Langton SR, Watt RJ, Bruce I
Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK FK9 4LA.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2000 Feb;4(2):50-59. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(99)01436-9.
The face communicates an impressive amount of visual information. We use it to identify its owner, how they are feeling and to help us understand what they are saying. Models of face processing have considered how we extract such meaning from the face but have ignored another important signal - eye gaze. In this article we begin by reviewing evidence from recent neurophysiological studies that suggests that the eyes constitute a special stimulus in at least two senses. First, the structure of the eyes is such that it provides us with a particularly powerful signal to the direction of another person's gaze, and second, we may have evolved neural mechanisms devoted to gaze processing. As a result, gaze direction is analysed rapidly and automatically, and is able to trigger reflexive shifts of an observer's visual attention. However, understanding where another individual is directing their attention involves more than simply analysing their gaze direction. We go on to describe research with adult participants, children and non-human primates that suggests that other cues such as head orientation and pointing gestures make significant contributions to the computation of another's direction of attention.
面部传达着大量令人印象深刻的视觉信息。我们通过它来识别其主人、了解他们的感受，并帮助我们理解他们在说什么。面部处理模型考虑了我们如何从面部提取这些意义，但却忽略了另一个重要信号——目光注视。在本文中，我们首先回顾近期神经生理学研究的证据，这些证据表明眼睛至少在两种意义上构成一种特殊刺激。首先，眼睛的结构使我们能够获得关于他人注视方向的特别有力的信号，其次，我们可能已经进化出专门用于注视处理的神经机制。因此，注视方向会被快速且自动地分析，并且能够触发观察者视觉注意力的反射性转移。然而，理解另一个人将注意力指向何处不仅仅是简单地分析他们的注视方向。我们接着描述针对成年参与者、儿童和非人类灵长类动物的研究，这些研究表明诸如头部朝向和指示手势等其他线索对计算他人的注意力方向有重大贡献。
