Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Eye direction aftereffect

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Psychological Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Three experiments using computer-generated human figures showed that after a prolonged observation of eyes looking to the left (or right), eyes looking directly toward the viewer appeared directed to the right (or left). Observation of an arrow pointing left or right did not induce this aftereffect on the perceived eye direction. Happy faces produced the aftereffect more effectively than surprised faces, even though the image features of the eyes were identical for both the happy and the surprised faces. These results suggest that the eye direction aftereffect may reflect the adaptation of relatively higher-level mechanisms analyzing the other’s eye direction.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ando, S. (2002). Luminance-induced shift in the apparent direction of gaze. Perception, 31, 657–674.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S. (1995a). The eye direction detector (EDD) and the shared attention mechanism (SAM): Two cases for evolutionary psychology. In C. Moor & P. J. Dunham (Eds.), Joint attention: its origins and role in development (pp. 41–59). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

  • Baron-Cohen, S. (1995b). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

  • Baron-Cohen, S., & Cross, P. (1992). Reading the eyes: Evidence for the role of perception in the development of a theory of mind. Mind & Language, 7, 172–186.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coltheart, M. (1971). Visual feature-analyzers and aftereffects of tilt and curvature. Psychological Review, 78, 114–121.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Downing, P. E., Dodds, C. M., & Bray, D. (2004). Why does the gaze of others direct visual attention? Visual Cognition, 11, 71–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Driver, J., Davis, G., Ricciardelli, P., Kidd, P., Maxwell, E., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). Gaze perception triggers reflexive visuospatial orienting. Visual Cognition, 6, 509–540.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eastwood, J. D., Smilek, D., & Merikle, P. M. (2001). Differential attentional guidance by unattended faces expressing positive and negative emotion. Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 1004–1013.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Emery, N. J. (2000). The eyes have it: The neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 24, 581–604.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Friesen, C. K., & Kingstone, A. (1998). The eyes have it! Reflexive orienting is triggered by nonpredictive gaze. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5, 490–495.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frisby, J. (1979). Seeing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Hietanen, J. K. (1999). Does your gaze direction and head orientation shift my visual attention? Neuroreport, 10, 3443–3447.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hietanen, J. K. (2002). Social attention orienting integrates visual information from head and body orientation. Psychological Research/Psychologische Forschung, 66, 174–179.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hietanen, J. K., & Leppänen, J. M. (2003). Does facial expression affect attention orienting by gaze direction cues? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 29, 1228–1243.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hikosaka, O., Miyauchi, S., & Shimojo, S. (1993). Focal visual attention produces illusory temporal order and motion sensation. Vision Research, 33, 1219–1240.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hooker, C. I., Paller, K. A., Gitelman, D. R., Parrish, T. B., Mesulam, M.-M., & Reber, P. J. (2003). Brain networks for analyzing eye gaze. Cognitive Brain Research, 17, 406–418.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jenkins, J., & Langton, S. R. H. (2003). Configural processing in the perception of eye-gaze direction. Perception, 32, 1181–1188.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kitazaki, M., & Sato, T. (2003). Attentional modulation of self-motion perception. Perception, 32, 475–484.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Köhler, W., & Emery, D. A. (1947). Figural after-effects in the third dimension of visual space. American Journal of Psychology, 60, 159–201.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langton, S. R. H. (2000). The mutual influence of gaze and head orientation in the analysis of social attention direction. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53A, 825–845.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langton, S. R. H., & Bruce, V. (1999). Reflexive visual orienting in response to the social attention of others. Visual Cognition, 6, 541–567.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langton, S. R. H., Watt, R. J., & Bruce, V. (2000). Do the eyes have it? Cues to the direction of social attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 50–59.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Leopold, D. A., O’Toole, A. J., Vetter, T., & Blanz, V. (2001). Prototype-referenced shape encoding revealed by high-level aftereffects. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 89–94.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mathews, A., Fox, E., Yiend, J., & Calder, A. (2003). The face of fear: Effects of eye gaze and emotion on visual attention. Visual Cognition, 10, 823–835.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Öhman, A., Lundqvist, D., & Esteves, F. (2001). The face in the crowd revisited: A threat advantage with schematic stimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 381–396.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • O’Leary, A., & McMahon, M. (1991). Adaptation to form distortion of a familiar shape. Perception & Psychophysics, 49, 328–332.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Perrett, D. I., & Emery, N. J. (1994). Understanding the intentions of others from visual signals: Neurophysiological evidence. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive, 13, 683–694.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perrett, D. I., Hietanen, J. K., Oram, M. W., & Benson, P. J. (1992). Organization and functions of cells responsive to faces in the temporal cortex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 335, 23–30.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rhodes, G., Jeffery, L., Watson, T. L., Clifford, C. W. G., & Nakayama, K. (2003). Fitting the mind to the world: Face adaptation and attractiveness aftereffects. Psychological Science, 14, 558–566.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ricciardelli, P., Baylis, G., & Driver, J. (2000). The positive and negative of human expertise in gaze perception. Cognition, 77, B1–B14.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ristic, J., Friesen, C. K., & Kingstone, A. (2002). Are eyes special? It depends on how you look at it. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 507–513.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seyama, J., & Nagayama, R. S. (2002). Perceived eye size is larger in happy faces than in surprised faces. Perception, 31, 1153–1155.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Seyama, J., & Nagayama, R. S. (in press). The effect of torso direction on the judgment of eye direction. Visual Cognition.

