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The effect of non-communicative eye movements on joint attention
Caruana, Nathan Alhasan, Ayeh Wagner, Kirilee Kaplan, David M. Woolgar, Alexandra McArthur, Genevieve
Caruana, Nathan
Alhasan, Ayeh
Wagner, Kirilee
Kaplan, David M.
Woolgar, Alexandra
McArthur, Genevieve
Abstract
Eye movements provide important signals for joint attention. However, those eye movements that indicate bids for joint attention often occur among non-communicative eye movements. This study investigated the influence of these non-communicative eye movements on subsequent joint attention responsivity. Participants played an interactive game with an avatar which required both players to search for a visual target on a screen. The player who discovered the target used their eyes to initiate joint attention. We compared participants’ saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to the avatar’s joint attention bids when they were preceded by non-communicative eye movements that predicted the location of the target (Predictive Search), did not predict the location of the target (Random Search), and when there were no non-communicative eye gaze movements prior to joint attention (No Search). We also included a control condition in which participants completed the same task, but responded to a dynamic arrow stimulus instead of the avatar’s eye movements. For both eye and arrow conditions, participants had slower SRTs in Random Search trials than No Search and Predictive Search trials. However, these effects were smaller for eyes than for arrows. These data suggest that joint attention responsivity for eyes is relatively stable to the presence and predictability of spatial information conveyed by non-communicative gaze. Contrastingly, random sequences of dynamic arrows had a much more disruptive impact on subsequent responsivity compared with predictive arrow sequences. This may reflect specialised social mechanisms and expertise for selectively responding to communicative eye gaze cues during dynamic interactions, which is likely facilitated by the integration of ostensive eye contact cues.
Keywords
joint attention, eye tracking, eye gaze, social interaction, social cognition
Date
2020
Type
Journal article
Journal
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Book
Volume
73
Issue
12
Page Range
2389-2402
Article Number
ACU Department
Faculty of Education and Arts
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open