Anxiety and sensitivity to gaze direction in emotionally expressive faces.

This study investigated the role of neutral, happy, fearful, and angry facial expressions in enhancing orienting to the direction of eye gaze. Photographs of faces with either direct or averted gaze were presented. A target letter (T or L) appeared unpredictably to the left or the right of the face, either 300 ms or 700 ms after gaze direction changed. Response times were faster in congruent conditions (i.e., when the eyes gazed toward the target) relative to incongruent conditions (when the eyes gazed away from the target letter). Facial expression did influence reaction times, but these effects were qualified by individual differences in self-reported anxiety. High trait-anxious participants showed an enhanced orienting to the eye gaze of faces with fearful expressions relative to all other expressions. In contrast, when the eyes stared straight ahead, trait anxiety was associated with slower responding when the facial expressions depicted anger. Thus, in anxiety-prone people attention is more likely to be held by an expression of anger, whereas attention is guided more potently by fearful facial expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does Facial Expression Affect Attention Orienting by Gaze Direction Cues?

In 6 experiments, the authors investigated whether attention orienting by gaze direction is modulated by the emotional expression (neutral, happy, angry, or fearful) on the face. The results showed a clear spatial cuing effect by gaze direction but no effect by facial expression. In addition, it was shown that the cuing effect was stronger with schematic faces than with real faces, that gaze cuing could be achieved at very short stimulus onset asynchronies (14 ms), and that there was no evidence for a difference in the strength of cuing triggered by static gaze cues and by cues involving apparent motion of the pupils. In sum, the results suggest that in normal, healthy adults, eye direction processing for attention shifts is independent of facial expression analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression on cueing spatial attention.

Empirical evidence shows an effect of gaze direction on cueing spatial attention, regardless of the emotional expression shown by a face, whereas a combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression has been observed on individuals' evaluative judgments. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether gaze direction and facial expression affect spatial attention depending upon the presence of an evaluative goal. Disgusted, fearful, happy, or neutral faces gazing left or right were followed by positive or negative target words presented either at the spatial location looked at by the face or at the opposite spatial location. Participants responded to target words based on affective valence (i.e., positive/negative) in Experiment 1 and on letter case (lowercase/uppercase) in Experiment 2. Results showed that participants responded much faster to targets presented at the spatial location looked at by disgusted or fearful faces but only in Experiment 1, when an evaluative task was used. The present findings clearly show that negative facial expressions enhance the attentional shifts due to eye-gaze direction, provided that there was an explicit evaluative goal present. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention to gaze and emotion in schizophrenia.

Objective: Individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty interpreting social and emotional cues such as facial expression, gaze direction, body position, and voice intonation. Nonverbal cues are powerful social signals but are often processed implicitly, outside the focus of attention. The aim of this research was to assess implicit processing of social cues in individuals with schizophrenia. Method: Patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and matched controls performed a primary task of word classification with social cues in the background. Participants were asked to classify target words (LEFT/RIGHT) by pressing a key that corresponded to the word, in the context of facial expressions with eye gaze averted to the left or right. Results: Although facial expression and gaze direction were irrelevant to the task, these facial cues influenced word classification performance. Participants were slower to classify target words (e.g., LEFT) that were incongruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the right) compared to target words (e.g., LEFT) that were congruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the left), but this only occurred for expressions of fear. This pattern did not differ for patients and controls. Conclusion: The results showed that threat-related signals capture the attention of individuals with schizophrenia. These data suggest that implicit processing of eye gaze and fearful expressions is intact in schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gaze behavior predicts memory bias for angry facial expressions in stable dysphoria.

Interpersonal theories suggest that depressed individuals are sensitive to signs of interpersonal rejection, such as angry facial expressions. The present study examined memory bias for happy, sad, angry, and neutral facial expressions in stably dysphoric and stably nondysphoric young adults. Participants' gaze behavior (i.e., fixation duration, number of fixations, and distance between fixations) while viewing these facial expressions was also assessed. Using signal detection analyses, the dysphoric group had better accuracy on a surprise recognition task for angry faces than the nondysphoric group. Further, mediation analyses indicated that greater breadth of attentional focus (i.e., distance between fixations) accounted for enhanced recall of angry faces among the dysphoric group. There were no differences between dysphoria groups in gaze behavior or memory for sad, happy, or neutral facial expressions. Findings from this study identify a specific cognitive mechanism (i.e., breadth of attentional focus) that accounts for biased recall of angry facial expressions in dysphoria. This work also highlights the potential for integrating cognitive and interpersonal theories of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fearful faces but not fearful eyes alone delay attention disengagement in 7-month-old infants.

