Face processing and familiarity: Evidence from eye‐movement data

Stacey, Paula C.; Walker, Stephanie; Underwood, Jean

doi:10.1348/000712605x47422

Cited by 70 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…We would thus suggest that the nose was fixated in the study of Hsiao and Cottrell (2009), not the center of the face. Our findings reinforce the hypothesis that observers rely on information from internal features in various face recognition tasks, as has been shown to be the case in identification and familiarity rating (Stacey, Walker, & Underwood, 2005). Thus, if a ''center of information'' as proposed by Hsiao and colleagues exists, this center is clearly different from the geometrical center of a face.…”

Section: Features Always Mattersupporting

confidence: 84%

Looking at faces from different angles: Europeans fixate different features in Asian and Caucasian faces

2014

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Race categorization of faces is a fast and automatic process and is known to affect further face processing profoundly and at earliest stages. Whether processing of own- and other-race faces might rely on different facial cues, as indicated by diverging viewing behavior, is much under debate. We therefore aimed to investigate two open questions in our study: (1) Do observers consider information from distinct facial features informative for race categorization or do they prefer to gain global face information by fixating the geometrical center of the face? (2) Does the fixation pattern, or, if facial features are considered relevant, do these features differ between own- and other-race faces? We used eye tracking to test where European observers look when viewing Asian and Caucasian faces in a race categorization task. Importantly, in order to disentangle centrally located fixations from those towards individual facial features, we presented faces in frontal, half-profile and profile views. We found that observers showed no general bias towards looking at the geometrical center of faces, but rather directed their first fixations towards distinct facial features, regardless of face race. However, participants looked at the eyes more often in Caucasian faces than in Asian faces, and there were significantly more fixations to the nose for Asian compared to Caucasian faces. Thus, observers rely on information from distinct facial features rather than facial information gained by centrally fixating the face. To what extent specific features are looked at is determined by the face's race.

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Section: Features Always Mattersupporting

confidence: 84%

Looking at faces from different angles: Europeans fixate different features in Asian and Caucasian faces

2014

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“…Since the seminal work by Yarbus (1967) on eye movements to faces in the 1960s, studies have reported a consistent pattern of results whereby fixations are predominantly directed to the eyes, followed by the nose, and mouth (e.g., Althoff & Cohen, 1999;Luria & Strauss, 1978;Mertens, Siegmund, & Grüsser, 1993;Stacey, Walker, & Underwood, 2005). This viewing pattern might reflect an automatic preference for the eye region because it conveys information diagnostic for identifying individual faces (e.g., Barton et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Faces elicit different scanning patterns depending on task demands

Boutet

Lemieux

Goulet

et al. 2017

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Eye movements were recorded while participants discriminated upright and inverted faces that differed with respect to either configural or featural information. Two hypotheses were examined: (1) whether featural and configural information processing elicit different scanning patterns; (2) whether fixations on a specific region of the face dominate scanning patterns. Results from two experiments were compared to examine whether participants' prior knowledge of the kind of information that would be relevant for the task (i.e., configural vs featural) influences eye movements. In Experiment 1, featural and configural discrimination trials were presented in random order such that participants were unaware of the information that would be relevant on any given trial. In Experiment 2, featural and configural discrimination trials were blocked and participants were informed of the nature of the discriminations. The results of both experiments suggest that faces elicit different scanning patterns depending on task demands. When participants were unaware of the nature of the information relevant for the task at hand, face processing was dominated by attention to the eyes. When participants were aware that relational information was relevant, scanning was dominated by fixations to the center of the face. We conclude that faces elicit scanning strategies that are driven by task demands.

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“…In recent years, several studies have explored the relationship between recognition of faces and gaze fixations (e.g., Althoff & Cohen, 1999;Hannula et al, 2010;Ryan, Hannula, & Cohen, 2007;Stacey, Walker, & Underwood, 2005). The leading question has been whether prior experience with a face determines subsequent eye movement behavior.…”

Section: Abstract Eye Movements Concealed Information Test Guiltymentioning

confidence: 99%

The revealing glance: Eye gaze behavior to concealed information

Schwedes

Wentura

2011

Mem Cogn

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We explored the usefulness of eye fixation durations as a dependent measure in a concealed knowledge test, drawing on Ryan, Hannula, and Cohen (2007), who found eye fixations on a familiar face to be longer than fixations on an unknown face. However, in their study, participants always had to select the known face out of three faces; thus, recognition and response intention could not be differentiated. In the experimental phase of our experiment, participants saw six faces per trial and had to select one of them. We had three conditions: In the first, one of the six faces was a known face, and the participants had to conceal that knowledge and select another face (concealed display); in another, one of the six faces was a known face, and the participants had to select that face (revealed display); or finally, all six faces were unknown, and participants had to select any of the six faces (neutral display). Using fixation durations as the dependent measure, we found a pure and early recognition effect; that is, fixations on the concealed faces (known but not selected) were longer than fixations on the nonselected unknown target faces in the neutral display. In addition, we found a response intention effect; that is, fixation durations on the selected known faces were longer than those on concealed faces (known but not selected).

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Face processing and familiarity: Evidence from eye‐movement data

Cited by 70 publications

References 22 publications

Looking at faces from different angles: Europeans fixate different features in Asian and Caucasian faces

Looking at faces from different angles: Europeans fixate different features in Asian and Caucasian faces

Faces elicit different scanning patterns depending on task demands

The revealing glance: Eye gaze behavior to concealed information

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