Abstract
Humans spontaneously follow gaze of others. Here we investigated how this behavior operates in multi-agent contexts, i.e., when more than one individual is present. Social information in groups is often inconsistent such that some agents look in one direction, while others look elsewhere. How does the number of agents and the consistency of their gaze cues affect gaze following behavior? To address this question, we modified the standard gaze-cuing procedure to include three faces. On any given trial, zero, one, two, or three faces could look either to the left or to the right. Consistent trials were those on which all three faces looked in the same direction. Inconsistent trials were those on which two faces looked in the same direction while the remaining face looked in the opposite direction. Participants were asked to identify the target letter (H or N) that appeared with equal probability on the left and right side of the screen 300 or 900ms following the presentation of the cues. Results indicated that the number of agents did not affect participants' responses when social cues were inconsistent. However, the number of agents affected performance when cues were consistent, such that facilitated performance was observed when all agents looked at the target. Together these results suggest potentially important differences in how consistent and inconsistent social information affect social attentional behavior.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017