My eyes want to look where your eyes are looking: exploring the tendency to imitate another individual's gaze.

Full Abstract

In this study we investigated the tendency of humans to imitate the gaze direction of other individuals. Distracting gaze stimuli or non biological directional cues (arrows) were presented to observers performing an instructed saccadic eye movement task. Eye movement recordings showed that observers performed less accurately when the distracting gaze and the instructed saccade had opposite directions, with a substantial number of saccades matching the direction of the distracting gaze. Static (Experiment 1) and dynamic (Experiment 2) gaze distracters, but not pointing arrows (Experiment 3), produced the effect. Results show a strong predisposition of humans to imitate somebody else's oculomotor behaviour, even when detrimental to task performance. This is likely linked to a strong tendency to share attentional states of other individuals, known as joint attention.

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Author information

Author/s: Ricciardelli, Paola (P); Bricolo, Emanuela (E); Aglioti, Salvatore M (SM); Chelazzi, Leonardo (L);

Affiliation: Department of Neurological and Vision Sciences, Section of Physiology, University of Verona, Strada Le Grazie 8, 37134 Verona Cognitive Science Laboratory, Rovereto Branch, University of Trento, Italy.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Neuroreport (Neuroreport), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Dec; vol 13 (issue 17) : pp 2259-64

Dates: Created 2002/12/18; Completed 2003/04/15; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12488807, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Attention - physiology
Cerebral Cortex - anatomy & histology; physiology
Cognition - physiology
Cues
Female
Fixation, Ocular - physiology
Humans
Imitative Behavior - physiology

Imitative Behavior - physiology
Male
Neural Pathways - anatomy & histology; physiology
Neuropsychological Tests
Photic Stimulation
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Saccades - physiology
Social Behavior

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