Eye contact is a highly salient and fundamentally social signal. This entails that the mere perce... more Eye contact is a highly salient and fundamentally social signal. This entails that the mere perception of direct gaze may trigger differentiated neurobehavioral responses as compared to other gaze directions. We investigated this issue using a visual word-spelling task where faces under different gaze directions and head orientations were displayed on-screen concomitantly with the words. We show evidence for automatic increase of skin conductance response (SCR), indicative of arousal, associated with the perception of direct gaze as compared to both averted gaze and closed eyes. Moreover, the perception of averted gaze was associated with an increase of electromyographic (EMG) corrugator activity. These effects were observed in two demanding word-spelling tasks, but not in a simple letter decision task. We propose to interpret these findings in terms of the social value of direct and averted gaze and conclude that some circumstances such as the task at hand may be essential for uncovering the neurobehavioral responses associated with the perception of others' gaze.
Direct gaze or eye contact is a strong social signal, which triggers distinct processes as compar... more Direct gaze or eye contact is a strong social signal, which triggers distinct processes as compared to other gaze directions. Thus, direct gaze could be early dissociated from averted gaze during the processing of gaze direction. In order to examine the processing of gaze contact ...
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, Jan 28, 2015
Gaze direction, a cue of both social and spatial attention, is known to modulate early neural res... more Gaze direction, a cue of both social and spatial attention, is known to modulate early neural responses to faces e.g. N170. However, findings in the literature have been inconsistent, likely reflecting differences in stimulus characteristics and task requirements. Here, we investigated the effect of task on neural responses to dynamic gaze changes: away and toward transition (resulting or not in eye contact). Subjects performed, in random order, social (away/toward them) and non-social (left/right) judgment tasks on these stimuli. Overall, in the non-social task, results showed a larger N170 to gaze aversion than gaze motion toward the observer. In the social task, however, this difference was no longer present in the right hemisphere, likely reflecting an enhanced N170 to gaze motion toward the observer. Our behavioral and ERP data indicate that performing social judgments enhances saliency of gaze motion toward the observer, even those that did not result in gaze contact. These da...
Eye contact is a highly salient and fundamentally social signal. This entails that the mere perce... more Eye contact is a highly salient and fundamentally social signal. This entails that the mere perception of direct gaze may trigger differentiated neurobehavioral responses as compared to other gaze directions. We investigated this issue using a visual word-spelling task where faces under different gaze directions and head orientations were displayed on-screen concomitantly with the words. We show evidence for automatic increase of skin conductance response (SCR), indicative of arousal, associated with the perception of direct gaze as compared to both averted gaze and closed eyes. Moreover, the perception of averted gaze was associated with an increase of electromyographic (EMG) corrugator activity. These effects were observed in two demanding word-spelling tasks, but not in a simple letter decision task. We propose to interpret these findings in terms of the social value of direct and averted gaze and conclude that some circumstances such as the task at hand may be essential for uncovering the neurobehavioral responses associated with the perception of others' gaze.
Direct gaze or eye contact is a strong social signal, which triggers distinct processes as compar... more Direct gaze or eye contact is a strong social signal, which triggers distinct processes as compared to other gaze directions. Thus, direct gaze could be early dissociated from averted gaze during the processing of gaze direction. In order to examine the processing of gaze contact ...
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, Jan 28, 2015
Gaze direction, a cue of both social and spatial attention, is known to modulate early neural res... more Gaze direction, a cue of both social and spatial attention, is known to modulate early neural responses to faces e.g. N170. However, findings in the literature have been inconsistent, likely reflecting differences in stimulus characteristics and task requirements. Here, we investigated the effect of task on neural responses to dynamic gaze changes: away and toward transition (resulting or not in eye contact). Subjects performed, in random order, social (away/toward them) and non-social (left/right) judgment tasks on these stimuli. Overall, in the non-social task, results showed a larger N170 to gaze aversion than gaze motion toward the observer. In the social task, however, this difference was no longer present in the right hemisphere, likely reflecting an enhanced N170 to gaze motion toward the observer. Our behavioral and ERP data indicate that performing social judgments enhances saliency of gaze motion toward the observer, even those that did not result in gaze contact. These da...
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