Social perception in dyadic social interactions

In this project, we test the hypothesis that people implicitly perceive the direction of another person’s covert visual attention.

Covert visual attention is the act of orienting one’s attention to a stimulus, without moving one’s eyes. In the absence of other overt bodily or environmental cues indicating an attention shift, the reorienting of one’s covert attention is considered, almost by definition, undetectable by outside observers. Social perception of others’ covert attention is a virtually unstudied subject, perhaps due to the aforementioned reasons.

In this project, conducted in collaboration with Arvid Guterstam, Martha Paskin, Mikael Lundqvist, Mats Lekander and Ole Petter Ottersen (Karolinska Institutet) we test the hypothesis that people implicitly perceive the direction of another person’s covert visual attention, possibly by processing that person’s involuntary miniature eye movements (or subtle bodily cues associated with reorienting covert attention).

Eye movements are monitored using a dual eye tracker setup (Tobii Spectrum Pro, 1200Hz).

Positive results would suggest that monitoring attention goes far beyond simply registering another’s gaze direction. It may involve predictive modelling based on subtle cues, which may contribute to humans’ extraordinary social ability to predict the mental states and behavior of others.