Watching Eyes effects: When others meet the self

Feeling through another's eyes: Perceived gaze direction impacts ERP and behavioural measures of positive and negative affective empathy

Looking at the eyes informs us about the thoughts and emotions of those around us, and impacts our own emotional state. However, it is unknown how perceiving direct and averted gaze impacts our ability to share the gazer's positive and negative emotions, abilities referred to as positive and negative affective empathy. We presented 44 participants with contextual sentences describing positive, negative and neutral events happening to other people (e.g. "Her newborn was saved/killed/fed yesterday afternoon."). These were designed to elicit positive, negative, or little to no empathy, and were followed by direct or averted gaze images of the individuals described. Participants rated their affective empathy for the individual and their own emotional valence on each trial. Event-related potentials time-locked to face-onset and associated with empathy and emotional processing were recorded to investigate whether they were modulated by gaze direction. Relative to averted gaze, direct gaze was associated with increased positive valence in the positive and neutral conditions and with increased positive empathy ratings. A similar pattern was found at the neural level, using robust mass-univariate statistics. The N100, thought to reflect an automatic activation of emotion areas, was modulated by gaze in the affective empathy conditions, with opposite effect directions in positive and negative conditions.. The P200, an ERP component sensitive to positive stimuli, was modulated by gaze direction only in the positive empathy condition. Positive and negative trials were processed similarly at the early N200 processing stage, but later diverged, with only negative trials modulating the EPN, P300 and LPP components. These results suggest that positive and negative affective empathy are associated with distinct time-courses, and that perceived gaze direction uniquely modulates positive empathy, highlighting the importance of studying empathy with face stimuli.

Enhanced mirroring upon mutual gaze: multimodal evidence from TMS-assessed corticospinal excitability and the EEG mu rhythm

Previous research has demonstrated that eye contact between actor and observer specifically enhances the 'mirroring' of others' actions, as measured by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-induced motor evoked potentials (MEPs). However, it remains unknown whether other markers of mirror system activation, such as suppression of the EEG mu rhythm (8-13 Hz) over the sensorimotor strip, are also susceptible to perceived eye contact. Here, both TMS-induced MEPs and EEG mu suppression indices were assessed (in separate sessions) while 32 participants (mean age: 24y; 8m) observed a simple hand movement combined with direct or averted gaze from the actor. Both measures were significantly modulated by perceived eye gaze during action observation; showing an increase in MEP amplitude and an attenuation of the mu rhythm during direct vs. averted gaze. Importantly, while absolute MEP and mu suppression scores were not related, a significant association was identified between gaze-related changes in MEPs and mu suppression, indicating that both measures are similarly affected by the modulatory impact of gaze cues. Our results suggest that although the neural substrates underlying TMS-induced MEPs and the EEG mu rhythm may differ, both are sensitive to the social relevance of the observed actions, which might reflect a similar neural gating mechanism.

No preference for direct versus averted gaze in autistic adults: a reinforced preferential looking paradigm

Background

With the overarching objective to gain better insights into social attention in autistic adults, the present study addresses three outstanding issues about face processing in autism. First, do autistic adults display a preference for mouths over eyes; second, do they avoid direct gaze; third, is atypical visual exploration of faces in autism mediated by gender, social anxiety or alexithymia?

Methods

We used a novel reinforced preferential looking paradigm with a group of autistic adults (n = 43, 23 women) pairwise matched on age with neurotypical participants (n = 43, 21 women). Participants watched 28 different pairs of 5 s video recordings of a speaking person: the two videos, simultaneously displayed on the screen, were identical except that gaze was directed at the camera in one video and averted in the other. After a 680 ms transition phase, a short reinforcement animation appeared on the side that had displayed the direct gaze.

Results

None of the groups showed a preference for mouths over eyes. However, neurotypical participants fixated significantly more the stimuli with direct gaze, while no such preference emerged in autistic participants. As the experiment progressed, neurotypical participants also increasingly anticipated the appearance of the reinforcement, based on the location of the stimulus with the direct gaze, while no such anticipation emerged in autistic participants.

Limitations

Our autistic participants scored higher on the social anxiety and alexithymia questionnaires than neurotypicals. Future studies should match neurotypical and autistic participants on social anxiety and alexithymia and complement questionnaires with physiological measures of anxiety.

