@article{Masih Shafiei2026,
author = "Masih Shafiei and Yasmin Arnous and Nick Taubert and  Martin Giese and Peter Thier",
abstract = "Previous research suggests that humans are extremely sensitive to object-directed eye gaze, which effectively guides their attention toward objects of shared interest. This contrasts with non-human primates, who typically require much more salient eye-gaze cues to achieve comparable attentional orienting. However, it remains unclear whether cross-species differences in ocular morphology account for this performance gap. To address this question, we examined humans’ covert shifts of spatial attention in response to eye-gaze cues provided by either realistic human or rhesus monkey head avatars. Target detection was reliably enhanced on gaze-congruent compared to gaze-incongruent trials, with comparable gaze-cueing effects for both avatar types, despite the fact that monkey eyes lack many of the conspicuous features characteristic of human eyes. Hence, eye morphology alone does not substantially modulate gaze-driven attentional orienting in humans, whereas humans’ reliable use of monkey eye-gaze cues highlights a clear species difference in perceptual sensitivity to eye gaze signals.",
doi = "https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.11.705002",
journal = "bioRxiv",
month = "May 11, 2026",
title = "{B}ehavioral evidence challenges species-specific ocular morphology as a primary constraint on human gaze-following",
url = "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.11.705002v1.abstract",
year = "2026",
}