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Psychological Science
21(12) 1765 –1769
© The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797610388812
http://pss.sagepub.com
Eye gaze not only carries information regarding a person’s
direction of attention, but also provides clues to his or her
future intentions and actions (Baron-Cohen, 1995). The ability
to discriminate direct from averted gaze is present from birth
(Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002). In adults, direct
gaze potentiates detection of faces (Senju & Hasegawa, 2005),
as well as discrimination of their gender (Macrae, Hood,
Milne, Rowe, & Mason, 2002) and identity (Hood, Macrae,
Cole-Davies, & Dias, 2003). Direct gaze may facilitate per-
ception because it is a deliberate, or ostensive, signal (Sperber
& Wilson, 1995) that indicates to the observer that something
of importance is about to be communicated (Frith, 2008).
However, gaze direction is only one component of a much
richer set of social signals from visual and auditory modalities,
including facial expression, body posture, and verbal and non-
verbal vocal information.
In the auditory modality, a signal with value similar to
that of direct gaze is hearing one’s own name (Moray, 1959).
Although sensitivity to one’s own name emerges over the first
year of life (Mandel, Jusczyk, & Pisoni, 1995), sensitivity to
another auditory ostensive cue―being spoken to in a slow,
deliberate manner (motherese)―is present in the first month
after birth (Cooper & Aslin, 1990). In a study indicative of the
common ostensive value of these auditory and gaze cues,
infants followed an adult’s gaze to objects in their environ-
ment only if the gaze shift was preceded by an ostensive sig-
nal, such as a period of direct eye contact or infant-directed
speech (Senju & Csibra, 2008). Note that these two signals
not only have a similar function but also often co-occur. For
example, a mother would typically speak in motherese as she
engages her infant in mutual gaze. Similarly, in order to attract
the attention of an adult, people often call the person’s name as
they make direct eye contact with him or her. An important,
but as yet unaddressed, question arising from the natural co-
occurrence and shared value of these two signals is whether
hearing one’s own name would enhance one’s perception of
direct gaze in the visual modality.
Previous work has shown that visual context may affect
where one thinks others are looking. For example, Lobmaier,
Fischer, and Schwaninger (2006) showed that an object near
the line of sight causes the perceived gaze direction to
Corresponding Author:
Raliza S. Stoyanova, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer
Rd., Cambridge CB2 7EF, United Kingdom
E-mail: raliza.stoyanova@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
“You Talkin’ to Me?”: Self-Relevant
Auditory Signals Influence Perception
of Gaze Direction
Raliza S. Stoyanova, Michael P. Ewbank, and Andrew J. Calder
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, England
Abstract
In humans, direct gaze typically signals a deliberate attempt to communicate with an observer. An auditory signal with
similar signal value is calling someone’s name. We investigated whether the presence of this personally relevant signal in
the auditory modality would influence perception of another individual’s gaze. Participants viewed neutral faces displaying
different gaze deviations while hearing someone call their own name or the name of another person. Results were consistent
with our predictions, as participants judged faces with a wider range of gaze deviations as looking directly at them when they
simultaneously heard their own name. The influence of this personally relevant signal was present only at ambiguous gaze
deviations; thus, an overall response bias to categorize gaze as direct when hearing one’s own name cannot account for the
results. This study provides the first evidence that communicative intent signaled via the auditory modality influences the
perception of another individual’s gaze.
Keywords
face perception, facial features, auditory perception, social cognition
Received 1/26/10; Revision accepted 6/18/10
Research Report
1766 Stoyanova et al.
gravitate toward that object, presumably because one expects
people to be attending to objects rather than to an empty space.
Of more relevance to the current study is research showing
that the range of gaze deviations that participants perceive to
be directed at themselves is affected by facial expression, with
angry expressions increasing this range relative to fearful
or neutral expressions (Ewbank, Jennings, & Calder, 2009;
Lobmaier, Tiddeman, & Perrett, 2008). To the best of our
knowledge, no prior research has addressed whether any form
of auditory cue exerts an influence on gaze discrimination.
However, there is good reason to think that this may be the
case, in view of the principle that social stimuli with the same
signal value (Adams & Kleck, 2003, 2005) influence the per-
ception of one another. Moreover, recent work suggests that
the prefrontal region involved in inferring the mental states of
other people is engaged both in response to hearing one’s own
name (vs. another name) and in response to viewing direct
gaze (vs. averted gaze; Kampe, Frith, & Frith, 2003).
