title: 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 nonpredictively 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 nonthreatening (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 optimizes attentional integration of gaze and expression information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Center for Visual Neuroscience, North Dakota State University Dept. 2765, PO Box 6050, Fargo, North Dakota 581086050, USA. chris.friesen@ndsu.edu
authors.forename: Chris Kelland
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Friesen
authors.forename: Kimberly M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Halvorson
authors.forename: Reiko
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Graham
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception