The Role Of Cue Type In The Subliminal Gaze-cueing Effect

Attention can be shifted to locations which are gazed by the others. Such phenomenon is called as gaze following and measured by gaze-cueing effect(GCE). Whether or not GCE could function without awareness is not fully studied. Shepherd(2010) suggested the subcortical visual pathway might sustain subliminal gaze following. But Teufel et. al(2010) thought gaze following was the result of conscious perception and was controlled by theory of mind. They both got the evidence. But the study, which supported Shepherd(2010), adopted the dynamic gaze cue. We argued that gaze cue type might influence the subliminal GCE.Continuous flash suppression and spatial cuing paradigm were used in our study, we firstly investigated whether different types of gaze cues(dynamic vs. static) would influence subliminal GCE. In addition, we also compared the dynamic and static gaze cues in the supraliminal condition. We predicted that eyes’ movement might play a key role in the subliminal GCE and benefit supraliminal GCE. In the second and third experiments, dynamic dot cue were investigated. Then we compared the cueing effect between dynamic dot and dynamic gaze.The main results showed that eyes’ movement influenced GCE in the subliminal experiment. RTs were shorter in valid trials in comparison of that in invalid trials when the cue was dynamic, demonstrating a classical GCE. However, when the cue was static, GCE could not function. Furthermore, GCE was enhanced when the cue was dynamic in the supraliminal experiment, in contrast to static.The results demonstrated: 1) the moving effect caused by dynamic gaze played a key role in the subliminal gaze following. And 2) this dynamic advantage also existed in the supraliminal gaze following. Thus, attention shift could not be triggered by static gaze cues without awareness. Our findings provided behavioral evidence for interactive model of social perception and theory of mind. Since unconscious is a feature of automaticity, the results suggested gaze following might not be automatic.