Dataset Information

Assessing Self-Awareness through Gaze Agency.

ABSTRACT: We define gaze agency as the awareness of the causal effect of one's own eye movements in gaze-contingent environments, which might soon become a widespread reality with the diffusion of gaze-operated devices. Here we propose a method for measuring gaze agency based on self-monitoring propensity and sensitivity. In one task, naïf observers watched bouncing balls on a computer monitor with the goal of discovering the cause of concurrently presented beeps, which were generated in real-time by their saccades or by other events (Discovery Task). We manipulated observers' self-awareness by pre-exposing them to a condition in which beeps depended on gaze direction or by focusing their attention to their own eyes. These manipulations increased propensity to agency discovery. In a second task, which served to monitor agency sensitivity at the sensori-motor level, observers were explicitly asked to detect gaze agency (Detection Task). Both tasks turned out to be well suited to measure both increases and decreases of gaze agency. We did not find evident oculomotor correlates of agency discovery or detection. A strength of our approach is that it probes self-monitoring propensity-difficult to evaluate with traditional tasks based on bodily agency. In addition to putting a lens on this novel cognitive function, measuring gaze agency could reveal subtle self-awareness deficits in pathological conditions and during development.

SUBMITTER: Gregori Grgic R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5094589 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Assessing Self-Awareness through Gaze Agency.

Gregori Grgič Regina R Crespi Sofia Allegra SA de'Sperati Claudio C

PloS one 20161103 11

We define gaze agency as the awareness of the causal effect of one's own eye movements in gaze-contingent environments, which might soon become a widespread reality with the diffusion of gaze-operated devices. Here we propose a method for measuring gaze agency based on self-monitoring propensity and sensitivity. In one task, naïf observers watched bouncing balls on a computer monitor with the goal of discovering the cause of concurrently presented beeps, which were generated in real-time by thei ...[more]

PMID: 27812138

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Project description:Children begin to develop self-awareness when they associate images and abilities with themselves. Such "construction of self" continues throughout adult life as we constantly cycle through different forms of self-awareness, seeking, to redefine ourselves. Modern technologies like screens and artificial intelligence threaten to alter our development of self-awareness, because children and adults are exposed to machines, tele-presences, and displays that increasingly become part of human identity. We use avatars, invent digital lives, and augment ourselves with digital imprints that depart from reality, making the development of self-identification adjust to digital technologies that blur the boundary between us and our devices. To empower children and adults to see themselves and artificially intelligent machines as separately aware entities, we created the persona of a salvaged supermarket security camera refurbished and enhanced with the power of computer vision to detect human faces, and project them on a large-scale 3D face sculpture. The surveillance camera system moves its head to point to human faces at times, but at other times, humans have to get its attention by moving to its vicinity, creating a dynamic where audiences attempt to see their own faces on the sculpture by gazing into the machine's eye. We found that audiences began attaining an understanding of machines that interpret our faces as separate from our identities, with their own agendas and agencies that show by the way they serendipitously interact with us. The machine-projected images of us are their own interpretation rather than our own, distancing us from our digital analogs. In the accompanying workshop, participants learn about how computer vision works by putting on disguises in order to escape from an algorithm detecting them as the same person by analyzing their faces. Participants learn that their own agency affects how machines interpret them, gaining an appreciation for the way their own identities and machines' awareness of them can be separate entities that can be manipulated for play. Together the installation and workshop empower children and adults to think beyond identification with digital technology to recognize the machine's own interpretive abilities that lie separate from human being's own self-awareness.

Dataset Information

Assessing Self-Awareness through Gaze Agency.

Publications

Assessing Self-Awareness through Gaze Agency.

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