Socially communicative eye contact and gender affect memory
Socially communicative eye contact and gender affect memory
Author
Lanthier, Sophie N.
Jarick, Michelle
Zhu, Mona J. H.
Byun, Crystal S. J.
Kingstone, Alan
Faculty Advisor
Date
2019
Keywords
gaze , eye contact , attention , memory , gender
Abstract (summary)
Because of their value as a socially communicative cue, researchers have strived to
understand how the gaze of other people influences a variety of cognitive processes.
Recent work in social attention suggests that the use of images of people in laboratory
studies, as a substitute for real people, may not effectively test socially communicative
aspects of eye gaze. As attention affects many other cognitive processes, it is likely that
social attention between real individuals could also affect other cognitive processes, such
as memory. However, from previous work alone, it is unclear whether, and if so how,
socially communicative eye gaze affects memory. The present studies test the assumption
that socially communicative aspects of eye gaze may impact memory by manipulating
the eye gaze of a live speaker in the context of a traditional recognition paradigm used
frequently in the laboratory. A female (Experiment 1) or male (Experiment 2) investigator
read words aloud and varied whether eye contact was, or was not, made with a participant.
With both female and male investigators, eye contact improved word recognition only for
female participants and hindered word recognition in male participants. When a female
investigator prolonged their eye contact (Experiment 3) to provide a longer opportunity
to both observe and process the investigator’s eye gaze, the results replicated the findings
from Experiments 1 and 2. The findings from Experiments 1–3 suggest that females
interpret and use the investigator’s eye gaze differently than males. When key aspects
from the previous experiments were replicated in a noncommunicative situation (i.e., when
a video of a speaker is used instead of a live speaker; Experiment 4), the memory effects
observed previously in response to eye gaze were eliminated. Together, these studies
suggest that it is the socially communicative aspects of eye gaze from a real person that
influence memory. The findings reveal the importance of using social cues that are
communicative in nature (e.g., real people) when studying the relationship between social
attention and memory.
Publication Information
Lanthier, S.N., Jarick, M., Zhu, M.J.H., Byun, C.S.J., & Kingstone, A.K. (2019). Socially communicative eye contact and gender affect memory, Frontiers in Psychology: Perception Science, 10, 1128. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01128
DOI
Notes
Item Type
Article
Language
English
Rights
Attribution (CC BY)
