Detection of Idiosyncratic Gaze-Fingerprint Signatures in Humans

Do individuals possess a "gaze fingerprint" that reveals how they uniquely look at the world? We tested this question by examining intra- and intersubject gaze similarity across 700 static pictures of complex natural scenes. Independent discovery (<i>n</i> = 105) and replication data sets (<i>n</i> = 46) of adults aged 18 to 50 years (sampled from Italy and Germany) revealed that gaze fingerprinting is possible at relatively high rates (e.g., 52%-63%) compared with chance (e.g., 1%-2%). We also identify <i>gaze-fingerprint barcodes</i>, which reveal a unique individualized code describing which stimuli an individual can be gaze-fingerprinted on. Preregistered longitudinal follow-up experiments have shown that gaze-fingerprint barcodes are nonrandom within an individual over short and long time fraframmes. Finally, we find that increased gaze fingerprintability for social stimuli is associated with decreased levels of autistic traits. To summarize, this work showcases the potential of gaze fingerprinting for isolating traitlike factors that may be of high neurodevelopmental and biological significance.