Benedek Mathias, Daxberger David, Annerer-Walcher Sonja, Smallwood Jonathan
Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
Vis cogn. 2018 Aug 7;26(7):511-517. doi: 10.1080/13506285.2018.1504845. eCollection 2018.
Facial cues provide information about affective states and the direction of attention that is important for human social interaction. The present study examined how this capacity extends to judging whether attention is internally or externally directed. Participants evaluated a set of videos and images showing the face of people focused externally on a task, or internally while they performed a task in imagination. We found that participants could identify the focus of attention above chance in videos, and to a lesser degree in static images, but only when the eye region was visible. Self-reports further indicated that participants relied particularly on the eye region in their judgements. Interestingly, people engaged in demanding cognitive tasks were more likely judged to be externally focused independent of the actual focus of attention. These findings demonstrate that humans use information from the face and especially from the eyes of others not only to infer external goals or actions, but also to detect when others focus internally on their own thoughts and feelings.
面部线索提供了有关情感状态和注意力方向的信息，这对人类社交互动至关重要。本研究探讨了这种能力如何扩展到判断注意力是指向内部还是外部。参与者评估了一组视频和图像，这些视频和图像展示了人们在外部专注于一项任务时的面部，或者在想象中执行任务时的面部。我们发现，参与者能够在视频中高于随机水平地识别出注意力焦点，在静态图像中识别程度较低，但只有当眼睛区域可见时才能做到。自我报告进一步表明，参与者在判断时特别依赖眼睛区域。有趣的是，从事要求较高认知任务的人更有可能被判断为注意力指向外部，而与实际注意力焦点无关。这些发现表明，人类不仅利用来自面部尤其是他人眼睛的信息来推断外部目标或行动，还能检测到他人何时将注意力内部聚焦于自己的思想和情感。
