Computing perceived gaze direction

I will be presenting some experiments from my PhD thesis, in which I examined how the perception of another’s gaze direction is computed by the human observer, and in turn, how we can compute the direction of gaze that is perceived by the observer. The perception of gaze direction involves the integration of a large variety of visual cues, such as the spatial offset of the pupil, the contrast polarity within the eye region, the orientation of the head, and more indirectly, the emotional expression of the face, and the surrounding context the face is presented within. The experimental manipulation of these cues alter the way observers respond to gaze stimuli, however, little attention has been paid to isolating the perceptual influence of these cues from the possibility that these cues may also alter the observer’s willingness to make a certain response. By carefully excluding the possibility of response bias, we find evidence that observers may integrate information for gaze direction in a flexible manner, according to the availability of the information, and the situational demands of the observer.