Saito Toshiki, Nouchi Rui, Kinjo Hikari, Kawashima Ryuta
Division of Advanced Brain Science, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku UniversitySendai, Japan.
Creative Interdisciplinary Research Division, Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Science (FRIS), Tohoku UniversitySendai, Japan.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2017 Aug 25;9:285. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00285. eCollection 2017.
Individuals' gaze behavior reflects the choice they will ultimately make. For example, people confronting a choice among multiple stimuli tend to look longer at stimuli that are subsequently chosen than at other stimuli. This tendency, called , is a key aspect of visual decision-making. Nevertheless, no study has examined the generality of the gaze bias effect in older adults. Here, we used a two-alternative forced-choice task (2AFC) to compare the gaze behavior reflective of different stages of decision processes demonstrated by younger and older adults. Participants who had viewed two faces were instructed to choose the one that they liked/disliked or the one that they judged to be more/less similar to their own face. Their eye movements were tracked while they chose. The results show that the gaze bias effect occurred during the remaining time in both age groups irrespective of the decision type. However, no gaze bias effect was observed for the preference judgment during the first dwell time. Our study demonstrated that the gaze bias during the remaining time occurred regardless of decision-making task and age. Further study using diverse participants, such as clinic patients or infants, may help to generalize the gaze bias effect and to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the gaze bias.
个体的注视行为反映了他们最终会做出的选择。例如，面对多种刺激进行选择时，人们往往会在随后被选中的刺激上注视的时间比在其他刺激上更长。这种被称为注视偏差效应的倾向是视觉决策的一个关键方面。然而，尚无研究考察老年人中注视偏差效应的普遍性。在此，我们使用二选一强制选择任务（2AFC）来比较年轻人和老年人在决策过程不同阶段所表现出的反映注视行为的差异。观看两张面孔的参与者被要求选择他们喜欢/不喜欢的那张，或者他们认为与自己面孔更相似/不太相似的那张。在他们做出选择时追踪其眼球运动。结果表明，无论决策类型如何，两个年龄组在剩余时间内均出现了注视偏差效应。然而，在首次注视时间内，偏好判断未观察到注视偏差效应。我们的研究表明，剩余时间内的注视偏差效应不受决策任务和年龄的影响。使用不同参与者（如临床患者或婴儿）进行的进一步研究可能有助于推广注视偏差效应，并阐明注视偏差背后的机制。
