Affect in the eyes: explicit and implicit evaluations

The present study investigated whether another individual’s gaze direction influences an observer’s affective responses. In Experiment 1, subjective self-ratings and an affective priming paradigm were employed to examine how participants explicitly and implicitly, respectively, evaluated the affective valence of direct gaze, averted gaze, and closed eyes. The explicit self-ratings showed that participants evaluated closed eyes more positively than direct gaze. However, the implicit priming task showed an inverse pattern of results indicating that direct gaze was automatically evaluated more positively than closed eyes were. Experiment 2 confirmed that the opposite patterns of results between the two tasks were not due to differences in presentation times of the gaze stimuli. The results provide evidence for automatic affective reactions to eye gaze and indicate a dissociation between explicit and implicit affective evaluations of eyes and gaze direction.     

Investigating joint attention mechanisms through spoken human-robot interaction

Referential gaze during situated language production and comprehension is tightly coupled with the unfolding speech stream ( [Griffin, 2001] , [Meyer et al., 1998] and [Tanenhaus et al., 1995] ). In a shared environment, utterance comprehension may further be facilitated when the listener can exploit the speaker’s focus of (visual) attention to anticipate, ground, and disambiguate spoken references. To investigate the dynamics of such gaze-following and its influence on utterance comprehension in a controlled manner, we use a human–robot interaction setting. Specifically, we hypothesize that referential gaze is interpreted as a cue to the speaker’s referential intentions which facilitates or disrupts reference resolution. Moreover, the use of a dynamic and yet extremely controlled gaze cue enables us to shed light on the simultaneous and incremental integration of the unfolding speech and gaze movement.We report evidence from two eye-tracking experiments in which participants saw videos of a robot looking at and describing objects in a scene. The results reveal a quantified benefit-disruption spectrum of gaze on utterance comprehension and, further, show that gaze is used, even during the initial movement phase, to restrict the spatial domain of potential referents. These findings more broadly suggest that people treat artificial agents similar to human agents and, thus, validate such a setting for further explorations of joint attention mechanisms.     

Is anyone looking at me? Direct gaze detection in children with and without autism

Atypical processing of eye contact is one of the significant characteristics of individuals with autism, but the mechanism underlying atypical direct gaze processing is still unclear. This study used a visual search paradigm to examine whether the facial context would affect direct gaze detection in children with autism. Participants were asked to detect target gazes presented among distracters with different gaze directions. The target gazes were either direct gaze or averted gaze, which were either presented alone (Experiment 1) or within facial context (Experiment 2). As with the typically developing children, the children with autism, were faster and more efficient to detect direct gaze than averted gaze, whether or not the eyes were presented alone or within faces. In addition, face inversion distorted efficient direct gaze detection in typically developing children, but not in children with autism. These results suggest that children with autism use featural information to detect direct gaze, whereas typically developing children use configural information to detect direct gaze.     

Coordinating cognition: the costs and benefits of shared gaze during collaborative search

Collaboration has its benefits, but coordination has its costs. We explored the potential for remotely located pairs of people to collaborate during visual search, using shared gaze and speech. Pairs of searchers wearing eyetrackers jointly performed an O-in-Qs search task alone, or in one of three collaboration conditions: shared gaze (with one searcher seeing a gaze-cursor indicating where the other was looking, and vice versa), shared-voice (by speaking to each other), and shared-gaze-plus-voice (by using both gaze-cursors and speech). Although collaborating pairs performed better than solitary searchers, search in the shared gaze condition was best of all: twice as fast and efficient as solitary search. People can successfully communicate and coordinate their searching labor using shared gaze alone. Strikingly, shared gaze search was even faster than shared-gaze-plus-voice search; speaking incurred substantial coordination costs. We conclude that shared gaze affords a highly efficient method of coordinating parallel activity in a time-critical spatial task.     

Crossmodal spatial attention shift produced by centrally presented gaze cues1

Abstract: Despite previous failures to identify visual‐upon‐auditory spatial‐cuing effects, recent studies have demonstrated that the abrupt onset of a lateralized visual stimulus triggers a shift of spatial attention in response to auditory judgment. Nevertheless, whether a centrally presented visual stimulus orients auditory attention remained unclear. The present study investigated whether centrally presented gaze cues trigger a reflexive shift of attention in response to auditory judgment. Participants fixated on a schematic face in which the eyes looked left or right (the cue). A target sound was then presented to the left or right of the cue. Participants judged the direction of the target as quickly as possible. Even though participants were told that the gaze direction did not predict the direction of the target, the response time was significantly faster when the gaze was in the target direction than when it was in the non‐target direction. These findings provide initial evidence for visual‐upon‐auditory spatial‐cuing effects produced by centrally presented cues, suggesting that a reflexive crossmodal shift of attention does occur with a centrally presented visual stimulus.     

