Kloth Nadine, Pugh Charlotte, Rhodes Gillian
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA,
J Vis. 2017 Mar 1;17(3):5. doi: 10.1167/17.3.5.
Gaze direction is a dynamic social signal that provides real-time insight into another person's focus of attention. Gaze adaptation induces aftereffects in the perception of gaze in subsequent faces, typically biasing it away from the adapted direction. Previous studies found that such gaze direction aftereffects persist for about 7 min when repeatedly tested immediately after adaptation, but can survive at least 24 hr when there is no testing immediately after adaptation. These findings suggest that exposure to test faces after adaptation might affect the persistence of gaze direction aftereffects more than the passing of time. The present study systematically established the contributions of time and intervening testing on the longevity of gaze direction aftereffects. Aftereffects were induced and then traced over six postadaptation tests. Participants were assigned to four groups with a delay of either 30 s, 3 min, 5.5 min, or 8 min between adaptation and the first postadaptation test. Aftereffects were strongly affected by the number of preceding postadaptation tests, but unaffected by the delay between adaptation and test, revealing that face exposure affects the longevity of aftereffects more strongly than the passing of time, at least over the time frame studied here. Our findings suggest that exposure to a substantial number of faces with an unbiased distribution of gaze directions may be necessary to overcome gaze direction aftereffects.
注视方向是一种动态的社会信号，能实时洞察他人的注意力焦点。注视适应会在后续面孔的注视感知中引发后效，通常会使注视方向偏离适应方向。先前的研究发现，这种注视方向后效在适应后立即反复测试时会持续约7分钟，但在适应后没有立即测试的情况下至少能持续24小时。这些发现表明，适应后接触测试面孔可能比时间的流逝更能影响注视方向后效的持续性。本研究系统地确定了时间和中间测试对注视方向后效持续时间的影响。诱导产生后效，然后在适应后的六次测试中追踪。参与者被分为四组，在适应和第一次适应后测试之间的延迟分别为30秒、3分钟、5.5分钟或8分钟。后效受到先前适应后测试次数的强烈影响，但不受适应和测试之间延迟的影响，这表明面孔暴露比时间的流逝更强烈地影响后效的持续时间，至少在此处研究的时间范围内是这样。我们的研究结果表明，可能需要接触大量具有无偏注视方向分布的面孔才能克服注视方向后效。
