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    Eye contact facilitates awareness of faces during interocular suppression

    Stein, T. and Senju, Atsushi and Peelen, M.V. and Sterzer, P. (2011) Eye contact facilitates awareness of faces during interocular suppression. Cognition 119 (2), pp. 307-311. ISSN 0010-0277.

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    Abstract

    Eye contact captures attention and receives prioritized visual processing. Here we asked whether eye contact might be processed outside conscious awareness. Faces with direct and averted gaze were rendered invisible using interocular suppression. In two experiments we found that faces with direct gaze overcame such suppression more rapidly than faces with averted gaze. Control experiments ruled out the influence of low-level stimulus differences and differential response criteria. These results indicate an enhanced unconscious representation of direct gaze, enabling the automatic and rapid detection of other individuals making eye contact with the observer.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: “NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Cognition. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Cognition, 119(2), May 2011, DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.01.008”
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Eye contact, gaze processing, binocular rivalry, interocular suppression, unconscious processing
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD)
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 17 Feb 2011 11:34
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 16:54
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/3080

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