scholarly journals Decoding of the other’s focus of attention by a temporal cortex module

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Ramezanpour ◽  
P. Thier
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Flexible Linkage

AbstractFaces attract the observer’s attention towards objects and locations of interest for the other, thereby allowing the two agents to establish joint attention. Previous work has delineated a network of cortical “patches” in the macaque cortex, processing faces, eventually also extracting information on the other’s gaze direction. Yet, the neural mechanism that links information on gaze direction, guiding the observer’s attention to the relevant object has remained elusive. Here we present electrophysiological evidence for the existence of a distinct “gaze-following patch (GFP)” with neurons that establish this linkage in a highly flexible manner. The other’s gaze and the object, singled out by the gaze, are linked only if this linkage is pertinent within the prevailing social context. The properties of these neurons establish the GFP as a key switch in controlling social interactions based on the other’s gaze.One Sentence SummaryNeurons in a “gaze-following patch” in the posterior temporal cortex orchestrate the flexible linkage between the other’s gaze and objects of interest to both, the other and the observer.

scholarly journals Decoding of the other’s focus of attention by a temporal cortex module

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (5) ◽  
pp. 2663-2670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamidreza Ramezanpour ◽  
Peter Thier
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Joint Attention ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Neural Mechanism ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
The Gaze

Faces attract the observer’s attention toward objects and locations of interest for the other, thereby allowing the two agents to establish joint attention. Previous work has delineated a network of cortical “patches” in the macaque cortex, processing faces, eventually also extracting information on the other’s gaze direction. Yet, the neural mechanism that links information on gaze direction, guiding the observer’s attention to the relevant object, has remained elusive. Here we present electrophysiological evidence for the existence of a distinct “gaze-following patch” (GFP) with neurons that establish this linkage in a highly flexible manner. The other’s gaze and the object, singled out by the gaze, are linked only if this linkage is pertinent within the prevailing social context. The properties of these neurons establish the GFP as a key switch in controlling social interactions based on the other’s gaze.

scholarly journals A naturalistic paradigm simulating gaze-based social interactions for the investigation of social agency

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 1044-1055
Author(s):  
Marie-Luise Brandi ◽  
Daniela Kaifel ◽  
Juha M. Lahnakoski ◽  
Leonhard Schilbach
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
Gaze Behavior ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Real Person

Abstract Sense of agency describes the experience of being the cause of one’s own actions and the resulting effects. In a social interaction, one’s actions may also have a perceivable effect on the actions of others. In this article, we refer to the experience of being responsible for the behavior of others as social agency, which has important implications for the success or failure of social interactions. Gaze-contingent eyetracking paradigms provide a useful tool to analyze social agency in an experimentally controlled manner, but the current methods are lacking in terms of their ecological validity. We applied this technique in a novel task using video stimuli of real gaze behavior to simulate a gaze-based social interaction. This enabled us to create the impression of a live interaction with another person while being able to manipulate the gaze contingency and congruency shown by the simulated interaction partner in a continuous manner. Behavioral data demonstrated that participants believed they were interacting with a real person and that systematic changes in the responsiveness of the simulated partner modulated the experience of social agency. More specifically, gaze contingency (temporal relatedness) and gaze congruency (gaze direction relative to the participant’s gaze) influenced the explicit sense of being responsible for the behavior of the other. In general, our study introduces a new naturalistic task to simulate gaze-based social interactions and demonstrates that it is suitable to studying the explicit experience of social agency.

Can infants use robot gaze for object learning?

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuko Okumura ◽  
Yasuhiro Kanakogi ◽  
Takayuki Kanda ◽  
Hiroshi Ishiguro ◽  
Shoji Itakura
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Humanoid Robot ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Gaze Behavior ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Object Learning ◽  
Verbal Signal ◽  
Infant Learning

Previous research has shown that although infants follow the gaze direction of robots, robot gaze does not facilitate infants’ learning for objects. The present study examined whether robot gaze affects infants’ object learning when the gaze behavior was accompanied by verbalizations. Twelve-month-old infants were shown videos in which a robot with accompanying verbalizations gazed at an object. The results showed that infants not only followed the robot’s gaze direction but also preferentially attended to the cued object when the ostensive verbal signal was present. Moreover, infants showed enhanced processing of the cued object when ostensive and referential verbal signals were increasingly present. These effects were not observed when mere nonverbal sound stimuli instead of verbalizations were added. Taken together, our findings indicate that robot gaze accompanying verbalizations facilitates infants’ object learning, suggesting that verbalizations are important in the design of robot agents from which infants can learn. Keywords: gaze following; humanoid robot; infant learning; verbalization; cognitive development

scholarly journals Theory of mind affects the interpretation of another person's focus of attention

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Dawson ◽  
Alan Kingstone ◽  
Tom Foulsham
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Computer System ◽  
Target Object ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
The Gaze

AbstractPeople are drawn to social, animate things more than inanimate objects. Previous research has also shown gaze following in humans, a process that has been linked to theory of mind (ToM). In three experiments, we investigated whether animacy and ToM are involved when making judgements about the location of a cursor in a scene. In Experiment 1, participants were told that this cursor represented the gaze of an observer and were asked to decide whether the observer was looking at a target object. This task is similar to that carried out by researchers manually coding eye-tracking data. The results showed that participants were biased to perceive the gaze cursor as directed towards animate objects (faces) compared to inanimate objects. In Experiments 2 and 3 we tested the role of ToM, by presenting the same scenes to new participants but now with the statement that the cursor was generated by a ‘random’ computer system or by a computer system designed to seek targets. The bias to report that the cursor was directed toward faces was abolished in Experiment 2, and minimised in Experiment 3. Together, the results indicate that people attach minds to the mere representation of an individual's gaze, and this attribution of mind influences what people believe an individual is looking at.

