Meeting another's gaze shortens subjective time by capturing attention.

Gaze directed at the observer (direct gaze) is an important and highly salient social signal with multiple effects on cognitive processes and behavior. It is disputed whether the effect of direct gaze is caused by attentional capture or increased arousal. Time estimation may provide an answer because attentional capture predicts an underestimation of time whereas arousal predicts an overestimation. In a temporal bisection task, observers were required to classify the duration of a stimulus as short or long. Stimulus duration was selected randomly between 988 and 1479 ms. When gaze was directed at the observer, participants underestimated stimulus duration, suggesting that effects of direct gaze are caused by attentional capture, not increased arousal. Critically, this effect was limited to dynamic stimuli where gaze appeared to move toward the participant. The underestimation was present with stimuli showing a full face, but also with stimuli showing only the eye region, inverted faces and high-contrast eye-like stimuli. However, it was absent with static pictures of full faces and dynamic nonfigurative stimuli. Because the effect of direct gaze depended on motion, which is common in naturalistic scenes, more consideration needs to be given to the ecological validity of stimuli in the study of social attention.

The influence of top-down modulation on the processing of direct gaze.

Gaze or eye contact is one of the most important nonverbal social cues, which is fundamental to human social interactions. To achieve real time and dynamic face-to-face communication, our brain needs to process another person's gaze direction rapidly and without explicit instruction. In order to explain the fast and spontaneous processing of direct gaze, the fast-track modulator model was proposed. Here, we review recent developments in gaze processing research in the last decade to extend the fast-track modulator model. In particular, we propose that task demand or top-down modulation could play a more crucial role at gaze processing than formerly assumed. We suggest that under different task demands, top-down modulation can facilitate or interfere with the direct gaze effects for early visual processing. The proposed modification of the model extends the role of task demand and its implication on the direct gaze effect, as well as the need to better control for top-down processing in order to better disentangle the role of top-down and bottom-up processing on the direct gaze effect. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition Psychology > Perception and Psychophysics Neuroscience > Cognition.