Gaze cues influence memory…but not for long

Dodd, Michael D.; Weiss, Noah; McDonnell, Gerald P.; Sarwal, Amara; Kingstone, Alan

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.06.003

Cited by 27 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The role of intent in gaze can also help explain the growing evidence of gaze-specific effects observed in the literature when a Bqualitative^rather than a Bquantitative^approach has been used to dissociate between gaze and arrow attentional mechanisms. In particular, these studies have focused on effects other than the usual facilitation effect produced by gaze and arrow cues, such as object evaluation (e.g., Bayliss et al, 2006), object selection (Marotta et al, 2012), long-term memory (Dodd et al, 2012), working memory (Gregory & Jackson, 2017), and spatial interference, as we studied here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

2018

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Eye gaze conveys rich information concerning the states of mind of others, playing a critical role in social interactions, signaling internal states, and guiding others' attention. On the basis of its social significance, some researchers have proposed that eye gaze may represent a unique attentional stimulus. However, contrary to this notion, the majority of the literature has shown indistinguishable attentional effects when eye gaze and arrows have been used as cues. Taking a different approach, in this study we aimed at finding qualitative attentional differences between gazes and arrows when they were used as targets instead of as cues. We used a spatial Stroop task, in which participants were required to identify the direction of eyes or arrows presented to the left or the right of a fixation point. The results showed that the two types of stimuli led to opposite spatial interference effects, with arrows producing faster reaction times when the stimulus direction was congruent with the stimulus position (a typical spatial Stroop effect), and eye gaze producing faster reaction times when it was incongruent (a "reversed" spatial Stroop effect). This reversed Stroop is interpreted as an eye-contact effect, therefore revealing the unique nature of eyes as special social-attention stimuli.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This affective preference for cued objects was not found when arrows cues were used. Finally, combining a traditional gazecueing paradigm with a visual memory task, Dodd, Weiss, McDonnell, Sarwal, and Kingstone (2012) and Gregory and Jackson (2017) have shown that gaze cues but not arrow cues improved memory accuracy for cued information.…”

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confidence: 99%

Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

2018

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“…For example, using a visual memory task, Dodd et al (2012) and Gregory and Jackson (2017) have studied the difference between gaze and arrow cues, showing an improvement in memory accuracy just when information is cued by a gaze but not when using an arrow. Moreover, Marotta et al (2018) observed that eye-gaze and arrows yielded opposite spatial interference effects when used as targets in a spatial interference task: whereas arrows elicited the usual spatial stroop effect, i.e., faster reaction times when its position was congruent with the direction, eye-gaze produced the opposite effect, i.e., faster responses when it was incongruent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Differences in Attentional Selection Following Gaze and Arrow Cues

et al. 2020

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Although most studies on social attention have shown undistinguishable attentional effects in response to eye-gaze and arrow cues, recent research has found that whereas the orienting of attention triggered by eye-gaze is directed to the specific position, or part of the object looked at, arrows unselectively elicit attention toward parts of the environment. However, it is unclear whether this dissociation between gaze and arrow cues is related to social cognitive mechanisms such as mental state attribution (Theory of Mind, ToM). We aimed at replicating the dissociation between gaze and arrow cues and investigating if the attentional object selection elicited by these two types of stimuli differs depending on the sex of observers. To make our research plan transparent, our hypotheses, together with the plans of analyses, were registered before data exploration. While we replicated the arrow-gaze dissociation, this was equivalent in the male and female population. These results seem to contradict the intuition that ToM skills can be associated with the differences observed between orienting to eyes and arrows since greater ToM abilities have been generally shown in females. However, this conclusion must be interpreted with caution, since, in our sample, it was not possible to observe any differences in autistic quotient scores and ToM abilities between male and female participants. Further research is needed in order to clarify this issue.

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“…As previous laboratory work has successfully measured other gaze-related memory effects using recognition tests (e.g., gaze cuing to visual word stimuli presented on a computer screen, Fry and Smith, 1975; Kelley and Gorham, 1988; Macrae et al., 2002; Hood et al., 2003; Mason et al., 2004; Smith et al., 2006; Dodd et al., 2012; Falck-Ytter et al., 2014), the studies presented in this paper will use a variant of these classic recognition tasks. The basic methodology is as follows.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socially Communicative Eye Contact and Gender Affect Memory

et al. 2019

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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.

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Gaze cues influence memory…but not for long

Cited by 27 publications

References 15 publications

Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

Sex Differences in Attentional Selection Following Gaze and Arrow Cues

Socially Communicative Eye Contact and Gender Affect Memory

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