Adult-like attentional biases toward fearful faces can be observed in 7-month-old infants. It is possible, however, that infants merely allocate attention to simple features such as enlarged fearful eyes. In the present study, 7-month-old infants (n = 15) were first shown individual emotional faces to determine their visual scanning patterns of the expressions. Second, an overlap task was used to examine the latency of attention disengagement from centrally presented faces. In both tasks, the stimuli were fearful, happy, and neutral facial expressions, and a neutral face with fearful eyes. Eye-tracking data from the first task showed that infants scanned the eyes more than other regions of the face; however, there were no differences in scanning patterns across expressions. In the overlap task, infants were slower in disengaging attention from fearful as compared to happy and neutral faces and also to neutral faces with fearful eyes. Together, these results provide evidence that threat-related stimuli tend to hold attention preferentially in 7-month-old infants and that the effect does not reflect a simple response to differentially salient eyes in fearful faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Garner interference reveals dependencies between emotional expression and gaze in face perception.

The relationship between facial expression and gaze processing was investigated with the Garner selective attention paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants performed expression judgments without interference from gaze, but expression interfered with gaze judgments. Experiment 2 replicated these results across different emotions. In both experiments, expression judgments occurred faster than gaze judgments, suggesting that expression was processed before gaze could interfere. In Experiments 3 and 4, the difficulty of the emotion discrimination was increased in two different ways. In both cases, gaze interfered with emotion judgments and vice versa. Furthermore, increasing the difficulty of the emotion discrimination resulted in gaze and expression interactions. Results indicate that expression and gaze interactions are modulated by discriminability. Whereas expression generally interferes with gaze judgments, gaze direction modulates expression processing only when facial emotion is difficult to discriminate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intermodal perception of expressive behaviors: Relation of eye and voice?

Examined intermodal perception of vocal and facial expressions in 2 experiments with 16 5- and 16 7-mo-olds. Two filmed facial expressions were presented with a single vocal expression characteristic of 1 of the facial expressions (angry or happy). The lower third of each face was obscured, so Ss could not simply match lip movements to the voice. Overall findings indicate that only 7-mo-olds increased their fixation to a facial expression when it was sound-specified. Older infants evidently detected information that was invariant across the presentations of a single affective expression, despite degradation of temporal synchrony information. The 5-mo-olds' failure to look differentially is explained by the possibilities that (1) 5-mo-olds may need to see the whole face for any discrimination of expressions to occur; (2) they cannot discriminate films of happy and angry facial expressions even with the full face available; or (3) they rely heavily on temporal information for the discrimination of facial expressions and/or the intermodal perception of bimodally presented expressions, although not for articulatory patterns. Preferences for a particular expression were not found: Infants did not look longer at the happy or the angry facial expression, independent of the sound manipulation, suggesting that preferences for happy expressions found in prior studies may rest on attention to the "toothy" smile. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Angry faces are special too: Evidence from the visual scanpath.

Traditional models of face processing posit independent pathways for the processing of facial identity and facial expression (e.g., Bruce & Young, 1986). However, such models have been questioned by recent reports that suggest positive expressions may facilitate recognition (e.g., Baudouin et al., 2000), although little attention has been paid to the role of negative expressions. The current study used eye movement indicators to examine the influence of emotional expression (angry, happy, neutral) on the recognition of famous and novel faces. In line with previous research, the authors found some evidence that only happy expressions facilitate the processing of famous faces. However, the processing of novel faces was enhanced by the presence of an angry expression. Contrary to previous findings, this paper suggests that angry expressions also have an important role in the recognition process, and that the influence of emotional expression is modulated by face familiarity. The implications of this finding are discussed in relation to (1) current models of face processing, and (2) theories of oculomotor control in the viewing of facial stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Direct and Averted Gaze on the Perception of Facially Communicated Emotion.

Research has largely neglected the effects of gaze direction cues on the perception of facial expressions of emotion. It was hypothesized that when gaze direction matches the underlying behavioral intent (approach-avoidance) communicated by an emotional expression, the perception of that emotion would be enhanced (i.e., shared signal hypothesis). Specifically, the authors expected that (a) direct gaze would enhance the perception of approach-oriented emotions (anger and joy) and (b) averted eye gaze would enhance the perception of avoidance-oriented emotions (fear and sadness). Three studies supported this hypothesis. Study 1 examined emotional trait attributions made to neutral faces. Study 2 examined ratings of ambiguous facial blends of anger and fear. Study 3 examined the influence of gaze on the perception of highly prototypical expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of facial expression on memory for facial identity: Effects of visual features or emotional meaning?

