Perceived gaze direction affects concreteness effects in words memory: an event-related potentials study.

Abstract

Previous studies have revealed that word concreteness effects could be influenced by contextual cues such as emotional context. However, it is unclear whether concreteness effects might be influenced by social context such as perception of gaze direction, which plays an important role in social interaction. This study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether perceived gaze direction could affect concreteness effects in words memory. Concrete and abstract words were presented on direct- or averted-gaze faces, and participants were asked to memorize the words. Behavioral results verified the direct-gaze memory advantage, showing that memory performance was better for words presented with direct gaze than with averted gaze. ERP results showed that concrete words were associated with a larger N400 and a smaller late positive component (LPC) than abstract words. ERP results also revealed a significant interaction between gaze direction and word concreteness on the LPC component: specifically, the LPC concreteness effect occurred only in the direct-gaze condition. Our results suggested that the gaze direction could be interpreted as a complex social context that differs from pure emotional cues in its influence on mental imagery in concreteness effects. This study provides a new perspective for investigating word concreteness effects with contextual cues.