Kampe et al. (2003) suggested that visual and auditory
ostensive cues activate theory-of-mind computations in order
to facilitate the interpretation of subsequent communication.
However, Conty, N’Diaye, Tijus, and George (2007) have
reported that the prefrontal response to direct gaze temporally
precedes the response in perceptual regions, such as the supe-
rior temporal sulcus, that are thought to be involved in coding
the direction (Calder et al., 2007; Nummenmaa & Calder,
2009) or intentionality (e.g., Pelphrey, Viola, & McCarthy,
2004) conveyed by gaze. This suggests that the analysis of
gaze direction may be amenable to top-down influences from
prefrontal regions that are sensitive to direct gaze and the rel-
evance of one’s name. On the basis of these findings and the
observation that social stimuli with shared signal value can
influence the perception of one another (Adams & Kleck,
2003, 2005), we hypothesized that hearing one’s own name,
relative to another name, would increase the range over which
one feels that another individual’s gaze is directed at oneself.
To test this hypothesis, we had participants categorize the
gaze direction of neutral faces whose gaze varied from left to
right in small, incremental steps. Faces were presented indi-
vidually and were accompanied by auditory presentation of
the participant’s own name or another person’s name. Psycho-
metric functions, fitted to the proportion of “left,” “right,” and
“direct” responses, provided an objective dependent measure
of the range of gaze deviations perceived as direct when
participants heard their own name and when they heard
another person’s name.
Method
Participants
Eighteen volunteers with normal or corrected-to-normal vision
(6 male, 12 female; mean age = 24.7 years, SD = 4.92 years)
were recruited from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences
Unit Volunteer Panel. They provided written and informed
consent and were paid for participating. One participant did
not complete the entire experiment and was excluded from the
analysis, leaving a final sample of 17 (6 male, 11 female; mean
age = 24.8 years, SD = 5.03 years).
Stimuli
The face stimuli consisted of gray-scale photographs of four
males posing neutral expressions. The photographs were
selected from the NimStim Face Stimulus Set (Tottenham et al.,
2009) and the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database
(Lundqvist, Flykt, & Öhman, 1998). Nonfacial areas and hair
were masked, leaving the central face area visible. The facial
images subtended a visual angle of 12° by 8°. Following pre-
vious research (Adams & Kleck, 2005; Ewbank et al., 2009),
we manipulated gaze by altering the position of the iris of each
eye in incremental steps of 1 pixel per image using Adobe
Photoshop. This alteration is equivalent to a shift of 0.03 cm,
or a visual angle of approximately 1/12°. We used a total of
seven gaze deviations: true direct gaze plus shifts of 4, 7, and
10 pixels for left and right gaze (see Fig. 1). These deviations
were chosen on the basis of a previous study showing that true
direct gaze is largely perceived as direct, gaze that is 10 or
more pixels from direct is mostly perceived as averted, and
gaze that is 4 pixels from direct is perceived as direct and
averted equally often (Ewbank et al., 2009).
Auditory stimuli consisted of recordings of four male
native English speakers calling participants’ first names (e.g.,
“Sarah!”), as well as a set of control names. Recordings were
made in a soundproof booth. For each participant, three gender-
and syllable-matched names served as controls. There was no
significant difference (p > .3) in the duration of participants’
own names (M = 571.65 ms, SE = 8.9 ms) and the duration of
Left 10 Left 7 Left 4 Direct Right 4 Right 7 Right 10
Fig. 1. Examples of the stimuli. Each facial identity displayed a neutral expression at seven gaze deviations: 10 pixels to the left, 7 pixels to the left, 4
pixels to the left, direct gaze, 4 pixels to the right, 7 pixels to the right, and 10 pixels to the right.
Self-Relevant Signals Influence Gaze Perception 1767
control names (M = 562.88 ms, SE = 4.75 ms). All sound files
were normalized in amplitude, using Adobe Audition 2 (http://
www.adobe.com).
Procedure
Participants were seated 50 cm in front of a computer monitor.
