Gaze heuristic is a simple decision-making strategy used in visual perception, especially in situations involving movement and tracking. It's one of the many fast-and-frugal heuristics that people employ when making judgments under uncertainty. The classic example of the gaze heuristic is seen in baseball:
When a baseball outfielder is trying to catch a fly ball, instead of making complex calculations about the ball's trajectory, speed, wind resistance, and other factors, the player can simply fixate their gaze on the ball and adjust their running speed so that the angle of their gaze remains constant. If the outfielder does this, they will end up in the right place to catch the ball.
The gaze heuristic is a way of using visual information in a quick and efficient manner to solve a problem that might seem computationally complex if approached in a different way.