Gaze cueing as a function of perceived gaze direction

Previous studies have found that attention is automatically oriented in the direction of other people's gaze. This study directly investigated whether the perceiving gaze direction modulates the orienting of observers' attention. Gaze perception was manipulated by changing the face context (head orientation) of the gaze cue: the perceived gaze angle was increased (or decreased) when the head and gaze are congruent (or incongruent), while the local-feature information of the eye region was preserved for all stimuli. The results showed that gaze-cueing effects were enhanced when the perceived gaze direction was averted more toward left or right, and reduced when the perceived gaze direction was closer to direct gaze. The results suggest that gaze-cueing effects are based on mechanisms specialized for gaze perception, and the magnitude of gaze-cueing effects was probably a function of the perceived gaze direction.