Caruana Nathan, Hechler Friederike Charlotte, Cross Emily S, Tidoni Emmanuele
Flinders University Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
College of Education Psychology and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
R Soc Open Sci. 2025 Jul 16;12(7):250277. doi: 10.1098/rsos.250277. eCollection 2025 Jul.
This study examined the perceptual dynamics that influence the evaluation of eye contact as a communicative display. Participants ( = 137) completed a task where they decided if agents were inspecting or requesting one of three objects. Each agent shifted its gaze three times per trial, with the presence, frequency and sequence of eye contact displays manipulated across six conditions. We found significant differences between all gaze conditions. Participants were most likely, and fastest, to perceive a request when eye contact occurred between two averted gaze shifts towards the same object. Findings suggest that the relative temporal context of eye contact and averted gaze, rather than eye contact frequency or recency, shapes its communicative potency. Commensurate effects were observed when participants completed the task with agents that appeared as humans or a humanoid robot, indicating that gaze evaluations are broadly tuned across a range of social stimuli. Our findings advance the field of gaze perception research beyond paradigms that examine singular, salient and static gaze cues and inform how signals of communicative intent can be optimally engineered in the gaze behaviours of artificial agents (e.g. robots) to promote natural and intuitive social interactions.
本研究考察了影响将目光接触评估为一种交流展示的感知动态。参与者（(n = 137)）完成了一项任务，即判断主体是在检查还是请求三个物体中的一个。每个主体在每次试验中转移其目光三次，目光接触展示的存在、频率和顺序在六种条件下进行了操控。我们发现在所有目光条件之间存在显著差异。当在两次转向同一物体的回避目光转移之间发生目光接触时，参与者最有可能且最快地察觉到请求。研究结果表明，目光接触和回避目光的相对时间背景，而非目光接触频率或近期性，塑造了其交流效力。当参与者与呈现为人类或类人机器人的主体完成任务时，观察到了相应的效果，这表明目光评估在一系列社会刺激中具有广泛的适应性。我们的研究结果将目光感知研究领域从考察单一、显著和静态目光线索的范式向前推进，并为如何在人工主体（如机器人）的目光行为中优化设计交流意图信号以促进自然和直观的社会互动提供了信息。
