The effect of torso direction on the judgement of eye direction

Participants judged the directions the eyes of computer-generated human figures were looking when the figures' eyes, head, and torso were oriented towards the viewer or to the right. Although the directions of the head and the torso were irrelevant to the participants' task, they influenced the reaction time of the eye direction judgement. When the eyes and the head were congruently oriented, the judgement was faster than when they were incongruently oriented. In contrast, when the eyes and the torso were incongruently oriented, the judgement was faster than when they were congruently oriented. The effects of the eye-head relationship and the eye-torso relationship were additive. The results suggest that two independent perceptual processes modulated the eye direction judgement in different manners.