Conclusions

The absence of preference for direct versus averted gaze in the autistic group is probably due to difficulties in distinguishing eye gaze direction, potentially linked to a reduced spontaneous exploration or avoidance of the eye region. Social attention and preference for direct versus averted gaze correlated with alexithymia and social anxiety scores, but not gender.

Making eye contact with a robot: Psychophysiological responses to eye contact with a human and with a humanoid robot

Previous research has shown that eye contact, in human-human interaction, elicits increased affective and attention related psychophysiological responses. In the present study, we investigated whether eye contact with a humanoid robot would elicit these responses. Participants were facing a humanoid robot (NAO) or a human partner, both physically present and looking at or away from the participant. The results showed that both in human-robot and human-human condition, eye contact versus averted gaze elicited greater skin conductance responses indexing autonomic arousal, greater facial zygomatic muscle responses (and smaller corrugator responses) associated with positive affect, and greater heart deceleration responses indexing attention allocation. With regard to the skin conductance and zygomatic responses, the human model's gaze direction had a greater effect on the responses as compared to the robot's gaze direction. In conclusion, eye contact elicits automatic affective and attentional reactions both when shared with a humanoid robot and with another human.

Enhanced emotional and motor responses to live versus videotaped dynamic facial expressions

Facial expression is an integral aspect of non-verbal communication of affective information. Earlier psychological studies have reported that the presentation of prerecorded photographs or videos of emotional facial expressions automatically elicits divergent responses, such as emotions and facial mimicry. However, such highly controlled experimental procedures may lack the vividness of real-life social interactions. This study incorporated a live image relay system that delivered models' real-time performance of positive (smiling) and negative (frowning) dynamic facial expressions or their prerecorded videos to participants. We measured subjective ratings of valence and arousal and facial electromyography (EMG) activity in the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii muscles. Subjective ratings showed that the live facial expressions were rated to elicit higher valence and more arousing than the corresponding videos for positive emotion conditions. Facial EMG data showed that compared with the video, live facial expressions more effectively elicited facial muscular activity congruent with the models' positive facial expressions. The findings indicate that emotional facial expressions in live social interactions are more evocative of emotional reactions and facial mimicry than earlier experimental data have suggested.

The effect of non-communicative eye movements on joint attention

Eye movements provide important signals for joint attention. However, those eye movements that indicate bids for joint attention often occur among non-communicative eye movements. This study investigated the influence of these non-communicative eye movements on subsequent joint attention responsivity. Participants played an interactive game with an avatar which required both players to search for a visual target on a screen. The player who discovered the target used their eyes to initiate joint attention. We compared participants' saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to the avatar's joint attention bids when they were preceded by non-communicative eye movements that predicted the location of the target (Predictive Search), did not predict the location of the target (Random Search), and when there were no non-communicative eye gaze movements prior to joint attention (No Search). We also included a control condition in which participants completed the same task, but responded to a dynamic arrow stimulus instead of the avatar's eye movements. For both eye and arrow conditions, participants had slower SRTs in Random Search trials than No Search and Predictive Search trials. However, these effects were smaller for eyes than for arrows. These data suggest that joint attention responsivity for eyes is relatively stable to the presence and predictability of spatial information conveyed by non-communicative gaze. Contrastingly, random sequences of dynamic arrows had a much more disruptive impact on subsequent responsivity compared with predictive arrow sequences. This may reflect specialised social mechanisms and expertise for selectively responding to communicative eye gaze cues during dynamic interactions, which is likely facilitated by the integration of ostensive eye contact cues.

Temporal error monitoring with directional error magnitude judgements: a robust phenomenon with no effect of being watched

A key aspect of metacognition is the ability to monitor performance. A recent line of work has shown that error-monitoring ability captures both the magnitude and direction of timing errors, thereby pointing at the metric composition of error monitoring [e.g., Akdoğan and Balcı (J Exp Psychol https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000265 , 2017)]. These studies, however, primarily used a composite variable that combined isolated measures of ordinal confidence ratings (as a proxy for error magnitude judgement) and "shorter/longer than the target" judgements. In two experiments we tested temporal error monitoring (TEM) performance with a more direct measure of directional error magnitude rating on a continuum. The second aim of this study is to test if TEM performance is modulated by the feeling of being watched that was previously shown to influence metacognitive-like monitoring processes. We predicted that being watched would improve TEM performance, particularly in participants with high timing precision (a proxy for high task mastery), and disrupt TEM performance in participants with low timing precision (a proxy for low task mastery). In both experiments, we found strong evidence for TEM ability. However, we did not find any reliable effect of the social stimulus on TEM performance. In short, our results demonstrate that metric error monitoring is a robust metacognitive phenomenon, which is not sensitive to social influence.

