Review
The eye contact effect: mechanisms and development

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The ‘eye contact effect’ is the phenomenon that perceived eye contact with another human face modulates certain aspects of the concurrent and/or immediately following cognitive processing. In addition, functional imaging studies in adults have revealed that eye contact can modulate activity in structures in the social brain network, and developmental studies show evidence for preferential orienting towards, and processing of, faces with direct gaze from early in life. We review different theories of the eye contact effect and advance a ‘fast-track modulator’ model. Specifically, we hypothesize that perceived eye contact is initially detected by a subcortical route, which then modulates the activation of the social brain as it processes the accompanying detailed sensory information.

Introduction

Direct gaze signals that the gazer is looking at the perceiver. In many species, the perception of direct gaze elicits an aversive response [1], probably because it is a salient signal for potential threat. In humans, by contrast, eye contact provides a foundation of communication and social interaction 2, 3. Some researchers argue that the depigmentation of the human sclera, which does not exist in other primate species, has evolved for effective communication and social interaction based on eye contact [4].

Recent advances in the fields of developmental, social and cognitive neurosciences have revealed a network of structures involved in human social interaction and communication, sometimes termed ‘the social brain’ 5, 6, 7. The social brain is the cortical and subcortical network of regions, including ventral and medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus (FG), cingulate gyrus and amygdala [5], which are specialized to process social information such as the face [8], gaze [9], biological motion [9], human action [10], goal-directedness [10], theory of mind [11] and empathy [12]. Although it is commonly agreed that eye contact modulates the development and activation of the social brain network, the precise mechanisms and developmental processes involved remain unclear. Here, we summarize research findings on eye contact processing, before addressing issues about the mechanisms underlying the effects of eye contact on the social brain network and its development.

Section snippets

Eye contact modulates the social brain

Psychological studies have revealed that perceived eye contact modulates cognition and attention. For example, a series of studies adopted visual search tasks to test whether human observers are faster to detect a face 13, 14 or eyes [15] with direct gaze than those with averted gaze. In these studies, participants are required to judge whether the target image is present or absent among distracters (that are the same images as targets except for their gaze direction). Results show that

How does eye contact activate the social brain?

Currently, most of the accounts of the eye contact effect that have been given are either insufficiently detailed to generate testable predictions or are specific to a particular experimental paradigm. Two general accounts have often been invoked to explain the mechanisms underlying the eye contact effect. Here, we summarize these two models and advance a third model that we believe to be at least equally consistent with the majority of the results on the eye contact effect. Although current

The developmental basis of the eye contact effect

Several studies have revealed that sensitivity to eye contact is present even in newborns [48] (Box 2). Neuroimaging studies have also demonstrated that eye contact modulates cortical activation in infants as young as 4 months of age [48]. This suggests that human infants are equipped with a bias to detect and orient towards faces that make eye contact with them. Several other studies support the view that the eye contact effect is present from early in life in humans (Box 3).

The question

Looking forward

As Kleinke [3] noted, ‘the significance of eyes in human relationship fascinated writers and philosophers (as well as scientists) for centuries’. Great advances in adult functional neuroimaging studies and infant behavioural studies in the last decade have opened the study of the eye contact effect within the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. These advances and accumulating empirical findings have enabled us to revisit the old question of how eye contact works in human

Acknowledgements

We thank Kathrin Cohen Kadosh, Laurence Conty, Gergely Csibra, Kevin Pelphrey and Bruno Wicker for the help and discussions on earlier version of draft. AS was supported by an ESRC Research Fellowship (RES -063–27–0207), and MHJ was supported by the UK Medical Research Council (G0701484).

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