Visual Search of Interactive Gaze in a Virtual Environment: Detecting Eye Contact is Faster than Gaze Averting

Abstract

We often gaze at each other when we communicate with others intimately. A previous study with static stimuli has revealed that perception of others' gaze is asymmetric only when the head is deviated; gazing face target is found faster than averting gaze target. However, the gaze research has been limited to static eye's stimuli, and the perceptual processing of dynamic gaze has not yet been investigated. Therefore, we created dynamic and interactive gaze stimuli of frontal heads in a virtual environment using a head mounted display that can measure eye movements, and conducted visual search experiments. We found that the gaze contacting target presented among gaze averting distractors was detected faster than the gaze averting target among gaze directing distractors. Thus, the detecting eye contact is faster than gaze averting even with frontal faces in dynamic environments, suggesting that dynamic eye contact has a special value for human perception.