Lord Byng Secondary School, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Biol Lett. 2013 Feb 23;9(1):20120850. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0850. Epub 2012 Oct 31.
Animals, including dogs, dolphins, monkeys and man, follow gaze. What mediates this bias towards the eyes? One hypothesis is that primates possess a distinct neural module that is uniquely tuned for the eyes of others. An alternative explanation is that configural face processing drives fixations to the middle of peoples' faces, which is where the eyes happen to be located. We distinguish between these two accounts. Observers were presented with images of people, non-human creatures with eyes in the middle of their faces (humanoids') or creatures with eyes positioned elsewhere (monsters'). There was a profound and significant bias towards looking early and often at the eyes of humans and humanoids and also, critically, at the eyes of monsters. These findings demonstrate that the eyes, and not the middle of the head, are being targeted by the oculomotor system.
动物,包括狗、海豚、猴子和人类,都会追随目光。那么,是什么导致了这种对眼睛的偏好呢?有一种假设认为,灵长类动物拥有一个独特的神经模块,专门用于处理他人的眼睛。另一种解释是,面部整体加工驱动注视点集中在人们面部的中央,而眼睛恰好位于这个位置。我们对这两种解释进行了区分。实验中给观察者展示了人的图像、面部中央有眼睛的非人类生物(“类人生物”)或眼睛位于其他位置的生物(“怪物”)的图像。结果发现,观察者会显著且强烈地倾向于早期且频繁地注视人类和类人生物的眼睛,同时也会显著且强烈地注视怪物的眼睛。这些发现表明,眼球,而不是头部中央,是眼球追踪系统的目标。