Research has shown that neutral faces are better recognized when they had been presented with happy rather than angry expressions at study, suggesting that emotional signals conveyed by facial expressions influenced the encoding of novel facial identities in memory. An alternative explanation, however, would be that the influence of facial expression resulted from differences in the visual features of the expressions employed. In this study, this possibility was tested by manipulating facial expression at study versus test. In line with earlier studies, we found that neutral faces were better recognized when they had been previously encountered with happy rather than angry expressions. On the other hand, when neutral faces were presented at study and participants were later asked to recognize happy or angry faces of the same individuals, no influence of facial expression was detected. As the two experimental conditions involved exactly the same amount of changes in the visual features of the stimuli between study and test, the results cannot be simply explained by differences in the visual properties of different facial expressions and may instead reside in their specific emotional meaning. The findings further suggest that the influence of facial expression is due to disruptive effects of angry expressions rather than facilitative effects of happy expressions. This study thus provides additional evidence that facial identity and facial expression are not processed completely independently. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gaze perception requires focused attention: Evidence from an interference task.

The direction of another person's gaze is difficult to ignore when presented at the center of attention. In 6 experiments, perception of unattended gaze was investigated. Participants made directional (left-right) judgments to gazing-face or pointing-hand targets, which were accompanied by a distractor face or hand. Processing of the distractor was assessed via congruency effects on target response times. Congruency effects were found from the direction of distractor hands but not from the direction of distractor gazes (Experiment 1). This pattern persisted even when distractor sizes were increased to compensate for their peripheral presentation (Experiments 2 and 5). In contrast, congruency effects were exerted by profile heads (Experiments 3 and 4). In Experiment 6, isolated eye region distractors produced no congruency effects, even when they were presented near the target. These results suggest that, unlike other facial information, gaze direction cannot be perceived outside the focus of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resolving ambiguous behavioral intentions by means of involuntary prioritization of gaze processing.

Anticipation of others' actions is of paramount importance in social interactions. Cues such as gaze direction and facial expressions can be informative, but can also produce ambiguity with respect to others' intentions. We investigated the combined effect of an actor's gaze and expression on judgments made by observers about the end-point of the actor's head rotation toward the observer. Expressions of approach gave rise to an unambiguous intention to move toward the observer, while expressions of avoidance gave rise to an ambiguous behavioral intention (as the expression and motion cues were in conflict). In the ambiguous condition, observers overestimated how far the actor's head had rotated when the actor's gaze was directed ahead of head rotation (compared to congruent or lagging behind). In the unambiguous condition the estimations were not influenced by the gaze manipulation. These results show that social cue integration does not follow simple additive rules, and suggests that the involuntary allocation of attention to another's gaze depends on the perceived ambiguity of the agent's behavioral intentions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revisiting the relationship between the processing of gaze direction and the processing of facial expression.

There is mixed evidence on the nature of the relationship between the perception of gaze direction and the perception of facial expressions. Major support for shared processing of gaze and expression comes from behavioral studies that showed that observers cannot process expression or gaze and ignore irrelevant variations in the other dimension. However, these studies have not considered the role of head orientation, which is known to play a key role in the processing of gaze direction. In a series of experiments, the relationship between the processing of expression and gaze was tested both with head orientation held constant and with head orientation varied between trials, making it a relevant source of information for computing gaze direction. Results show that when head orientation varied between trials, the processing of facial expression was not interfered with gaze direction, and conversely, the processing of gaze could be made without being interfered from irrelevant variations in expression. These findings suggest that the processing of gaze and the processing of expression are not functionally interconnected as was previously assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety meets fear in perception of dynamic expressive gaze.

This study investigated in 2 experiments whether reflexive cuing of attention that occurs after perception of a gaze cue is greater for fearful than for happy faces in normal participants, as hypothesized from a social neuroscience perspective. To increase neuroecological validity, dynamic stimulus presentation was used to display faces that simultaneously morphed from a neutral expression into a happy or fearful one and shifted eye gaze from the center to the periphery. Shifts of attention resulting from a natural fearful gaze were expected to be related to participants' anxiety traits, in agreement with the often found increased selective attention to threat in anxious participants. Both hypotheses were confirmed: Fearful faces induced stronger gaze cuing than happy faces, and the strength of this cuing effect was correlated to participants' anxiety levels. These results suggest a neural network, which integrates the processing of gaze, expression, and emotional states to adaptively prime vigilance under threatening circumstances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related positivity enhancement is not universal: Older Chinese look away from positive stimuli.

Socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that with age, people are motivated to derive emotional meaning from life, leading them to pay more attention to positive relative to negative/neutral stimuli. The authors argue that cultures that differ in what they consider to be emotionally meaningful may show this preference to different extents. Using eye-tracking techniques, the authors compared visual attention toward emotional (happy, fearful, sad, and angry) and neutral facial expressions among 46 younger and 57 older Hong Kong Chinese. In contrast to prior Western findings, older but not younger Chinese looked away from happy facial expressions, suggesting that they do not show attentional preferences toward positive stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social referencing: The infant's use of emotional signals from a friendly adult with mother present.

Previous studies have demonstrated that 1-yr-old infants look toward their mothers' facial expressions and use the emotional information conveyed. In this study, 46 1-yr-olds were confronted with an unusual toy in a context where an experimenter familiar to the infants posed either happy or fearful expressions and where their mothers were present but did not provide facial signals. Results indicate that most of the Ss (83%) referenced the familiarized stranger. Once the adult's facial signals were noted, the S's instrumental behaviors and expressive responses to the toy were influenced in the direction of the affective valence of the adult's expression. It is suggested that infants may be influenced by the emotional expressions of a much broader group of adults than has previously been recognized. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Categorical representation of facial expressions by 7-month-old infants.

We investigated the ability of 7-month-olds to categorize the facial expressions happy, fear, and surprise when these expressions varied both by the model depicting the expression and by how intensely the expression was portrayed in a series of three experiments. In Experiment 1, infants successfully discriminated a single model posing a mild versus an extreme version of happy and fear. In Experiment 2, infants categorized happy when depicted by for different models posing mild and extreme versions and discriminated happy from fear. In Experiment 3, infants categorized both happy and surprise posed by five models varying in degree of expressiveness and discriminated these expressions from fear. In both Experiments 2 and 3, there was no evidence that infants could also (a) categorize the fear expressions and discriminate fear from happy or from surprise or (b) discriminate surprise from happy after habituating to surprise. These results are discussed in the context of the importance of experience in recognizing facial expressions and of how such experience influences the ease with which various expressions can be encoded and discriminated from other expressions in the laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judging approachability on the face of it: The influence of face and body expressions on the perception of approachability.

The aim of the current study was to examine how emotional expressions displayed by the face and body influence the decision to approach or avoid another individual. In Experiment 1, we examined approachability judgments provided to faces and bodies presented in isolation that were displaying angry, happy, and neutral expressions. Results revealed that angry expressions were associated with the most negative approachability ratings, for both faces and bodies. The effect of happy expressions was shown to differ for faces and bodies, with happy faces judged more approachable than neutral faces, whereas neutral bodies were considered more approachable than happy bodies. In Experiment 2, we sought to examine how we integrate emotional expressions depicted in the face and body when judging the approachability of face-body composite images. Our results revealed that approachability judgments given to face-body composites were driven largely by the facial expression. In Experiment 3, we then aimed to determine how the categorization of body expression is affected by facial expressions. This experiment revealed that body expressions were less accurately recognized when the accompanying facial expression was incongruent than when neutral. These findings suggest that the meaning extracted from a body expression is critically dependent on the valence of the associated facial expression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Facial expressions of emotion influence memory for facial identity in an automatic way": Correction to D'Argembeau and Van der Linden (2007).

Reports an error in "Facial expressions of emotion influence memory for facial identity in an automatic way" by Arnaud D'Argembeau and Martial Van der Linden (Emotion, 2007[Aug], Vol 7[3], 507-515). The image printed for Figure 3 was incorrect. The correct image is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2007-11660-005.) Previous studies indicate that the encoding of new facial identities in memory is influenced by the type of expression displayed by the faces. In the current study, the authors investigated whether or not this influence requires attention to be explicitly directed toward the affective meaning of facial expressions. In a first experiment, the authors found that facial identity was better recognized when the faces were initially encountered with a happy rather than an angry expression, even when attention was oriented toward facial features other than expression. Using the Remember/Know/Guess paradigm in a second experiment, the authors found that the influence of facial expressions on the conscious recollection of facial identity was even more pronounced when participants' attention was not directed toward expressions. It is suggested that the affective meaning of facial expressions automatically modulates the encoding of facial identity in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)