Evidence map›Paper›PMID 27493767›Full record

ArticleRoyal Society open science2016

Pupil dilation as an index of preferred mutual gaze duration.

Nicola Binetti, Charlotte Harrison, Antoine Coutrot, Alan Johnston, Isabelle Mareschal

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Royal Society open science, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
24citing papers in PubMed
8.3field-weighted citation impact, top 2% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

24 citing papers in PubMed, 93 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Feasibility of a Novel Eye Gaze Shift Task in Autism Assessment: A Pilot Study.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2026
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  11. Eye contact marks the rise and fall of shared attention in conversation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021
    Article
  12. From Gaze Perception to Social Cognition: The Shared-Attention System.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2021
    Review
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  20. Affective Eye Contact: An Integrative Review.Frontiers in psychology · 2018
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.

Nicola BinettiDepartment of Experimental Psychology , University College London , London , UK.
Charlotte HarrisonDepartment of Experimental Psychology , University College London , London , UK.
Antoine CoutrotCoMPLEX , University College London , London , UK.
Alan JohnstonDepartment of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, UK; CoMPLEX, University College London, London, UK; School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
Isabelle MareschalSchool of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Psychology , Queen Mary University of London , London , UK.
University College London · GBQueen Mary University of London · GB

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Most animals look at each other to signal threat or interest. In humans, this social interaction is usually punctuated with brief periods of mutual eye contact. Deviations from this pattern of gazing behaviour generally make us feel uncomfortable and are a defining characteristic of clinical conditions such as autism or schizophrenia, yet it is unclear what constitutes normal eye contact. Here, we measured, across a wide range of ages, cultures and personality types, the period of direct gaze that feels comfortable and examined whether autonomic factors linked to arousal were indicative of people's preferred amount of eye contact. Surprisingly, we find that preferred period of gaze duration is not dependent on fundamental characteristics such as gender, personality traits or attractiveness. However, we do find that subtle pupillary changes, indicative of physiological arousal, correlate with the amount of eye contact people find comfortable. Specifically, people preferring longer durations of eye contact display faster increases in pupil size when viewing another person than those preferring shorter durations. These results reveal that a person's preferred duration of eye contact is signalled by physiological indices (pupil dilation) beyond volitional control that may play a modulatory role in gaze behaviour.

Indexed as

arousaleye contacteye-trackinggaze durationpupillometry

Identifiers

PMID27493767
PMCPMC4968459
OpenAlexW2468295287

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.