Abstract
We studied temporal order judgements (TOJs) of gaze shift behaviours and evaluated the impact of gaze direction (direct and averted gaze) and face context information (both eyes set within a single face or each eye within two adjacent hemifaces) on TOJ performance measures. Avatar faces initially gazed leftwards or rightwards (Starting Gaze Direction). This was followed by sequential and independent left and right eye gaze shifts with various amounts of stimulus onset asynchrony. Gaze shifts could be either Matching (both eyes end up pointing direct or averted) or Mismatching (one eye ends up pointing direct, the other averted). Matching shifts revealed an attentional cueing mechanism, where TOJs were biased in favour of the eye lying in the hemispace cued by the avatar’s Starting Gaze Direction. For example, the left eye was more likely to be judged as shifting first when the avatar initially gazed toward the left side of the screen. Mismatching shifts showed biased TOJs in favour of the eye performing the averted shift, but only in the context of two separate hemifaces that does not violate expectations of directional gaze shift congruency. This suggests a postdictive inferential strategy that prioritises eye movements based on the type of gaze shift, independently of where attention is initially allocated. Averted shifts are prioritised over direct, as these might signal the presence of behaviourally relevant information in the environment.
Highlights
Gaze behaviours guide social interactions and deliver nonverbal information about goals and mental states (Baron-Cohen, 1997)
When the avatars initially gazed toward the left side of the screen, temporal order judgements (TOJs) were biased in favour of perceiving the left eye as having shifted first, while when the avatars initially gazed toward the right side of the screen, TOJs were biased in favour of the right eye having shifted first (negative Point of Subjective Simultaneity (PSS) values; Figure 3(a))
When avatars performed Matching gaze shifts, we found that TOJs were biased in favour of the eye lying in the hemispace cued by the avatar’s initial gaze direction, which suggests an attentional cuing phenomenon
Summary
Gaze behaviours guide social interactions and deliver nonverbal information about goals and mental states (Baron-Cohen, 1997). Direct (or forward—when someone looks straight at us) and averted (when someone is looking away) gaze behaviours deliver information pertinent to different aspects of social communication. Imaging and electrophysiological data provide evidence of dedicated neural systems for gaze direction processing in the primate and human brain. Human functional imaging studies have documented posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) activation in gaze processing (Hoffman & Haxby, 2000; Pelphrey, Morris, & McCarthy, 2005) and distinct neural populations in the anterior STS and inferior temporal lobule tuned to different gaze shift directions (Calder et al, 2007). Electroencephalographic evidence has indicated differences in brain activity when observing direct opposed to averted gaze (Conty, N’Diaye, Tijus, & George, 2007; McCarthy, Puce, Belger, & Allison, 1999). In vivo recordings in the anterior STS of macaque monkeys have identified cell populations which selectively respond to direct and averted gaze stimuli (Perrett & Emery, 1994; Perrett et al, 1985)
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