scholarly journals Embodied social robots trigger gaze following in real-time

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Wiese ◽  
Patrick Peter Weis ◽  
Daniel Lofaro
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Social Robots ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Shared Attention ◽  
Interaction Partners ◽  
Gaze Cues

In human-human interaction, we use information from gestures, facial expressions and gaze direction to make inferences about what interaction partners think, feel or intend to do next. Observing changes in gaze direction triggers shifts of attention to gazed-at locations and helps establish shared attention between gazer and observer - a prerequisite for more complex social skills like mentalizing, action understanding and joint action. The ability to follow others’ gaze develops early in life and being able to process gaze signals is a crucial milestone in human development. While human gaze signals are so essential for social interactions that we automatically follow them, it is unclear whether robot gaze cues are followed to similar degrees, and whether they have the ability to establish shared attention between human and robot. Furthermore, most studies on social attention in human-robot-interaction (HRI) use robot images and videos in controlled laboratory settings, which makes it necessary to determine whether gaze following can also be observed in social interactions with embodied robot platforms in real- time. In the current experiment, we use the humanoid robot Meka to examine whether gaze following can be induced in realistic interactions with social robots. The results indicate that Meka’s gaze cues were reliably followed, and that they were able to establish shared attention in HRI. Implications of this finding for social robotics are discussed.

scholarly journals Joint attention facilitates observed gaze direction discrimination

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-90
Author(s):  
S Gareth Edwards ◽  
Nathalie Seibert ◽  
Andrew P Bayliss
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Joint Attention ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Direction Discrimination

Efficiently judging where someone else is looking is important for social interactions, allowing us a window into their mental state by establishing joint attention. Previous work has shown that judging the gaze direction of a non-foveally presented face is facilitated when the eyes of that face are directed towards the centre of the scene. This finding has been interpreted as an example of the human bias for misattributing observed ambiguous gaze signals as self-directed eye-contact. To test this interpretation against an alternative hypothesis that the facilitation is instead driven by the establishment of joint attention, we conducted two experiments in which we varied the participants’ fixation location. In both experiments, we replicated the previous finding of facilitated gaze discrimination when the participants fixated centrally. However, this facilitation was abolished when participants fixated peripheral fixation crosses (Experiment 1) and reversed when participants fixated peripheral images of real-world objects (Experiment 2). Based on these data, we propose that the facilitation effect is consistent with the interpretation that gaze discrimination is facilitated when joint attention is established. This finding therefore extends previous work showing that engaging in joint attention facilitates a range of social cognitive processes.

scholarly journals Gaze Following in Ungulates: Domesticated and Non-domesticated Species Follow the Gaze of Both Humans and Conspecifics in an Experimental Context

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Schaffer ◽  
Alvaro L. Caicoya ◽  
Montserrat Colell ◽  
Ruben Holland ◽  
Conrad Ensenyat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Food Location ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Experimental Context ◽  
Individual Ability ◽  
The Individual

Gaze following is the ability to use others’ gaze to obtain information about the environment (e.g., food location, predators, and social interactions). As such, it may be highly adaptive in a variety of socio-ecological contexts, and thus be widespread across animal taxa. To date, gaze following has been mostly studied in primates, and partially in birds, but little is known on the gaze following abilities of other taxa and, especially, on the evolutionary pressures that led to their emergence. In this study, we used an experimental approach to test gaze following skills in a still understudied taxon, ungulates. Across four species (i.e., domestic goats and lamas, and non-domestic guanacos and mouflons), we assessed the individual ability to spontaneously follow the gaze of both conspecifics and human experimenters in different conditions. In line with our predictions, species followed the model’s gaze both with human and conspecific models, but more likely with the latter. Except for guanacos, all species showed gaze following significantly more in the experimental conditions (than in the control ones). Despite the relative low number of study subjects, our study provides the first experimental evidence of gaze following skills in non-domesticated ungulates, and contributes to understanding how gaze following skills are distributed in another taxon—an essential endeavor to identify the evolutionary pressures leading to the emergence of gaze following skills across taxa.

scholarly journals The evolutionary origins of primate scleral coloration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex S. Mearing ◽  
Judith M. Burkart ◽  
Jacob Dunn ◽  
Sally E. Street ◽  
Kathelijne Koops
Keyword(s):  
Generalized Least Squares ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Primate Species ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Lethal Aggression ◽  
Cooperative Behaviors

Primate gaze following behaviors are of great interest to evolutionary scientists studying social cognition. The ability of an organism to determine a conspecifics likely intentions from their gaze direction may confer an advantage to individuals in a social group. This advantage could be cooperative and/or competitive. Humans are unusual in possessing depigmented sclerae whereas most other extant primates, including the closely related chimpanzee, possess dark scleral pigment. The origins of divergent scleral morphologies are currently unclear, though human white sclerae are often assumed to underlie our hyper-cooperative behaviors. Here, we use phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) analyses with previously generated species-level scores of proactive prosociality, social tolerance (both n=15 primate species), and conspecific lethal aggression (n=108 primate species) to provide the first quantitative, comparative test of three complementary hypotheses. The cooperative eye and self-domestication explanations predict white sclerae to be associated with cooperative, rather than competitive, environments. The gaze camouflage hypothesis predicts that dark scleral pigment functions as gaze direction camouflage in competitive social environments. We show that white sclerae in primates are associated with increased cooperative behaviors whereas dark sclerae are associated with reduced cooperative behaviors and increased intra-specific lethal aggression. Our results lend support to all three hypotheses of scleral evolution, suggesting that primate scleral morphologies evolve in relation to variation in social environment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document