{"id":8502,"date":"2019-05-22T16:08:24","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/mutual_gaze\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T16:08:24","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T16:08:24","slug":"mutual_gaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/mutual_gaze\/","title":{"rendered":"Mutual gaze"},"content":{"rendered":"

The simultaneous gaze of partnerstoward each other, which may or may not involve direct eye contact.  It can serve a number of different functions:as means of communicating intimacy or a request for help, as well as aggressionand the intention to be dominant.  Thenthere are distinctive cultural differences in how mutual gaze is deployed insocial situations.  For example, Muslims,during communication between members of the opposite sex, tend to lower theirgaze so that their eyes are not directed toward the face and hands.  Japanese adults also lower their gaze whenspeaking to somebody they perceive to be in some way \u2018superior\u2019, while Japanesechildren are instructed to gaze the Adam\u2019s apple of a teacher.  Such differences, as well as a broad-rangingcoverage of the functions of mutual gaze with adults, can be found in theseminal book Gaze and mutual gaze<\/span><\/a>(1976) by Michael Argyle (<\/a>1925-2002) and Mark Cook<\/a>.  Inmany non-human animals, eye contact is perceived as a threat signal that canresult in an aggressive response (hence the recommendation to avoid direct eyecontact with an unknown dog).  Humansappear to be sensitive to eye contact from birth.<\/a>  For example, it has been demonstrated thatnewborns aged 2-5 days are able to discriminate between averted and directgaze, while EEG recordings at 4 months reveal differences in the corticalelectrical activity between direct and averted gazes.  A related strand of research involves socialreferencing: gaze evident in third-party interactions.  In this respect, ten month-old infants appearto be able to discriminate between two people displaying mutual versus avertedgaze, with the expectation that a person looks towards a partner when engagedin conversation.  Such was not the casewith 9 month-old infants, even when the gazer\u2019s social goals were highlightedfor them.  Developmentally, mutual gaze(together with joint attention and turn-taking) has been implicated inacquisition of an understanding of the semantics of utterances.  Thus, according to Jerome S. Bruner<\/a>, we are bornwith a LASS<\/a> (Language Acquisition Social System) that involves experience withmutual gaze, joint attention and turn-taking that are essential to theacquisition of language, which according to him has to take place in a socialcontext.  In other primate infants suchas chimpanzees<\/a>, they display mutual gaze at similar rates to human infants at the same age.         <\/p>\n

See Communication<\/a>, Conversational contexts, Conversations<\/a>, Covert attention<\/a>, Electroencephalogram (EEG)<\/a>, Event-related (brain) potentials (ERPs)<\/a>, Joint attention<\/a>, N170<\/a>, Language development<\/a>, Overt attention<\/a>, Performance (linguistics)<\/a>, Psycholinguistics<\/a>, Semantics<\/a>, Shared reference<\/a>, Signs, Social referencing<\/a>, Still-face paradigm<\/a>, Symbols<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The simultaneous gaze of partnerstoward each other, which may or may not involve direct eye contact.  It can serve a number of different functions:as means of communicating intimacy or a request for help, as well as aggressionand the intention to be dominant.  Thenthere are distinctive cultural differences in how mutual gaze is deployed insocial situations.  … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Mutual gaze”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-8502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/fas\/psych\/glossary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}