Improvement of Conflict Handling: Hand-Holding During and After Conflict Discussions Affects Heart Rate, Mood, and Observed Communication Behavior in Romantic Partners

Improved conflict handling is important to reduce relational discord. Touch potentially has beneficial effects on three important characteristics of conflict discussions, i.e., physiological reactivity, affect and communication behavior. We studied effects of hand-holding between partners during conflict discussions (N = 47 student couples) and after conflict discussions (N = 53 student and N = 45 clinical couples). During conflict discussions hand-holding caused lower heart rate reactivity, higher positive affect and improved communication in men, and in women lower positive affect but improved communication. After conflict discussions hand-holding resulted in lower heart rate reactivity and higher heart rate variability in student couples and higher positive affect in student and clinical couples. Touch seems a promising add-on intervention in couple therapy.

Psychophysiological responses to eye contact in a live interaction and in video call

Another person's gaze directed to oneself elicits autonomic arousal and facial reactions indicating positive affect in its observer. These effects have only been found to occur with mutual, live eye contact and not in response to direct gaze pictures or when the observer believes that the live person cannot see them. The question remains whether the physical presence of the other person is necessary for these effects. We measured psychophysiological responses to another person's direct versus averted gaze in three conditions: live interaction, bidirectional video call, and watching a mere video. Autonomic arousal was measured with skin conductance responses and facial reactions with facial electromyography. In the live and video call conditions, but not in the mere video condition, direct gaze increased autonomic arousal in comparison to averted gaze. In all three conditions, however, direct gaze elicited positive affective facial reactions. Therefore, an experience of being seen is essential for the autonomic reactions but not for the facial responses that are elicited by another person's direct gaze. Most importantly, the results suggest that the physical presence or proximity of the other person is not necessary for these psychophysiological responses to eye contact.

Eye contact enhances interpersonal motor resonance: comparing video stimuli to a live two-person action context

Previous research has shown a link between eye contact and interpersonal motor resonance, indicating that the mirroring of observed movements is enhanced when accompanied with mutual eye contact between actor and observer. Here, we further explored the role of eye contact within a naturalistic two-person action context. Twenty-two participants observed simple hand movements combined with direct or averted gaze presented via a live model in a two-person setting or via video recordings, while transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the primary motor cortex (M1) to measure changes in M1 excitability. Skin conductance responses and gaze behavior were also measured to investigate the role of arousal and visual attention herein. Eye contact significantly enhanced excitability of the observer's M1 during movement observation within a two-person setting. Notably, participants with higher social responsiveness (Social Communication subscale of the Social Responsiveness Scale) displayed a more pronounced modulation of M1 excitability by eye gaze. Gaze-related modulations in M1 excitability were, however, not associated with differences in visual attention or autonomic arousal. In summary, the current study highlights the effectiveness and feasibility of adopting paradigms with high ecological validity for studying the modulation of mirror system processes by subtle social cues, such as eye gaze.

Eye contact boosts the reflexive component of overt gaze following

Establishing eye contact with an individual can subsequently lead to a stronger gaze-mediated orienting effect. However, studies exploring this phenomenon have, so far, only assessed manual responses and focused on covert attention - namely, without eye movements. Here, in two experiments, we explored for the first time whether eye contact can also impact on overt attention in an oculomotor task. This approach has two main advantages, in that it relies on more sensitive, online measures of attention allocation and it better mimics real life settings. Participants performed leftwards and rightwards eye movements in response to a central cue. Furthermore, a task-irrelevant central face established - or not - eye contact with the participant, and then averted its gaze either leftwards or rightwards. Hence, eye movement direction was either congruent or incongruent with that of the gaze stimulus. In both experiments, a gaze following behaviour emerged - specifically, smaller saccadic latencies and a greater accuracy emerged on congruent than on incongruent trials - but its magnitude was not modulated by eye contact. However, in Experiment 2 - in which the different eye contact conditions were presented intermixed rather than blocked, thus making eye contact contextually salient - eye contact led to an overall decrement of saccadic latencies and enhanced the reflexive component of gaze following. Taken together, these results provide novel evidence indicating that eye contact can impact on both eye movements programming and overt gaze following mechanisms, at least when eye contact is made contextually salient.

