Look Me in the Eyes: Mechanisms Underlying the Eye Contact Effect

Eye contact with an experimenter enhances participants’ performance in certain cognitive tasks. The eye contact effect has been demonstrated in studies with infants and adults. However, this effect may be modulated by individual and contextual factors. In this review, I focus on several mechanisms that may account for the enhancement of cognitive processing by eye contact: an early preparedness to process gaze, an informative signal value of direct gaze, and responses elicited by eye contact (i.e., increased arousal, positive emotions, and approach motivation). We need developmental studies to determine how these mechanisms change over time.