Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Sci Rep. 2019 May 20;9(1):7586. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-44058-w.
How people process gaze cues from multiple others is an important topic but rarely studied. Our study investigated this question using an adapted gaze cueing paradigm to examine the cueing effect of multiple gazes and its neural correlates. We manipulated gaze directions from two human avatars to be either convergent, created by the two avatars simultaneously averting their gazes to the same direction, or non-convergent, when only one of the two avatars shifted its gaze. Our results showed faster reaction times and larger target-congruency effects following convergent gazes shared by the avatars, compared with the non-convergent gaze condition. These findings complement previous research to demonstrate that observing shared gazes from as few as two persons is sufficient to enhance gaze cueing. Additionally, ERP analyses revealed that (1) convergent gazes evoked both left and right hemisphere N170, while non-convergent gazes evoked N170 mainly in the hemisphere contralateral to the cueing face; (2) effects of target congruency on target-locked N1 and P3 were modulated by gaze convergence. These findings shed light on temporal features of the processing of multi-gaze cues.
多个人的注视线索如何被处理是一个重要的研究课题，但却很少被研究。本研究使用一种改良的注视线索范式来考察多注视线索的线索效应及其神经相关性。我们通过操纵两个虚拟人的注视方向来实现两种条件：一种是会聚的，即两个虚拟人同时将目光转向同一个方向；另一种是非会聚的，即只有一个虚拟人转移了目光。我们的结果表明，与非会聚的注视条件相比，虚拟人共享的会聚注视会产生更快的反应时间和更大的目标一致性效应。这些发现补充了先前的研究，证明观察来自两个人的共享注视足以增强注视线索效应。此外，ERP 分析表明：（1）会聚的注视会引发左右半球的 N170，而非会聚的注视主要会引发与提示面孔相对侧的半球的 N170；（2）目标一致性对目标锁定的 N1 和 P3 的影响受到注视会聚的调节。这些发现揭示了多注视线索处理的时间特征。