The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: A subliminal ERP study

Facial expressions are deeply tied to empathy, which plays an important role during social communication. The eye region is effective at conveying facial expressions, especially fear and sadness emotions. Further, it was proved that subliminal stimuli could impact human behavior. This research aimed to explore the effect of subliminal sad, fearful and neutral emotions conveyed by the eye region on a viewer's empathy for pain using event-related potentials (ERP). The experiment used an emotional priming paradigm of 3 (prime: subliminal neutral, sad, fear eye region information) × 2 (target: painful, nonpainful pictures) within-subject design. Participants were told to judge whether the targets were in pain or not. Results showed that the subliminal sad eye stimulus elicited a larger P2 amplitude than the subliminal fearful eye stimulus when assessing pain. For P3 and late positive component (LPC), the amplitude elicited by the painful pictures was larger than the amplitude elicited by the nonpainful pictures. The behavioral results demonstrated that people reacted to targets depicting pain more slowly after the sad emotion priming. Moreover, the subjective ratings of Personal Distress (PD) (one of the dimensions in Chinese version of Interpersonal Reactivity Index scale) predicted the pain effect in empathic neural responses in the N1 and N2 time window. The current study showed that subliminal eye emotion affected the viewer's empathy for pain. Compared with the subliminal fearful eye stimulus, the subliminal sad eye stimulus had a greater impact on empathy for pain. The perceptual level of pain was deeper in the late controlled processing stage.

Direct gaze enhances interoceptive accuracy

Direct-gaze signals are known to modulate human cognition, including self-awareness. In the present study, we specifically focused on 'bodily' self-awareness and examined whether direct gaze would modulate one's interoceptive accuracy (IAcc)-the ability to accurately monitor internal bodily sensations. While viewing a photograph of a frontal face with a direct gaze, an averted face or a mere white cross as a baseline, participants were required to count their heartbeats without taking their pulse. The results showed higher IAcc in the direct-gaze condition than in the averted-face or baseline condition. This was particularly the case in participants with low IAcc at baseline, indicating that direct gaze enhanced the participants' IAcc. Importantly, their heart rate was not different while viewing the direct gaze and averted face, suggesting that sensitivity to interoceptive signals, rather than physiological arousal, is heightened by direct gaze. These findings demonstrate the role of social signals in our bodily interoceptive processing and support the notion of the social nature of self-awareness.

Effects of being watched on self-referential processing, self-awareness and prosocial behaviour

Reputation management theory suggests that our behaviour changes in the presence of others to signal good reputation (audience effect). However, the specific cognitive mechanisms by which being watched triggers these changes are poorly understood. Here we test the hypothesis that these changes happen because the belief in being watched increases self-referential processing. We used a novel deceptive video-conference paradigm, where participants believe a video-clip is (or is not) a live feed of a confederate watching them. Participants completed four tasks measuring self-referential processing, prosocial behaviour and self-awareness under these two belief settings. Although the belief manipulation and self-referential effect task were effective, there were no changes on self-referential processing between the two settings, nor on prosocial behaviour and self-awareness. Based on previous evidence and these findings, we propose that further research on the role of the self, social context and personality traits will help elucidating the mechanisms underlying audience effects.

Attachment styles have a modulatory impact on psychophysiological arousal evoked by reciprocated and unreciprocated gaze

Gaze processing plays an essential role during social interactions. Here, it was investigated whether variations in attachment style (secure, anxious and avoidant) were associated with differential expressions of sympathetic autonomic arousal upon live dyadic gaze interactions. To do so, 47 participants were presented with either reciprocated or unreciprocated eye gaze from a live model and skin conductance responses (SCRs) were collected. In line with previous observations, SCRs and subjective ratings of arousal were higher in response to reciprocated, compared to unreciprocated gaze. In terms of the modulation by attachment style, it was shown that participants with low attachment security and high attachment avoidance displayed overall higher sympathetic arousal upon the presentation of the live dyadic gaze cues, irrespective of whether the observed model showed reciprocal or unreciprocated gaze. Together, these observations indicate that attachment styles have a modulatory effect on individuals' psychophysiological responses to dyadic gaze interactions.

