Differences in Looking at Own- and Other-Race Faces Are Subtle and Analysis-Dependent: An Account of Discrepant Reports

Abstract

The Other-Race Effect (ORE) is the robust and well-established finding that people are generally poorer at facial recognition of individuals of another race than of their own race. Over the past four decades, much research has focused on the ORE because understanding this phenomenon is expected to elucidate fundamental face processing mechanisms and the influence of experience on such mechanisms. Several recent studies of the ORE in which the eye-movements of participants viewing own- and other-race faces were tracked have, however, reported highly conflicting results regarding the presence or absence of differential patterns of eye-movements to own- versus other-race faces. This discrepancy, of course, leads to conflicting theoretical interpretations of the perceptual basis for the ORE. Here we investigate fixation patterns to own- versus other-race (African and Chinese) faces for Caucasian participants using different analysis methods. While we detect statistically significant, though subtle, differences in fixation pattern using an Area of Interest (AOI) approach, we fail to detect significant differences when applying a spatial density map approach. Though there were no significant differences in the spatial density maps, the qualitative patterns matched the results from the AOI analyses reflecting how, in certain contexts, Area of Interest (AOI) analyses can be more sensitive in detecting the differential fixation patterns than spatial density analyses, due to spatial pooling of data with AOIs. AOI analyses, however, also come with the limitation of requiring a priori specification. These findings provide evidence that the conflicting reports in the prior literature may be at least partially accounted for by the differences in the statistical sensitivity associated with the different analysis methods employed across studies. Overall, our results suggest that detection of differences in eye-movement patterns can be analysis-dependent and rests on the assumptions inherent in the given analysis.

Culture modulates face scanning during dyadic social interactions

“…However, methods based on RFT may produce unreliable results when data is not normally distributed or for paradigms with a low number of participants since maps may not necessarily be sufficiently smooth 36 . Another approach -and the one chosen here -is non-parametric permutation testing [37][38][39] . Permutation testing uses the observed data itself to generate a null distribution by exchanging the data across groups in all possible arrangements to compute the frequency distribution of test statistics (e.g., t-score).…”

Where You Look Matters for Body Perception: Preferred Gaze Location Contributes to the Body Inversion Effect

“…The use of profile density statistical contrast analyses has been motivated in a prior eye-tracking study of face perception [28]. The present analysis is similar in principle to that in the prior study, but differs from it in a few details.…”

The "face race lightness illusion": An effect of the eyes and pupils?

“…In general, research employing eye-tracking has revealed that there are differences in the way observers from different culture look at own- and other-race faces [ 36 – 38 ], although some studies indicate that such differences can be rather subtle [ 39 ]. We surmise that even small changes in dwell time of gaze on darker vs. brighter regions of a stimulus might be sufficient to evoke noticeable differences in perceived luminance.…”