Emotionally meaningful targets enhance orienting triggered by a fearful gazing face

Abstract

Studies investigating the effect of emotional expression on spatial orienting to a gazed-at location have produced mixed results. The present study investigated the role of affective context in the integration of emotion processing and gaze-triggered orienting. In three experiments, a face gazed non-predictively to the left or right, and then its expression became fearful or happy. Participants identified (Experiments 1 and 2) or detected (Experiment 3) a peripheral target presented 225 or 525 ms after the gaze cue onset. In Experiments 1 and 3 the targets were either threatening (a snarling dog) or non-threatening (a smiling baby); in Experiment 2 the targets were neutral. With emotionally valenced targets, the gaze-cuing effect was larger when the face was fearful compared to happy—but only with the longer cue–target interval. With neutral targets, there was no interaction between gaze and expression. Our results indicate that a meaningful context optimises attentional integration of gaze and expression information.

Keywords:

• Gaze direction
• Emotional expression
• Visual attention
• Affective context

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NIH/NCRR COBRE grant P20 RR020151 (CKF) and NIH grant 1R03MH079295–01A1 (RG). The authors wish to thank Erin Kauffman, Christopher Kuylen, Edeleen Lunjew, Kayla Prosser, and Laura Vogel-Ciernia for their valuable assistance with data collection.