Eye contact effects on social preference and face recognition in normal ageing and in Alzheimer's disease

Perceiving a direct gaze (i.e. another individual's gaze directed to the observer leading to eye contact) influences positively a wide range of cognitive processes. In particular, direct gaze perception is known to stimulate memory for other's faces and to increase their likeability. Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in social withdrawal and cognitive decline. However, patients show preserved eye contact behaviours until the middle stage of the disease. The eye contact effects could be preserved in AD and be used to compensate for cognitive and social deficits. Yet, it is unknown whether these effects are preserved in normal ageing. The aim of this study was to address whether the positive effects of eye contact on memory for faces and likeability of others are preserved in healthy older adults and in patients with early to mild AD. Nineteen AD patients, 20 older adults and 20 young adults participated in our study. Participants were first presented with faces displaying either direct or averted gaze and rated each face's degree of likeability. They were then asked to identify the faces they had previously seen during a surprise recognition test. Results showed that the effect of eye contact on other's likeability was preserved in normal ageing and in AD. By contrast, an effect of eye contact on memory for faces seems to emerge only in young participants, suggesting that this effect declines with ageing. Interestingly, however, AD patients show a positive correlation between ratings of likeability and recognition scores, suggesting that they implicitly allocated their encoding resources to most likeable faces. These results open a new way for a "compensating" therapy in AD.

The impact of eye contact on the sense of agency

Recent research suggests that eye contact can lead to enhanced self-awareness. A related phenomenon, the sense of agency deals with the notion of the self as the origin of our actions. Possible links between eye contact and agency have been so far neglected. Here, we investigated whether an implicit sense of agency could be modulated by eye gaze. We asked participants to respond (button press) to a face stimulus: looking or not at the participant (experiment 1); or displaying distinct eye gaze before or after a mask (experiment 2). After each trial, participants estimated the time between their key press and the ensuing effects. We found enhanced intentional binding for conditions that involved direct compared to averted gaze. This study supports the idea that eye contact is an important cue that affects complex cognitive processes and suggests that modulating self-processing can impact the sense of agency.

The effect of emotional and self-referential contexts on ERP responses towards surprised faces

The perception of surprised faces is demonstrably modulated by emotional context. However, the influence of self-relevance and its interaction with emotional context have not been explored. The present study investigated the effects of contextual valence and self-reference on the perception of surprised faces. Our results revealed that faces in a negative context elicited a larger N170 than those in a neutral context. The EPN was affected by the interaction between contextual valence and self-reference, with larger amplitudes for faces in self-related positive contexts and sender-related negative contexts. Additionally, LPP amplitudes were enhanced for faces in negative contexts relative to neutral and positive contexts, as well as for self-related contexts in comparison to sender-related contexts. Together, these findings help to elucidate the psychophysiological mechanisms underlying the effects of emotional and self-referential contexts on the perception of surprised faces, which are characterized by distinctive ERPs.

Eye Contact Is a Two-Way Street: Arousal Is Elicited by the Sending and Receiving of Eye Gaze Information

Research shows that arousal is significantly enhanced while participants make eye contact with a live person compared to viewing a picture of direct or averted gaze. Recent research has pointed toward the potential for social interaction as a possible driving force behind the arousal enhancement. That is, eye gaze is not only a signal perceived but also a signal sent out in order to communicate with others. This study aimed to test this by having dyads engage in eye contact and averted gaze naturally, while wearing sunglasses, and while blindfolded; such that the gaze signals were clear, degraded, and blocked, respectively. Autonomic nervous system arousal was measured via skin conductance response and level. The results showed that dyads exhibited the highest degree of arousal (increased skin conductance) while making eye contact (send/receive) compared to send-only or receive-only gaze trials; however, this was only the case if eye contact was clear. Once gaze information became degraded (by sunglasses or blindfold), arousal significantly decreased and was no longer modulated by the sending and receiving of gaze. Therefore, the arousal enhancement observed during eye contact is not only caused by receiving gaze signals (the focus of previous research) and should be more accurately attributed to the subtle interplay between sending and receiving gaze signals.

