Effects
of Gaze Perception on Response to Location or Feature
H. Sasaki, H. Ishi, & J. Gyoba |
Some
psychological studies have shown that changes in gaze direction trigger
reflexive shifts of attention. The cortical region responding to
eye gaze has connections with both of the two visual pathways responsible
for spatial orientation and feature analysis. The purpose of the
present study was to examine the effect of gaze-triggered attention
on these two visual functions. Participants engaged in both location
and orientation discrimination tasks with an uninformative gaze cue.
The results indicate that the gaze direction of a schematic face
facilitates responses only in the location discrimination task, and
not in the orientation discrimination task. These results suggest
a specific contribution of gaze perception to the processing of spatial
orientation information. Moreover, further analysis of the data revealed
that the compatibility between the gaze direction and the target
location would be retained in implicit short-term memory. Key words: gaze perception, attention, location, feature |