Why are you looking at me? It’s because I’m talking, but mostly because I’m staring or not doing much

Abstract

Our attention is particularly driven toward faces, especially the eyes, and there is much debate over the factors that modulate this social attentional orienting. Most of the previous research has presented faces in isolation, and we tried to address this shortcoming by measuring people’s eye movements whilst they observe more naturalistic and varied social interactions. Participants’ eye movements were monitored whilst they watched three different types of social interactions (monologue, manual activity, active attentional misdirection), which were either accompanied by the corresponding audio as speech or by silence. Our results showed that (1) participants spent more time looking at the face when the person was giving a monologue, than when he/she was carrying out manual activities, and in the latter case they spent more time fixating on the person’s hands. (2) Hearing speech significantly increases the amount of time participants spent looking at the face (this effect was relatively small), although this was not accounted for by any increase in mouth-oriented gaze. (3) Participants spent significantly more time fixating on the face when direct eye contact was established, and this drive to establish eye contact was significantly stronger in the manual activities than during the monologue. These results highlight people’s strategic top-down control over when they attend to faces and the eyes, and support the view that we use our eyes to signal non-verbal information.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.3758/s13414-018-1588-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Looking behavior and potential human interactions during locomotion

“…Similarly, participants looked relatively more at the arms of the walkers handing out a flyer or standing still in the hallway (see Appendix C) than they did for walkers who did not reach out an arm. We thus extend previous research that has shown that participants look at areas of the body of a person depending on what that person does (Scott et al, 2019). Critically, we show that this is also the case when participants share the same physical space with their passers-by and thus can interact with them in a direct way, as opposed to when they observe others in a video.…”

“…(2012) proposed that looking behavior to faces can be considered an information-seeking process where observers seek out parts of the scene that are relevant. In a similar vein, Scott, Batten, and Kuhn (2019) presented participants with videos of an actor carrying out various behaviors (holding a monologue, manual actions, and misdirection). They showed that the actor's face was looked at most during monologues, while the actor's hands were looked at most during manual actions and misdirection.…”

How does gaze to faces support face-to-face interaction? A review and perspective

“…Moreover, Foulsham and Sanderson ( 2013 ) showed that this also occurred for videos from which the sound was removed. In another study, Scott et al, ( 2019 ) showed observers three videos of an actor carrying out a monologue, manual actions (how to make a cup of tea) and misdirection (a magic trick ‘cups and balls’). They reported that faces were looked at most during monologues, but hands were looked at much more often during manual actions and misdirections in videos portrayed by an actor.…”

“…As noted before, however, information for speech recognition need not be confined to the mouth (Lansing and McConkie, 1999 ; Yehia et al, 1998 ). Finally, Scott et al, ( 2019 ) showed that eye contact by the actor (during manual activity and misdirection in particular) increased observers’ fixation time to the face.…”

On the cognitive bases of illusionism

“…Experimentally, it has been reported that social cues, beyond gaze location, can manipulate the audience’s attention effectively ( Kuhn & Tatler, 2005 ; Kuhn et al, 2008a ; Kuhn, Amlani & Rensink, 2008b ). In general, social cues strengthen the effectiveness of the magic effects, can be imposed on explicit instructions and allow manipulating the audience’s expectations ( Cui et al, 2011 ; Hergovich & Oberfichtner, 2016 ; Kuhn & Land, 2006 ; Kuhn, Tatler & Cole, 2009 ; Kuhn & Teszka, 2015 ; Kuhn et al, 2016 ; Kuhn & Rensink, 2016 ; Rieiro, Martinez-Conde & Macknik, 2013 ; Scott, Batten & Kuhn, 2019 ; Tachibana & Kawabata, 2014 ; Thomas & Didierjean, 2016a , 2016b ; Tompkins, Woods & Aimola Davies, 2016 ).…”