L18 - Eye Gaze Flashcards
What can eye gaze tell us about another person
- Signals where someone is looking, where they are directing attention
- Direct gaze can signal approach - interest in positive/neg interaction
- When someone looks away = attention shifted to something else in env, could be important to look there too
- Gaze carries info about someone’s mental state e.g thoughts, intentions etc.
What is gaze behaviour in development?
- Joint attention: ability to use gesture and eye contact to coordinate attention with another person to share experience
- Humans have a strong tendency to orient attention to where other people are looking
- Develops very early and may act as precursor to theory of mind
Describe direct gaze?
- Babies as young as 4 days prefer direct gaze = more meaningful gaze
- Increase in direct gaze when trying to perceptive/deceptive
- Increase in direct gaze when making friends
- Speakers making eye contact rated more pleasant and less nervous
- Increases attractiveness and likability ratings
- Can be a sign of aggression, dominance and threat
Describe averted gaze?
- Signals attention oriented elsewhere
- Important cue for information in environment
- Disinterest
- Deceptive/untrustworthy
Why are humans good at eye gaze direction?
- We have a large difference in white of iris and colour of eye = easier to see where they are looking
- Reverse polarity for gaze images: people make a lot of errors so brighter colour makes it more accurate
What is the effect of eye gaze on facial expression?
Presented ppt with diff emotions on faces - either direct or averted gazes
- When measuring RT perceiving emotions as anger/fear
- Quicker to label anger with direct gaze, and averted for fear
- Anger is approach signal and direct gaze is approach and vice versa = showed the same pattern with happiness/sadness
What is the effect of facial expression on eye gaze?
- Ppts were presented with faces with diff emotions and had to categorise face as direct/averted
- Angry faces perceived at looking at the observer
What was a study looking at gaze cueing?
1) When we don’t want to, we will orient our attention to where someone else is looking
- Have a fixation with direct gaze, then averted gaze with a target either on same side or not = if eye gaze is on the same side = people will be faster to identify target
2) gaze cueing paradigm and ppts had to discriminate whether letter T/L presented in periphery in different onset times
- Strong cueing effect at longer times
- Then told ppts that gaze would give you the wrong info = still get cueing effects at shorter timings but at longer times it becomes under conscious control
- Averted cues trigger automatic shift of attention, even when observer trying to ignore cue
What is the top-down modulation of gaze cueing?
- Cueing paradigm: model presenting the gaze cues was wearing two types of goggles: either transparent or opaque = no diff in stimuli except what observer believes
- Gaze cueing is seen at short times, and a bigger effect when they can see through the googles vs when it is opaque
- Mental state attribution affects rapid, reflexive components of gaze following
What are the brain mechanisms in processing eye gaze?
1) Studies in macaques
- When recorded in superior temporal sulcus, diff cells responded to gaze direction, and head orientation
- Subset of cells sensitive to both, and direction of attention
2) In humans, used adaptation paradigm with diff gaze direction
- Found cells in anterior temporal lobes that were sensitive to gaze orientation = when repeated, reduced activity
What is the social context of eye gaze? (Role of pSTS)
- pSTS also involved in gaze processing, but not as a function of gaze direction
- pSTS seems involved when different gaze directions signal different social intentions
- pSTS responded more to eye gaze that was incongruent with participants’ expectations
What are other brain regions involved in gaze processing?
Amygdala:
- Greater amygdala response for direct relative to averted gaze
- Patient S.M. (amygdala lesions) does not look at eyes in social interaction
mPFC:
- Participants scanned while hearing voices calling their name or someone else’s name, and scanned while viewing direct or averted gaze
- mPFC important for self-relevant communicative signals
What are the brain networks for processing eye gaze?
- Consist of anterior STS: gaze as an env cue: e.g gaze direction and orienting of spatial attention, and extracts social meaning
- Other network is regions that help extract meaningful mental state
What is the link between autism and eye gaze?
- Reduced eye contact
- Absence of joint attention
What was a study looking at eye gaze and autism?
- Suggests that autistic individuals have no difficulty detecting direction of gaze but inferring mental states to eye gaze
- Presented cartoon faces surrounded by different sweets
- Asked children what sweet the child wanted, all children except those with autism said the correct answer
- Supports the inference problem in those with autism = do not associate looking in a direction as wanting that sweet
