Faces are special, but facial expressions aren’t: Insights from an oculomotor capture paradigm

Abstract

We compared the ability of angry and neutral faces to drive oculomotor behaviour as a test of the widespread claim that emotional information is automatically prioritized when competing for attention. Participants were required to make a saccade to a colour singleton; photos of angry or neutral faces appeared amongst other objects within the array, and were completely irrelevant for the task. Eye-tracking measures indicate that faces drive oculomotor behaviour in a bottom-up fashion; however, angry faces are no more likely to capture the eyes than neutral faces are. Saccade latencies suggest that capture occurrs via reflexive saccades and that the outcome of competition between salient items (colour singletons and faces) may be subject to fluctuations in attentional control. Indeed, although angry and neutral faces captured the eyes reflexively on a portion of trials, participants successfully maintained goal-relevant oculomotor behaviour on a majority of trials. We outline potential cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying oculomotor capture by faces.

The influence of emotional stimuli on the oculomotor system: A review of the literature

“…In contrast to studies with fear-conditioned distractors, the visual-search studies with emotional expressions (DeVue & Grimshaw, 2017;Hunt et al, 2007a) did not find any evidence of more oculomotor capture by emotional expressions. Moreover, in the study of DeVue and Grimshaw (2017), the latency of the error saccades to the faces with a neutral as well as an emotional expression were all below 200 ms.…”

“…In sum, although threatening distractor stimuli possibly affect the oculomotor system early in time (Nissens et al, 2017), a modulation of the very short latency saccades (<200 ms) has not yet been found (DeVue & Grimshaw, 2017;Mulckhuyse & Dalmaijer, 2016). A possible explanation might be a ceiling effect for saccades initiated under 200 ms. Alternatively, the lack of a finding on latency could imply that a visually salient threatening distractor is not processed faster than a visually salient nonthreatening distractor, as it does not reach the saccade map any faster.…”

“…Exogenous attentional capture, most especially, seems to be enhanced by emotion (Carretié, 2014). For instance, studies that did find an effect of emotion often presented the emotional stimulus as a sudden onset (Bannerman, Milders, de Gelder, et al, 2009;, 2010a, 2010bHopkins et al, 2016;Mulckhuyse & Dalmaijer, 2016;Schmidt et al, 2015Schmidt et al, , 2017, whereas in visual search studies that did not find an effect of emotion, the stimulus display including the target and distractor were presented together and for relatively long durations (DeVue & Grimshaw, 2017;Hunt et al, 2007a). In other words, there was no additional luminance transient present together with the emotional signal.…”

Saccade Latency Provides Evidence for Reduced Face Inversion Effects With Higher Autism Traits

“…In neurotypical populations, faces appear to constitute a unique category of objects that gain priority access to neural processing possibly via a direct superior colliculus-pulvinaramygdala route (McFadyen et al, 2017). For example, faces capture attention in visual search, even when they are irrelevant to the task (Devue and Grimshaw, 2017), and infants also demonstrate preferential looking at faces (Johnson et al, 1991). The salient nature of faces is well illustrated by a saccadic choice reaction time paradigm employed by Crouzet et al (2010) in which saccade onset times towards photographs of natural scenes presented simultaneously to the left and right of fixation averaged 150 ms when detecting the side containing a face (the express saccade range), compared to more than 180 ms when they were detecting a vehicle.…”

Trustworthiness of Hosts in Accommodation Sharing: The Effect of Facial Traits and Expressions

“…Infants spend more time looking at faces rather than non-facial stimuli (Cassia et al, 2004;Valenza et al, 1996). Faces grab attention, even if presented peripherally and completely irrelevant to the task (Devue & Grimshaw, 2017). A face still pops out when it is presented among non-facial distractor objects (Hershler & Hochstein, 2005;Langton et al, 2008), and it can thus be stated that faces have a unique capacity to attract attention.…”