Abstract
Gaze direction and emotion expression are salient facial features that facilitate social interactions. Previous studies addressed how gaze direction influences the evaluation and recognition of emotion expressions, but few have tested how emotion expression influences attentional processing of direct versus averted gaze faces. Here, we present recent evidence from two sets of experiments that the prioritization of direct gaze (towards the observer) relative to averted gaze (away from the observer) is modulated by the emotional expression of the observed face. We establish this in a paradigm in which we manipulated emotion expressions of the faces (neutral, angry, fearful, happy, disgusted) across participants and gaze direction within participants as they identified a target letter on one of four faces. The direct gaze effect was enhanced in angry faces (approach oriented) and reduced in fearful faces (avoidance oriented) in a first study, while angry and fearful expressions diminished any effects of gaze direction in a follow-up. In addition, a consistent direct gaze advantage was found for happy faces and an averted gaze advantage was found for disgusted faces. Together, these results indicated modulation of gaze processing for approach/avoidance-related emotions. We then investigated the temporal integration of gaze and emotion cues by tracking eye movements and performance. We again found evidence for an approach/avoidance-congruency advantage for happy and disgusted faces, both in performance and gaze behavior. Analyses of gaze behavior suggested early integration of gaze and emotion information (starting at 300 ms) that is driven by emotion-specific attention patterns. These findings reveal when and how the context of facial emotion expressions as well as their gaze influences attentional processing.