Project overview
Our recent VR dyad study found that an avatar’s tracked eye direction added no decodable information about the attended target. The study itself flags two boundary conditions of that null result. First, it measured which cues observers spontaneously exploit, not the ceiling of what the eye channel could carry if observers were made to rely on it. Second, adjacent targets were 22.5 degrees apart, so body-level precision sufficed and the task never demanded eye-level resolution. This project runs the two direct tests: an instructed eyes-only condition, and denser target layouts.
Project motivation
The distinction between spontaneous cue use and channel capacity matters for design: if the rendered eye carries usable signal that observers simply ignore when a body is available, interfaces could train or nudge users to exploit it; if the channel is empty at these viewing distances, eye rendering can be de-prioritized for spatial decoding altogether. Gaze-perception psychophysics [1] and avatar gaze-redirection thresholds [2] give competing predictions about where eye-level resolution becomes usable.
Project goals
- Eyes-only condition. Freeze or hide the avatar’s body and head (or decouple them from the target) so that only the rendered eyes carry information, instruct Receivers accordingly, and measure decoding accuracy against the parent study’s body-visible baseline.
- Target-density sweep. Vary angular spacing between adjacent targets (for example 22.5, 11.25, and 5.6 degrees) and test the parent study’s published prediction that eye direction regains predictive value once targets are closer together than body orientation can discriminate.
You will
- Perform a literature review on gaze psychophysics and gaze estimation in VR
- Modify the existing Unity VR environment (masking conditions, denser target grids)
- Run a dyad or confederate-sender study with the existing eye-tracking pipeline
- Analyze accuracy psychophysically (thresholds) and with the existing GLMM tooling
- Summarize your findings in a thesis and present them to an audience
- (Optional) co-write a research paper
You need
- Strong communication skills in English
- Good knowledge of Unity
- Interest in psychophysics and quantitative modeling
References
- Loomis, J. M., Kelly, J. W., Pusch, M., Bailenson, J. N., & Beall, A. C. (2008). Psychophysics of perceiving eye-gaze and head direction with peripheral vision. Perception, 37(9). https://doi.org/10.1068/p5896
- Schott, D., et al. (2025). Estimating Detection Thresholds of Being Looked at in Virtual Reality for Avatar Redirection. CHI 2025. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714041
- Bangerter, A. (2004). Using Pointing and Describing to Achieve Joint Focus of Attention in Dialogue. Psychological Science, 15(6). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00694.x
- The parent study on avatar-mediated shared attention in virtual reality; details are available from the advisor on request.
Keywords: VR, Eye Tracking, Gaze, Psychophysics, Target Density