A chin rest was used to maintain head position and distance
from the screen. Each trial began with a central fixation cross,
which remained on-screen for between 500 and 1,750 ms (M =
1,125 ms). A variable duration was used in order to reduce
expectancy effects. The fixation cross was followed by a cen-
trally presented face for 600 ms. The face was displayed on a
gray background and was presented together with an auditory
name delivered through Sennheiser (Weddemark, Germany)
HD465 stereo headphones. Following the offset of the face
and name, there was a 2,000-ms interval during which partici-
pants were required to press one of three buttons according to
whether they perceived the face to be looking to their left, to
their right, or directly at them. Participants were instructed that
auditory stimuli were irrelevant to the task and that they should
concentrate on categorizing the direction of the gaze as accu-
rately as possible; speed of response was not emphasized.
There were a total of 256 randomly presented trials: Sixty-four
trials presented direct gaze, and 64 presented each of the devi-
ated gaze directions (4, 7, and 10 pixels). The trials presenting
deviated gaze were equally divided between left-oriented and
right-oriented gaze. At each gaze deviation, the participant’s
own name and the three control names each appeared on one
quarter of the trials.
Results
For each participant, separate logistic functions were fitted to
the proportion of “left” and “right” responses as a function of
gaze deviation. A function for “direct” responses was calcu-
lated by subtracting the sum of “left” and “right” responses
from 1 at each gaze deviation. From these data, we calculated
the crossover point between the fitted “direct” and “left” func-
tions and between the fitted “direct” and “right” functions (see
Fig. 2). The sum of these two absolute values provided an
objective measure of the range of gaze deviations that each
participant perceived to be direct for each of two conditions:
the own-name condition and the other-name condition. Fol-
lowing Gamer and Hecht (2007), who likened this range to a
cone, we refer to these as cone-of-gaze values.
A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA)
revealed a significant main effect of condition, F(1, 16) =
4.61, p < .05, η
p
2
= .22, reflecting a wider cone of gaze for the
own-name condition (M = 7.5 pixels, SE = 0.47) than for the
other-name condition (M = 6.8 pixels, SE = 0.41). Although
the effect of condition appeared to be slightly larger for
rightward than for leftward gaze deviations, the difference
between the crossover points for the own- and other-name
conditions did not differ significantly between rightward and
leftward deviations, t(16) = −1.03, p = .32, two-tailed. Hence,
–10 –8 –6 –4 –2 0 2 4 6 8 10
.0
1.0
Proportion of Responses
Own Name
Other Nam
e
“Right” Responses“Left” Responses “Direct” Responses
.1
.2
.3
.4
.5
.6
.7
.8
.9
Gaze Deviation
Fig. 2. Plot showing the mean fitted logistic functions for “left,” “right,” and “direct” responses in the own-name condition and the other-name condition.
The dashed lines indicate the crossover points, and the arrows indicate the width of the cone of gaze.
1768 Stoyanova et al.
the following analyses collapsed across leftward and right-
ward gaze deviations.
To exclude the possibility that the effects reflected an over-
all bias for participants to label gaze as direct when they heard
their own name, we entered the proportion of “direct”
responses into a 2 × 4 ANOVA with condition (own-name or
other-name) and gaze deviation (0, 4, 7, or 10 pixels) as
repeated measures factors. This analysis revealed the expected
main effect of gaze deviation, F(3, 48) = 408.86, p < .001, η
p
2
=
.96, and a trend for an effect of condition, F(1, 16) = 4.21, p =
.06, η
p
2
= .21. Critically, there was also a significant interac-
tion between the two factors, F(3, 48) = 7.94, p < .001, η
p
2
=
.33. Simple-effects analyses, at each gaze deviation, showed
an effect of condition only at the 4-pixel deviation, F(1, 16) =
9.61, p < .01, η
p
2
= .38, for which the perceived direction of
gaze was somewhat ambiguous. There was no effect of condi-
tion for faces that showed true direct gaze (0 pixels, F < 1), nor
for faces with gaze deviations of 7 or 10 pixels (Fs < 2.13,
ps > .16). Thus, there was no evidence that hearing one’s own
name resulted in an overall bias to respond “direct.”
