Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

In order for something, or somebody, to influence our behaviour, we first have to notice that it (or he or she) is there. By investigating something as simple as what people look at, we can understand a lot about how they understand the world around them, and why they behave in the ways they do. Identifying exactly what people are looking at isn't quite so simple, however, and needs some sophisticated technology in order to track a person's patterns of visual monitoring. The aim of this research is to use a sophisticated eye-tracking system and associated software to investigate (i) how children's visual monitoring patterns change over the course of development, and to test whether children who appear socially awkward pick up on different social cues to those who are socially competent (ii) how adults learn the structure of the world around them without being aware that they are doing so, and how this 'implicit learning' is reflected in patterns of visual monitoring  and (iii) whether senior citizens who report an extreme fear of falling display different visual monitoring patterns of the physical world to those who report only mild fear, and whether fixation on balance-threatening stimuli increases the risk of actually suffering a fall because they fail to notice other relevant cues in the environment. By investigating patterns of visual monitoring across the life-span, and across both physical and social domains, we can begin to understand what human beings find notable, interesting and threatening in the world around them, and how these visual cues can be manipulated to increase our ability to engage in social, cognitive and physical tasks in more effective, and more fulfilling, ways.