The Influence Of Perceptual Load On The Gaze Cue Effec

The gaze cueing effect refered to the faster and more accurate recognition of the pointing position when there was biological orientation information,such as eye gaze direction.In previous studies,researchers found that perceptual load can affect the perception of eye gaze direction,and,the perception of gaze direction would further affect the gaze cueing effect.However,some studies had also shown that perceptual load did not affect the gaze cueing effect.Summarizing previous studies,we found that whether the gaze cueing effect was affected by perceptual load may be due to differences in the research paradigms employed.Meanwhile,the effect of perceptual load on gaze cueing effect was also moderated by gaze cue types(static vs.dynamic),and individual expectation etc.Therefore,this study adopted the classical gaze cueing paradigm combined with the dual task paradigm to investigate its influence on the gaze cueing effect by manipulating different levels of perceptual load.And,the influence of perceptual load on the gaze cueing effect is further explored by changing the type of eye gaze cues(static vs.dynamic),and subjects’ individual expectations.Under the condition of static gaze cues,experiment 1 used low contrast of load letters and background faces to explore whether perceptual loads would affect the gaze cueing effect.It was found that the gaze cueing effect was not produced under the three levels of perceptual load.However,some studies have shown that dynamic gaze cues can produce more stable the gaze cueing effect than static gaze cues.Therefore,experiment 2,under the condition of dynamic gaze cues,explore again whether perceptual loads would affect the gaze cueing effect.At the same time,experiment 2 examines the role of the contrast between the loaded letters and the background faces.Specifically,experiment 2A uses low contrast of load letters and background faces.The results showed that the gaze cueing effect was produced under no perceptual load condition,but the gaze cueing effect was still not produced under low and high perceptual load conditions.Experiment 2B used high contrast of load letters and background faces.The results showed that both no and low perceptual load conditions produced the gaze cueing effects,but high perceptual load condition did not produce the gaze cueing effect.In addition to,whether it was different types of gaze cues or different contrast of loaded letters and background face,the two are more focus on the moderating role of bottom-up stimulus’ factors in the effect of perceptual load on the gaze cueing effect.However,what role top-down individual factors played deserves further exploration.Thus,in experiment 4,under the condition of dynamic gaze cues,the probability information of target appearance was used to increase the subjects’ subjective intention of the target appearance position,and to explore the influence of perceptual load on the gaze cueing effect.The results showed that the gaze cueing effect was produced under both low and high perceptual load conditions.Based on the experimental results of our four experiments,the following conclusions can be drawn in this study:(1)Perceptual load influenced the dynamic gaze cueing effect.The gaze cueing effect was mainly reflected in the existence of no and low perceptual load conditions,while the gaze cueing effect disappeared under high perceptual load conditions.The disappearance of the gaze cueing effect was in line with the expectations of perceptual load theory.Since perceptual resources are depleted under high perceptual load condition,and there were no excess perceptual resources for processing faces.Therefore,dynamically presented eye gaze directions failed to generate the gaze cueing effect under condition of high perceptual load.(2)The influence of perceptual load on the gaze cueing effect was moderated by gaze cue types.Specifically,using static gaze cues,in the absence of perceptual load,the gaze cue effects cannot be produced.However,with dynamic gaze cues,the gaze cueing effects can be produced in the presence of no and low perceptual loads.(3)The influence of perceptual load on the gaze cueing effect was not only affected by the physical properties of the stimulus,but also mediated by individual expectation.Specifically,when there was no expectation,the gaze cueing effect cannot be produced under the condition of high perceptual load.However,when subjects produced top-down subjective expectation,the gaze cueing effect could be produced under high perceptual load condition.This may be through top-down attention distribution which was increasing the level of attention to faces.That is,some perceptual resources were allocated to face processing from top to bottom.Thus,even under condition of high perceptual load,dynamically presented eye gaze directions can produce the gaze cueing effect.Generally,our results showed that whether perceptual loads can affect the gaze cueing effect,which depends on different types of eye gaze cues(dynamic vs.static cues)and top-down individual expectation.Our research can provide a new experimental evidence for the previous research on the influence of perceptual load on the gaze cueing effect,and make a preliminary research analysis for the reason of the controversy,which has an important theoretical contribution to the research in this field.At the same time,it has important practical significance for our daily social communication in perceptually complex scenes.