Interactive effects between gaze direction and facial expression on attentional resources deployment: the task instruction and context matter

Ricciardelli, Paola; Lugli, Luisa; Pellicano, Antonello; Iani, Cristina; Nicoletti, Roberto · 2016 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1038/srep21706

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Summary

This study investigates how gaze direction and facial expression interact to influence the deployment of attentional resources, specifically examining whether task instructions and contextual factors modulate this process. The authors address a gap in previous research by testing whether the prioritized processing of threatening faces (e.g., angry faces with direct gaze) is automatic or flexible depending on explicit task demands and the presence of other emotional stimuli. The research is grounded in appraisal theory, which posits that the affective meaning of a face is determined by the integration of gaze and expression cues within a specific context. The researchers employed three experiments using the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) paradigm to measure the attentional blink (AB), a phenomenon where identifying a second target (T2) is impaired if it follows closely after a first target (T1). In Experiment 1, participants explicitly discriminated the emotional expression (angry or neutral) of T1 faces with direct or averted gaze, followed by a landscape orientation judgment for T2. Experiment 2 used implicit instructions (gender discrimination of T1) and included fearful expressions mixed with neutral and angry faces. Experiment 3 was identical to Experiment 2 but blocked trials so that angry and fearful faces never appeared in the same block, isolating the contextual effect of mixed emotional stimuli. The results demonstrated that the presence and magnitude of the attentional blink depend heavily on experimental context. In Experiment 1, explicit instruction to identify emotions resulted in a significant AB for angry faces with direct gaze, indicating that top-down attentional demands increased the resources required to process these threatening stimuli. Conversely, in Experiment 2, where fearful faces were intermixed with angry and neutral faces, the prioritized processing of angry faces with direct gaze disappeared; instead, direct gaze generally held more attention than averted gaze regardless of expression. Experiment 3 revealed that when angry and fearful faces were presented in separate blocks, the pattern of attentional deployment shifted again, suggesting that the co-occurrence of different emotional faces alters the perceived significance of individual stimuli. These findings indicate that the deployment of attentional resources for face processing is not rigidly automatic but is flexible and context-dependent. The study concludes that both task instructions and the situational context (such as the presence of other emotional faces) can modify or even reverse the attentional blink. This supports the view that face processing involves a dynamic appraisal of self-relevance, where external cues and internal goals jointly determine the allocation of attention. The results have implications for understanding how humans navigate social environments, highlighting that the processing of social threats is adaptable rather than encapsulated.

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• gaze based attention detection