Investigating Eye Contact Effect on People's Name Retrieval in Normal Aging and in Alzheimer's Disease

Difficulty in recalling people's name is one of the most universally experienced changes in old age and would also constitute one of the earliest symptom of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Direct gaze, i.e., another individual's gaze directed to the observer that leads to eye contact, has been shown to improve memory for faces and concomitant verbal information. Here, we investigated whether this effect extends to memory for Face-Name association and can thus enhance names' retrieval in normal aging and in AD, at the early stage of the disease. Twenty AD patients, 20 older adults and 25 young adults participated in our study. Subjects were presented with faces displaying either direct or averted gaze in association with a name presented orally. They were then asked to perform a surprise recognition test for each pair of stimuli, in a sequential fashion (i.e., first categorizing a face as old or new and then associating a name using a forced-choice procedure). Results showed that direct gaze does not improve memory for Face-Name association. Yet, we observed an overall direct gaze memory effect over faces and names independently, across our populations, showing that eye contact enhances the encoding of concomitantly presented stimuli. Our results are the first empirical evidence that eye contact benefits memory throughout the course of aging and lead to better delimit the actual power of eye contact on memory.

Perceived Gaze Direction Differentially Affects Discrimination of Facial Emotion, Attention, and Gender - An ERP Study

The perception of eye-gaze is thought to be a key component of our everyday social interactions. While the neural correlates of direct and averted gaze processing have been investigated, there is little consensus about how these gaze directions may be processed differently as a function of the task being performed. In a within-subject design, we examined how perception of direct and averted gaze affected performance on tasks requiring participants to use directly available facial cues to infer the individuals' emotional state (emotion discrimination), direction of attention (attention discrimination) and gender (gender discrimination). Neural activity was recorded throughout the three tasks using EEG, and ERPs time-locked to face onset were analyzed. Participants were most accurate at discriminating emotions with direct gaze faces, but most accurate at discriminating attention with averted gaze faces, while gender discrimination was not affected by gaze direction. At the neural level, direct and averted gaze elicited different patterns of activation depending on the task over frontal sites, from approximately 220-290 ms. More positive amplitudes were seen for direct than averted gaze in the emotion discrimination task. In contrast, more positive amplitudes were seen for averted gaze than for direct gaze in the gender discrimination task. These findings are among the first direct evidence that perceived gaze direction modulates neural activity differently depending on task demands, and that at the behavioral level, specific gaze directions functionally overlap with emotion and attention discrimination, precursors to more elaborated theory of mind processes.

Socially Communicative Eye Contact and Gender Affect Memory

Because of their value as a socially communicative cue, researchers have strived to understand how the gaze of other people influences a variety of cognitive processes. Recent work in social attention suggests that the use of images of people in laboratory studies, as a substitute for real people, may not effectively test socially communicative aspects of eye gaze. As attention affects many other cognitive processes, it is likely that social attention between real individuals could also affect other cognitive processes, such as memory. However, from previous work alone, it is unclear whether, and if so how, socially communicative eye gaze affects memory. The present studies test the assumption that socially communicative aspects of eye gaze may impact memory by manipulating the eye gaze of a live speaker in the context of a traditional recognition paradigm used frequently in the laboratory. A female (Experiment 1) or male (Experiment 2) investigator read words aloud and varied whether eye contact was, or was not, made with a participant. With both female and male investigators, eye contact improved word recognition only for female participants and hindered word recognition in male participants. When a female investigator prolonged their eye contact (Experiment 3) to provide a longer opportunity to both observe and process the investigator's eye gaze, the results replicated the findings from Experiments 1 and 2. The findings from Experiments 1-3 suggest that females interpret and use the investigator's eye gaze differently than males. When key aspects from the previous experiments were replicated in a noncommunicative situation (i.e., when a video of a speaker is used instead of a live speaker; Experiment 4), the memory effects observed previously in response to eye gaze were eliminated. Together, these studies suggest that it is the socially communicative aspects of eye gaze from a real person that influence memory. The findings reveal the importance of using social cues that are communicative in nature (e.g., real people) when studying the relationship between social attention and memory.

Turning Away From Averted Gazes: The Effect of Social Exclusion on Gaze Cueing

Past studies showed increased sensitivity to other people’s gaze after social exclusion. In the present research, across two studies, we tested whether social exclusion could affect the basic cognitive phenomenon of gaze-cueing effect, namely, the tendency to redirect visual attention to the same location that other people are looking at. To this purpose, participants were socially excluded or included using the Cyberball manipulation. In Study 1, after the manipulation, participants performed a gaze-cueing task in which an individual’s gaze, oriented rightward or leftward, preceded a peripheral target stimulus requiring a simple categorization response. The gaze direction could be congruent or incongruent with the location of the target. Results revealed a reduced gaze-cueing effect for socially excluded than for socially included participants. In Study 2, where human gazes were replaced by arrow cues, such an interaction between social exclusion and trial congruency disappeared, indicating a specific effect of social stimuli. We interpreted these findings with the notion that excluded participants can perceive an averted gaze as a further sign of social exclusion, thus showing a reduced gaze-cueing effect.

