Characteristic fixation biases in Super-Recognizers

Abstract

Neurotypical observers show large and reliable individual differences in gaze behavior along several semantic object dimensions. Individual gaze behavior towards faces has been linked to face identity processing, including that of neurotypical observers. Here, we investigated potential gaze biases in Super-Recognizers (SRs) - individuals with exceptional face identity processing skills. 10 SRs, identified with a novel conservative diagnostic framework, and 43 controls freely viewed 700 complex scenes, depicting more than 5000 objects. First, we tested whether SRs vs. controls differ in fixation biases along four semantic dimensions: Faces, Text, objects being Touched and Bodies. Second, we tested potential group differences in fixation biases towards eyes and mouths. Finally, we tested whether SRs show less intra- and inter-individual variability with regard to their preferred vertical fixation position in faces. SRs showed a stronger gaze bias towards Faces and away from Text and Touched objects, starting from the first fixation onwards. Further, SRs showed a trend to fixate faces more centrally than controls. They spent a significantly smaller proportion of first fixations and dwell time towards faces on Mouths and a similar trend emerged for Eyes. SRs also exhibited significantly less inter-individual variance in vertical face fixation locations than controls. Our findings demonstrate that reliable superiority for face identity processing is accompanied by early fixation biases towards faces, with fixations biased centrally within faces. We discuss future directions to investigate the functional basis of individual fixation behavior and face identity processing ability.

Individual fixation tendencies in person viewing generalize from images to videos

“…Our results replicate previous findings showing medium to strong consistencies for individual fixation tendencies toward person features in static scenes (Broda & de Haas, 2022; de Haas et al, 2019; Guy et al, 2019; Linka, Broda, et al, 2022; Linka & de Haas, 2020; Peterson et al, 2016). Specifically, we replicate two distinct clusters for face (head & eyes) and body features, with the tendency to fixate mouths falling closer to the body cluster and a strong negative correlation for the general tendency to fixate heads versus bodies (Broda & de Haas, 2022).…”

“…Faces are also highly salient in the context of videos (Foulsham et al, 2010; Klin et al, 2002). At the same time, the tendency to fixate faces and eyes is modulated by robust individual differences, (Constantino et al, 2017; Guy et al, 2019; Peterson & Eckstein, 2013) and these fixation tendencies correlate with face recognition and memory performance (de Haas et al, 2019; Linka, Broda, et al, 2022). For special populations such as humans with autism spectrum disorder, the avoidance of faces and eyes in particular (Tanaka & Sung, 2016) has been linked to a general reduction of social attention (Riby & Hancock, 2008).…”

Quick, eyes! Isolated upper face regions but not artificial features elicit rapid saccades

“…Interestingly, upper faces elicited faster minimum saccadic reaction times and significantly greater saccadic reaction time advantages than lower and even the whole faces they were taken from. This finding resonates with the eye region's prominent importance for face detection ( Lewis & Edmonds, 2003 ; Viola & Jones, 2001 ) and recognition ( Linka, Broda, Alsheimer, de Haas, & Ramon, 2022 ; Peterson & Eckstein, 2012 ; Sadr, Jarudi, & Sinha, 2003 ; Vinette, Gosselin, & Schyns, 2004 ). When eyes are obscured, observers need significantly more time to detect a face.…”

Faces in scenes attract rapid saccades

“…Additionally, even though we included the subject as a random factor in our Linear mixed-effects models, the remaining analyses had to be conducted on aggregated group-level data to avoid power attrition. Given the evidence for the idiosyncratic nature of gaze behavior (Bargary et al, 2017;de Haas et al, 2019;Linka et al, 2022;Linka & de Haas, 2020;Rigas et al, 2016;Yoon et al, 2020), a more sensitive approach towards individual differences may reveal systematic variance regarding the effects we found. This would be especially interesting with regards to the main hypothesis suggested by our results: The effect of faces as targets on saccadic latency and velocity rest on separate mechanisms.…”