The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention

Abstract

We investigated whether a fearful expression enhances the effect of another's gaze in directing the attention of an observer. Participants viewed photographs of faces whose gaze was directed ahead, to the left or to the right. Target letters then appeared unpredictably to the left or right. As expected, targets in the location indicated by gaze were detected more rapidly. In nonanxious volunteers the effects of fearful gaze did not differ from neutral gaze, but fearful expression had a more powerful influence in a selected high anxious group. Attention is thus more likely to be guided by the direction of fearful than neutral gaze, but only in anxiety-prone individuals.Observing another's direction of gaze often results in a congruent focus of attention on the part of the observer. This effect emerges quite early in life, and has been noted in infants as young as 3 months (Hood, Willen, & Driver, 1998). When infants saw faces displayed on a computer whose eyes moved to the left or right, followed by a target stimulus on the same or the opposite side, saccades towards the target were faster if the observed gaze had been in the same direction. This early sensitivity to gaze direction was taken by the authors as consistent with the suggestion that detection of gaze is a biologically prepared ability, possibly controlled by a specialized brain module.In the experiment to be described here we investigated the influence of eye gaze in guiding attention in adult participants, with particular reference to the influence of facial expression displayed by the model, and the emotionality of the observer. As will be discussed later, we hypothesized that fearful gaze might be especially effective in guiding the attention of an observer to the same location, but particularly so in highly anxious individuals.We followed the general method described by a number of other researchers, albeit without reference to emotion. In an initial report by Friesen and Kingstone (1998), schematically drawn faces with blanked eyes were displayed centrally for 680 ms, after which the eye pupils appeared, apparently looking straight ahead, to the left or to the right. With a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 105, 300, 600, or 1005 ms, a target letter (F or T) appeared unpredictably but with equal frequency on the left or right side of the screen. For each SOA except the longest, detection times were significantly faster when targets were in the location consistent with gaze direction, despite instructions that eye gaze was not in fact predictive. There were no significant differences between the conditions when gaze was straight ahead and when targets appeared UKPMC Funders Group Author Manuscript UKPMC Funders Group Author Manuscriptin the gaze-incongruent location, at any SOA. That is, there were significant benefits of cueing by gaze direction with an SOA of 105-600 ms, but no significant costs when gaze and targets were in opposing locations.Two further series broadly confirming these findings were reported by Driver, Davis, Ricciard...

“Avoiding or approaching eyes”? Introversion/extraversion affects the gaze-cueing effect

“…4), although we did not replicate the specific effects of the different emotional facial expressions on performance (significantly slower responses with angry expressions in high trait anxiety subjects) described by Fox et al (2007). The relationships between trait anxiety and processing of emotional facial expressions with direct gaze warrants further investigation, also in consideration that other authors reported slower responses in anxious individuals to centrally located fearful faces with direct gaze (e.g., Mathews et al 2003). …”

“…Provided that introversion is related to high levels of arousal to social signals (Eysenck 1967), and consistent with evidence on social phobia (Horley et al 2004;Moukheiber et al 2010;Stein et al 2002), we expected that introverts would not show the gaze congruency effect in presence of threatening, and in particular angry, facial stimuli relative to non-threatening (happy and neutral) expressions. Importantly, since previous research showed that the gaze-cueing effect with emotional expressions can interact with trait anxiety (Frischen et al 2007;Fox et al 2007;Mathews et al 2003), in the present experiment we also assessed self-reported levels of trait anxiety to explore the possible relationships between anxiety and intro-/extraversion in modulation of the gaze-cueing effect.…”

“…Two more studies have confirmed that the interactive effect of gaze direction and facial expression is largely modulated by trait anxiety. Actually, orienting of attention toward the gaze direction of the face-cue proved to be enhanced by fearful expressions, but only in subjects with high levels of trait anxiety (Fox et al 2007;Mathews et al 2003). Therefore, the mixed pattern of results on the gaze-cueing effect in the context of an emotional facial expression et al Fox et al 2007).…”

“…Independently from meditational analysis, following previous studies (Fox et al 2007;Mathews et al 2003) we specifically investigated possible relationships between trait anxiety and behavioral performance by means of separate regression analyses.…”

“…All the above analyses were performed on averted gaze and direct gaze conditions separately (Fox et al 2007;Mathews et al 2003). As regards gaze averted trials, the congruency effect was computed for each of the four facial expressions (angry, fearful, happy and neutral) by subtracting the mean reaction times on congruent trials from the mean reaction time on incongruent trials; with respect to direct gaze trials, mean reaction times were calculated separately for each emotion and then entered into regression analyses.…”