Attentional Prioritisation of Another's Direct Gaze: Stimulus, Template, and Expectation

Another’s direct gaze, a crucial social cue, is presumed to be attentionally prioritised even in the presence of other gazes. Consistent with this notion is the stare in the crowd effect (SITCE) — the finding that direct gazing eyes are often detected faster and more efficiently from among averted gazing ones than vice versa. An investigation of top-down influences on the SITCE, through pre-cues, revealed two dissociable effects, both in favour of direct gaze – one scaling with set size, unaffected by templates, and likely reflecting noisy parallel processing (Process 1), and the other, independent of set size, selectively applying prior knowledge to speed overall responses (Process 2) – taken as evidence for an obligatory direct gaze prior. Examination of initial saccade patterns to target gaze within this paradigm suggested ‘odd-one-out’ direct gaze does not attract exogenous attention – an averted gaze bias was revealed when task conditions highlighted gaze uniqueness, consistent with Predictive Coding models – rather, task goals may determine how expectation influences perception. Investigation of the mechanism underpinning gaze prioritisation in visual search found evidence for sophisticated socio-cognitive processing rather than simple feature-based templates — search for target eyes gazing at a salient object was more efficient than for eyes gazing away, the effect obscured by a pre-cue to target gaze. Finally, an exploration of whether autistic traits influence SITCE task performance revealed a similar tendency for individuals with higher autistic traits to preferentially select direct gaze targets over averted, both with and without top-down cues guiding attention, suggesting a propensity to apply direct gaze priors at least within the particular context of the SITCE. To conclude, findings from the present thesis reveal that a complex interplay of factors guides attentional prioritisation of direct gaze.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Ramamoorthy, Nayantara

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Davis, Gregory

• gaze perception
• visual search
• attentional prioritisation

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/c8e6b633-67ab-4907-903b-171619a69a98/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.58263

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/311171