Biological Psychology 104 (2015) 173–183 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Psychology jo ur nal home p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/biopsycho Emotional communication in the context of joint attention for food stimuli: Effects on attentional and affective processing Robert Soussignan a,∗ , Benoist Schaal a , Véronique Boulanger a , Samuel Garcia b , Tao Jiang b a Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, UMR 6265 CNRS, Université de Bourgogne-Inra, Dijon, France b Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon, UMR 5292 CNRS-Inserm, Université de Lyon 1, Lyon, France a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 6 May 2014 Accepted 12 December 2014 Available online 22 December 2014 Keywords: Emotion Communication Facial expressions Food Gaze direction Joint attention a b s t r a c t Guided by distinct theoretical frameworks (the embodiment theories, shared-signal hypothesis, and appraisal theories), we examined the effects of gaze direction and emotional expressions (joy, disgust, and neutral) of virtual characters on attention orienting and affective reactivity of participants while they were engaged in joint attention for food stimuli contrasted by preference (disliked, moderately liked, and liked). The participants were exposed to videos of avatars looking at food and displaying facial expressions with their gaze directed either toward the food only or toward the food and participants consecutively. We recorded eye-tracking responses, heart rate, facial electromyography (zygomatic, corrugator, and leva- tor labii regions), and food wanting/liking. The avatars’ joy faces increased the participants’ zygomatic reactions and food liking, with mutual eye contact boosting attentional responses. Eye contact also fos- tered disgust reactions to disliked food, regardless of the avatars’ expressions. The findings show that joint attention for food accompanied by face-to-face emotional communication elicits differential atten- tional and affective responses. The findings appear consistent with the appraisal theories of emotion. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Eye gaze and facial expressions are critical organizers of social interactions because they provide a wealth of dynamic informa- tion about people’s interest, preferences, intentions, and mental states (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Weelwright, & Jolliffe, 1997; Emery, 2000; Fridlund, 1994; Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper, 2007; Itier & Batty, 2009). For example, the direction of eye gaze signals another person’s focus of interest, intention to communicate, and what is wanted or liked (Bayliss, Paul, Cannon, & Tipper, 2006; Castellanos et al., 2009; Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, & Scheier, 2003; Strick, Holland, & van Knippenberg, 2008). This communicative pro- cess is well exemplified in so-called ‘joint attention’ (Carpenter, Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998; Moore & Dunham, 1995), a triadic rela- tion in which two individuals coordinate their attention toward an object of mutual interest enabling an understanding of other minds (Emery, 2000; Seemann, 2012; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007). ∗ Corresponding author at: Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, 9E boulevard Jeanne D’arc, 21000 Dijon, France. E-mail addresses: rsoussignan@sfr.fr, robert.soussignan@u-bourgogne.fr (R. Soussignan). Research over the last decades has provided abundant evidence that joint attention is a major milestone of infant social cogni- tion (Moore & Dunham, 1995; Scaife & Bruner, 1975; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007) because it is essential for social development, language acquisition, imitative learning, and social referencing (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Brooks & Meltzoff, 2005; Moore & Dunham, 1995; Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985). Research conducted in adults has begun to elucidate the atten- tional processes and neural mechanisms underlying gaze following and joint attention (Bayliss et al., 2013; Frischen et al., 2007; Lachat, Hugueville, Lemaréchal, Conty, & George, 2012; Redcay, Kleiner, & Saxe, 2012; Schilbach et al., 2010). Such investigations often relied on the gaze-cueing paradigm, in which participants have to respond to a peripheral target appearing shortly after a centrally presented gaze cue either directed toward, or away from, the tar- get. In these conditions, participants typically react faster when the target appears in the gazed-at location compared with an uncued location, with gaze cues triggering both overt and covert automatic orienting responses (Frischen et al., 2007). Because gaze cues usually operate with other social cues in interactive contexts (e.g., head orientation, facial expression), how the sender’s facial expressions modulate the observer’s behav- ior during joint attention episodes has also been explored, but in focusing predominantly on attentional processes. However, some http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.12.006 0301-0511/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.