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Updated: Jun 13, 2026

Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Following gaze: gaze-following behavior as a window into social cognition
1Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University Princeton, NJ, USA.
Abstract:
In general, individuals look where they attend and next intend to act. Many animals, including our own species, use observed gaze as a deictic ("pointing") cue to guide behavior. Among humans, these responses are reflexive and pervasive: they arise within a fraction of a second, act independently of task relevance, and appear to undergird our initial development of language and theory of mind. Human and nonhuman animals appear to share basic gaze-following behaviors, suggesting the foundations of human social cognition may also be present in nonhuman brains.
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