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Updated: Jul 20, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
The eyes are sufficient to produce a threat superiority effect
Elaine Fox1, Ljubica Damjanovic
1Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Essex, United Kingdom. efox@essex.ac.uk
Abstract:
The research described in this article used a visual search task and demonstrated that the eye region alone can produce a threat superiority effect. Indeed, the magnitude of the threat superiority effect did not increase with whole-face, relative to eye-region-only, stimuli. The authors conclude that the configuration of the eyes provides a key signal of threat, which can mediate the search advantage for threat-related facial expressions.
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