Left gaze bias in humans, rhesus monkeys and domestic dogs

While viewing faces, human adults often demonstrate a natural gaze bias towards the left visual field, that is, the right side of the viewee’s face is often inspected first and for longer periods. Using a preferential looking paradigm, we demonstrate that this bias is neither uniquely human nor limited to primates, and provide evidence to help elucidate its biological function within a broader social cognitive framework. We observed that 6-month-old infants showed a wider tendency for left gaze preference towards objects and faces of different species and orientation, while in adults the bias appears only towards upright human faces. Rhesus monkeys showed a left gaze bias towards upright human and monkey faces, but not towards inverted faces. Domestic dogs, however, only demonstrated a left gaze bias towards human faces, but not towards monkey or dog faces, nor to inanimate object images. Our findings suggest that face- and species-sensitive gaze asymmetry is more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously recognised, is not constrained by attentional or scanning bias, and could be shaped by experience to develop adaptive behavioural significance

Skim reading: an adaptive strategy for reading on the web

It has been suggested that readers spend a great deal of time skim reading on the Web and that if readers skim read they reduce their comprehension of what they have read. There have been a number of studies exploring skim reading, but relatively little exists on the skim reading of hypertext and Webpages. In the experiment documented here, we utilised eye tracking methodology to explore how readers skim read hypertext and how hyperlinks affect reading behaviour. The results show that the readers read faster when they were skim reading and comprehension was reduced. However, the presence of hyperlinks seemed to assist the readers in picking out important information when skim reading. We suggest that readers engage in an adaptive information foraging strategy where they attempt to minimise comprehension loss while maintaining a high reading speed. Readers use hyperlinks as markers to suggest important information and use them to read through the text in an efficient and effective way. This suggests that skim reading may not be as damaging to comprehension when reading hypertext, but it does mean that the words we choose to hyperlink become very important to comprehension for those skim reading text on the Web

Honesty, social presence, and self-service in retail

Retail self-service checkouts (SCOs) can benefit consumers and retailers, providing control and autonomy to shoppers independent from staff. Recent research indicates that the lack of presence of staff may provide the opportunity for consumers to behave dishonestly. This study examined whether a social presence in the form of visual, humanlike SCO interface agents had an effect on dishonest user behaviour. Using a simulated SCO scenario, participants experienced various dilemmas in which they could financially benefit themselves undeservedly. We hypothesised that a humanlike social presence integrated within the checkout screen would receive more attention and result in fewer instances of dishonesty compared to a less humanlike agent. Our hypotheses were partially supported by the results. We conclude that companies adopting self-service technology may consider the implementation of social presence to support ethical consumer behaviour, but that more research is required to explore the mixed findings in the current study

Knowing me, knowing you: perspectives on awareness in autism

Purpose: This paper raises important questions from the different perspectives on autism research that arose from a seminar on autism and technology, held as part of an ESRC-funded series on innovative technologies for autism. Design/methodology/approach: The paper focuses on the roles of technology in understanding questions about different perspectives on autism: how do people on the spectrum see neurotypicals (people without autism) and vice versa?; how do we use eye-gaze differently from each other?; how might technology influence what is looked at and how we measure this?; what differences might there be in how people use imitation of others?; and finally, how should we study and treat any differences? Findings: We synthesise common themes from invited talks and responses. The audience discussions highlighted the ways in which we take account of human variation, how we can understand the perspective of another, particularly across third-person and second-person approaches in research, and how researchers and stakeholders engage with each other. Originality/value: We argue that the question of perspectives is important for considering how people with autism and neurotypical people interact in everyday contexts, and how researchers frame their research questions and methods. We propose that stakeholders and researchers can fruitfully engage directly in discussions of research, in ways that benefit both research and practice

Differential gaze behavior towards sexually preferred and non-preferred human figures

The gaze pattern associated with image exploration is a sensitive index of our attention, motivation and preference. To examine whether an individual’s gaze behavior can reflect his/her sexual interest, we compared gaze patterns of young heterosexual men and women (M = 19.94 years, SD = 1.05) while viewing photos of plain-clothed male and female figures aged from birth to sixty years old. Our analysis revealed a clear gender difference in viewing sexually preferred figure images. Men displayed a distinctive gaze pattern only when viewing twenty-year-old female images, with more fixations and longer viewing time dedicated to the upper body and waist-hip region. Women also directed more attention at the upper body on female images in comparison to male images, but this difference was not age-specific. Analysis of local image salience revealed that observers’ eye-scanning strategies could not be accounted for by low-level processes, such as analyzing local image contrast and structure, but were associated with attractiveness judgments. The results suggest that the difference in cognitive processing of sexually preferred and non-preferred figures can be manifested in gaze patterns associated with figure viewing. Thus, eye-tracking holds promise as a potential sensitive measure for sexual preference, particularly in men

Discrimination of human and dog faces and inversion responses in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)

Although domestic dogs can respond to many facial cues displayed by other dogs and humans, it remains unclear whether they can differentiate individual dogs or humans based on facial cues alone and, if so, whether they would demonstrate the face inversion effect, a behavioural hallmark commonly used in primates to differentiate face processing from object processing. In this study we first established the applicability of the Visual Paired Comparison (VPC or preferential looking) procedure for dogs using a simple object discrimination task with 2D pictures. The animals demonstrated a clear looking preference for novel objects when simultaneously presented with prior-exposed familiar objects. We then adopted this VPC procedure to assess their face discrimination and inversion responses. Dogs showed a deviation from random behaviour, indicating discrimination capability when inspecting upright dog faces, human faces and object images; but the pattern of viewing preference was dependent upon image category. They directed longer viewing time at novel (vs. familiar) human faces and objects, but not at dog faces, instead, a longer viewing time at familiar (vs. novel) dog faces was observed. No significant looking preference was detected for inverted images regardless of image category. Our results indicate that domestic dogs can use facial cues alone to differentiate individual dogs and humans, and that they exhibit a non-specific inversion response. In addition, the discrimination response by dogs of human and dog faces appears to differ with the type of face involved