Abstract
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.
Highlights
The direction of human eye gaze conveys a significant amount of relevant social information, especially with respect to attention and intention, and serves as a reliable source of nonverbal information
And contrary to our initial assumption, accuracy was higher for averted gaze (M = 83.93%, SE = 2.29%) compared to direct gaze (M = 76.33%, SE = 2.99%)
Given the medium effect size, we further analyzed this interaction revealing a nominal tendency towards higher accuracy rates for averted gaze for both upright and eyes only stimuli, t(24) = 2.68, p = .013, d = 0.54, and t(24) = 2.50, p = .020, d = 0.50, respectively, while there was no such difference for inverted stimuli, t(24) = 0.37, p = .716, d = 0.07
Summary
The direction of human eye gaze conveys a significant amount of relevant social information, especially with respect to attention and intention, and serves as a reliable source of nonverbal information Given that gaze discrimination is of special importance in situations of danger or threat, where “every second counts” and viewing conditions might be suboptimal, we put emphasis on the investigation of gaze discrimination ability when the perception of gaze direction is limited to a very short time window, that is, under brief and masked presentation conditions. Such conditions might be considered paradigmatic for real-life instances where gaze perception can be difficult due to situational constraints (e.g., time pressure, spatial distance, low lighting, etc.)
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