Metacognition and the dual function of social gaze

While the movement of one's eyes to extract information from the visual environment often occurs without conscious reflection, this may not be true when one's eyes are also a signal of information to others, such as in a social interaction. Metacognitive monitoring of one's ability to balance the use of gaze to both receive and send information has not been empirically tested. The present study investigated this issue by eye-tracking participants during a novel hide-and-seek paradigm. Hiders selected boxes on a computer display with the goal of cooperating with or deceiving a future seeker. Displays were either homogeneous or contained a visually conspicuous box. Hiders were either aware or unaware that their gaze would be revealed to future seekers. Hiders reported their confidence in their hiding success after every trial. To assess hider performance, a new group of participants ("seekers") were tasked with identifying the hiders' box selections after seeing an animation of hiders' fixations toward displays. The results indicate that hiders' confidence effectively predicted seeker accuracy, with this metacognitive ability being strongest when hiders both intentionally and cooperatively signaled with their eyes and when a visually conspicuous box aided communication. These findings highlight the capacity to monitor the use of one's gaze for both gathering and signaling information and reveal that this ability varies with both the environmental context and the form of communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).