The Eff ects of Gaze Direction in Visual Search for Facial Expressions

Another persons 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 infl uences 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 infl uences the facial expression detection time. Moreover no interaction eff ect 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 eff ective for detecting a target stimulus is processed.