Infant's perception of face and gaze under uncertainty

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H06456
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Ehime University
• Principal Investigator: OTSUKA YUMIKO 愛媛大学, 法文学部, 准教授 (20757645)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-08-28 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 視線知覚 / 不確実 / バイアス / 乳児

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Psychophysical study with adult participants have reported that adults showed that perception is biased in particular way under uncertainty condition. In the case for the perception of other’s gaze direction, perceived gaze direction has been shown to be systematically biased to “direct” gaze toward the observer under uncertain compared to certain condition. By using preferential looking technique, the present study examined infants perception of eye gaze direction under the conditions varying in uncertainty. The experiments using image pairs varying only with gaze direction in frontal face orientation revealed no systematic gaze bias under uncertainty condition. Further experiments using image pairs with varying head orientation to explore characteristic of infant’s gaze perception under uncertainty condition is currently under investigation.

Free Research Field

知覚心理学