Though highlight is useful for red-eyes detection, some red eye with no highlight region may occur when the eye direction does not face toward the camera/flash light.
Here we combine task performance (accuracy to correctly label a target item) and eye movement information ('where' the participant fixates when completing the task) to understand more about the components involved in completing eye direction detection tasks.
For the past several years it has been thought that cues, such as eye direction, can trigger reflexive shifts in attention because of their biological relevance and their specialized neural architecture.
Fifteen participants with autism were significantly less accurate at interpreting eye direction and detecting a target item (array sizes 4 and 6 items) than typically developing participants of comparable nonverbal ability.
Between the shape of the exposed eye, direction of gaze, eyebrows, wrinkles (for those of us expressive enough to have them) and so on, there's actually quite a bit of information there.
This finding would make sense if efferent signals to the eye are used to determine the direction of gaze: the visual system "infers" that perceived objects are moving because they would have to be in order for retinal stimulation to remain constant despite the change in eye direction predicted on the basis of motor outflow.
An example of the experimental design is shown in Fig. 1A collapsed across the factors goal and eye direction.
Sensitivity to eye direction may have evolved in chicks as an anti-predatory, rather than a social-affiliative, mechanism since recognizing where a predator is looking could be highly advantageous.
However, gaze is often used as a general term encompassing head orientation, eye direction and any other potential indicators.
The research assistants received training to observe aspects of the encounter including physical contact between patient and PCP, use of hand gestures, eye direction, facial expressions, listening, interruptions, and level of comfort.
