Eyes as the Center of Focus in the Visual Examination of Human Faces

Janik, Stephen W.; Wellens, A. Rodney; Goldberg, Michael A.; Dell’Osso, Louis F.

doi:10.2466/pms.1978.47.3.857

Cited by 170 publications

(128 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Prior work suggests that typical individuals attend to the eyes when scanning faces (Haith et al 1977) as well as the internal features of the face (Janik et al 1978;Walker-Smith et al 1977). Furthermore, eye movements become more predictable with increased exposure and familiarity (Althoff and Cohen 1999), suggesting that exposure to a face can influence eye movements, or patterns of attention to faces.…”

Section: Eye Tracking and Familiar Facesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Face Familiarity in Eye Tracking of Faces by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Sterling

Dawson

Murias

et al. 2008

J Autism Dev Disord

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It has been shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate normal activation in the fusiform gyrus when viewing familiar, but not unfamiliar faces. The current study utilized eye tracking to investigate patterns of attention underlying familiar versus unfamiliar face processing in ASD. Eye movements of 18 typically developing participants and 17 individuals with ASD were recorded while passively viewing three face categories: unfamiliar non-repeating faces, a repeating highly familiar face, and a repeating previously unfamiliar face. Results suggest that individuals with ASD do not exhibit more normative gaze patterns when viewing familiar faces. A second task assessed facial recognition accuracy and response time for familiar and novel faces. The groups did not differ on accuracy or reaction times.

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Section: Eye Tracking and Familiar Facesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Face Familiarity in Eye Tracking of Faces by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Sterling

Dawson

Murias

et al. 2008

J Autism Dev Disord

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“…We will focus on the latter. Research on gaze behavior during face processing in healthy populations is in high agreement that participants fixate first and foremost the eyes and mouth when no instructions are given prior to viewing the faces (Groner, Walder, & Groner 1984;Janik, Wellens, Goldberg, & Dell'Osso, 1978;Yarbus, 1967). Jeffreys, Tukmachi, and Rockley (1992) studied the relationship between evoked potential and fixation position with facial images and concluded that the point between both eyes might be the position from which optimal processing occurs.…”

Section: Research On Gaze Behavior During Face Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gaze behavior in analytical and holistic face processing

2005

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Humans are experts at recognizing faces. We identify faces quickly and exactly without any effort. Small wonder, then, that extensive research has been carried out to understand the stages of information processing that underlie face-recognition performance. The two relevant stages of information processing are perceptual encoding and information processing. In the area of face processing, most studies have focused on the latter and have shown that people often use the configural processing mode-processing the relations among the facial features (e.g., Diamond & Carey, 1986;Farah, Tanaka, & Drain, 1995;Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka, 1998;Freire, Lee, & Symons, 2000;Tanaka & Farah, 1993). Analytical face processing has been emphasized as being relevant, too (e.g., Bruyer & Coget, 1987;Macho & Leder, 1998;Schwarzer & Massaro, 2001), and most recent studies concern the question of whether and how both configural and analytical information processing play a role in face recognition (e.g., Collishaw & Hole, 2000;Leder & Bruce, 2000;Schwaninger, Lobmaier, & Collishaw, 2002;Searcy & Bartlett, 1996;Tanaka & Sengco, 1997). However, very few studies address the visual encoding stage in face processing directly and analyze what kind of facial information is extracted during face processing. According to Viviani (1990), the analysis of gaze behavior can be understood as a method to study the stage of visual encoding. Therefore, to understand the visual encoding stage of face processing, the present study investigated participants' gaze behavior when they processed faces analytically or configurally. Research on the Different Modes of Face ProcessingAs mentioned above, the information processing modes people use to recognize faces is of both configural and analytical character. According to Maurer, Le Grand, and Mondloch (2002), configural processing can be divided into three types: (1) processing of first-order relationsthat is, seeing that a stimulus is a face because the features are arranged with two eyes above a nose, which is above a mouth; (2) holistic processing-that is, gluing together the features into a gestalt; and (3) processing second-order relations-that is, processing the specific distances among the features. Previous research has shown that adults use all of these three types of configural processing: They have a remarkable ability to detect faces among a sample of other visual stimuli on the basis of first-order relations (Moscovitch, Winocur, & Behrmann, 1997). When adults detect the first-order relations of a face, they tend to process the face as a gestalt (holistic processing), which makes it harder to process individual features. This effect was demonstrated by the "composite face effect" (e.g., Young, Hellaway, & Hay, 1987), in which the top half of a face can be recognized correctly when it is presented in isolation, but that recognition is significantly slower when the top half is combined with the bottom half of a different face. Holistic processing of faces has also been demonstrated by the "par...

