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Updated: Jun 4, 2026

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
Published on: May 15, 2019
Increased gaze following for fearful faces. It depends on what you're looking for!
1Department of Psychology, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 3PH, UK. gustav.kuhn@brunel.ac.uk
Abstract:
An oculomotor visual search task was used to investigate how participants follow the gaze of a non-predictive and task irrelevant distractor gaze, and the way in which this gaze following is influenced by the emotional expression (fearful vs. happy) as well as participants' goal. Previous research has suggested that fearful emotions should result in stronger cueing effects than happy faces. Our results demonstrated that the degree to which the emotional expression influenced this gaze following varied as a function of the search target. When searching for a threatening target, participants were more likely to look in the direction of eye gaze on a fearful compared to a happy face. However, when searching for a pleasant target, this stronger cueing effect for fearful faces disappeared. Therefore, gaze following is influenced by contextual factors such as the emotional expression, as well as the participant's goal.
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