Dataset Information

Observing Others' Gaze Direction Affects Infants' Preference for Looking at Gazing- or Gazed-at Faces.

ABSTRACT: Eye gaze is an important signal in social interactions, and it plays an important role to understand what others looking in joint attention (JA) situations. JA has been examined in situations involving two people gazing at objects; however, ecologically, infants observe not only faces that gaze at objects but also those that gaze at other people. Here, we examined how eye gaze directed toward another face affect face preferences in infants. A total of 19 children were observed during a JA situation and a no-JA situation. In the JA situation, an adult face in the central position of the screen shifted her gaze to look at another adult face at a lateral position on the screen. However, during the no JA situation, the central face shifted her eye gaze away from the adult face presented on the screen. At test, for the centrally presented faces, infant looking times were longer at faces in the no JA condition. At test, for the laterally presented faces, looking times were longer at the faces in the JA condition. Thus, the adult's eye gaze biased the duration of the gaze of the infants at either the central faces or the lateral-cued faces in the preferential looking tests. These results suggest that 10-month-old infants may interpret adult gazing behavior and that this can affect the gazing behavior of infants.

SUBMITTER: Ishikawa M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6099611 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Observing Others' Gaze Direction Affects Infants' Preference for Looking at Gazing- or Gazed-at Faces.

Ishikawa Mitsuhiko M Itakura Shoji S

Frontiers in psychology 20180813

Eye gaze is an important signal in social interactions, and it plays an important role to understand what others looking in joint attention (JA) situations. JA has been examined in situations involving two people gazing at objects; however, ecologically, infants observe not only faces that gaze at objects but also those that gaze at other people. Here, we examined how eye gaze directed toward another face affect face preferences in infants. A total of 19 children were observed during a JA situat ...[more]

PMID: 30150965

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Project description:Facial expression and gaze direction play an important role in social communication. Previous research has demonstrated the perception of anger is enhanced by direct gaze, whereas, it is unclear whether perception of fear is enhanced by averted gaze. In addition, previous research has shown the anxiety affects the processing of facial expression and gaze direction, but hasn't measured or controlled for depression. As a result, firm conclusions cannot be made regarding the impact of individual differences in anxiety and depression on perceptions of face expressions and gaze direction. The current study attempted to reexamine the effect of the anxiety level on the processing of facial expressions and gaze direction by matching participants on depression scores. A reliable psychophysical index of the range of eye gaze angles judged as being directed at oneself [the cone of direct gaze (CoDG)] was used as the dependent variable in this study. Participants were stratified into high/low trait anxiety groups and asked to judge the gaze of angry, fearful, and neutral faces across a range of gaze directions. The result showed: (1) the perception of gaze direction was influenced by facial expression and this was modulated by trait anxiety. For the high trait anxiety group, the CoDG for angry expressions was wider than for fearful and neutral expressions, and no significant difference emerged between fearful and neutral expressions; For the low trait anxiety group, the CoDG for both angry and fearful expressions was wider than for neutral, and no significant difference emerged between angry and fearful expressions. (2) Trait anxiety modulated the perception of gaze direction only in the fearful condition, such that the fearful CoDG for the high trait anxiety group was narrower than the low trait anxiety group. This demonstrated that anxiety distinctly affected gaze perception in expressions that convey threat (angry, fearful), such that a high trait anxiety level modulated the impact of indirectly threatening expressions (fearful), and did not influence responses to directly threatening expression (angry). These findings partially support the shared signal hypothesis.

Project description:BACKGROUND:With the overarching objective to gain better insights into social attention in autistic adults, the present study addresses three outstanding issues about face processing in autism. First, do autistic adults display a preference for mouths over eyes; second, do they avoid direct gaze; third, is atypical visual exploration of faces in autism mediated by gender, social anxiety or alexithymia? METHODS:We used a novel reinforced preferential looking paradigm with a group of autistic adults (n?=?43, 23 women) pairwise matched on age with neurotypical participants (n?=?43, 21 women). Participants watched 28 different pairs of 5 s video recordings of a speaking person: the two videos, simultaneously displayed on the screen, were identical except that gaze was directed at the camera in one video and averted in the other. After a 680 ms transition phase, a short reinforcement animation appeared on the side that had displayed the direct gaze. RESULTS:None of the groups showed a preference for mouths over eyes. However, neurotypical participants fixated significantly more the stimuli with direct gaze, while no such preference emerged in autistic participants. As the experiment progressed, neurotypical participants also increasingly anticipated the appearance of the reinforcement, based on the location of the stimulus with the direct gaze, while no such anticipation emerged in autistic participants. LIMITATIONS:Our autistic participants scored higher on the social anxiety and alexithymia questionnaires than neurotypicals. Future studies should match neurotypical and autistic participants on social anxiety and alexithymia and complement questionnaires with physiological measures of anxiety. CONCLUSIONS:The absence of preference for direct versus averted gaze in the autistic group is probably due to difficulties in distinguishing eye gaze direction, potentially linked to a reduced spontaneous exploration or avoidance of the eye region. Social attention and preference for direct versus averted gaze correlated with alexithymia and social anxiety scores, but not gender.

Dataset Information

Observing Others' Gaze Direction Affects Infants' Preference for Looking at Gazing- or Gazed-at Faces.

Publications

Observing Others' Gaze Direction Affects Infants' Preference for Looking at Gazing- or Gazed-at Faces.

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