Abstract
To evaluate the accuracy of gaze direction in the face-to-face environment, we measured the sensitivity with which the “perceivers” could accurately discern the point on their own face toward which the “viewer” was directing his/her gaze.
In the Experiment 1, the viewer was asked to direct his/her gaze to a particular place on the perceiver's face. The perceiver was asked to judge the location of the viewer's gaze. The “error distance” was calculated by measuring the difference between the viewer's gaze point and the perceiver's estimated point, i.e. the distance from the perceiver's actual eye position to the viewer's gaze point on the perceiver's face. In the Experiments 2 and 3, the experimental procedure and analysis were identical to those used in Experiment 1, except for one instruction given to the perceivers. In the Experiment 2, they were required to pay attention to only one of the viewer's eyes when trying to judge the location of the viewer's gaze. In the Experiment 3, they were asked to pay attention to both of the viewer's eyes.
The error distance increased as the “distance from eye” of the perceiver increased. In addition, the perceiver's were more sensitive to gaze directed to the right half of their case than to the left one. Further, the perceivers' gaze sensitivity increased when they were instructed to focus their attention on the viewer's both eyes. These results show that perceivers' determine the location of the viewer's gaze by their dominant eye, suggesting that humans have an available capacity for improving gaze sensitivity by concentrating attention on both eyes of the viewer.
This work was supported by RARC (Rikkyo Amusement Research Center).