Title: Understanding the Interaction between Gaze

Direction, Facial Expressions, and Attentional Shift

INTRODUCTION
The capacity to focus attention in response to a different person's gaze, known as gaze cueing, is critical
to effective social interactions. Gaze cueing improves joint attention and is linked to social impairment in
distinct populations. Studying facial expressions of emotions is also important since they provide insights
into people's emotional states and help them navigate social situations. Emotional expressions, when
combined with gaze cues, tell observers how to interpret the gazer's reaction to the surroundings,
allowing for faster responses to possible dangers or rewards.
However, the impact of emotional expressions on gaze cueing has not been consistently confirmed
across studies, raising the possibility of methodological factors impacting the findings. One such feature
is project expectations, which have gotten little attention in previous research. We wish to investigate
how tasks influence the eye movement effect, as well as how emotional Expressions increase it.
Specifically, we will compare a discriminating task with higher cognitive demands to a localized task that
has lower cognitive demands for the same subjects. The discrimination test's cognitive demands may
disrupt the integration of emotional and gaze cues, leading to less or no emotional modulation of the
gaze cueing effect compared to the localization task. In addition, we will investigate the effect of
stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) on gaze cueing augmentation by pleasant smiles.

METHODS
Participants included 28 psychology undergraduates (21 women, 7 men; mean age = 21.3, SD = 5.7),
fulfilling course credit requirements. The evaluative spatial cueing task employed eight facial affect
photographs depicting happy, disgusted, afraid, or neutral expressions, sourced from Ekman and Friesen
(1976). These images were digitally manipulated to create left and right gaze orientations using Adobe
Photoshop. Target words (n = 288) were selected from the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW;
Bradley & Lang, 1999), balanced for valence and arousal, with half positive and half negative Every word
was shown twice in trials with valid gaze cues and in trials with faulty gaze cues. Using E-Prime software,
stimuli were displayed on a 17-inch monitor that was linked to a 1-GHz Pentium computer. The facial
photos occupied a 7-degree vertical visual angle, while the sentences were displayed in an 18-point font.
The stimuli are depicted in instances in (Figure 1).
 Participants provided informed consent before engaging in the experiment, which involved sitting in
front of a computer screen in a dimly lit room at a distance of approximately 60 cm. They completed 4
blocks of 576 trials after 40 practice trials. Each trial comprised a fixation point(1,000 ms), a briefly
presented facial expression (250 ms) depicting happiness, neutrality, disgust, or fear, followed by a
target word (left or right) appearing at the same level as the eyes. Participants identified
whether the word was positive or negative, with speed and accuracy prioritized and feedback provided.
The intertrial interval varied (500-1,250 ms), and trial order was randomized. Data analysis excluded
error trials (1%) and those with extreme reaction times (<100 ms or >1,500 ms; 1.5%). Mean reaction
times were calculated for each condition. The experimental design employed a within-participant
structure, manipulating facial expression, gaze cue validity, and target valence. These procedures
ensured systematic data collection and rigorous analysis in a controlled experimental environment.

RESULTS
The analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated significant effects of facial expression (F(3, 81) = 15.74, p
<.001, ηp^2 =.368), gaze cue (F(1, 27) = 25.38, p <.001, ηp^2 =.485), and target valence (F(1, 27) = 18.62,
p <.001, ηp^2 =.408).Longer reaction times (RTs) were observed for negative facial expressions
compared to happy or neutral expressions. Additionally, RTs were longer for targets presented at invalid
gaze-cued locations and for negative target words. It was discovered that there were significant
interactions between facial expression and gaze cue (F(3, 81) = 2.81, p <.05, ηp^2 =.094) as well as target
valence (F(3, 81) = 5.78, p <.001, ηp^2 =.176). Only trials with negative facial expressions showed spatial
cueing effects, according to follow-up studies (figure 2). In particular, RTs decreased when targets were
displayed in the designated spatial location gazed by fearful faces.
DISCUSSIONS
The selection task had a major impact on the combining of emotional and gaze cues, as it lowered their
effect and eliminated emotional modulation. This supports the notion that cognitive resources required
for target discrimination interfere with the processing of emotional information, potentially biasing
participants toward a local processing strategy. The findings align with previous studies suggesting that
maintaining global precedence, necessary for processing emotional expressions, requires cognitive
resources. The lack of emotional modulation in the discrimination task contrasts with previous studies,
indicating that different task demands may engage different cognitive processes. Additionally, the tasks'
sequence had an impact on the gaze cueing effect's strength, indicating top-down modulations motivated
by task demands. These findings are consistent with the Eye Tune model, which emphasizes the role of
situational gain, individual constraints, and contextual factors in modulating gaze cueing. Overall, the
study highlights the complex interplay between cognitive processes, task demands, and emotional cues in
guiding social attention, shedding light on the mechanisms underlying gaze cueing and its emotional
modulation.

Take

Picture this: you're at a lively party, surrounded by laughter and music. Suddenly, you catch a glimpse of
someone shooting you a look filled with either fear or happiness. Normally, you'd expect such a powerful
expression to grab your attention immediately, right? Well, here's the twist: if you're already looking for
something else, like seeing the crowd for specific individuals, that emotional look might not have the
same impact on you. So, even though emotional looks possess immense power, they may go
unnoticed when our minds are preoccupied with some other tasks. Essentially, catching someone's
eye isn't solely about the look itself; it's also influenced by what else is occupying our thoughts.
 Reference

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.618606/full
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18837612/