Social perception of other people’s covert attention in a real-world setting

Social perception of other people’s covert attention in a real-world setting | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Social perception of other people’s covert attention in a real-world setting Martha Paskin, Patrick Falk, Patricia Christian, Ole Petter Ottersen, and 3 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9157631/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Covert attention is a fundamental aspect of natural human social behavior, frequently employed in real-world interactions to regulate the social meaning of gaze. Being able to perceive another’s covert attention should be highly adaptive; yet, this ability remains surprisingly unexplored. Here we show that people spontaneously perceive others’ covert attention by processing subtle involuntary behavioral cues associated with covert attention orienting. Participant dyads sat face-to-face, and one was tasked with reading the covert visual (exp1) or auditory spatial attention (exp2) of the other. By combining eye-tracking, face-video recordings, and machine learning, we found that humans (and machines) decipher others’ covert visual and auditory attention significantly better than chance, based on patterns of subtle facial expressions. Machine-decoding generalized across participants and sensory modalities. Thus, covertly attending to different parts of space induces distinguishable patterns of behavioral cues, common across individuals and sensory modalities, which are perceivable by others in social interactions. Psychology Cognitive Neuroscience social attention covert attention social perception gaze perception machine learning ecological Full Text Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Supplementary Files PaskinetalSupplementaryInformation.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-9157631","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":608154833,"identity":"0a8f7e50-ec15-44ef-896b-cb160adb1fb4","order_by":0,"name":"Martha 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