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Updated: Jun 1, 2026

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss
Published on: April 11, 2025
Person perception informs understanding of cognition during visual search
Allison A Brennan1, Marcus R Watson, Alan Kingstone
1Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. abrennan@psych.ubc.ca
Abstract:
Does person perception--the impressions we form from watching others--hold clues to the mental states of people engaged in cognitive tasks? We investigated this with a two-phase method: In Phase 1, participants searched on a computer screen (Experiment 1) or in an office (Experiment 2); in Phase 2, other participants rated the searchers' video-recorded behavior. The results showed that blind raters are sensitive to individual differences in search proficiency and search strategy, as well as to environmental factors affecting search difficulty. Also, different behaviors were linked to search success in each setting: Eye movement frequency predicted successful search on a computer screen; head movement frequency predicted search success in an office. In both settings, an active search strategy and positive emotional expressions were linked to search success. These data indicate that person perception informs cognition beyond the scope of performance measures, offering the potential for new measurements of cognition that are both rich and unobtrusive.
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