Rose Pan
Research Mentor: Greg Gage
Mentor Department: Backyard Brains, Engineering
Author(s): Rose Pan, Greg Gage
Session: Session 5 (2:00 PM – 2:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 33
Abstract
People naturally construct implicit models of other people’s visual attention, sometimes perceiving gaze as an invisible, physical force. Previous work demonstrated this phenomenon using an online spatial task in which participants judged the tipping point of a virtual tube; the presence of a face gazing at the tube significantly biased participants’ physical tilt responses, consistent with a gentle perceived force pushing the object. In a highly powered replication (N > 500), we successfully reproduced this core effect, achieving a clean double dissociation between sighted and blindfolded conditions. However, the magnitude of the perceived force in our sample (D = 0.24°) was substantially smaller than the original finding (D = 0.64°). To investigate what drives this variance, we hypothesized that the effect is modulated by the evolutionary salience of the face; specifically, its perceived threat level. We manipulated face stimuli based on standardized threat ratings (1 to 5) and measured the resulting directional motor bias. Preliminary data suggest that high-threat faces (e.g., strong threat cues, visible tattoos) elicit a stronger compensatory motor response than low-threat faces. We will present data from a large-scale online cohort to test whether the human brain’s implicit model of active gaze scales the “force” of visual attention in proportion to social threat.
