"Gaze leading": initiating simulated joint attention influences eye movements and choice behavior

Recent research in adults has made great use of the gaze cuing paradigm to understand the behavior of the follower in joint attention episodes. We implemented a gaze leading task to investigate the initiator--the other person in these triadic interactions. In a series of gaze-contingent eye-tracking studies, we show that fixation dwell time upon and reorienting toward a face are affected by whether that individual face shifts its eyes in a congruent or an incongruent direction in response to the participant's eye movement. Gaze leading also biased affective responses toward the faces and attended objects. These findings demonstrate that leading the eyes of other individuals alters how we explore and evaluate our social environment.