Consistent left gaze bias in processing different facial cues

Abstract

While viewing faces, humans often demonstrate a natural gaze bias towards the left visual field, that is, the right side of the viewee's face is often inspected first and for longer periods. Previous studies have suggested that this gaze asymmetry is part of the gaze pattern associated with face exploration, but its relation with perceptual processing of facial cues is unclear. In this study we recorded participants' saccadic eye movements while exploring face images under different task instructions (free-viewing, judging familiarity and judging facial expression). We observed a consistent left gaze bias in face viewing irrespective of task demands. The probability of the first fixation and the proportion of overall fixations directed at the left hemiface were indistinguishable across different task instructions or across different facial expressions. It seems that the left gaze bias is an automatic reflection of hemispheric lateralisation in face processing, and is not necessarily correlated with the perceptual processing of a specific type of facial information.

Alcohol attention bias in adolescent social drinkers: an eye tracking study

“…The precise relationship between alcohol AB, alcohol use and alcohol expectancies is still unclear and future research should examine co-variation between such variables in more detail. The presence of a left gaze bias can be influenced by laterality of participants; however this was not measured in the current population (Guo et al, 2012). Future work in this area would benefit from an examination of how alcohol AB manifestations change as alcohol use continues across the developmental trajectory from adolescence to adulthood.…”

“…One possibility for this is left gaze bias. To date a strong literature base supports the presence of left gaze bias when examining studies of facial perception and reading direction (Guo, Smith, Powell & Nicholls, 2012;Heath, Rouhana & Ghanem, 2005) whereas evidence appears to be less clear in relation to viewing pictures (Leonards & Scott-Samuel, 2005). Left gaze bias has not been addressed in AB research to date, possibly due to the absence of AB studies in non-clinical populations.…”

“…If AB is yet to reach automaticity in social drinkers left gaze bias may be the dominant process driving automatic attention. This bias is thought to be a result of hemispheric specialisation, strengthened by the propensity of English speakers to read left to right (Guo, Smith, Powell & Nicholls, 2012). These processes are well practiced in older adolescents and therefore may take precedence in driving automatic attention.…”

How does image noise affect actual and predicted human gaze allocation in assessing image quality?

“…We tend to avoid low-contrast and homogeneous 'predictable' regions in natural scenes, and bias our fixation to local features with high-contrast, high spatial frequency, high edge density, and complex local structure (e.g., curved lines, edges and corners, as well as occlusions or isolated spots) (Acik et al, 2009;Krieger et al, 2000;Mannan, Ruddock, & Wooding, 1995, 1996Parkhurst & Niebur, 2003;Reinagel & Zador, 1999), or to local regions deviated from surrounding image statistics (Einhäuser et al, 2006). On the other hand, top-down factors, such as expectation, memory, semantic and task-related knowledge, could significantly modulate gaze allocation in scene exploration (Guo et al, 2012;Henderson, 2007;Pollux, Hall, & Guo, 2014;Tatler et al, 2011).…”

Central fixations with rightward deviations: saccadic eye movements on the landmark task

“…Through the study of eye movement patterns, a better understanding of how visual information is gathered and how eye movements relate to task performance can be gained. Eye movement research has been usefully applied to a variety of topics, including reading (Rayner 1998), numerical cognition (Merkley and Ansari 2010) and facial processing (Guo et al 2012).…”