Eye Gaze Perception And Its Effects On Social Cognition Such As Face Recognition And Judgment Of Facial Expression

In our daily life of social interaction, the eye gaze from others is a meaningful signal. The eye gaze from others indicates his/her focus of attention, which helps us interpret and predict others’mental state and behavioral intention. Eye gaze direction is divided into two parts by some researchers, one is called direct gaze, and the other is averted gaze. It is found that there are so many differences in processing these two kinds of gaze directions. In addition, effects of gaze direction on other kinds of cognitive processes have also been found.In the study Ⅰ of our research, we use a real female model to take the pictures of her eye region. A visual spatial search paradigm is used. Participants are asked to search for direct gaze or averted gaze separately, in order to detect the differences between processing of direct versus averted gaze. Moreover, face orientation is a debated factor for its effects on eye gaze processing. So it is also an independent variable in our study. The results show that, compare to averted gaze, direct gaze is better detected with its faster reaction time and higher accuracy rate. Furthermore, there is an effect of face orientation on eye gaze perception, which means that the better score of direct gaze detection only occurs when the face is averted to the periphery, and that the incongruence of face orientation and eye gaze direction facilitates the processing of eye gaze.In study2, we detect the effects of gaze direction on face recognition. We adopt pictures of human faces with different gaze direction, and separately discuss the influence of gaze direction in encoding phase and retrieval phase. Results show that the recognition score for faces with direct gaze is better than faces with averted gaze, so as the reaction time. In addition, the results of accuracy rate indicate that effects of gaze direction on face recognition can be found in both encoding and retrieval phase.In study3, we try to find the effects of gaze direction on judgment of facial expression. Gaze direction and four kinds of basic facial expression are chosen as the independent variables. Participants are asked to label each facial expression, and rate the intensity of them. Results indicate that, when approach-motivation expressions (such as joy and anger) are in conjunction with direct gaze, they can be labeled more quickly, and the perceived intensity of them is much higher than expressions with averted gaze. So is the case with avoidance-motivation (such as sadness and fear) facial expressions in conjunction with averted gaze. These results offer evidence for the "shared signal hypothesis" proposed by Adams et al.In sum, we found the difference between the processing of direct versus averted gaze. In most occasions, compare to averted gaze, there is a better processing for direct gaze. Moreover, effects of gaze direction on social cognition associated with face processing are found in our research. More importantly, these effects are not congruent within many kinds of social cognition processes. When emotion is not involved in cognitive processes (such as study2), results always indicate advantages of direct gaze, which facilitates cognitive processing associated with face. However, when emotion is involved in (such as study3), there shows a notable regulation effect of facial expressions on the advantages of direct gaze.