CNRS, Paris, France.
Soc Neurosci. 2010;5(2):171-86. doi: 10.1080/17470910903227507. Epub 2009 Oct 12.
Eye contact is a highly salient and fundamentally social signal. This entails that the mere perception of direct gaze may trigger differentiated neurobehavioral responses as compared to other gaze directions. We investigated this issue using a visual word-spelling task where faces under different gaze directions and head orientations were displayed on-screen concomitantly with the words. We show evidence for automatic increase of skin conductance response (SCR), indicative of arousal, associated with the perception of direct gaze as compared to both averted gaze and closed eyes. Moreover, the perception of averted gaze was associated with an increase of electromyographic (EMG) corrugator activity. These effects were observed in two demanding word-spelling tasks, but not in a simple letter decision task. We propose to interpret these findings in terms of the social value of direct and averted gaze and conclude that some circumstances such as the task at hand may be essential for uncovering the neurobehavioral responses associated with the perception of others' gaze.
眼神交流是一种高度显著且基本的社交信号。这意味着，与其他注视方向相比，仅仅感知到直接注视就可能引发不同的神经行为反应。我们使用视觉单词拼写任务来研究这个问题，在这个任务中，不同注视方向和头部姿势的面孔与单词同时显示在屏幕上。我们有证据表明，与回避注视和闭眼相比，直接注视会引起皮肤电反应 (SCR) 的自动增加，这表明觉醒程度增加。此外，回避注视的感知与皱眉肌肌电图 (EMG) 活动的增加有关。这些效应在两个要求较高的单词拼写任务中观察到，但在简单的字母判断任务中没有观察到。我们建议根据直接和回避注视的社会价值来解释这些发现，并得出结论，某些情况，如手头的任务，对于揭示与他人注视感知相关的神经行为反应可能是必不可少的。
