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标题：The influence of emotional facial expressions on gaze-following in grouped and solitary pedestrians
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作者：Andrew C. Gallup ; Andrew Chong ; Alex Kacelnik 等
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2014
卷号：4
DOI：10.1038/srep05794
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：The mechanisms contributing to collective attention in humans remain unclear. Research indicates that pedestrians utilise the gaze direction of others nearby to acquire environmentally relevant information, but it is not known which, if any, additional social cues influence this transmission. Extending upon previous field studies, we investigated whether gaze cues paired with emotional facial expressions (neutral, happy, suspicious and fearsome) of an oncoming walking confederate modulate gaze-following by pedestrians moving in a natural corridor. We found that pedestrians walking alone were not sensitive to this manipulation, while individuals traveling together in groups did reliably alter their response in relation to emotional cues. In particular, members of a collective were more likely to follow gaze cues indicative of a potential threat (i.e., suspicious or fearful facial expression). This modulation of visual attention dependent on whether pedestrians are in social aggregates may be important to drive adaptive exploitation of social information, and particularly emotional stimuli within natural contexts.