TY  - JOUR
A1  - Breil, Christina
A1  - Huestegge, Lynn
A1  - Böckler, Anne
T1  - From eye to arrow: Attention capture by direct gaze requires more than just the eyes
JF  - Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
N2  - Human attention is strongly attracted by direct gaze and sudden onset motion. The sudden direct-gaze effect refers to the processing advantage for targets appearing on peripheral faces that suddenly establish eye contact. Here, we investigate the necessity of social information for attention capture by (sudden onset) ostensive cues. Six experiments involving 204 participants applied (1) naturalistic faces, (2) arrows, (3) schematic eyes, (4) naturalistic eyes, or schematic facial configurations (5) without or (6) with head turn to an attention-capture paradigm. Trials started with two stimuli oriented towards the observer and two stimuli pointing into the periphery. Simultaneous to target presentation, one direct stimulus changed to averted and one averted stimulus changed to direct, yielding a 2 × 2 factorial design with direction and motion cues being absent or present. We replicated the (sudden) direct-gaze effect for photographic faces, but found no corresponding effects in Experiments 2-6. Hence, a holistic and socially meaningful facial context seems vital for attention capture by direct gaze. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: The present study highlights the significance of context information for social attention. Our findings demonstrate that the direct-gaze effect, that is, the prioritization of direct gaze over averted gaze, critically relies on the presentation of a meaningful holistic and naturalistic facial context. This pattern of results is evidence in favor of early effects of surrounding social information on attention capture by direct gaze.
KW  - social interaction
KW  - social cognition
KW  - attention capture
KW  - direct gaze
KW  - social cues
KW  - face perception
Y1  - 2022
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273206
SN  - 1943-393X
VL  - 84
IS  - 1
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Riechelmann, Eva
A1  - Gamer, Matthias
A1  - Böckler, Anna
A1  - Huestegge, Lynn
T1  - How ubiquitous is the direct-gaze advantage? Evidence for an averted-gaze advantage in a gaze-discrimination task
JF  - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
N2  - Human eye gaze conveys an enormous amount of socially relevant information, and the rapid assessment of gaze direction is of particular relevance in order to adapt behavior accordingly. Specifically, previous research demonstrated evidence for an advantage of processing direct (vs. averted) gaze. The present study examined discrimination performance for gaze direction (direct vs. averted) under controlled presentation conditions: Using a backward-masking gaze-discrimination task, photographs of faces with direct and averted gaze were briefly presented, followed by a mask stimulus. Additionally, effects of facial context on gaze discrimination were assessed by either presenting gaze direction in isolation (i.e., by only showing the eye region) or in the context of an upright or inverted face. Across three experiments, we consistently observed a facial context effect with highest discrimination performance for faces presented in upright position, lower performance for inverted faces, and lowest performance for eyes presented in isolation. Additionally, averted gaze was generally responded to faster and with higher accuracy than direct gaze, indicating an averted-gaze advantage. Overall, the results suggest that direct gaze is not generally associated with processing advantages, thereby highlighting the important role of presentation conditions and task demands in gaze perception.
KW  - social cognition
KW  - gaze processing
KW  - averted gaze
KW  - direct gaze
KW  - gaze discrimination
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-235268
SN  - 1943-3921
VL  - 83
ER  -