The Role of Eye Gaze During Natural Social Interactions in Typical and Autistic People

Social interactions involve complex exchanges of a variety of social signals, such as gaze, facial expressions, speech and gestures. Focusing on the dual function of eye gaze, this review explores how the presence of an audience, communicative purpose and temporal dynamics of gaze allow interacting partners to achieve successful communication. First, we focus on how being watched modulates social cognition and behavior. We then show that the study of interpersonal gaze processing, particularly gaze temporal dynamics, can provide valuable understanding of social behavior in real interactions. We propose that the Interpersonal Gaze Processing model, which combines both sensing and signaling functions of eye gaze, provides a framework to make sense of gaze patterns in live interactions. Finally, we discuss how autistic individuals process the belief in being watched and interpersonal dynamics of gaze, and suggest that systematic manipulation of factors modulating gaze signaling can reveal which aspects of social eye gaze are challenging in autism.

The influence of top-down modulation on the processing of direct gaze

Gaze or eye contact is one of the most important nonverbal social cues, which is fundamental to human social interactions. To achieve real time and dynamic face-to-face communication, our brain needs to process another person's gaze direction rapidly and without explicit instruction. In order to explain the fast and spontaneous processing of direct gaze, the fast-track modulator model was proposed. Here, we review recent developments in gaze processing research in the last decade to extend the fast-track modulator model. In particular, we propose that task demand or top-down modulation could play a more crucial role at gaze processing than formerly assumed. We suggest that under different task demands, top-down modulation can facilitate or interfere with the direct gaze effects for early visual processing. The proposed modification of the model extends the role of task demand and its implication on the direct gaze effect, as well as the need to better control for top-down processing in order to better disentangle the role of top-down and bottom-up processing on the direct gaze effect. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition Psychology > Perception and Psychophysics Neuroscience > Cognition.

Eye contact reduces lying

The perception of watching eyes has been found to reduce dishonest behavior. This effect, however, has only been shown in situations where it can be explained by increased adherence to rules and norms, and thus a watching-eyes effect on dishonesty per se has not been demonstrated. Moreover, the effect has been investigated only with images of watching eyes, not in an interactive situation with a live person, which may arguably have different effects on behavior. In the present study, the effect of watching eyes on dishonesty was investigated with an interactive computer game of lying. Participants played the game against a confederate, whom they believed to be another participant. On each trial, they were briefly presented with a view of the confederate, after which they chose whether to lie in the game. The confederate alternated between the use of direct and downward gaze. The results showed that another individual's direct gaze reduced lying in the game. The findings have implications for both everyday and professional situations, such as clinical conversations and police interrogations.

Social inclusion, but not exclusion, delays attentional disengagement from direct gaze

The present study investigated whether another person’s direct gaze holds a perceiver’s visuospatial attention and whether social exclusion or social inclusion would enhance this effect. Participants were socially excluded, socially included, or underwent a non-social control manipulation in a virtual ball-tossing game. The manipulation was followed by an attentional disengagement task, in which we measured manual response times in identification of peripheral stimuli shown to the left or right of centrally presented faces portraying direct or downward gaze. Contrary to our hypotheses, the response times were not, in general, longer for direct gaze trials than downward gaze trials, and exclusion did not increase the delay in direct gaze trials. Instead, we discovered that, in the social inclusion group, the response times were longer for direct gaze trials relative to downward gaze trials. Thus, social inclusion might have activated affiliation-related cognitive processes leading to delayed attentional disengagement from faces cueing affiliation.

