The Effects of Gaze Direction in Visual Search for Facial Expressions

Another person's facial expression and gaze direction are important signals encountered in social interaction. It has not been examined, however, how they interact in visual search. This study investigated whether gaze direction in some facial expressions influences emotional face detection in a visual search paradigm. Ten participants searched displays of four picture faces for a unique facial expression with direct or averted gaze among neutral faces with direct or averted gaze. Results showed that an angry face was detected faster than either a happy or a fearful face. Nevertheless, neither the gaze direction of target nor that of the distractor influences the facial expression detection time. Moreover, no interaction effect exists between the facial expression and gaze direction. These findings suggest that, in searching for emotional faces, gaze information is not necessarily processed, depending on task requirements, only facial expression information that is effective for detecting a target stimulus is processed