Project Summary Humans move their eyes toward relevant information when making decisions, especially when making social inferences (e.g. inferences on emotion, trustworthiness, danger, etc.). While previous research has investigated how human gaze patterns are guided by task demands and stimulus features, little is known about how humans, especially those with abnormal gaze patterns, make eye movements toward socially relevant information in a dynamic environment. This is due to much of the previous literature investigating eye movements in social cognitive tasks with the use of static stimuli of facial expressions, leaving much to be desired regarding the generalizability and ecological validity of previous research. Many novel computational and analytical methods can be used to process dynamic eye-tracking data, such as inter-subject correlations of gaze patterns between observers that can reveal task engagement and information processing. Thus, in order to mimic the complex social environment that humans experience in their everyday lives, more naturalistic experimental designs and stimuli should be implemented by researchers. Advancements in this area of research can help scientists understand how eye movements are influenced during dynamic social cognitive tasks, especially in individuals with known abnormal gaze patterns such as those with depression, autism spectrum disorder, and schizophrenia. F99 Phase: The current project uses a novel dynamic emotion tracking task called Inferential Emotion Tracking in which observers must continuously track the emotion of a target character in a video (e.g. Hollywood movie, home video, or documentary clip) while observers' eye movements are recorded. This emotion-tracking paradigm can capture large amounts of data from continuous emotion ratings and eye-tracking. More importantly, the use of dynamic and context-rich stimuli to investigate human social cognition can more accurately measure the cognitive mechanisms that humans use to infer emotion outside of a laboratory setting. Additionally, using eye tracking while participants complete this emotion perception task will allow us to access where and when observers look for important emotional cues or information to inform their judgments. Investigating how humans shift their visual attention during social cognitive tasks will provide valuable insights into how social visual attention is impacted in vulnerable populations. The training involved in this phase will include instruction in computational methods related to computer vision models and the neuroscience of emotion processing to prepare for the K00 phase. K00 Phase: This phase would include extending my F99 Phase study by investigating the neural mechanisms of visual attention during complex social cognitive tasks by using fMRI. This approach could reveal which areas of the brain are involved during the processing of emotions with the use of dynamic and context-rich stimuli and aims to improve ou...