Gaze patterns reflect right-hemispheric dominance of the control of emotional body movements

Year:
2011
Type of Publication:
In Collection
Authors:
Festl, Kathrin
Christensen, Andrea
Giese, Martin A.
Pages:
216
BibTex:
Note:
not reviewed
Abstract:

During expression of emotions by full-body movements the left side of the body is more expressive than the right side (Roether et al, 2008). This is consistent with related observations of faces. We tested whether this lateral bias has an influence on the looking behavior during the observation of emotional body expressions. Methods: From motion-captured emotional walks we created three sets of stimuli: (i) normal walks, (ii) walks with switched body sides, and (iii) perfectly symmetric chimeric walks. Participants performed a classification task during which their eye movements were recorded. Fixation durations were determined separately for the left and the right body side of the displayed avatars. Results: We found two occulomotor response patterns: The first group of participants mainly fixated the hip region before their categorization responses. The second class of participants scanned the whole body showing a clear bias, fixating the left side of the body longer than the right. Present computational analyses investigate possible features that might support this lateral bias. Conclusion: For a subgroup of observers the looking behavior supports the hypothesis that active perception reflects the right-hemispheric dominance in the expression of emotion through bodily movements.