  • Sinha, P. (2000). Here’s looking at you, kid. Perception, 29, 1005–1008.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Spivey, M. J., & Spirn, M. J. (2000). Selective visual attention modulates the direct tilt aftereffect. Perception & Psychophysics, 62, 1525–1533.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tomonaga, M., Kumada, T., & Yoshikawa, S. (2002). Visual cognition from the standpoint of comparative cognitive science. Japanese Journal of Psychonomic Science, 20, 193–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Troje, N. F., & Siebeck, U. (1998). Illumination-induced apparent shift in orientation of human heads. Perception, 27, 671–680.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Valentine, T. (1991). A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 43A, 161–204.

    Google Scholar 

  • von Grünau, M., & Anston, C. (1995). The detection of gaze direction: A state-in-the-crowd effect. Perception, 24, 1297–1313.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vuilleumier, P. (2002). Facial expression and selective attention. Current Opinion In Psychiatry, 15, 291–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Watson, T. L., & Clifford, C. W. G. (2003). Pulling faces: An investigation of the face-distortion aftereffect. Perception, 32, 1109–1116.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Webster, M. A., & MacLin, O. H. (1999). Figural aftereffects in the perception of faces. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6, 647–653.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Webster, M. A., Kaping, D., Mizokami, Y., & Duhamel, P. (2004). Adaptation to natural facial categories. Nature, 428, 557–561.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wichmann, F. A., & Hill, N. J. (2001). The psychometric function. I. Fitting, sampling, and goodness of fit. Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 1293–1313.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, L., & Chubb, C. (2001). The size-tuning of the face-distortion after-effect. Vision Research, 41, 2979–2994.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zorzi, M., Mapelli, D., Rusconi, E., & Umiltà, C. (2003). Automatic spatial coding of perceived gaze direction is revealed by the Simon effect. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 423–429.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by MEXT.KAKENHI (14710039). The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Ruth S. Nagayama

    Present address: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shizuoka Eiwa Gakuin University, 1769 Ikeda, Shizuoka-City, Shizuoka 422–8005, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo, 7–3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113–0033, Japan

    Jun’ichiro Seyama

  2. Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders, Hiroshima Prefectural College of Health Sciences, 1–1 Gakuen-machi, Mihara-City, Hiroshima 723–0053, Japan

    Ruth S. Nagayama

Authors
  1. Jun’ichiro Seyama
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ruth S. Nagayama
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jun’ichiro Seyama.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Seyama, J., Nagayama, R.S. Eye direction aftereffect. Psychological Research 70, 59–67 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-004-0188-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-004-0188-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation