Abstract
Direct gaze is a powerful social cue used to indicate the attention of another on oneself and is of such importance to typical everyday social interaction that it is preferentially attended from birth (Farroni et al., 2002). The “the-stare-in-the-crowd” effect showed that searching for faces with direct- gaze eyes is more accurate and faster than a face with averted eyes when direct and averted gaze faces were presented together (von Grünau and Anston, 1995). However, people have a feeling of “being stared” even when others has a mouth-muffle on, suggesting the effect might be independent from a whole face context. In this present study, participants were asked to detect direct/averted-gaze eyes, with or without a target, from four faces. The four faces were in one of such three conditions: normal faces, first-order vertical configuration impaired faces (the eyes area configuration was intact), and scrambled face (eyes were apart). Data showed that “the-stare-in-the-crowd” effect was always there when face first-order configuration or even eyes configuration was impaired. The direct gaze advantage in detection is invariant, independent from face spatial configuration, suggesting gaze processing initiate eyes perception, face perception, and human social interaction.