Dynamic gaze cueing alters the perceived direction of apparent motion

Abstract

Visual attention automatically shifts in the direction of another person's gaze shift. However, this gaze cueing effect has been tested only in static situations. In the present study, we examined whether dynamic gaze cueing, triggered by the dynamic gaze shift of another person, could alter the perceived direction of apparent motion. In Experiment 1, we presented a drifting or counterphased flickering sinusoidal grating in the upper visual field and a pictorial face stimulus with its eyes smoothly moved towards the left or right side of the grating in the lower visual field. Observers were asked to report the perceived motion direction in the grating; consequently, it was biased in the direction of the gaze shift. In Experiment 2, we ruled out the possibility of motion capture due to the motion signals in the eyes as a source of bias in the previous experiment. From these results, we concluded that dynamic gaze cueing altered perceived motion direction, and we proposed the usefulness of our approach in exploring gaze perception in dynamic environments.