Gazing at me: the importance of social meaning in understanding direct-gaze cues | Zendy

Antonia F. de C. Hamilton | Zendy

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Gazing at me: the importance of social meaning in understanding direct-gaze cues

Author(s) -

Antonia F. de C. Hamilton

Publication year - 2015

Publication title -

philosophical transactions of the royal society b biological sciences

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.753

H-Index - 272

eISSN - 1471-2970

pISSN - 0962-8436

DOI - 10.1098/rstb.2015.0080

Subject(s) - gaze , psychology , meaning (existential) , cognitive psychology , context (archaeology) , cognition , social cue , joint attention , social cognition , arousal , social psychology , cognitive science , neuroscience , developmental psychology , autism , paleontology , psychoanalysis , psychotherapist , biology

Direct gaze is an engaging and important social cue, but the meaning of direct gaze depends heavily on the surrounding context. This paper reviews some recent studies of direct gaze, to understand more about what neural and cognitive systems are engaged by this social cue and why. The data show that gaze can act as an arousal cue and can modulate actions, and can activate brain regions linked to theory of mind and self-related processing. However, all these results are strongly modulated by the social meaning of a gaze cue and by whether participants believe that another person is really watching them. The implications of these contextual effects and audience effects for our theories of gaze are considered.

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