Hermens Frouke, Walker Robin
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2010 Nov;63(11):2120-40. doi: 10.1080/17470211003718721. Epub 2010 May 17.
Perceiving someone's averted eye-gaze is thought to result in an automatic shift of attention and in the preparation of an oculomotor response in the direction of perceived gaze. Although gaze cues have been regarded as being special in this respect, recent studies have found evidence for automatic attention shifts with nonsocial stimuli, such as arrow cues. Here, we directly compared the effects of social and nonsocial cues on eye movement preparation by examining the modulation of saccade trajectories made in the presence of eye-gaze, arrows, or peripheral distractors. At a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the distractor and the target, saccades deviated towards the direction of centrally presented arrow distractors, but away from the peripheral distractors. No significant trajectory deviations were found for gaze distractors. At the longer SOA, saccades deviated away from the direction of the distractor for all three distractor types, but deviations were smaller for the centrally presented gaze and arrow distractors. These effects were independent of whether line-drawings or photos of faces were used and could not be explained by differences in the spatial properties of the peripheral distractor. The results suggest that all three types of distractors (gaze, arrow, peripheral) can induce the automatic programming of an eye movement. Moreover, the findings suggest that gaze and arrow distractors affect oculomotor preparation similarly, whereas peripheral distractors, which are classically regarded as eliciting an automatic shift of attention and an oculomotor response, induce a stronger and faster acting influence on response preparation and the corresponding inhibition of that response.
人们认为，察觉到某人回避的目光会导致注意力自动转移，并促使眼动反应朝着所察觉到的目光方向准备。尽管在这方面目光线索被视为具有特殊性，但最近的研究发现了非社会刺激（如箭头线索）能引起自动注意力转移的证据。在此，我们通过研究在存在目光注视、箭头或周边干扰物的情况下所做出的扫视轨迹的调制，直接比较了社会线索和非社会线索对眼动准备的影响。在干扰物与目标之间的刺激起始异步时间（SOA）较短时，扫视会朝着中央呈现的箭头干扰物的方向偏离，但会远离周边干扰物。对于目光干扰物，未发现明显的轨迹偏差。在较长的SOA时，对于所有三种干扰物类型，扫视都会偏离干扰物的方向，但对于中央呈现的目光和箭头干扰物，偏差较小。这些效应与使用的是面部线条图还是照片无关，也无法用周边干扰物的空间特性差异来解释。结果表明，所有三种类型的干扰物（目光、箭头、周边）都能诱发眼动的自动编程。此外，研究结果表明，目光和箭头干扰物对眼动准备的影响相似，而周边干扰物，传统上被认为会引发注意力的自动转移和眼动反应，对反应准备和相应反应的抑制作用更强且起效更快。
