Abstract
This thesis examines the way in which social relationship and meaningful facial signals (eye gaze and emotional facial expressions) influence the allocation of visual attention. Eighteen healthy right-handed undergraduate students were participated as subjects. Three (social relationship: significant others, known others, unknown others) x three (facial emotions: angry, happy, neutral) x three (feedback: available, no, random) factors were located within a subject. In the visual cueing paradigm, after a cue (face with averted gaze) was presented, subjects were required to answer the location of simultaneously presented target by pressing one of two buttons (right or left). Results suggest that while the type of emotion (angry or happy) expressed by significant others does influence rather than that of both known others and unknown others the allocation of attention when the gaze direction does not match to the target location. These findings are discussed in terms of how the social meaning of the stimulus can influence preattentive processing of visual orienting.
