文章基本信息

标题：Fear-specific leftward bias in gaze direction judgment
本地全文：下载
作者：Yue Zhang ; Qiqi Hu ; Xinwei Lai 等
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2021
卷号：11
DOI：10.1038/s41598-021-97039-3
语种：English
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：Previous studies have shown that humans have a left spatial attention bias in cognition and behaviour. However, whether there exists a leftward perception bias of gaze direction has not been investigated. To address this gap, we conducted three behavioural experiments using a forced-choice gaze direction judgment task. The point of subjective equality (PSE) was employed to measure whether there was a leftward perception bias of gaze direction, and if there was, whether this bias was modulated by face emotion. The results of experiment 1 showed that the PSE of fearful faces was significantly positive as compared to zero and this effect was not found in angry, happy, and neutral faces, indicating that participants were more likely to judge the gaze direction of fearful faces as directed to their left-side space, namely a leftward perception bias. With the response keys counterbalanced between participants, experiment 2a replicated the findings in experiment 1. To further investigate whether the gaze direction perception variation was contributed by emotional or low-level features of faces, experiment 2b and 3 used inverted faces and inverted eyes, respectively. The results revealed similar leftward perception biases of gaze direction in all types of faces, indicating that gaze direction perception was biased by emotional information in faces rather than low-level facial features. Overall, our study demonstrates that there a fear-specific leftward perception bias in processing gaze direction. These findings shed new light on the cerebral lateralization in humans.