Watching Eyes effects: When others meet the self

The perception of direct gaze—that is, of another individual’s gaze directed at the observer—is known to influence a wide range of cognitive processes and behaviors. We present a new theoretical proposal to provide a unified account of these effects. We argue that direct gaze first captures the beholder’s attention and then triggers self-referential processing, i.e., a heightened processing of stimuli in relation with the self. Self-referential processing modulates incoming information processing and leads to the Watching Eyes effects, which we classify into four main categories: the enhancement of self-awareness, memory effects, the activation of pro-social behavior, and positive appraisals of others. We advance that the belief to be the object of another’s attention is embedded in direct gaze perception and gives direct gaze its self-referential power. Finally, we stress that the Watching Eyes effects reflect a positive impact on human cognition; therefore, they may have a therapeutic potential, which future research should delineate.     

Affective evaluations of objects are influenced by observed gaze direction and emotional expression

Gaze direction signals another person's focus of interest. Facial expressions convey information about their mental state. Appropriate responses to these signals should reflect their combined influence, yet current evidence suggests that gaze-cueing effects for objects near an observed face are not modulated by its emotional expression. Here, we extend the investigation of perceived gaze direction and emotional expression by considering their combined influence on affective judgments. While traditional response-time measures revealed equal gaze-cueing effects for happy and disgust faces, affective evaluations critically depended on the combined product of gaze and emotion. Target objects looked at with a happy expression were liked more than objects looked at with a disgust expression. Objects not looked at were rated equally for both expressions. Our results demonstrate that facial expression does modulate the way that observers utilize gaze cues: Objects attended by others are evaluated according to the valence of their facial expression.     

What leads to coordinated attention in parent–toddler interactions? Children's hearing status matters

Coordinated attention between children and their parents plays an important role in their social, language, and cognitive development. The current study used head‐mounted eye‐trackers to investigate the effects of children's prelingual hearing loss on how they achieve coordinated attention with their hearing parents during free‐flowing object play. We found that toddlers with hearing loss (age: 24–37 months) had similar overall gaze patterns (e.g., gaze length and proportion of face looking) as their normal‐hearing peers. In addition, children's hearing status did not affect how likely parents and children attended to the same object at the same time during play. However, when following parents' attention, children with hearing loss used both parents' gaze directions and hand actions as cues, whereas children with normal hearing mainly relied on parents' hand actions. The diversity of pathways leading to coordinated attention suggests the flexibility and robustness of developing systems in using multiple pathways to achieve the same functional end.     

Social context influences infants’ ability to extract statistical information from a sequence of gestures

Infants’ social environment is rich of complex sequences of events and actions. This study investigates whether 12-month-old infants are able to learn statistical regularities from a sequence of human gestures and whether this ability is affected by a social vs non-social context. Using a visual familiarization task, infants were familiarized to a continuous sequence of eight videos in which two women imitated each other performing arm gestures. The sequence of videos in which the two women performed imitative gestures was organized into 4 different gesture units. Videos within a gesture unit had a highly predictable transitional probability, while such transition was less predictable between gesture units. The social context was manipulated varying the mutual gaze of the actors and their body orientation. At test, infants were able to discriminate between the high- and low-predictable gesture units in the social, but not in the non-social condition. Results demonstrate that infants are capable to detect statistical regularities from a sequence of human gestures performed by two different individuals. Moreover, our findings indicate that salient social cues can modulate infants’ ability to extract statistical information from a sequence of gestures.     

Children's knowledge of deceptive gaze cues and its relation to their actual lying behavior

Eye gaze plays a pivotal role during communication. When interacting deceptively, it is commonly believed that the deceiver will break eye contact and look downward. We examined whether children’s gaze behavior when lying is consistent with this belief. In our study, 7- to 15-year-olds and adults answered questions truthfully (Truth questions) or untruthfully (Lie questions) or answered questions that required thinking (Think questions). Younger participants (7- and 9-year-olds) broke eye contact significantly more when lying compared with other conditions. Also, their averted gaze when lying differed significantly from their gaze display in other conditions. In contrast, older participants did not differ in their durations of eye contact or averted gaze across conditions. Participants’ knowledge about eye gaze and deception increased with age. This knowledge significantly predicted their actual gaze behavior when lying. These findings suggest that with increased age, participants became increasingly sophisticated in their use of display rule knowledge to conceal their deception.     

Regarding Scenes

ABSTRACT— When we view the visual world, our eyes flit from one location to another about three times each second. These frequent changes in gaze direction result from very fast saccadic eye movements. Useful visual information is acquired only during fixations, periods of relative gaze stability. Gaze control is defined as the process of directing fixation through a scene in real time in the service of ongoing perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral activity. This article discusses current approaches and new empirical findings that are allowing investigators to unravel how human gaze control operates during active real-world scene perception.     

Attention, researchers! it is time to take a look at the real world

Theories of attention, too often generated from artificial laboratory experiments, may have limited validity when attention in the natural world is considered. For instance, for more than two decades, conceptualizations of "reflexive" and "volitional" shifts of spatial attention have been grounded in methodologies that do not recognize or utilize the basic fact that people routinely use the eyes of other people as rich and complex attentional cues. This fact was confirmed by our novel discovery that eyes will trigger a reflexive shift of attention even when they are presented centrally and are known to be spatially nonpredictive. This exploration of real-world attention also led to our finding that, contrary to popular wisdom, arrows, like eyes, are capable of producing reflexive shifts of attention—a discovery that brings into question much of the existing attention research. We argue that research needs to be grounded in the real world and not in experimental paradigms. It is time for cognitive psychology to reaffirm the difficult task of studying attention in a manner that has relevance to real-life situations.     

双通路理论视角下孤独症谱系障碍者的视线加工障碍

临床行为观察发现, 孤独症谱系障碍个体普遍存在不能与他人建立视线接触, 不能追随他人视线看向目标物体等视线加工(gaze processing)障碍。然而已有实验研究发现该群体在实验情境中普遍存在视线接触(eye contact)异常, 但其视线追随行为(gaze following)则存在正常与异常并存的现象。基于视线加工双通路理论的启示, 该障碍可能是由于视线加工皮下通路先天功能异常而皮层通路后天发展异常所致。然而, 该理论尚缺乏皮下通路先天功能异常是视线接触障碍潜在神经机制的直接证据, 还需进一步考察皮下通路先天功能异常对视线追随障碍的影响作用, 以及皮层通路后天发展异常即其补偿机制的神经回路及早期形成过程。     

靶刺激变换对情景知觉过程中注视控制的影响

研究考察了情景浏览过程中靶刺激变换对注视控制的影响,运用了眼动记录技术。实验采用2(靶刺激位置:左、右)×2(变换方式:增加靶刺激、删除靶刺激)的重复测量设计。结果发现:(1)靶刺激变换方式对靶刺激所属兴趣区首次注视启动时间存在显著性影响,并对靶刺激所属兴趣区的前3次注视持续时间产生影响;(2)靶刺激位置属性对兴趣区首次注视启动时间、前3次注视持续时间均不存在显著影响。结果表明,与靶刺激增加相比,靶刺激的删除更易引起被试的优先注意,而且会抑制首次注视过程中的信息提取。     

西医——中医挥之不去的他者

中西医的论证是医学哲学与医学史研究的热点问题。后现代哲学可以为理解两种医学之间的关系提供一个新的视角。本文运用后现代哲学中的“他者”观念回顾了中西医之间张力的演变,指出在整个过程中“中医”未能摆脱“西医”作为“他者”的注视。并从后现代医学的角度对这种张力的未来进行展望。