Levy, J and Foulsham, Tom and Kingstone, Alan (2013) Monsters are people too. Biology Letters, 9 (1). p. 20120850. DOI https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0850
Levy, J and Foulsham, Tom and Kingstone, Alan (2013) Monsters are people too. Biology Letters, 9 (1). p. 20120850. DOI https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0850
Levy, J and Foulsham, Tom and Kingstone, Alan (2013) Monsters are people too. Biology Letters, 9 (1). p. 20120850. DOI https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0850
Abstract
Animals, including dogs, dolphins, monkeys and man, follow gaze. What mediates this bias towards the eyes? One hypothesis is that primates possess a distinct neural module that is uniquely tuned for the eyes of others. An alternative explanation is that configural face processing drives fixations to the middle of peoples' faces, which is where the eyes happen to be located. We distinguish between these two accounts. Observers were presented with images of people, non-human creatures with eyes in the middle of their faces (`humanoids?) or creatures with eyes positioned elsewhere (`monsters?). There was a profound and significant bias towards looking early and often at the eyes of humans and humanoids and also, critically, at the eyes of monsters. These findings demonstrate that the eyes, and not the middle of the head, are being targeted by the oculomotor system.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Gaze following; gaze selection; social attention; primates |
Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
Divisions: | Faculty of Science and Health Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 14 May 2014 10:46 |
Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2024 20:37 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/9355 |