Biases in Spatial Bisection Induced by Viewing Male and Female Faces

Abstract

Research on visual attention triggered by face gender is still relatively sparse. In the present study, three experiments are reported in which male and female participants were required to estimate the midpoint of a line (i.e., the "line bisection task"): at each end of the line a face was presented. Depending on the experimental condition, faces could be of the same gender (i.e., two males or two females) or the opposite gender. Experiments 1 and 2 converged in showing that when a male face was presented at the right and a female face at the left endpoint of the line, a clear rightward bias emerged compared to the other experimental conditions, indicating that male faces captured attention more than female faces. Importantly, male faces used across Experiments 1 and 2 were rated as more threatening than female faces, suggesting that perceived level of threat may have been responsible for the observed bias toward the male face. Experiment 3 corroborated this hypothesis by finding an attentional bias toward the male face with high threat (angry) faces but not with low threat (smiling) faces.

Anxiety is not the right choice! Individual differences in trait anxiety modulate biases in pseudoneglect

“…When we take into account the performance of all participants in the current investigation, our results are consistent with two previous studies (Cattaneo et al, 2014a ; Hatin and Sykes Tottenham, 2016 ), showing that happy faces decrease pseudoneglect, reducing the leftward bisection error when compared to Baseline (empty circle flanked lines), as well as to neutral and negative (sad faces) stimuli. The extent of the pseudoneglect in our results is substantially comparable to previous studies (Cattaneo et al, 2014a , b ; Hatin and Sykes Tottenham, 2016 ). The neurobiological underpinnings of the leftward bias (pseudoneglect) are likely to depend on hemispheric asymmetries in attentional frontoparietal networks, which are modulated by emotional processing (de Schotten et al, 2005 ; Corbetta et al, 2008 ; Bartolomeo and Malkinson, 2019 ).…”

“…To confirm previous studies that employed the bisection task (Cattaneo et al, 2014a , b ), we first analyzed the global performance of the 60 participants (not considering the differences in trait anxiety scores).…”

“…As it has been done in previous studies (Cattaneo et al, 2012 , 2014a , b ), to verify that participants paid attention to the faces that flanked the lines, we analyzed the accuracy of the recognition memory task with a repeated measure ANOVA with two levels of factor Side (left vs. right) and three levels of factor condition (neutral, sad, and happy faces). No main effect or interaction was significant (all p s > 0.05 ) .…”

The eyes know it: Toddlers' visual scanning of sad faces is predicted by their theory of mind skills

“…However, while some researchers have shown no evidence of own-sex bias in face recognition in children [46], others have demonstrated that both male and female infants show preference for female body shape [47] and faces [48]. Adults also show no evidence of own-sex bias, demonstrating the same attentional bias toward male over female faces, especially in threat or anger contexts [49]. Further, at least two meta-analyses on the effect of gender on emotion processing have reported no such own-gender bias across a wide age range [50–51].…”

Eye Avoidance of Threatening Facial Expressions in Parents of Children with ASD

“…Second, our experimental materials included the use of only female facial expressions, and it is unclear whether male faces are perceived as more threatening than female faces. 54 Finally, neutral emotional faces have not been used as experimental materials in our research. We are not sure whether parents of children with ASD avoid looking at the eyes of neutral faces.…”