Do the upright eyes have it?

Eye contact is crucial for social communication. A perceived direct gaze facilitates detection, whereas face inversion diminishes this facilitative effect (Senju, Hasegawa, & Tojo, 2005). In the present study, we adopted a visual search paradigm to investigate why a direct gaze facilitates detection in an upright face, but not in an upside-down face. Upright eyes were found to facilitate detection even when other parts of the face were inverted or absent, whereas inverted eyes had no effect on search performance. A critical role for the morphological information of upright eyes, which can be distorted by "eye inversion," in direct gaze processing is suggested.