Attention Capture by Direct Gaze is Robust to Context and Task Demands
Loading...
Date
2012-01-10
Authors
Itier, Roxane J.
Palancia, Adam
Advisor
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer
Abstract
Eye-tracking was used to investigate whether gaze direction would influence the visual scanning of faces, when presented in the context of a full character, in different social settings, and with different task demands. Participants viewed individual computer agents against either a blank background or a bar scene setting, during both a free-viewing task and an attractiveness rating task for each character. Faces with a direct gaze were viewed longer than faces with an averted gaze regardless of body context, social settings, and task demands. Additionally, participants evaluated characters with a direct gaze as more attractive than characters with an averted gaze. These results, obtained with pictures of computer agents rather than real people, suggest that direct gaze is a powerful attention grabbing stimulus that is robust to background context or task demands.
Description
The final publication is available at Springer via https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10919-011-0128-z.
Keywords
Gaze direction, Eye tracking, Body scanning