Fearful Faces Always Attract Gaze in the Absence of Awareness, but Neutral Faces Only in Combination with a Neutral Voice.

Fearful faces attract gaze even when they remain 'unseen', suggesting that the oculomotor system prioritizes threat-related facial information in the absence of visual awareness. As congruent voices enhance face perception, we tested whether emotional voices modulate the effects of suppressed fearful and neutral faces on observers' gaze. Using continuous flash suppression, we suppressed fearful and neutral faces from visual awareness and paired them with either a fearful voice, a neutral voice, or no voice. Concurrently, we tracked eye movements. We verified absence of visual awareness of the face using objective measures (chance performance in face localization and categorization tasks) and subjective measures (reports of zero face visibility). Eye tracking data from trials with successful suppression revealed distinct gaze patterns: Fearful faces attracted gaze regardless of vocal context, confirming that visual threats actively guide the eyes in the absence of awareness. By contrast, unseen neutral faces attracted gaze only when paired with a neutral voice, indicating a form of multisensory enhancement whereby emotionally matching sounds enhance weak visual signals to be prioritized by the oculomotor system.