The emotion of sound target modulates the auditory gaze cueing effect

ABSTRACT

The auditory gaze cueing effect (auditory-GCE) is a faster response to auditory targets at an eye-gaze cue location than at a non-cue location. Previous research has found that auditory-GCE can be influenced by the integration of both gaze direction and emotion conveyed through facial expressions. However, it is unclear whether the emotional information of auditory targets can be cross-modally integrated with gaze direction to affect auditory-GCE. Here, we set neutral faces with different gaze directions as cues and three emotional sounds (fearful, happy, and neutral) as targets to investigate how the emotion of sound target modulates the auditory-GCE. Moreover, we conducted a controlled experiment using arrow cues. The results show that the emotional content of sound targets influences the auditory-GCE but only for those induced by facial cues. Specifically, fearful sounds elicit a significantly larger auditory-GCE compared to happy and neutral sounds, indicating that the emotional content of auditory targets plays a modulating role in the auditory-GCE. Furthermore, this modulation appears to occur only at a higher level of social meaning, involving the integration of emotional information from a sound with social gaze direction, rather than at a lower level, which involves the integration of direction and auditory emotion.

KEYWORDS:

• Auditory gaze cueing effect
• emotion
• sound localisation judgement

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Qiang Liu (Sichuan Normal University) who provided insight and expertise in statistical analysis.

Author contributions

Z.H. conceived and designed the experiments. X.F. and X.S. performed the data acquisition and analysed the data. Z.H., X.F., and X.S. interpreted the data and drafted the manuscript. All authors revised and approved the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data and materials of this study are available at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/wg6gy986dn/1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [grant number BBA210032].