Relational property between head and eye regions is the primary determinant of the efficiency in search for a deviant gaze

摘要

The human visual system is extremely sensitive to the directions of the gazes of others. However, themechanism underlying gaze direction perception has yet to be clarified. The primary aim of thepresent study is to investigate whether the relational property between the local eye region andother facial regions serves as the primary visual system cue in detecting a direct gaze. Our resultsshowed that search efficiency was determined primarily by the gaze direction indicated by the rela-tional property regardless of the direction indicated by the local feature information of the eyeregion; this was true even when the gaze directions indicated by these two types of informationwere conflicting. These results bolster the hypothesis that the human visual system primarily accessessocially meaningful information in searching for a deviant gaze.