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Eye gaze is not coded by cardinal mechanisms alone |
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| Authors: | Dominic J Cheleski Isabelle Mareschal Andrew J Calder Colin W G Clifford |
| Institution: | 1.School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Griffith Taylor Building, New South Wales 2006, Australia;2.Australian Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia;3.School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia;4.Biological and Experimental Psychology, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK;5.MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit, Cambridge, UK |
| Abstract: | Gaze is an important social cue in regulating human and non-human interactions. In this study, we employed an adaptation paradigm to examine the mechanisms underlying the perception of another''s gaze. Previous research has shown that the interleaved presentation of leftwards and rightwards gazing adaptor stimuli results in observers judging a wider range of gaze deviations as being direct. We applied a similar paradigm to examine how human observers encode oblique (e.g. upwards and to the left) directions of gaze. We presented observers with interleaved gaze adaptors and examined whether adaptation differed between congruent (adaptor and test along same axis) and incongruent conditions. We find greater adaptation in congruent conditions along cardinal (horizontal and vertical) and non-cardinal (oblique) directions suggesting gaze is not coded alone by cardinal mechanisms. Our results suggest that the functional aspects of gaze processing might parallel that of basic visual features such as orientation. |
| Keywords: | gaze adaptation cardinal non-cardinal |