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"Rare" emotive faces and attentional orienting
Gustav Kuhn1, Alan Pickering1, Geoff G Cole2
1Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
|September 1, 2015
Summary
Emotional expressions capture attention, especially when rare. Fearful faces, as unique events, gain priority over happy faces, supporting the behavioral urgency hypothesis in attention research.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Neuroscience
Background:
- The behavioral urgency hypothesis posits that danger cues receive attentional priority.
- Gaze cueing paradigms typically fail to show consistent emotional modulation of gaze following.
- Repeated exposure to emotional expressions may explain null results in prior studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if emotional expression modulates gaze following when emotional cues are rare.
- To test the behavioral urgency hypothesis using a novel gaze cueing method.
Main Methods:
- A modified gaze cueing paradigm presenting rare emotional face trials within blocks of common expressions.
- Comparison of gaze following for fearful versus happy faces presented as unique events.
Main Results:
- Gaze cueing was independent of face type when emotional expressions were common.
- Significantly greater gaze cueing occurred for rare fearful faces compared to rare happy faces.
- Emotional expression modulated gaze following when it was an infrequent event.
Conclusions:
- Emotional expression does modulate gaze following, but only when it represents a rare or unexpected event.
- Findings support the behavioral urgency hypothesis, highlighting the attentional priority of potential danger cues.
- The frequency of emotional stimuli is critical for observing their impact on attention and gaze behavior.
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