After a period of fixation, two stimuli, one emotional and one neutral, are presented briefly (i.e., ~100–500 ms) on either side of the screen before being replaced with a target that participants must respond to as quickly as possible. The dot-probe task is a computerized cognitive test that begins with a central fixation point. Yet, little is known about how the morphology of facial expressions influences the capture and hold of observers’ attention.Ī task that is commonly used to quantify the extent to which individuals attend to fearful faces, and emotional stimuli more broadly, is the dot-probe task. A variety of state and trait variables have been shown to moderate the extent to which individuals attend to emotional faces, as have task-level variables such as stimulus-onset asynchrony. The prototypical features of fearful faces (i.e., increased pupil size and eye-white area) serve to enhance sensory acquisition for both the expresser and observers. As such, they have been shown to selectively capture (i.e., facilitate orienting), hold (i.e., delay disengagement), and direct attention in order to facilitate adaptive responses. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.įearful faces, characterized by enlarged eye-whites and dilated pupils, can serve as evolutionarily important signals that indicate the presence of a potential threat in one’s environment. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting information files.įunding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health () under Award Number R15MH110951 awarded to JMC. Received: AugAccepted: Published: May 17, 2023Ĭopyright: © 2023 Aday et al. PLoS ONE 18(5):Įditor: Simone Battaglia, University of Bologna: Universita di Bologna, ITALY Sclera exposure appears to be an important facilitator of nonverbal communication and perhaps represents an understudied variable in social cognition more broadly.Ĭitation: Aday JS, Fang L, Carlson JM (2023) Eye-size effects in the dot-probe task: Greater sclera exposure predicts delayed disengagement from fearful faces. Collectively, the results indicate that fearful facial expressions and sclera exposure modulate spatial attention through independent and interactive mechanisms. The results suggested that (1) fearful faces were prioritized over neutral faces (i.e., they captured and held attention), (2) greater sclera exposure at target locations facilitated reaction times, and (3) attention was held by greater sclera exposure of fearful faces at task irrelevant locations resulting in delayed disengagement. To address this, a sample of 249 adults completed a dot-probe task of selective attention with fearful and neutral faces. Yet, the extent to which variability in sclera exposure possibly impacts the capture and hold of attention by fearful faces is untested. Specifically, increased sclera exposure associated with fearful expressions has been shown to moderate how observers’ shift their attention toward the direction of another’s gaze. The morphological properties of the eye region, such as sclera exposure, are thought to play an important role in nonverbal communication. They are characterized by enlarged eye whites and dilated pupils, and fearful eyes alone are sufficient to capture attention. Fearful facial expressions are nonverbal and biologically salient signals of potential threat that automatically hold, capture, and direct observers’ attention.
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