The effects of social pressure and emotional expression on the cone of gaze in patients with social anxiety disorder

Variations in the Appearance and Interpretation of Interpersonal Eye Contact in Social Categorizations and Psychiatric Populations Worldwide: A Scoping Review with a Critical Appraisal of the Literature

BACKGROUND

Eye contact is one of the most fundamental forms of interhuman communication. However, to date, there has been no comprehensive research comparing how eye contact is made and interpreted in all possible populations worldwide. This study presents a summary of the existing literature on these modalities stratified to social categorizations and psychiatric disorders.

METHOD

A scoping review with critical appraisal of the literature according to the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. Databases AnthroSource, Medline, CINAHL, the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection (EBSCO) and PsychInfo were searched.

RESULTS

7068 articles were screened for both the grey literature and reference lists, of which 385 were included, 282 for social categorizations and 103 for psychiatric disorders. In total, 603 thematic clustered outcomes of variations were included. Methodological quality was generally moderate to good.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a great degree of variation in the presentation and interpretation of eye contact between and within populations. It remains unclear why specific variations occur in populations. Additionally, no gold standard for how eye contact should be used or interpreted emerged from the studies. Further research into the reason for differences in eye contact between and within populations is recommended.

Autistic traits modulate the influence of face masks on gaze perception

Detecting when others are looking at us is a crucial social skill. Accordingly, a range of gaze angles is perceived as self-directed; this is termed the "cone of direct gaze" (CoDG). Multiple cues, such as nose and head orientation, are integrated during gaze perception. Thus, occluding the lower portion of the face, such as with face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, may influence how gaze is perceived. Individual differences in the prioritisation of eye-region and non-eye-region cues may modulate the influence of face masks on gaze perception. Autistic individuals, who may be more reliant on non-eye-region directional cues during gaze perception, might be differentially affected by face masks. In the present study, we compared the CoDG when viewing masked and unmasked faces (N = 157) and measured self-reported autistic traits. The CoDG was wider for masked compared to unmasked faces, suggesting that reduced reliability of lower face cues increases the range of gaze angles perceived as self-directed. Additionally, autistic traits positively predicted the magnitude of CoDG difference between masked and unmasked faces. This study provides crucial insights into the effect of face masks on gaze perception, and how they may affect autistic individuals to a greater extent.

The Relationship between Stress Perception and Problematic Social Network Use among Chinese College Students: The Mediating Role of the Fear of Missing Out

Based on the interaction of person-affect-cognition-execution model, this study examined the association between stress perception and problematic social network use among Chinese college students and explored the mediating effect of the fear of missing out (FoMO) on the relationship between stress perception and problematic social network use. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 554 students from nine universities in China. We found that stress perception was significantly positively correlated with problematic social network use and FoMO (r = 0.38, 0.46; p < 0.001), and FoMO was significantly positively correlated with problematic social network use (r = 0.45, p < 0.001). FoMO mediated the relationship between stress perception and problematic social network use. Conclusion: Stress perception has a negative impact on college students' problematic social network use via the mediating effect of FoMO. Practical implications that reveal the college students' problematic social network use were discussed as well.

Face masks have a limited effect on the feeling of being looked at

Introduction

Wearing face masks has been promoted as an effective measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Because face masks cover a major part of the face, they have detrimental effects on various aspects of social cognition. Yet, a highly important feature of the face is not occluded by face masks: the eyes. The eyes play an important role in social interactions: knowing where another person is looking is of central importance when interacting with others. Recent research has reported an attentional shift toward the eye region as a consequence of the widespread exposure to face masks. However, no study has yet investigated the influence of face masks on the perception of eye gaze direction. Here we investigated whether face masks have an effect on the feeling of being looked at. Assuming an attentional shift toward the eyes, we might expect more accurate gaze perception in faces wearing face masks.

Methods

Sixty-five participants decided for a series of realistic avatar faces whether each face was making eye contact or not. Half of the faces wore face masks, the other half did not. For each participant and separately for each condition (mask vs. no mask), we calculated the cone of direct gaze (CoDG), a commonly used measure to quantify the range of gaze angles within which an observer assumes mutual gaze.

Results

Contrary to our expectations, results show that mutual gaze is not recognized more accurately in masked faces. Rather, the CoDG was, on average, slightly wider for faces wearing masks compared to faces without masks.

Discussion

Notwithstanding the relatively small effect of face mask, these findings potentially have implications on our social interactions. If we inadvertently feel looked at by an onlooker, we may react inappropriately by reciprocating the alleged approach orientation.

Masked face is looking at me: Face mask increases the feeling of being looked at during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background

As the COVID-19 global pandemic unfolded, governments recommended wearing face masks as a protective measure. Recent studies have found that a face mask influences perception; but how it affects social perception, especially the judgment of being looked at, is still unknown. This study investigated how wearing a mask influences the judgment of gaze direction by conducting a cone of direct gaze (CoDG) task.

Methods

In Experiment 1, three types of masked faces were considered to investigate whether the effect of masks on CoDG is modulated by mask types. Experiment 2 was to further validate the results of Experiment 1 by adding a learning phase to help participants better distinguish N95 and surgical masks. Furthermore, to investigate whether the effect of masks derives from its social significance, a face with only the eye-region (a mouth-cut face) was used as the stimuli in Experiment 3.