眼动交互中对象排列方式对作业绩效的影响

由于人眼注视的方位能够表达用户的兴趣中心等信息,使得基于眼动的用户界面备受关注,同时眼动也成为攫取当前认知加工过程的一个窗口。本研究采用２排列方式×６目标项位置的被试内设计,主要考察了眼动人机界面中交互对象的不同空间排列方式及目标项位置对选择工效的影响,以期为设计和优化基于视线追踪的人机交互界面的布局提供心理学依据。所获得的主要结论如下：（1）在基于视线追踪的人机交互中,对象水平排列方式优于垂直排列方式;（2）不同对象排列方式影响目标项位置对作业时间的效应模式,对象水平排列时,作业时间随着目标位置右移而线性递增;垂直排列时,作业时间随目标位置下移以非线性方式递增;（3）目标项位置仅影响目标定位时间,目标激活时间不受对象空间排列方式和目标项位置的影响;（4）基于视线追踪的人机交互系统其对象排列方式以水平方式为宜     

Bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) hatchlings track the direction of human gaze

Gaze following allows individuals to detect the locus of attention of both conspecifics and other species. However, little is known about how this ability develops. We explored the emergence of bobwhite quail hatchlings’ ability to track human gaze by assessing their avoidance behavior in an open arena under five testing conditions: (1) a Direct Gaze condition, in which an experimenter looking down was positioned above one of two approach areas; (2) a Gaze Follow condition in which an experimenter, positioned equidistant between two approach areas, directed his/her gaze towards one of the areas; (3) a Masked Gaze Follow condition, in which the experimenter wore a mask during the Gaze Follow test; (4) a Deprived Face Experience condition, in which hatchlings were deprived of experience with human faces prior to the Gaze Follow test; and (5) a Control condition in which no experimenter was present during testing. Results revealed that hatchlings from the Direct Gaze condition preferred the non-gazed approach area at all ages tested. Hatchlings from the Gaze Follow condition preferred the non-gazed approach area at 48 and 72 h, but not at 24 h of age. In contrast, hatchlings from the Masked Gaze Follow, Deprived Face and Control conditions did not prefer either approach area at any age tested. These results indicate that experience with human faces plays a key role in the rapid emergence of gaze following behavior in bobwhite quail hatchlings.     

Now you see me,now you don't: evidence that chimpanzees understand the role of the eyes in attention

Chimpanzees appear to understand something about the attentional states of others; in the present experiment, we investigated whether they understand that the attentional state of a human is based on eye gaze. In all, 116 adult chimpanzees were offered food by an experimenter who engaged in one of the four experimental manipulations: eyes closed, eyes open, hand over eyes, and hand over mouth. The communicative behavior of the chimpanzees was observed. More visible behaviors were produced when the experimenter's eyes were visible than when the experimenter's eyes were not visible. More vocalizations were produced when the experimenter's eyes were closed than when they were open, but there were no differences in other attention getting behaviors. There was no effect of age or rearing history. The results suggest that chimpanzees use the presence of the eyes as a cue that their visual gestures will be effective.     

Maternal attitudes during pregnancy predict mother-infant physical proximity six months after birth

The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument for assessing maternal attitudes. Three photographs representing infants or mother-infant dyads were presented to 26 mothers in the second half of pregnancy and six months after birth. Nine mothers were clinical cases, seventeen mothers were nonpathological controls. Thirty-three semantic categories were used to code the mothers' responses to the pictures. Mothers' responses were coded independently by two researchers. The factor analysis of the codes yielded an ‘attraction to, vs rejection of, children’ factor. Compared with the control group, the mean factor score of the clinical group was significantly lower, i. e. reflected less attraction (p < 0.01). To study the relation between the attraction factor and the physical proximity of mothers and infants, 21 of these mother-infant dyads were videotaped in a semi-structured play interaction six months after birth. Recordings were coded independently by two researchers for various indices of proximity (spatial proximity, kisses, embraces, touches). The factor analysis of the codes yielded a factor contrasting distant vs close and tender interaction. A significant correlation was found between the attraction scores of pregnant women and the proximity scores of mother-infant interaction (r = 0.46; p < 0.05). These results suggest that this instrument is useful in assessing maternal attitudes of psychiatrically disturbed pregnant women and that maternal attitudes of pregnant women are significant predictors of physical proximity in motherinfant interaction at the end of the first semester.     

“Hey mom, look at me!”

The degree to which infant and maternal characteristics were related to maternal psychological distress and play competence was examined in 40 mother preterm and full-term dyads. Measures of maternal psychological distress, self-efficacy, infant temperament, and mother-infant interaction in a play situation, were obtained at 4 months corrected for prematurity. Results revealed that maternal self-efficacy was the strongest correlate of maternal psychological distress but was not related to maternal play competence. Interaction effects for unadaptable temperament and infant behavioral involvement were found in the regressions predicting both maternal psychological distress and maternal play competence. Mothers of more adaptable and less behaviorally involved infants reported greater psychological distress and exhibited greater play competence than mothers of more adaptable and involved infants. The results suggest that a lack of concordance between mothers' perceptions of their infants' behavior and actual behavioral experiences adversely affects mothers' affect and the quality of their play interactions.