Publications
Each paper here is peer-reviewed and, where possible, backed by open data and code — because work that is both reviewed and reproducible is a stronger signal than either alone.
Trust framing shifted decisions by ~30% — more than the information the source actually provided.
Gerlofs, D. J., Roberts, K. H., & Kingstone, A. (2025). Perceived intent drives gaze interpretation. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 87, 2323–2331.
So what for product: Credibility signals, source badges, and ranking positions can move decisions more than the content they label — an effect products rarely measure, and one that differs across user segments.
Awareness that your gaze might be seen shifts your decisions as much as interface salience does.
Gerlofs, D. J., Roberts, K. H., Anderson, N. C., & Kingstone, A. (2022). Eye spy: Gaze communication and deception during hide-and-seek. Cognition, 227, 105209.
So what for product: In tools where activity is visible — collaborative platforms, social commerce, presence-aware apps — users respond not just to what they see, but to what they imagine others see about them.
Gaze, gesture, and speech work as a single coordination system — remove one channel and the others compensate.
Haraped, L., Gerlofs, D. J., Huang, O. C. H., Hickling, C., Bischof, W. F., Sachse, P., & Kingstone, A. (2025). Coordinating attention in face-to-face collaboration: The dynamics of gaze, pointing, and verbal reference. Cognitive Science, 49(10), e70123.
So what for product: Real-time collaborative interfaces that reduce coordination to a single signal (e.g., cursor position) miss the multimodal system people actually rely on — especially on shared screens and in XR.
Users are poor judges of their own accuracy — but calibrated feedback design measurably closes the gap.
Gerlofs, J. D., & Kingstone, A. (in press). Metacognition and the dual function of social gaze. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
So what for product: Confidence miscalibration is a hidden source of friction — users second-guess correct choices and over-trust wrong ones. Feedback that helps users assess their own performance is effective and rarely measured.
Task success falls ~55% at an identifiable visual-complexity threshold, rather than degrading gradually.
Gerlofs, J., et al. Visual complexity thresholds and cognitive load. Under revision.
So what for product: Knowing where the complexity threshold sits for your product gives design teams an empirical line to defend — the difference between a heuristic ("avoid clutter") and a criterion.