Culture modulates face scanning during dyadic social interactions

Abstract

Recent studies have revealed significant cultural modulations on face scanning strategies, thereby challenging the notion of universality in face perception. Current findings are based on screen-based paradigms, which offer high degrees of experimental control, but lack critical characteristics common to social interactions (e.g., social presence, dynamic visual saliency), and complementary approaches are required. The current study used head-mounted eye tracking techniques to investigate the visual strategies for face scanning in British/irish (in the UK) and Japanese adults (in Japan) who were engaged in dyadic social interactions with a local research assistant. We developed novel computational data pre-processing tools and data-driven analysis techniques based on Monte Carlo permutation testing. The results revealed significant cultural differences in face scanning during social interactions for the first time, with British/Irish participants showing increased mouth scanning and the Japanese group engaging in greater eye and central face looking. Both cultural groups further showed more face orienting during periods of listening relative to speaking, and during the introduction task compared to a storytelling game, thereby replicating previous studies testing Western populations. Altogether, these findings point to the significant role of postnatal social experience in specialised face perception and highlight the adaptive nature of the face processing system.

Cultural differences in mutual gaze during face-to-face interactions: A dual head-mounted eye-tracking study

“…In line with the notion of gaze avoidance, East Asian dyads were expected to spend less time overall engaging in mutual gaze compared to Western Caucasian dyads, and were also predicted to show shorter individual instances of mutual gaze. With respect to face looking, we further expected increased face looking during listening compared to speaking periods in both cultural groups, as also reported in earlier face-to-face interaction studies (Freeth et al, 2013;Haensel et al, 2020). More face looking during the introductory period compared to the storytelling game was also expected in both cultural groups based on a previous cross-cultural social interaction study using the same experimental tasks (Haensel et al, 2020).…”

“…Looking at a face may reflect a way to better decode speech (Vatikiotis-Bateson et al, 1998), to signal attention to the speaker (Gobel et al, 2015;Risko et al, 2016), or an attempt to reduce cognitive load when speaking (Doherty-Sneddon & Phelps, 2005). In addition, both cultural groups also engaged in more face orienting during an introductory task relative to a storytelling game (Haensel et al, 2020), which had been suggested to result from social signalling during early introductory encounters, and the more demanding nature of the storytelling game that could have induced gaze aversion. Japanese participants also scanned the eye region more than British/Irish individuals; however, since only the eye movements of the participantand not the research assistantwere recorded, the study cannot inform about any cultural differences in two-way gaze dynamics including gaze avoidance.…”

“…This paradigm can examine gaze behaviour to individual facial features since regions-of-interests are sufficiently large on screen, though the setup requires a physical separation between interacting individuals (for details see Hessels et al, 2017). Alternatively, wearable eye-trackers have been used to record participants' eye movements during face-to-face interactions with an experimenter (e.g., Freeth et al, 2013;Freeth & Bugembe, 2019;Haensel et al, 2020;Vabalas & Freeth, 2016). To record both individuals of a dyad, a dual head-mounted eye-tracking paradigm can be employed (e.g., Ho et al, 2015;Rogers et al, 2018).…”

“…To record both individuals of a dyad, a dual head-mounted eye-tracking paradigm can be employed (e.g., Ho et al, 2015;Rogers et al, 2018). With respect to cross-cultural investigations of gaze behaviour during dyadic social interactions, only one study to date used head-mounted eye-tracking to compare face orienting and scanning strategies between British/Irish and Japanese participants (Haensel et al, 2020). Both cultural groups looked more at the face of the conversational partner (a local research assistant) during periods of listening compared to speaking.…”

Eye tracking in human interaction: Possibilities and limitations

“…It is therefore not surprising that the majority of the interaction studies using wearable eye trackers included in this review did not distinguish between facial features and instead chose to make cruder distinctions, such as whether gaze was directed on the face (or object) or somewhere else (Broz et al, 2012;Damm et al, 2013;Franchak et al, 2011;Freeth et al, 2013;Fu, Nelson, Borge, Buss, & Pérez-Edgar, 2019;Gullberg & Holmqvist, 1999, 2006Hanna & Brennan, 2007;Ho et al, 2015;Macdonald & Tatler, 2013Nadig, Lee, Singh, Bosshart, & Ozonoff, 2010;Yamamoto, Sato, & Itakura, 2019;Yu & Smith, 2013Yu, Suanda, & Smith, 2019). Five of the reviewed studies with wearable eye trackers distinguished between gaze directed at different regions of the face: Cañigueral, Hamilton, and Ward (2018) and Cañigueral, Ward, and Hamilton (2020) divided the face into an eye region and a mouth region and Haensel et al (2020) divided the face into an upper and lower region, while Rogers, Speelman, Guidetti, and Longmuir (2018) and Freeth and Bugembe (2019) further differentiated between the finer details of the face (i.e., eyes, nose, mouth, etc. ).…”