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Hack 97. Look Where I'm Looking
We are innately programmed to follow other people's eye gaze to see what they are looking at. It's so deeply ingrained that even cartoon eyes can interfere with our mental processing of direction. Eyes are special. They're part of a two-way sense. Wherever I look, you can tell what I'm looking at. You can tell if I'm paying attention to you or not, as well as hazarding a good guess as to what I'm really thinking about. Following gaze isn't a learned behavior. As far as the brain's concerned, gaze direction is a first-class citizen of the real world, as important as location. In the case of location, the Simon Effect [Hack #56] demonstrates that we have a tendency to react to a prompt in the same direction as that stimulus. This hack shows that we interpret gaze direction in much the same way as location: a cartoon pair of eyes looking in one direction has the same effect. 10.6.1. In ActionA team at the University of Padua in Italy constructed an experiment to see the effect of gaze.1 They drew a pair of cartoon eyesjust two ovals with a colored oval (the iris) within each, as shown in Figure 10-5. The irises were colored either blue or green, and the cartoon could be looking either straight ahead or to one of the sides. Figure 10-5. Cartoon eyes similar to the ones used in the experiment: show this page to someone and watch what her eyes dosee if you can catch her just flicking off to the right as the cartoon eyes trigger her automatic gaze-following routinePeople taking part in the experiment had to report the color of the irises, hitting a button on the left for blue and on the right for green. The apparent gaze direction wasn't important at all. Despite that, it was faster to hit the button for green on the right when the eyes were looking the same way (to the right) and slower when they were looking the other way. The same held true for blue and the eyes looking left. Thinking this might be nothing to do with the ovals looking like eyes, to investigate further, the team put together another task. Instead of ovals, the cartoon "eyes" were squares, with square "irises" in each, and looked much less like eyes (as shown in Figure 10-6). And sure enough, the significant reaction time difference (between gaze pointing in the same direction as the response key and in the opposite direction) went away. Figure 10-6. Square "eyes" similar to the ones used in the experiment: we don't follow the gaze of robot eyes
10.6.2. How It WorksEssentially, this experiment shares a mechanism with the Simon Effect [Hack #56] . Given that the brain translates gaze direction into location, the same effect gets triggered: if attention has already been directed to the left because of the stimulus, it takes a very short time more to make a response on the right. It makes sense that we treat gaze with such respect. If someone's looking at us, it usually means that some kind of interaction, for good or ill, is in motion. And if there are a few people looking at the same place, they've probably spotted something you should know about. Gaze is physically so tiny, but figures large in our social world. Just think how it feels to make eye contact with a stranger (sometimes good, sometimes embarrassing) or how difficult it is to have a conversation with someone looking elsewhere. If you doubt this, try repeatedly glancing over somebody's shoulder while you're talking with him, and see how long it takes him to crossly ask you what you're up to or glance over his shoulder to see what you're looking at.
This deep gaze perception is also sometimes referred to as shared, or joint, attention. The use of two people paying attention to the same object is most obvious for infants. When infants are learning, they need to be able to make associations between objects, words, actions, and so on. If there were no way to point or direct an infant's attention, it'd be next to impossible to teach her anything. At about 12-18 months, children follow eye gaze: they can observe your eyes, tell what you're looking at, and look over there instead. It's this automatic mechanism of joint attention that is used in making a shared understanding of the world.3
Shared attention is one thing that infants use as a springboard to develop an understanding of other minds, not just the world of objects. Children with autismindividuals with an impaired understanding of other people's intentionsdon't follow gaze automatically as other children do. 10.6.3. In Real LifeThe effortless, rapid, almost unconscious encoding of gaze direction makes it an ideal social signal, which, of course, leaves it open for abuse. Spot how many advertisements have a large face with eyes directed exactly at what they want you to read. 10.6.4. End Notes
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