As a powerful social signal, a body, face, or gaze facing toward oneself holds an individual’s attention. We asked whether, going beyond an egocentric stance, facingness between others has a similar effect and why. In a preferential-looking time paradigm, human adults showed spontaneous preference to look at two bodies facing toward (vs. away from) each other (Experiment 1a, N = 24). Moreover, facing dyads were rated higher on social semantic dimensions, showing that facingness adds social value to stimuli (Experiment 1b, N = 138). The same visual preference was found in juvenile macaque monkeys (Experiment 2, N = 21). Finally, on the human development timescale, this preference emerged by 5 years, although young infants by 7 months of age already discriminate visual scenes on the basis of body positioning (Experiment 3, N = 120). We discuss how the preference for facing dyads—shared by human adults, young children, and macaques—can signal a new milestone in social cognition development, supporting processing and learning from third-party social interactions.
AbassiE.PapeoL. (2024). Category-Selective Representation of Relationships in the Visual Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 44(5), e0250232023. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0250-23.2023
4.
AdibpourP.HochmannJ.-R.PapeoL. (2021). Spatial relations trigger visual binding of people. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33(7), 1343–1353. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01724
5.
Baron-CohenS. (1995). The eye direction detector (EDD) and the shared attention mechanism (SAM): Two cases for evolutionary psychology. In MooreC.DunhamP. J. (Eds.), Joint attention: Its origins and role in development (pp. 41–59). Erlbaum.
BuiattiM.GiorgioE. D.PiazzaM.PolloniC.MennaG.TaddeiF.BaldoE.VallortigaraG. (2019). Cortical route for facelike pattern processing in human newborns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 116(10), 4625–4630. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812419116
8.
CheneyD. L.SeyfarthR. M.SmutsB. (1986). Social relationships and social cognition in nonhuman primates. Science, 234(4782), 1361–1366.
9.
ChengY.LiuW.YuanX.JiangY. (2021). The eyes have it: Perception of social interaction unfolds through pupil dilation. Neuroscience Bulletin, 37(11), 1595–1598.
10.
de WaalF. B. M.LuttrellL. M. (1988). Mechanisms of social reciprocity in three primate species: Symmetrical relationship characteristics or cognition?Ethology and Sociobiology, 9(2), 101–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(88)90016-7
11.
DingX.GaoZ.ShenM. (2017). Two equals one: Two human actions during social interaction are grouped as one unit in working memory. Psychological Science, 28(9), 1311–1320. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617707318
FarroniT.CsibraG.SimionF.JohnsonM. H. (2002). Eye contact detection in humans from birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 99(14), 9602–9605. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.152159999
14.
FarroniT.JohnsonM. H.MenonE.ZulianL.FaragunaD.CsibraG. (2005). Newborns’ preference for face-relevant stimuli: Effects of contrast polarity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 102(47), 17245–17250. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0502205102
15.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.LangA.-G.BuchnerA. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146
16.
GoupilN.HochmannJ.-R.PapeoL. (2023). Intermodulation responses show integration of interacting bodies in a new whole. Cortex, 165, 129–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2023.04.013
17.
GoupilN.PapeoL.HochmannJ.-R. (2022). Visual perception grounding of social cognition in preverbal infants. Infancy, 27(2), 210–231. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12453
18.
GwiazdaJ.BauerJ.ThornF.HeldR. (1997). Development of spatial contrast sensitivity from infancy to adulthood: Psychophysical data. Optometry and Vision Science, 74(10), 785–789. https://doi.org/10.1097/00006324-199710000-00017
19.
HochmannJ.-R.KouiderS. (2022). Acceleration of information processing en route to perceptual awareness in infancy. Current Biology, 32(5), 1206–1210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.029
20.
HochmannJ.-R.PapeoL. (2014). The invariance problem in infancy: A pupillometry study. Psychological Science, 25(11), 2038–2046. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614547918
21.
HoodB. M.WillenJ. D.DriverJ. (1998). Adult’s eyes trigger shifts of visual attention in human infants. Psychological Science, 9(2), 131–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00024
22.
JohnsonM. H.SenjuA.TomalskiP. (2015). The two-process theory of face processing: Modifications based on two decades of data from infants and adults. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 50, 169–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.10.009
23.
