188 Chapter 7 addition to the differences between parents’ and adolescents’ responses to eye contact with each other and unknown others, the overlap in their responses is highlighted. Parents’ and adolescents’ responses to gaze direction (i.e., direct versus averted gaze) Chapters 2 and 4 examined parents’ and adolescents’ neural and affective responses to eye contact with each other and unknown others using the same eye contact task. In line with our expectations, parents and adolescents reported a better mood and enhanced feelings of connectedness in response to a direct versus an averted gaze of others. Moreover, both adolescents and adults (parents) made more eye contact with others during direct versus averted gaze videos (assessed with eye tracking), indicating that a direct gaze attracts and maintains one’s attention more than an averted gaze. In contrast to the overlapping subjective and gaze responses between adults and adolescents, our findings identified differences in the neural responses to direct versus averted gaze of others. While adolescents exhibited enhanced neural responses to prolonged direct versus averted gaze in several brain regions previously linked to gaze direction, including the superior and inferior frontal gyri (Hietanen, 2018; Senju & Johnson, 2009), parents’ neural responses to prolonged eye contact with others were not moderated by the gaze direction of the targets. Despite the fact that parents’ and adolescents’ responses were not directly compared, this finding seems to suggest that adolescents attend more to whether or not another person is making eye contact compared to adults. Although further research is necessary to support this, this would corroborate previous research postulating enhanced sensitivity to social cues during adolescence (Davey et al., 2008; Morris et al., 2018; Nelson et al., 2016; Nelson et al., 2005; Somerville, 2013). In order to investigate to what extent these findings were specifically attributable to the prolonged duration of eye contact, parents’ and adolescents’ affective responses to prolonged eye contact in the task were compared with their similar responses to the short presentation of static pictures of the same targets, prior to the task. This comparison specifically yielded enhanced feelings of connectedness to prolonged eye contact videos versus the short presentation of pictures in both parents and adolescents and validates the prolonged eye contact stimuli used in the eye contact task. It is of note, however, that prolonged eye contact did not further enhance feelings of connectedness in response to eye contact between parents and adolescents compared to unknown others, most likely because these ratings were already high at baseline. Together, these findings indicate that eye contact is generally experienced as positive and socially rewarding, both in adults and adolescents, and that particularly prolonged eye contact contributes to building a connection with others. Moreover, feeling connected with others seem
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