“Are you looking at me?” How children’s gaze judgments improve with age.

Mareschal, Isabelle; Otsuka, Yumiko; Clifford, Colin W. G.; Mareschal, Denis

doi:10.1037/dev0000100

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(78 reference statements)

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“…Direct gaze is detected faster than averted gaze (Senju, Kikuchi, Hasegawa, Tojo, & Osanai, ), it uniquely captures visual attention (Senju & Hasegawa, ), and people are biased to perceive direct gaze (Mareschal, Calder, & Clifford, ; Yumiko Otsuka et al, ). Infants look preferentially at faces with direct eye gaze (Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, ), and even though core mechanisms of eye gaze perception are intact by around 6–8 years‐of‐age (Vida & Maurer, ), they tend to be refined throughout childhood (Doherty, Anderson, & Howieson, ; Mareschal, Otsuka, Clifford, & Mareschal, ). Atypical development of these mechanisms has important consequences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Flexible weighting across changing circumstances makes sense, but how variable might this process be on an individual basis? A few researchers have speculated that weighting of head and eye cues may vary across individuals or among special populations (Mareschal et al, ; Otsuka et al, ). Yet to our knowledge this hypothesis has never been tested.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, vision is coarse in early childhood, with temporal and spatial perception developing up to the age of seven (Ellemberg, Lewis, Liu, & Maurer, ; Farzin, Rivera, & Whitney, , ). Second, although holistic perception of faces (presumably a related process; Nakato et al, ) is at least in place at the age of six (Markham & Adams, ), perception of global visual features develops gradually throughout childhood (Dukette & Stiles, ; Harrison & Stiles, ; Narasimhan & Giaschi, ; Parrish, Giaschi, Boden, & Dougherty, ), even into adulthood (Scherf, Berhmann, Kimchi, & Luna, ), and processing of eye gaze develops at least until the age of 11 (Mareschal et al, ). Testing ages 7–15 thus allowed us to measure emergent gaze perception during a potentially sensitive developmental window among children whose more basic visual mechanisms were presumably in place.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Perceiving gaze from head and eye rotations: An integrative challenge for children and adults

Mihalache

Feng

Askari

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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Gaze is an emergent visual feature. A person's gaze direction is perceived not just based on the rotation of their eyes, but also their head. At least among adults, this integrative process appears to be flexible such that one feature can be weighted more heavily than the other depending on the circumstances. Yet it is unclear how this weighting might vary across individuals or across development. When children engage emergent gaze, do they prioritize cues from the head and eyes similarly to adults? Is the perception of gaze among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) emergent, or is it reliant on a single feature? Sixty adults (M = 29.86 years‐of‐age), thirty‐seven typically developing children and adolescents (M = 9.3 years‐of‐age; range = 7–15), and eighteen children with ASD (M = 9.72 years‐of‐age; range = 7–15) viewed faces with leftward, rightward, or direct head rotations in conjunction with leftward or rightward pupil rotations, and then indicated whether the face was looking leftward or rightward. All individuals, across development and ASD status, used head rotation to infer gaze direction, albeit with some individual differences. However, the use of pupil rotation was heavily dependent on age. Finally, children with ASD used pupil rotation significantly less than typically developing (TD) children when inferring gaze direction, even after accounting for age. Our approach provides a novel framework for understanding individual and group differences in gaze as it is actually perceived—as an emergent feature. Furthermore, this study begins to address an important gap in ASD literature, taking the first look at emergent gaze perception in this population.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceiving gaze from head and eye rotations: An integrative challenge for children and adults

Mihalache

Feng

Askari

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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“…Our findings contribute to the field with a systematic investigation of holistic ensemble perception using Mooney faces. In the domain of ensemble face perception, many prior studies demonstrate that the visual system rapidly aggregates characteristics from crowds of faces including crowd threat (Alt et al, 2019), crowd emotion (Haberman & Whitney, 2007, gaze direction (Mareschal, Otsuka, Clifford, & Mareschal, 2016;, and head rotation direction (Florey, Clifford, Dakin, & Mareschal, 2016;Florey et al, 2017). Yet observers may rely on feature-based visual analysis to extract summary statistics of multiple faces.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holistic ensemble perception

Han

Leib

Chen

et al. 2020

Atten Percept Psychophys

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In a glance, observers can evaluate gist characteristics from crowds of faces, such as the average emotional tenor or the average family resemblance. Prior research suggests that high-level ensemble percepts rely on holistic and viewpoint-invariant information. However, it is also possible that feature-based analysis was sufficient to yield successful ensemble percepts in many situations. To confirm that ensemble percepts can be extracted holistically, we asked observers to report the average emotional valence of Mooney face crowds. Mooney faces are two-tone, shadow-defined images that cannot be recognized in a part-based manner. To recognize features in a Mooney face, one must first recognize the image as a face by processing it holistically. Across experiments, we demonstrated that observers successfully extracted the average emotional valence from crowds that were spatially distributed or viewed in a rapid temporal sequence. In a subsequent set of experiments, we maximized holistic processing by including only those Mooney faces that were difficult to recognize when inverted. Under these conditions, participants remained highly sensitive to the average emotional valence of Mooney face crowds. Taken together, these experiments provide evidence that ensemble perception can operate selectively on holistic representations of human faces, even when feature-based information is not readily available.

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“…In order to quantify how sensitive we are to another person’s gaze, Gamer and Hecht (2007) measured the range of gaze deviations that an individual perceives as being directed toward them [often referred to as the cone of direct gaze (CoDG)]. This CoDG measure is approximately 8–10° in adults (e.g., Gamer and Hecht, 2007; Mareschal et al, 2013b; Florey et al, 2015), and is wider in children (Vida and Maurer, 2012; Mareschal et al, 2016). Recently Mareschal et al (2013b) developed a CoDG model that quantifies the changes in gaze perception performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Emotional Expression and Eccentricity on Gaze Perception

2019

Self Cite

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The perception of another’s gaze direction and facial expression complements verbal communication and modulates how we interact with other people. However, our perception of these two cues is not always accurate, even when we are looking directly at the person. In addition, in many cases social communication occurs within groups of people where we can’t always look directly at every person in the group. Here, we sought to examine how the presence of other people influences our perception of a target face. We asked participants to judge the direction of gaze of the target face as either looking to their left, to their right or directly at them, when the face was viewed on its own or viewed within a group of other identity faces. The target face either had an angry or a neutral expression and was viewed directly (foveal experiment), or within peripheral vision (peripheral experiment). When the target was viewed within a group, the flanking faces also had either neutral or angry expressions and their gaze was in one of five different directions (from averted leftwards to averted rightwards in steps of 10°). When the target face was viewed foveally there was no effect of target emotion on participants’ judgments of its gaze direction. There was also no effect of the presence of flankers (regardless of expression) on the perception of the target gaze. When the target face was viewed peripherally, participants judged its direction of gaze to be direct over a wider range of gaze deviations than when viewed foveally, and more so for angry faces than neutral faces. We also find that flankers (regardless of emotional expression) did not influence performance. This suggests that observers judge that angry faces were looking at them over a broad range of gaze deviations in the periphery only, possibly resulting from increased uncertainty about the stimulus.

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“Are you looking at me?” How children’s gaze judgments improve with age.

Cited by 6 publications

References 42 publications

Perceiving gaze from head and eye rotations: An integrative challenge for children and adults

Perceiving gaze from head and eye rotations: An integrative challenge for children and adults

Holistic ensemble perception

The Role of Emotional Expression and Eccentricity on Gaze Perception

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