KuwahataH.AdachiI.FujitaK.TomonagaM.MatsuzawaT. (2004). Development of schematic face preference in macaque monkeys. Behavioural Processes, 66(1), 17–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2003.11.002
24.
LehmannJ.KorstjensA. H.DunbarR. I. M. (2007). Group size, grooming and social cohesion in primates. Animal Behavior, 74, 1617–1629.
MuschinskiJ.FeczkoE.BrooksJ. M.CollantesM.HeitzT. R.ParrL. A. (2016). The development of visual preferences for direct versus averted gaze faces in infant macaques (Macaca mulatta). Developmental Psychobiology, 58(8), 926–936. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21421
27.
NewJ.CosmidesL.ToobyJ. (2007). Category-specific attention for animals reflects ancestral priorities, not expertise. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 104(42), 16598–16603. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0703913104
PapeoL.AbassiE. (2019). Seeing social events: The visual specialization for dyadic human-human interactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(7), 877–888. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000646
PeirceJ.GrayJ. R.SimpsonS.MacAskillM.HöchenbergerR.SogoH.KastmanE.LindeløvJ. K. (2019). PsychoPy2: Experiments in behavior made easy. Behavior Research Methods, 51(1), 195–203. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-018-01193-y
34.
PiagetJ. (1927). La première année de l’enfant [The child’s first year]. British Journal of Psychology, 18(2), 97–120.
35.
PitcherD.UngerleiderL. G. (2021). Evidence for a third visual pathway specialized for social perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(2), 100–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.11.006
36.
RaysonH.MasseraA.BelluardoM.Ben HamedS.FerrariP. F. (2021). Early social adversity modulates the relation between attention biases and socioemotional behaviour in juvenile macaques. Scientific Reports, 11(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-00620-z
37.
R Core Team. (2020). A language and environment for statistical computing [Internet]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
RezlescuC.DanailaI.MironA.AmarieiC. (2020). More time for science: Using testable to create and share behavioral experiments faster, recruit better participants, and engage students in hands-on research. In ParkinB. L. (Ed.), Progress in brain research (Vol. 253, pp. 243–262). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2020.06.005
40.
RisticJ.FriesenC. K.KingstoneA. (2002). Are eyes special? It depends on how you look at it. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(3), 507–513. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196306
41.
SenjuA.CsibraG. (2008). Gaze following in human infants depends on communicative signals. Current Biology, 18(9), 668–671. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.03.059
42.
SenjuA.CsibraG.JohnsonM. H. (2008). Understanding the referential nature of looking: Infants’ preference for object-directed gaze. Cognition, 108(2), 303–319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.02.009
SenjuA.TojoY.DairokuH.HasegawaT. (2004). Reflexive orienting in response to eye gaze and an arrow in children with and without autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(3), 445–458. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00236.x
ThieleM.HepachR.MichelC.HaunD. B. M. (2021). Infants’ preference for social interactions increases from 7 to 13 months of age. Child Development, 92(6), 2577–2594. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13636
49.
ThieleM.KalinkeS.MichelC.HaunD. B. M. (2023). Direct and observed joint attention modulate 9-month-old infants’ object encoding. Open Mind, 7, 917–946. https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00114
50.
VallortigaraG. (2021). Born knowing: Imprinting and the origins of knowledge. MIT Press.
van RenswoudeD. R.RaijmakersM. E. J.KoornneefA.JohnsonS. P.HunniusS.VisserI. (2018). Gazepath: An eye-tracking analysis tool that accounts for individual differences and data quality. Behavior Research Methods, 50(2), 834–852. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-017-0909-3
53.
VestnerT.TipperS. P.HartleyT.OverH.RueschemeyerS.-A. (2019). Bound together: Social binding leads to faster processing, spatial distortion, and enhanced memory of interacting partners. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(7), 1251–1268. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000545
WassS. V.ForssmanL.LeppänenJ. (2014). Robustness and precision: How data quality may influence key dependent variables in infant eye-tracker analyses. Infancy, 19(5), 427–460. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12055
56.
WickhamH. (2016). Getting started with ggplot2. In WickhamH. (Ed.), Ggplot2: Elegant graphics for data analysis (pp. 11–31). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24277-4_2
57.
XuZ.ChenH.WangY. (2023). Invisible social grouping facilitates the recognition of individual faces. Consciousness and Cognition, 113, 103556.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
