I'll Walk This Way: Eyes Reveal the Direction of Locomotion and Make Passersby Look and Go the Other Way

Authors: Nummenmaa, Lauri; Hyönä, Jukka¹; Hietanen, Jari K.²

Source: Psychological Science, Volume 20, Number 12, December 2009 , pp. 1454-1458(5)

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Abstract:

This study shows that humans (a) infer other people's movement trajectories from their gaze direction and (b) use this information to guide their own visual scanning of the environment and plan their own movement. In two eye-tracking experiments, participants viewed an animated character walking directly toward them on a street. The character looked constantly to the left or to the right (Experiment 1) or suddenly shifted his gaze from direct to the left or to the right (Experiment 2). Participants had to decide on which side they would skirt the character. They shifted their gaze toward the direction in which the character was not gazing, that is, away from his gaze, and chose to skirt him on that side. Gaze following is not always an obligatory social reflex; social-cognitive evaluations of gaze direction can lead to reversed gaze-following behavior.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02464.x

Affiliations: 1: University of Turku 2: University of Tampere

Publication date: 2009-12-01