Capellini Roberta, Riva Paolo, Ricciardelli Paola, Sacchi Simona
Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.
NeuroMI, Milan Center for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2019 May 16;10:1000. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01000. eCollection 2019.
Past studies showed increased sensitivity to other people's gaze after social exclusion. In the present research, across two studies, we tested whether social exclusion could affect the basic cognitive phenomenon of gaze-cueing effect, namely, the tendency to redirect visual attention to the same location that other people are looking at. To this purpose, participants were socially excluded or included using the manipulation. In Study 1, after the manipulation, participants performed a gaze-cueing task in which an individual's gaze, oriented rightward or leftward, preceded a peripheral target stimulus requiring a simple categorization response. The gaze direction could be congruent or incongruent with the location of the target. Results revealed a reduced gaze-cueing effect for socially excluded than for socially included participants. In Study 2, where human gazes were replaced by arrow cues, such an interaction between social exclusion and trial congruency disappeared, indicating a specific effect of social stimuli. We interpreted these findings with the notion that excluded participants can perceive an averted gaze as a further sign of social exclusion, thus showing a reduced gaze-cueing effect.
以往的研究表明，社会排斥后对他人目光的敏感度会增加。在本研究中，我们通过两项研究测试了社会排斥是否会影响目光提示效应这一基本认知现象，即是否会将视觉注意力重新导向他人正在注视的同一位置的倾向。为此，使用该操纵方法将参与者分为被社会排斥组或被社会接纳组。在研究1中，操纵之后，参与者进行了一项目光提示任务，在该任务中，一个人的目光（向右或向左）先于一个需要简单分类反应的外周目标刺激出现。目光方向可能与目标位置一致或不一致。结果显示，与被社会接纳的参与者相比，被社会排斥的参与者的目光提示效应有所降低。在研究2中，用箭头提示取代了人类目光，社会排斥与试验一致性之间的这种相互作用消失了，这表明了社会刺激的特定效应。我们用这样的观点来解释这些发现：被排斥的参与者会将回避的目光视为社会排斥的进一步信号，从而表现出降低的目光提示效应。
