Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2021 Apr;28(2):494-502. doi: 10.3758/s13423-020-01841-5. Epub 2020 Nov 10.
Another person's gaze direction is a rich source of social information, especially eyes gazing toward prominent or relevant objects. To guide attention to these important stimuli, visual search mechanisms may incorporate sophisticated coding of eye-gaze and its spatial relationship to other objects. Alternatively, any guidance might reflect the action of simple perceptual 'templates' tuned to visual features of socially relevant objects, or intrinsic salience of direct-gazing eyes for human vision. Previous findings that direct gaze (toward oneself) is prioritised over averted gaze do not distinguish between these accounts. To resolve this issue, we compared search for eyes gazing toward a prominent object versus gazing away, finding more efficient search for eyes 'gazing toward' the object. This effect was most clearly seen in target-present trials when gaze was task-relevant. Visual search mechanisms appear to specify gazer-object relations, a computational building-block of theory of mind.
他人的注视方向是丰富的社会信息来源，尤其是注视着显著或相关物体的眼睛。为了引导注意力关注这些重要的刺激，视觉搜索机制可能会对注视方向及其与其他物体的空间关系进行复杂的编码。或者，任何引导都可能反映出对社会相关物体的视觉特征或直接注视眼睛的内在显著性进行简单感知“模板”的作用。先前的研究发现，直接注视（朝向自己）优先于回避注视，这并没有区分这些解释。为了解决这个问题，我们比较了对朝向突出物体的注视和偏离的注视的搜索，发现对“朝向”物体的注视的搜索更有效。当注视与任务相关时，这种效果在目标存在的试验中最为明显。视觉搜索机制似乎指定了注视者与物体的关系，这是心理理论的计算构建块。
