Jenkins Rob, Beaver John D, Calder Andrew J
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Psychol Sci. 2006 Jun;17(6):506-13. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01736.x.
Gaze direction is an important social signal in humans and other primates. In this study, we used an adaptation paradigm to investigate the functional organization of gaze perception in humans. Adaptation to consistent leftward or rightward gaze produced a powerful illusion that virtually eliminated observers' perception of gaze in the adapted direction; gaze to that side was seen as pointing straight ahead, though perception of gaze to the opposite side was unimpaired. This striking dissociation held even when retinotopic mapping between adaptation and test stimuli was disrupted by changes in size or head orientation, suggesting that our findings do not reflect adaptation to low-level visual properties. Moreover, adaptation to averted gaze did not affect judgments of line bisection, illustrating that our findings do not reflect a general spatial bias. Our findings provide evidence that humans have distinct populations of neurons that are selectively responsive to particular directions of seen gaze.
注视方向是人类和其他灵长类动物中一种重要的社交信号。在本研究中，我们采用适应范式来探究人类注视感知的功能组织。对一致向左或向右注视的适应产生了一种强烈的错觉，几乎消除了观察者对适应方向注视的感知；尽管对另一侧注视的感知未受影响，但看向该侧的注视被视为直接向前指向。即使适应刺激与测试刺激之间的视网膜拓扑映射因大小或头部方向的变化而受到干扰，这种显著的分离仍然存在，这表明我们的发现并不反映对低水平视觉属性的适应。此外，对回避注视的适应并不影响线段二等分的判断，这说明我们的发现并不反映一般的空间偏差。我们的发现提供了证据，表明人类有不同的神经元群体，它们对特定的可见注视方向具有选择性反应。
