Experimental psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Developmental psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2020 Feb 24;15(2):e0229203. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229203. eCollection 2020.
Researchers have increasingly focused on how the potential for social interaction modulates basic processes of visual attention and gaze behavior. In this study, we investigated why people may experience social interaction and what factors contributed to their subjective experience. We furthermore investigated whether implying social interaction modulated gaze behavior to people's faces, specifically the eyes. To imply the potential for interaction, participants received either one of two instructions: 1) they would be presented with a person via a 'live' video-feed, or 2) they would be presented with a pre-recorded video clip of a person. Prior to the presentation, a confederate walked into a separate room to suggest to participants that (s)he was being positioned behind a webcam. In fact, all participants were presented with a pre-recorded clip. During the presentation, we measured participants' gaze behavior with an eye tracker, and after the presentation, participants were asked whether they believed that the confederate was 'live' or not, and, why they thought so. Participants varied greatly in their judgements about whether the confederate was 'live' or not. Analyses of gaze behavior revealed that a large subset of participants who received the live-instruction gazed less at the eyes of confederates compared with participants who received the pre-recorded-instruction. However, for both the live-instruction group and the pre-recorded instruction group, another subset of participants gazed predominantly at the eyes. The current findings may contribute to the development of experimental designs aimed to capture the interactive aspects of social cognition and visual attention.
研究人员越来越关注社交互动的潜力如何调节视觉注意和注视行为的基本过程。在这项研究中，我们调查了人们为什么会经历社交互动，以及哪些因素促成了他们的主观体验。我们还研究了暗示社交互动是否会调节人们对人脸，特别是眼睛的注视行为。为了暗示互动的可能性，参与者收到了两种指令之一：1）他们将通过“实时”视频馈送观看一个人，或者 2）他们将观看一个人的预先录制的视频剪辑。在演示之前，一个同伙走进一个单独的房间，向参与者暗示（他/她）被定位在网络摄像头后面。实际上，所有参与者都观看了预先录制的剪辑。在演示过程中，我们使用眼动追踪器测量参与者的注视行为，在演示结束后，参与者被问到他们是否相信同伙是“实时”的，以及他们为什么这样认为。参与者对同伙是否“实时”的判断差异很大。注视行为的分析表明，收到实时指令的参与者中，有很大一部分人注视同伙的眼睛比收到预先录制指令的参与者少。然而，对于实时指令组和预先录制指令组，另一部分参与者主要注视眼睛。当前的发现可能有助于开发旨在捕捉社会认知和视觉注意力互动方面的实验设计。
