December 2022
Volume 22, Issue 14
Open Access
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   December 2022
The effects of crowd gaze on visual search
Author Affiliations & Notes
  • Shuyi Chen
    University of Texas Austin, Center for Perceptual Systems, Department of Psychology
  • Sholei Croom
    Johns Hopkins University, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
  • Kimberly Schauder
    University of Louisville School of Medicine, Norton Children’s Hospital
  • Jacob Yates
    University of Maryland, Department of Biology
  • Duje Tadin
    University of Rochester, Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, Center for Visual Science, Department of Ophthalmology, Department of Neuroscience
  • Woon Ju park
    University of Washington, Department of Psychology
  • Footnotes
    Acknowledgements  This work was supported by Schmitt Program on Integrative Brain Research to DT. W.P. W.P. was also supported by the 2021 Weill Neurohub Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Journal of Vision December 2022, Vol.22, 3181. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.14.3181
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      Shuyi Chen, Sholei Croom, Kimberly Schauder, Jacob Yates, Duje Tadin, Woon Ju park; The effects of crowd gaze on visual search. Journal of Vision 2022;22(14):3181. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.14.3181.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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Abstract

Crowd gaze is a social visual cue that signals the direction of a crowd’s attention. This statistical ensemble cue has high social relevance, providing important information about the environment. Studies showed that our visual system can extract the global gaze direction from a crowd of faces. However, whether the human visual system utilizes the crowd gaze direction to guide behavior is not yet known. Here, we investigated this question in the context of visual search and tested the hypothesis that crowd gaze can enhance search performance. Participants located a target face among distractor faces. In Experiment 1 (n = 36), we manipulated the gaze coherence (the proportion of distractor faces looking at the target face; 0%, 50%, 100%) and the number of distractors (2, 4, 8). In Experiment 2 (n = 39), we repeated the task with inverted faces. In Experiment 3 (n = 38), we manipulated the validity of the gaze cue (valid: crowd gaze towards the true target; invalid: towards a pseudo-target; neutral: random gaze), with 8 distractors. Reaction time (RT) was measured to characterize the visual search performance. Overall, RT increased with the number of distractors, but the rate of increase was smaller for conditions with larger gaze coherence (Experiment 1). This suggests an improvement in search efficiency as a function of gaze coherence. This benefit from the crowd gaze disappeared when the faces were inverted (Experiment 2), indicating that low-level visual cues cannot explain the observed benefit in Experiment 1. Furthermore, invalid crowd gazes had a detrimental effect, leading to longer RT than when the cue was valid (Experiment 3). Together, the findings demonstrate the effect of crowd gaze in facilitating visual search. The results provide insights into how human observers can rely on a high social cue to guide their visual behavior.

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