Cite as:
Russell T A, Corcoran R, Morris R G, 2001, "Reflexive orienting to social and non-social directional stimuli" Perception 30 ECVP Abstract Supplement

Reflexive orienting to social and non-social directional stimuli

T A Russell, R Corcoran, R G Morris

We set out to explore reflexive orienting to eye-gaze direction. Thirty-seven healthy subjects were presented with a gaze-direction-matching task which necessitated viewing a central pair of eyes gazing to one of four diagonals and matching this direction to one of four pairs of eyes presented in the corners of the screen. For half the trials the central eyes were looking towards the location of the correct answer (congruent condition). In the remaining trials the correct answer was located in another position (noncongruent condition). To test the specificity of this effect for eye stimuli, subjects also completed the same task where the central pair of eyes had been replaced by an arrow. In a third task only arrows were used. Although subjects were not informed of the congruence dimension, they were significantly faster and more accurate on the congruent as compared to noncongruent trials. A task by congruence interaction for reaction time indicated that greater response-time facilitation was afforded by arrows relative to eyes and arrows and eyes mixtures. These findings are discussed in relation to Baron-Cohen's model of the eye-direction detector and recent work exploring social orienting.

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