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“…People attend to the eyes at least 40% of the time, which is far greater than attention to other principal facial features such as the nose and mouth (Henderson, Williams, & Falk, 2005;Janik, Wellens, Goldberg, & Dell'Osso, 1978). Research has demonstrated that the eyes provide access to data useful for a variety of social judgments (Looser & Wheatley, 2010;Macrae, Hood, Milne, Rowe, & Mason, 2002;Niedenthal et al, 2010).…”

Section: Preferential Attention To the Eyes Of Ingroup Membersmentioning

confidence: 99%

An eye for the I: Preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members.

Kawakami¹,

Williams²,

Sidhu³

et al. 2014

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

138

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Human faces, and more specifically the eyes, play a crucial role in social and nonverbal communication because they signal valuable information about others. It is therefore surprising that few studies have investigated the impact of intergroup contexts and motivations on attention to the eyes of ingroup and outgroup members. Four experiments investigated differences in eye gaze to racial and novel ingroups using eye tracker technology. Whereas Studies 1 and 3 demonstrated that White participants attended more to the eyes of White compared to Black targets, Study 2 showed a similar pattern of attention to the eyes of novel ingroup and outgroup faces. Studies 3 and 4 also provided new evidence that eye gaze is flexible and can be meaningfully influenced by current motivations. Specifically, instructions to individuate specific social categories increased attention to the eyes of target group members. Furthermore, the latter experiments demonstrated that preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members predicted important intergroup biases such as recognition of ingroup over outgroup faces (i.e., the Own Race Bias; Study 3) and willingness to interact with outgroup members (Study 4). The implication of these findings for general theorizing on face perception, individuation processes, and intergroup relations are discussed.Keywords: intergroup bias, social categorization, individuation, prejudice, Own Race Bias, face perception, social vision PREFERENTIAL ATTENTION TO THE EYES OF INGROUP MEMBERS 3An Eye for the I: Preferential Attention to the Eyes of Ingroup MembersThe human face is arguably the most important of all social stimuli because it is such a rich source of information. Faces, and more specifically the eyes, play crucial roles in social and nonverbal communication, signaling valuable information about others (Adams & Kleck, 2003Niedenthal, Mermillod, Maringer, & Hess, 2010). Despite the key role that the eyes play in social cognition, few studies have investigated the impact of intergroup contexts and motivation on attention to the eyes of ingroup and outgroup members. Although research has convincingly demonstrated that perceivers are better at understanding and extracting information from faces that belong to ingroups relative to outgroups (Adams, Franklin, Nelson, & Stevenson, 2010;Chiao et al., 2008;, it remains unclear how people process faces from their own and other categories and whether distinct patterns of attention to specific facial features exist for these groups.The current research seeks to address this gap directly. To this end, we first provide a general review of the literature regarding the central role of the eyes in social perception, and in particular, their role when perceiving ingroup and outgroup members. Then we move to a discussion regarding the impact of motivation on eye gaze and the relationship between eye gaze, and two important intergroup biases: the Own Race Bias (Hugenberg, Young, Bernstein, & Sacco, 2010;Meissner & Brigham, 2001;Sporer, 2001) and a willing...

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Eyes as the Center of Focus in the Visual Examination of Human Faces

Cited by 170 publications

References 6 publications

The Role of Face Familiarity in Eye Tracking of Faces by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The Role of Face Familiarity in Eye Tracking of Faces by Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Gaze behavior in analytical and holistic face processing

An eye for the I: Preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members.

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