title: Direct gaze facilitates rapid orienting to faces: Evidence from express saccades and saccadic potentials.
abstract: Direct gaze is a crucial signal in human social communication, which is known to attract visual attention and modulate a wide range of behaviours. The present study investigated whether direct gaze facilitates rapid orienting to faces, which is important for adaptive on-line communication, and its neural correlates. Fifteen participants performed a rapid orienting task, in which they were instructed to saccade to peripherally presented buildings or faces containing direct or averted gaze as quickly as possible. Electroencephalographic recordings were made during the task. Shorter express saccade latencies were found for faces with direct gaze, compared to averted gaze or buildings, while no significant difference was found between faces with averted gaze and buildings. Furthermore, saccade-locked event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes in parieto-occipital areas discriminated faces with direct gaze from buildings and faces with averted gaze corroborating behavioural results. These results show that detection of direct gaze facilitates rapid orienting to faces.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Henry Wellcome Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom. Electronic address: imares01@mail.bbk.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Inês
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Mares
authors.affiliation: Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Henry Wellcome Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom; Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Marie L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Henry Wellcome Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mark H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Henry Wellcome Building, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Senju
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Direct gaze; Express saccades; Face detection; Saccade-locked event-related potentials