Differential impact of disfiguring facial features on overt and covert attention

Abstract

Observers can form negative impressions about faces that contain disfiguring features (e.g., scars). Previous research suggests that this might be due to the ability of disfiguring features to capture attention - as evidenced by contrasting observers' responses to faces with or without disfiguring features. This, however, confounds the effects of salience and perceptual interpretation, i.e. whether the feature is seen as integral to the face, or separate from it. Furthermore, it remains unclear to what extent disfiguring features influence covert as well as overt attention. We addressed these issues by studying attentional effects by photographs of unfamiliar faces containing a unilateral disfigurement (a skin discoloration) or a visually similar control feature that was partly occluding the face. Disfiguring and occluding features were first matched for salience (Experiment 1). Experiments 2 and 3 assessed the effect of these features on covert attention in two cueing tasks involving discrimination of a (validly or invalidly cued) target in the presence of, respectively, a peripheral or central distractor face. In both conditions, disfigured and occluded faces did not differ significantly in their impact on response-time costs following invalid cues. In Experiment 4 we compared overt attention to these faces by analysing patterns of eye fixations during an attractiveness rating task. Critically, faces with disfiguring features attracted more fixations on the eyes and incurred a higher number of recurrent fixations compared to faces with salience-matched occluding features. Together, these results suggest a differential impact of disfiguring facial features on overt and covert attention, which is mediated both by the visual salience of such features and by their perceptual interpretation.

Do facially disfiguring features influence attention and perception of faces? Evidence from an antisaccade task

“…The lack of a consistent impact across saccade types suggests that covert attention to the peripherally presented face was not by default affected by these added facial features nor by their type (i.e., whether disfiguring or occluding). This finding is consistent with evidence from our previous study with the same stimuli, in which both peripheral and central faces failed to differentially influence covert attention ( Boutsen et al, 2018 ; Experiments 2 and 3). However, this finding may still surprise as our observers consistently interpreted the disfiguring faces as disease-signalling and as affecting the appearance of the face, more so than they did towards faces with an occluding feature.…”

“…Thus, 10 images were created from each face. Details on the faces and on the construction of the added features can be found in Boutsen et al (2018) . Each image was 600 pixels (10.86°) wide and between 703 and 1,007 pixels (12.53–17.88°) tall; aspect ratio was preserved.…”

“…While these studies compared observers’ eye movements to faces with and without disfiguring features, they could not rule out the possibility that attentional capture might have been caused by the presence of an unusual feature, regardless of its nature (i.e., whether it signalled disease or not). We addressed this issue by comparing oculomotor responses with face images digitally manipulated to contain either a realistic looking skin deformity (a “portwine stain”) or a control feature that was partially occluding the face ( Boutsen et al, 2018 ; Figure 1 ). Faces with the simulated disfiguring feature attracted fewer fixations on the eyes and incurred a higher number of recurrent fixations compared with faces with a control feature.…”

Perceptive and affective impairments in emotive eye-region processing in alexithymia

“…, 2011 ; Fujiwara, 2018 ). Finally, it has been shown that faces with disfigured features attract more fixation on the eyes and incur a higher number of recurrent fixations compared to faces with salience-matched occluding features ( Boutsen et al. , 2018 ).…”

Towards a better understanding of the social stigma of facial difference

“…At the same time, FD diverts attention away from internal facial features like the eyes, which plays an important role in social interactions (Rasset et al, 2022a). Clearly, FD affects the allocation of overt visual attention, and not only because of its saliency (Ackerman et al, 2009;Boutsen et al, 2018Boutsen et al, , 2021. In fact, research has shown that faces with FD are not better memorized; people tend to confuse different faces with FD with each other more than different faces without FD (Ackerman et al, 2009).…”