gaze attention shift are not necessarily the case in all situations. The article demonstrates (a) gaze cuing over longer intervals than previously observed, (b) that these longer term effects can be inhibitory, and (c) that the longer term gaze cuing effects do not appear to be contingent on retrieval associated with a particular face identity.     

Simulating the role of visual selective attention during the development of perceptual completion

We recently proposed a multi‐channel, image‐filtering model for simulating the development of visual selective attention in young infants (Schlesinger, Amso & Johnson, 2007). The model not only captures the performance of 3‐month‐olds on a visual search task, but also implicates two cortical regions that may play a role in the development of visual selective attention. In the current simulation study, we used the same model to simulate 3‐month‐olds’ performance on a second measure, the perceptual unity task. Two parameters in the model – corresponding to areas in the occipital and parietal cortices – were systematically varied while the gaze patterns produced by the model were recorded and subsequently analyzed. Three key findings emerged from the simulation study. First, the model successfully replicated the performance of 3‐month‐olds on the unity perception task. Second, the model also helps to explain the improved performance of 2‐month‐olds when the size of the occluder in the unity perception task is reduced. Third, in contrast to our previous simulation results, variation in only one of the two cortical regions simulated (i.e. recurrent activity in posterior parietal cortex) resulted in a performance pattern that matched 3‐month‐olds. These findings provide additional support for our hypothesis that the development of perceptual completion in early infancy is promoted by progressive improvements in visual selective attention and oculomotor skill.     

The development of color categories in two languages: a longitudinal study

This study unites investigations into the linguistic relativity of color categories with research on children's category acquisition. Naming, comprehension, and memory for colors were tracked in 2 populations over a 3-year period. Children from a seminomadic equatorial African culture, whose language contains 5 color terms, were compared with a group of English children. Despite differences in visual environment, language, and education, they showed similar patterns of term acquisition. Both groups acquired color vocabulary slowly and with great individual variation. Those knowing no color terms made recognition errors based on perceptual distance, and the influence of naming on memory increased with age. An initial perceptually driven color continuum appears to be progressively organized into sets appropriate to each culture and language.     

The locus of spatial attention during the temporal integration of visual memories and visual percepts

Temporal integration is a process by which two serially presented visual stimuli are mentally integrated to form a composite representation. In the present research, we explored how spatial selective attention is used during the delay separating stimuli, in order to determine the contents of spatial working memory in this task. A two-task situation was created. On the primary task, two dot arrays were serially presented within a grid, leaving one space empty, which subjects identified. On the secondary task, instead of the second array, a discrimination probe was presented. Integration accuracy increased through delays of 1,500 msec, revealing an estimate of the time required to form an optimal memory trace for integration. Once the memory trace was formed (but not before), response time to the probe was faster if it was presented in a location previously occupied by a dot from Array 1. This indicates that during the delay separating the arrays, the subjects assigned spatial attention to the locations occupied by the first array and actively maintained the leading array in working memory. Implications for theories of visual processing and memory are discussed.     

The development of visual and auditory selective attention using the central-incidental paradigm

Analogous auditory and visual central-incidental learning tasks were administered to 24 second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade and college-age subjects to study the effects of modality of presentation on memory for central and incidental stimulus materials. There was no strong evidence to indicate that modality of presentation was an important factor in the development of selective attention. Central task learning increased with age for both auditory and visual presentations; incidental learning declined at the oldest age level for both auditory and visual tasks. The serial position analysis revealed that the observed developmental increase in recall performance was due primarily to differences in the initial serial positions. The use of active strategies for focusing attention on the relevant stimulus materials seemed to be the crucial determinant of level of performance.     

Infants' interactions with professional caregivers at 3 and 6 months of age: a longitudinal study

This study longitudinally investigated the quality and stability of 64 infants’ interactions with their professional caregivers in child care centers at 3 and 6 months of age, i.e., across the first 3 months after they entered child care. It was also examined whether the infants’ negative emotionality (as rated by the mother) predicted the quality of the caregiver–infant interaction. The interactive behavior of the professional caregivers (sensitivity, cooperation) and the infants (responsiveness, involvement) was rated from videotapes recorded in three different caregiving situations, lasting about 25 min in total. In contrast to our expectation, the quality of the caregiver–infant interaction did not significantly increase across the first 3 months in child care. As expected, significant rank order stability was found for the quality of the caregivers’ behavior over time. Also in accordance with our expectations, infants with higher negative emotionality scores experienced less sensitivity and cooperation in interactions with their primary professional caregivers at both ages.     

Prosocial development in early adulthood: a longitudinal study

Consistency of measures of a prosocial personality and prosocial moral judgment over time, and the interrelations among them, were examined. Participants and friends' reports of prosocial characteristics were obtained at ages 21-22, 23-24, and 25-26 years. In addition, participants' prosocial judgment was assessed with interviews and with an objective measure of prosocial moral reasoning at several ages. Reports of prosocial behavior and empathy-related responding in childhood and observations of prosocial behavior in preschool also were obtained. There was interindividual consistency in prosocial dispositions, and prosocial dispositions in adulthood related to empathy/sympathy and prosocial behavior at much younger ages. Interview and objective measures of moral reasoning were substantially interrelated in late adolescence/early adulthood and correlated with participants' and friends' reports of a prosocial disposition.     

Selective attention and performance with a multidimensional visual display

Selective attention was studied in four experiments in which stimuli varied in both spatial location and visual form. In Experiment 1 the likely location and likely form of targets were both precued. An advantage was found for cued over uncued forms at both cued and uncued locations. In Experiments 2, 3, and 4, different forms tended to occur at different locations. Regardless of whether a location was cued or uncued, form selective effects were found in accordance with form probability for that location. It was not the case that selective attention simply favored certain locations or certain stimulus forms in preference to others. Rather, selective attention was sensitive to precise combinations of form and location. These results could not be reconciled with mental spotlight notions of spatial selectivity.