The wide window of face detection

Abstract

Faces are detected more rapidly than other objects in visual scenes and search arrays, but the cause for this face advantage has been contested. In the present study, we found that under conditions of spatial uncertainty, faces were easier to detect than control targets (dog faces, clocks and cars) even in the absence of surrounding stimuli, making an explanation based only on low-level differences unlikely. This advantage improved with eccentricity in the visual field, enabling face detection in wider visual windows, and pointing to selective sparing of face detection at greater eccentricities. This face advantage might be due to perceptual factors favoring face detection. In addition, the relative face advantage is greater under flanked than non-flanked conditions, suggesting an additional, possibly attention-related benefit enabling face detection in groups of distracters.

Face detection differs from categorization: Evidence from visual search in natural scenes

“…These findings converge with previous experiments that have already hinted at this distinction (Hershler et al, 2010), but they provide more direct evidence by contrasting categorization with visual search in natural scenes and by assessing observers' search behavior with eye movements. These results are of theoretical importance for showing that these processes are dissociable.…”

“…One source of evidence to suggest that this distinction might be appropriate comes from tasks in which observers are required to detect the presence of faces at different locations in the visual field (Hershler, Golan, Bentin, & Hochstein, 2010). Under these conditions, face detection performance is comparable to that for nonface targets when these stimuli are presented close to fixation.…”

Finding faces among faces: human faces are located more quickly and accurately than other primate and mammal faces

“…One possibility is that more efficient searches for human faces relative to animal faces may be due to the fact that expert objects, compared to non-expert objects, can be located in broader detection windows (i.e., peripheral detection advantage), allowing viewers to scan larger areas of their visual field during each fixation (Hershler & Hochstein, 2009; Hershler et al, 2010). Human faces may be distinct in some preattentive features (Lewis & Ellis, 2003).…”

“…If so, then human faces may be located more efficiently than faces of other species. Previous studies suggest a human face detection advantage (e.g., Hershler, Golan, Bentin, & Hochstein, 2010; Hershler & Hochstein, 2005, 2006; Rousselet, Macé, & Fabre-Thorpe, 2003; Stein, Sterzer, & Peelen, 2012). Although it may be commonly accepted that human faces should be detected more efficiently than faces of other species, this has not been empirically tested in a context in which faces of different species are competing for attention.…”

What is special about expertise? Visual expertise reveals the interactive nature of real-world object recognition

“…However, the car search slopes were steeper than in faces, indicating a relatively less efficient search (for similar results see Hershler and Hochstein, 2009). Thus, both categories of expertise impact the deployment of object-based attention, but in faces this process is involuntary and stimulusdriven (Hershler et al, 2010;Hershler and Hochstein, 2005) whereas in car expertise, the deployment of attention occurs in a voluntary top-down fashion. Notably, the term "attention" denotes here two forms of attention: object-based attention, as well as space-based attention, as the car experts showed a significant advantage (shallower slopes) in detecting car targets located in the periphery relative to the center of the visual field.…”