The gaze direction of another person is an important social cue, allowing us to orient quickly in social interactions. The effect of short-term redirection of visual attention to the same object that other people are looking at is known as the gaze cueing effect. There is evidence that the strength of this effect depends on many social factors, such as the trust in a partner, her/his gender, social attitudes, etc. In our study we investigated the influence of race of face stimuli on the strength of the gaze cueing effect. Using the modified Posner Cueing Task an attentional shift was assessed in a scene where avatar faces of different race were used as distractors. Participants were instructed to fix the black dot in the centre of the screen until it changes colour, and then as soon as possible to make a rightward or leftward saccade, depending on colour of a fixed point. A male distractor face was shown in the centre of the screen simultaneously with a fixed point. The gaze direction of the distractor face changed from straight ahead to rightward or leftward at the moment when colour of a fixed point changed. It could be either congruent or incongruent with the saccade direction. We used face distractors of three race categories: Caucasian (own race faces), Asian and African (other race faces). Twenty five Caucasian participants took part in our study. The results showed that the race of face distractors influence the strength of the gaze cueing effect, that manifested in the change of latency and velocity of the ongoing saccades.
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Keywords: social attention; face perception; own-race effect; gaze-cueing effect; eye movements; saccadic latency;
Available Online 28.06.2017
Fig. 1. Equipment for registering eye movements SMI iViewXTM Hi-Speed 1250
Fig. 2. Samples of distractor faces: African, Asian, Caucasian (European)
Fig. 3. Patterns of standard samples with relevant and irrelevant distractors [1]
Fig. 4. Percentage of errors of the glance direction [2]
Fig. 5. Average latency of the saccade [3]
Fig. 6. Average speed of saccades [4]
Table 1. Mean value of errors (M) and standard deviations (SD) of the variable "Number of erroneous glances" (per cent)
Race of distractor face |
Congruent |
Incongruent |
||
M |
SD |
M |
SD |
|
African |
3.6 |
3.1 |
14.3 |
12.7 |
Asian |
2.1 |
1.9 |
14.7 |
9.4 |
Caucasian |
1,9 |
1,3 |
16,5 |
11,2 |
Table 2. Statistical indicators of the average number of errors in samples with distractor faces of different races
|
Congruent |
Incongruent |
African -Asian |
Z=1.028 p=0.304 |
Z=0.665 p=0.506 |
African -Caucasian |
Z=1.504 p=0.132 |
Z=0.934 p=0.350 |
Asian-Caucasian |
Z=0.090 p=0.928 |
Z=0.302 p=0.763 |
Table 3. Mean values (M) and standard deviations (SD) of the variable "Saccadic Latency"
Race of distractor face |
Congruent |
Incongruent with errors |
Incongruent without errors |
|||
M |
SD |
M |
SD |
M |
SD |
|
African |
345.5 |
68.8 |
340.9 |
87.4 |
360.4 |
86.0 |
Asian |
348.7 |
59.9 |
339.0 |
54.0 |
356.5 |
66.1 |
Caucasian |
341.9 |
58.6 |
343.8 |
76.8 |
359.6 |
67.6 |
Table 4. Mean values (M) and standard deviations (SD) of the variable "Saccade speed"
Race of distractor face |
Congruent |
Incongruent with errors |
Incongruent without errors |
|||
M |
SD |
M |
SD |
M |
SD |
|
African |
176.4 |
18.1 |
153.8 |
33.5 |
171.2 |
18.6 |
Asian |
178.6 |
17.1 |
166.0 |
32.9 |
172.2 |
19.1 |
Caucasian |
179.9 |
21.3 |
175 |
24.8 |
177.6 |
23.6 |
1. Left bar: the fixation point changes colour to green; according to the instruction the participant must change to leftward, the gaze cue in the distractor face is also leftward. Right bar: the fixation point changes colour to green, but the gaze cue in the distractor face is also rightw ard.
2. Left bars correspond to probes with the congruent gaze cue of the distractor face, right correspond to probes with the incongruent gaze cue of the distractor face.
3. On the abscissa axis there are groups of stimuli containing distractor faces of different races. The ordinate axis represents the latency of the saccade, ms. Bars with horizontal shading represent congruent samples.
4. On the abscissa axis there are groups of stimuli containing distractor faces of different races. The ordinate axis represents the values of the variable in angular degrees per second.
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