Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Vision research |
| Volume | 182 |
| Early online date | 4 Feb 2021 |
| Publication status | Published - May 2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Abstract
While passive social information (e.g. pictures of people) routinely draws one's eyes, our willingness to look at live others is more nuanced. People tend not to stare at strangers and will modify their gaze behaviour to avoid sending undesirable social signals; yet they often continue to monitor others covertly “out of the corner of their eyes.” What this means for looks that are being made near to live others is unknown. Will the eyes be drawn towards the other person, or pushed away? We evaluate changes in two elements of gaze control: image-independent principles guiding how people look (e.g. biases to make eye movements along the cardinal directions) and image-dependent principles guiding what people look at (e.g. a preference for meaningful content within a scene). Participants were asked to freely view semantically unstructured (fractals) and semantically structured (rotated landscape) images, half of which were located in the space near to a live other. We found that eye movements were horizontally displaced away from a visible other starting at 1032 ms after stimulus onset when fractals but not landscapes were viewed. We suggest that the avoidance of looking towards live others extends to the near space around them, at least in the absence of semantically meaningful gaze targets.
Keywords
- Fractal, Gaze control, Interpersonal, Landscape, Social attention, Social presence
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine(all)
- Ophthalmology
- Neuroscience(all)
- Sensory Systems
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In: Vision research, Vol. 182, 05.2021.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Social modulation of on-screen looking behaviour
AU - Dosso, Jill A.
AU - Anderson, Nicola C.
AU - Wahn, Basil
AU - Choi, Gini S.J.
AU - Kingstone, Alan
N1 - Funding information: The authors thank Katherine Nga Tsit Chow, George Molina, and Levana Fernadi for assistance in data collection and coding. This work was supported by grants to AK from Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council ( NSERC ) ( RGPIN-2016-04319 ) and its Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) ( 435-2013-2200 ). The authors thank Katherine Nga Tsit Chow, George Molina, and Levana Fernadi for assistance in data collection and coding. This work was supported by grants to AK from Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) (RGPIN-2016-04319) and its Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) (435-2013-2200).
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - While passive social information (e.g. pictures of people) routinely draws one's eyes, our willingness to look at live others is more nuanced. People tend not to stare at strangers and will modify their gaze behaviour to avoid sending undesirable social signals; yet they often continue to monitor others covertly “out of the corner of their eyes.” What this means for looks that are being made near to live others is unknown. Will the eyes be drawn towards the other person, or pushed away? We evaluate changes in two elements of gaze control: image-independent principles guiding how people look (e.g. biases to make eye movements along the cardinal directions) and image-dependent principles guiding what people look at (e.g. a preference for meaningful content within a scene). Participants were asked to freely view semantically unstructured (fractals) and semantically structured (rotated landscape) images, half of which were located in the space near to a live other. We found that eye movements were horizontally displaced away from a visible other starting at 1032 ms after stimulus onset when fractals but not landscapes were viewed. We suggest that the avoidance of looking towards live others extends to the near space around them, at least in the absence of semantically meaningful gaze targets.
AB - While passive social information (e.g. pictures of people) routinely draws one's eyes, our willingness to look at live others is more nuanced. People tend not to stare at strangers and will modify their gaze behaviour to avoid sending undesirable social signals; yet they often continue to monitor others covertly “out of the corner of their eyes.” What this means for looks that are being made near to live others is unknown. Will the eyes be drawn towards the other person, or pushed away? We evaluate changes in two elements of gaze control: image-independent principles guiding how people look (e.g. biases to make eye movements along the cardinal directions) and image-dependent principles guiding what people look at (e.g. a preference for meaningful content within a scene). Participants were asked to freely view semantically unstructured (fractals) and semantically structured (rotated landscape) images, half of which were located in the space near to a live other. We found that eye movements were horizontally displaced away from a visible other starting at 1032 ms after stimulus onset when fractals but not landscapes were viewed. We suggest that the avoidance of looking towards live others extends to the near space around them, at least in the absence of semantically meaningful gaze targets.
KW - Fractal
KW - Gaze control
KW - Interpersonal
KW - Landscape
KW - Social attention
KW - Social presence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100426971&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.visres.2020.12.009
DO - 10.1016/j.visres.2020.12.009
M3 - Article
C2 - 33550023
AN - SCOPUS:85100426971
VL - 182
JO - Vision research
JF - Vision research
SN - 0042-6989
ER -