Discussion
This study provides the first evidence that an ostensive signal in
the auditory modality (calling a person’s name) has an influence
on the perception of an ostensive signal with which it frequently
co-occurs in the visual modality (direct gaze). As we predicted,
participants reported direct gaze over a wider range of gaze
deviations when they heard their own name than when they
heard the name of another person. Further analyses showed that
this auditory signal did not affect responses when gaze was
clearly direct or clearly averted, providing no evidence of an
overall bias to respond “direct” in response to hearing one’s
own name. Instead, the effect was maximal when gaze direction
was intermediate, or ambiguous (i.e., the 4-pixel gaze devia-
tion). This pattern accords with previous research showing that,
within the visual modality, facial expression has an influence on
the perception of gaze when gaze direction is relatively difficult
to discriminate (Ewbank et al., 2009), and, similarly, that gaze
has a greater reciprocal influence on the processing of expres-
sion when the expression is more difficult to discriminate (Gra-
ham & LaBar, 2007). Similar effects have also been found in the
multisensory perception of emotional expression: Signals in the
nontarget modality exert a larger influence on perception of sig-
nals in the target modality when the latter are degraded or
ambiguous (e.g., Collignon et al., 2008; de Gelder & Vroomen,
2000). Future research should examine whether the bidirec-
tional influence between visual and auditory emotional cues
extends to ostensive cues. For example, would direct gaze also
increase the probability of detecting ambiguous or degraded
presentations of one’s own name?
Although gaze direction is an important cue to the current
and future intentions of individuals in one’s environment
(Baron-Cohen, 1995), it occurs in a rich visual and auditory
context. It is important to note that some of the signals that
co-occur with gaze convey the same behavioral intent. Within
the visual modality, for example, perception of an angry or
joyful facial expression is facilitated by direct gaze, as both
signals are associated with approach-related behavior (Adams
& Kleck, 2003; Graham & LaBar, 2007). By contrast, percep-
tion of fearful facial expressions may be facilitated when they
display averted gaze, because both fearful expressions and
averted gaze signal avoidance (Adams & Kleck, 2005; but see
Bindemann, Burton, & Langton, 2008). Similarly, as already
discussed, a reciprocal influence of angry expressions on gaze
perception is also found; observers are more likely to perceive
direct gaze in an angry facial expression than in a fearful or
neutral facial expression (Ewbank et al., 2009; Lobmaier et al.,
2008). The present study builds on this work by showing that
without any change in the visual characteristics of a face, a
concurrent auditory signal that conveys the intent to commu-
nicate can influence the perception of direct gaze, a visual sig-
nal conveying the same behavioral intent.
An interesting empirical question is whether the effect of
auditorily presented names on gaze discrimination is limited
to participants’ own names or whether it extends to other peo-
ple’s names. For example, might participants be more likely to
perceive ambiguous gaze as averted toward a friend sitting
beside them if the friend’s name was called out? This would
provide evidence that the range of gaze deviations perceived
as direct can be both widened and narrowed and would also
discount the idea that familiarity of the name alone can explain
the current results. It would also suggest that the reported
effect is not limited to self-relevant cues, but is a more general
property of cues that share intent and often co-occur.
Another direction for future research concerns the neural
mechanisms through which visual and auditory ostensive sig-
nals may interact. As suggested by research showing that the
prefrontal response to direct gaze is earlier than the superior
temporal response (Conty et al., 2007), it is possible that the
increased perception of direct gaze when one hears one’s own
name is a result of a top-down modulation of superior tempo-
ral regions involved in gaze perception. Although a number of
researchers have suggested that prefrontal mentalizing regions
might be a source of top-down signals in tasks that involve
making inferences about other individuals’ intentions (Frith
& Frith, 2006; Nummenmaa & Calder, 2009; Teufel et al.,
2009), this remains to be established empirically. Finally,
given infants’ early sensitivity to both visual and auditory
ostensive signals (e.g., Senju & Csibra, 2008), further work,
using behavioral and neuroimaging methods, could also exam-
ine at what point in development ostensive cues in one modal-
ity begin exerting their influence on perception of ostensive
cues in another modality.
In summary, we have shown that gaze is more likely to be
perceived as direct when accompanied by auditory presenta-
tion of one’s own name, a signal that shares similar behavioral
intent and frequently co-occurs with direct gaze. This suggests
that perception of another person’s gaze direction is affected
not only by salient visual cues, such as facial expression (e.g.,
Self-Relevant Signals Influence Gaze Perception 1769
Ewbank et al., 2009; Lobmaier et al., 2008), but also by audi-
tory cues with similar signal value.
Acknowledgments
R.S.S. holds a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and an Overseas
Research Studentship. We thank Simon Strangeways for preparing
the visual stimuli and Colin W. Clifford for helping with the logistic
function analysis.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
This research was funded by the United Kingdom Medical Research
Council (U.1055.02.001.0001.01 to A.J.C.).
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