Results

The results of Experiment 1 found that wearing masks widens the CoDG, irrespective of the mask type. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1. Experiment 3 found that the CoDG of N95-masked faces was wider than the mouth-cut and non-masked faces, while no significant difference existed between the CoDG of mouth-cut and non-masked faces, illustrating that the influence of wearing masks on CoDG was due to high-level social significance rather than low-level facial feature information.

Conclusion

The results show that face mask increases the feeling of being looked at during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The present findings are of significance for understanding the impact of wearing masks on human social cognition in the context of COVID-19.

Is there a 'zone of eye contact' within the borders of the face?

Eye contact is a salient feature of everyday interactions, yet it is not obvious what the physical conditions are under which we feel that we have eye contact with another person. Here we measure the range of locations that gaze can fall on a person's face to elicit a sense of eye contact. Participants made judgements about eye contact while viewing rendered images of faces with finely-varying gaze direction at a close interpersonal distance (50 cm). The 'zone of eye contact' tends to peak between the two eyes and is often surprisingly narrower than the observer's actual eye region. Indeed, the zone tends to extend further across the face in height than in width. This shares an interesting parallel with the 'cyclopean eye' of visual perspective - our sense of looking out from a single point in space despite the physical separation of our two eyes. The distribution of eye-contact strength across the face can be modelled at the individual-subject level as a 2D Gaussian function. Perception of eye contact is more precise than the sense of having one's face looked at, which captures a wider range of gaze locations in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions, at least at the close viewing distance used in the present study. These features of eye-contact perception are very similar cross-culturally, tested here in Australian and Japanese university students. However, the shape and position of the zone of eye contact does vary depending on recent sensory experience: adaptation to faces with averted gaze causes a pronounced shift and widening of the zone across the face, and judgements about eye contact also show a positive serial dependence. Together, these results provide insight into the conditions under which eye contact is felt, with respect to face morphology, culture, and sensory context.

Intranasal oxytocin enhances the perception of ambiguous averted gaze in women but not in men

BACKGROUND

Perceiving accurately that others are looking away from us (averted gaze) is as important, for social interactions, as perceiving that others are looking at us (direct gaze). However, previous studies have revealed that when the deflection angle of averted gaze is small, individuals tend to falsely perceive it as direct gaze. Oxytocin (OXT) has been shown to increase orientation to the eye region. Therefore, a critical question is whether and how OXT would facilitate the perception of ambiguous averted gaze.

OBJECTIVES

The present study aimed to measure the effects of OXT on the performance of males and females in distinguishing ambiguous averted gaze from direct gaze of different emotional faces.

METHODS

In a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover experiment, 48 participants were presented successively two emotional faces with direct gaze (defined as 0, indicating the center of the eye) or averted gaze (defined as ±4, indicating the corner of the eye; +4 means that the iris moves 4 steps to the right; and -4 means that the iris moves 4 steps to the left) following intranasal oxytocin or placebo treatment and asked to make judgments on whether or not the two faces were the same in terms of identity. The interference effect of gaze direction was calculated by subtracting the mean accuracy and reaction time in the congruent gaze condition from those in the incongruent gaze condition. The logic of the measurement was if intranasal OXT would facilitate the detection of ambiguous averted gaze, we would observe a larger interference effect in the gaze incongruent condition compared with the gaze congruent condition, leading to longer RT or/and lower accuracy for identification judgment in the gaze incongruent condition.

RESULTS

While there were no OXT effects in accuracy, we found a significant interaction between treatment, sex, and gaze congruency in reaction times. That is, following OXT as compared to placebo, women displayed stronger interference of gaze direction, whereas in men no significant difference was observed. Besides, this interaction did not vary across different emotional expressions.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings provide the first evidence for sex-dependent effects of OXT on the perception of ambiguous averted gaze. Given potential therapeutic applications of OXT to patients with developmental and psychiatric disorders, who are characterized as atypical in encoding gaze features, the findings suggest that rather different treatment outcomes could be anticipated in males and females.

The Cone of Direct Gaze: A Stable Trait

Direct eye gaze is a potent stimulus in social interactions and is often associated with interest and approach orientation. Yet, there is remarkable variability in the range of gaze lines that people accept as being direct. A measure that is frequently used to quantify the range of gaze angles within which an observer assumes mutual gaze is the cone of direct gaze (CoDG). While individual differences in CoDG have often been examined, studies that systematically investigate the stability of an observers' CoDG over time are scarce. In two experiments, we measured the CoDG using an established paradigm and repeated the measurement after 5 min and/or after 1 week. We found high inter-individual variation, but high agreement within participants (ICCs between 0.649 and 0.855). We conclude that the CoDG can be seen as a rather stable measure, much like a personality trait.

Theta resting EEG in TPJ/pSTS is associated with individual differences in the feeling of being looked at

Direct eye gaze is a powerful stimulus in social interactions, yet people vary considerably in the range of gaze lines that they accept as being direct (cone of direct gaze, CoDG). Here, we searched for a possible neural trait marker of these individual differences. We measured the width of the CoDG in 137 healthy participants and related their individual CoDG to their neural baseline activation as measured with resting electroencephalogram. Using a source-localization technique, we found that resting theta current density in the left temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and adjacent posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) was associated with the width of CoDG. Our findings suggest that the higher the baseline cortical activation in the left TPJ/pSTS, the wider the CoDG and thus the more liberal the individuals’ judgments were in deciding whether a looker stimulus was making eye contact or not. This is a first demonstration of the neural signatures underlying individual differences in the feeling of being looked at.