Affective Eye Contact: An Integrative Review

In recent years, many studies have shown that perceiving other individuals' direct gaze has robust effects on various attentional and cognitive processes. However, considerably less attention has been devoted to investigating the affective effects triggered by eye contact. This article reviews research concerning the effects of others' gaze direction on observers' affective responses. The review focuses on studies in which affective reactions have been investigated in well-controlled laboratory experiments, and in which contextual factors possibly influencing perceivers' affects have been controlled. Two important themes emerged from this review. First, explicit affective evaluations of seeing another's direct versus averted gaze have resulted in rather inconsistent findings; some studies report more positive subjective feelings to direct compared to averted gaze, whereas others report the opposite pattern. These contradictory findings may be related, for example, to differences between studies in terms of the capability of direct-gaze stimuli to elicit feelings of self-involvement. Second, studies relying on various implicit measures have reported more consistent results; they indicate that direct gaze increases affective arousal, and more importantly, that eye contact automatically evokes a positively valenced affective reaction. Based on the review, possible psychological mechanisms for the positive affective reactions elicited by eye contact are described.

Social Contact Enhances Bodily Self-Awareness

Human self-awareness is arguably the most important and revealing question of modern sciences. Converging theoretical perspectives link self-awareness and social abilities in human beings. In particular, mutual engagement during social interactions-or social contact-would boost self-awareness. Yet, empirical evidence for this effect is scarce. We recently showed that the perception of eye contact induces enhanced bodily self-awareness. Here, we aimed at extending these findings by testing the influence of social contact in auditory and tactile modalities, in order to demonstrate that social contact enhances bodily self-awareness irrespective of sensory modality. In a first experiment, participants were exposed to hearing their own first name (as compared to another unfamiliar name and noise). In a second experiment, human touch (as compared to brush touch and no-touch) was used as the social contact cue. In both experiments, participants demonstrated more accurate rating of their bodily reactions in response to emotional pictures following the social contact condition-a proxy of bodily self-awareness. Further analyses indicated that the effect of social contact was comparable across tactile, auditory and visual modalities. These results provide the first direct empirical evidence in support of the essential social nature of human self-awareness.

I don't need your attention: ostracism can narrow the cone of gaze

Previous research has shown that ostracized participants seek inclusive cues, such as gaze directed at them, when trying to reaffiliate. However, instead of seeking reinclusion, ostracized individuals may sometimes withdraw from interactions if not offered an opportunity for reaffiliation. In the current study, after an ostracism manipulation with no reaffiliation opportunity, participants judged whether faces portraying direct gaze or slightly averted gaze (2°-8° to the left and to the right) were looking at them or not. Compared to an inclusion group and a non-social control group, ostracized participants accepted a smaller range of gaze directions as being directed at them, i.e., they had a narrower "cone of gaze". The width of the gaze cone was equally wide in the inclusion and control groups. We propose that, without an opportunity for reaffiliation, ostracized participants may start to view other people as particularly unapproachable, possibly indicative of a motivational tendency to disengage from interactions.

The Effect of Eye Contact Is Contingent on Visual Awareness

The present study explored how eye contact at different levels of visual awareness influences gaze-induced joint attention. We adopted a spatial-cueing paradigm, in which an averted gaze was used as an uninformative central cue for a joint-attention task. Prior to the onset of the averted-gaze cue, either supraliminal (Experiment 1) or subliminal (Experiment 2) eye contact was presented. The results revealed a larger subsequent gaze-cueing effect following supraliminal eye contact compared to a no-contact condition. In contrast, the gaze-cueing effect was smaller in the subliminal eye-contact condition than in the no-contact condition. These findings suggest that the facilitation effect of eye contact on coordinating social attention depends on visual awareness. Furthermore, subliminal eye contact might have an impact on subsequent social attention processes that differ from supraliminal eye contact. This study highlights the need to further investigate the role of eye contact in implicit social cognition.

Genuine eye contact elicits self-referential processing

The effect of eye contact on self-awareness was investigated with implicit measures based on the use of first-person singular pronouns in sentences. The measures were proposed to tap into self-referential processing, that is, information processing associated with self-awareness. In addition, participants filled in a questionnaire measuring explicit self-awareness. In Experiment 1, the stimulus was a video clip showing another person and, in Experiment 2, the stimulus was a live person. In both experiments, participants were divided into two groups and presented with the stimulus person either making eye contact or gazing downward, depending on the group assignment. During the task, the gaze stimulus was presented before each trial of the pronoun-selection task. Eye contact was found to increase the use of first-person pronouns, but only when participants were facing a real person, not when they were looking at a video of a person. No difference in self-reported self-awareness was found between the two gaze direction groups in either experiment. The results indicate that eye contact elicits self-referential processing, but the effect may be stronger, or possibly limited to, live interaction.