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

Syrjämäki, Aleksi H.; Hietanen, Jari K.

doi:10.1007/s00426-018-1108-2

Cited by 13 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…In a similar vein, when presented at fixation, direct-gaze faces can also hold attention more effectively as compared to other eye-gaze conditions. Also in this case, studies using both manual 19,20 and oculomotor measures 21,22 supported this notion.…”

supporting

confidence: 61%

Eye contact boosts the reflexive component of overt gaze following

Dalmaso

Alessi

Castelli

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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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.

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supporting

confidence: 61%

Eye contact boosts the reflexive component of overt gaze following

Dalmaso

Alessi

Castelli

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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“…In more detail, attention holding refers to the greater "difficulty" to disengage attention from direct-gaze faces as compared with both averted-gaze or closed-eye faces. This phenomenon has been reported for the first time by Senju and Hasegawa (2005; see also Hietanen, Myllyneva, Helminen, & Lyyra, 2016;Syrjämäki & Hietanen, 2018), who asked participants to manually respond to peripheral targets while they were fixating a central task-irrelevant face with or without direct gaze. Evidence for such attention holding effect has been then reported also with oculomotor measures (Dalmaso, Castelli, & Galfano, 2017a;Ueda, Takahashi, & Watanabe, 2014).…”

mentioning

confidence: 56%

Social modulators of gaze-mediated orienting of attention: A review

2020

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Humans tend to shift attention according to others' eye-gaze direction. This is a core ability as it permits to create pervasive relationships among individuals and with the environment around them. In the beginning, this form of social orienting was considered a reflexive phenomenon, but in recent years evidence has shown that it is also permeable to several social factors related to the observer, the individual depicted in the cueing face, and the relationship between them. The major goal of this work is to provide a comprehensive overview concerning the role that social variables can play in shaping covert gaze cueing in healthy adults, critically examining both the modulatory social factors for which evidence is more robust and those for which evidence is mixed. When available, overt attention studies will also be discussed. Finally, a novel theoretical framework linking these social and attention domains will be also introduced.

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“…Our findings are in line with the recent literature on social exclusion and eye gaze direction. For instance, Syrjämäki and Hietanen (2018) investigated whether the attentional holding effect of direct gaze would be increased for socially excluded (or included) individual. In this research, participants took part in a Cyberball manipulation, and, afterward, they performed an attentional disengagement task, in which they were required to identify peripheral stimuli shown to the left or right of centrally presented faces portraying direct or downward eye gaze.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2019

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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.

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

Cited by 13 publications

References 67 publications

Eye contact boosts the reflexive component of overt gaze following

Eye contact boosts the reflexive component of overt gaze following

Social modulators of gaze-mediated orienting of attention: A review

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

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