How the eyes affect the I: gaze perception, cognition and the robot-human interface

A good deal of research has shown that humans are particularly sensitive to gaze direction. Indeed we may well have evolved neural mechanisms dedicated to the perception of the eyes and eye-gaze direction. As well as providing a very strong signal to our perceptual systems eye-gaze also produces a number of cognitive effects. This paper reviews a number of studies suggesting that both eye-gaze direction, and head orientation are processed automatically by our cognitive systems interfering with the processing of auditory directional information, triggering reflexive shifts of attention, influencing the information we extract from natural scenes and the performance of certain communicative tasks. Given the potential for social attention cues to influence aspects of cognitive activity, it would seem critical for designers to pay particular attention to the appearance and movement of the eyes and head in the creation of robot-human interfaces.