From eye to face: The impact of face outline, feature number, and feature saliency on the early neural response to faces

Parkington, Karisa; Itier, Roxane J.

doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2019.146343

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Baron-Cohen (1994, 2005 hypothesized an eye-direction detector, an intentionality detector, the emotion detector, a shared-attention mechanism, the empathizing system, and a theory-of-mind mechanism. The eyedirection detector has subsequently found support from the ERP research reviewed earlier, which suggests a specific eye-region detector (e.g., Engell & McCarthy, 2014;Parkington & Itier, 2019). Based partly on the findings of complex response profiles in monkey superior temporal sulcus (STS) to social-attention signals, Perrett and Emery (1994) theorized a direction-ofattention detector and a mutual-attention mechanism additional to those in Baron-Cohen's model.…”

Section: Current Theories and Models Of Shared Attentionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Indeed, it has long been known that observing eyes alone elicits an N170 greater in amplitude than the onset of a whole face ( Bentin, Allison, Puce, Perez, & McCarthy, 1996 ). More recently, gaze-contingent studies have demonstrated that the sensitivity of the N170 to gaze stimuli can be detected when participants fixate on the eyes of a face, not just when eye regions are presented in isolation ( Itier & Preston, 2018 ; Nemrodov, Anderson, Preston, & Itier, 2014 ; Parkington & Itier, 2018 , 2019 ). In children, the N170 has been shown to be larger for eyes than for faces and to reflect an adult-like event-related potential (ERP) profile by the age of 11, suggesting the N170 may be driven largely by eyes and mature earlier than the N170 for complete faces, which continues into adulthood ( Taylor, Edmonds, McCarthy, & Allison, 2001 ).…”

Section: Early Event-related Potentials: the N170 Edan And N2pcmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Gaze Perception to Social Cognition: The Shared-Attention System

Stephenson

Edwards

Bayliss

2021

Perspect Psychol Sci

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When two people look at the same object in the environment and are aware of each other’s attentional state, they find themselves in a shared-attention episode. This can occur through intentional or incidental signaling and, in either case, causes an exchange of information between the two parties about the environment and each other’s mental states. In this article, we give an overview of what is known about the building blocks of shared attention (gaze perception and joint attention) and focus on bringing to bear new findings on the initiation of shared attention that complement knowledge about gaze following and incorporate new insights from research into the sense of agency. We also present a neurocognitive model, incorporating first-, second-, and third-order social cognitive processes (the shared-attention system, or SAS), building on previous models and approaches. The SAS model aims to encompass perceptual, cognitive, and affective processes that contribute to and follow on from the establishment of shared attention. These processes include fundamental components of social cognition such as reward, affective evaluation, agency, empathy, and theory of mind.

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Section: Current Theories and Models Of Shared Attentionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Early Event-related Potentials: the N170 Edan And N2pcmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Gaze Perception to Social Cognition: The Shared-Attention System

Stephenson

Edwards

Bayliss

2021

Perspect Psychol Sci

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“…The evidence supporting above theoretical speculation comes from research on early processing of faces. For example, the visual search task found that the eyes had a very high priority in visual search 16,47 ; eye movement studies found that when people looked at faces, the probability of the first fixation on the eye area (including the eyes themselves and surrounding areas) was extremely high 15,48 , and 1-2 gaze points could allow participants to recognize faces quite accurately 15 ; ERP studies have found that the amplitude of N170 (which is considered to be the specific component for holistic face processing) induced by eyes was much higher than other features on the face 19,20,[49][50][51] . These results suggest that the human cognitive nervous system may have an "eye detector" that allows people to accurately detect the eyes at the very early stage of perception, completing the first stage of face perception.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Hsiao and colleagues used the eye-tracking technique and observed that the number of fixations on eyes was significantly higher than that on mouth, showing a bias fixating on the upper half 15 ; Burton and colleagues used the visual search paradigm and found that participants were faster and more accurate in searching for an upper facial half than a lower half in a complex visual background 16 ; Wang and colleagues using the face matching task found that participants were more sensitive to changes in the eye region relative to the mouth region 10 . In addition, some studies found that N170 amplitudes were stronger when participants fixed on eyes relative to other regions 19 , 20 . Considering that the N170 is regarded as the reflection of ERP index of holistic face processing 21 , 22 , this may suggest that the processing of the upper half of the face (than the lower half of the face) is more involved in holistic face processing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking at the upper facial half enlarges the range of holistic face processing

Wang

Zhou

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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Previous studies suggested that upper and lower facial halves might be involved in the human holistic face processing differently. In this study, we replicated and extended the finding above. In Experiment 1, we used the standard composite-face task to measure holistic face processing when participants made judgements on the upper and lower facial halves separately. Results showed that the composite-face effect was stronger for the upper facial half compared to the lower half. In Experiment 2, we investigated how facial information was integrated when participants focused on different features, using the perceptual field paradigm. Results showed that: (1) more “peripheral faces” were chosen when participants fixated at the eyes than when they fixated at the mouth; (2) less “peripheral faces” were chosen for inverted faces regardless of the fixated features. Findings from both experiments together indicate that more peripheral facial information were integrated when participants focused on the upper facial half, highlighting the significance of focusing on the upper facial half in face processing.

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“…Besides these studies, a series of studies investigated what effects of different face features on ERP responses (Neath & Itier, 2015; Neath-Tavares & Itier, 2016; Nemrodov et al, 2014; Parkington & Itier, 2018, 2019; see also Aguado et al, 2019; de Lissa et al, 2014; Towler & Eimer, 2015). In particular, Neath and Itier (2015) and Neath-Tavares and Itier (2016) demonstrated emotional modulation of the P1 and N170 components across changes in spatial locations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fearful faces straight ahead or in the periphery: Early neuronal responses independently of trait anxiety.

Schindler¹,

Meyer²,

Bruchmann³

et al. 2023

Emotion

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For humans, it is vitally important to rapidly detect potentially threatening stimuli such as fearful faces in the periphery. Trait anxiety has been related to biased responses to threatening faces, which might be more pronounced for peripheral stimuli. We examined the impact of spatial location and trait anxiety on event-related potentials to fearful faces (ERPs) in a large sample (N = 80). Using a face-unrelated oddball detection task and online eye-tracking, we ensured central fixation but sustained attention to the location of fearful and neutral faces at central or peripheral locations (12° left or right). Manipulation checks showed high task performance and successful shifts of visuospatial attention indexed by prestimulus alpha lateralization of the EEG spectra. Concerning ERPs, we observed increased P1 amplitudes for fearful compared to neutral faces, independent of the spatial location. In contrast, the N170 to fearful faces was only potentiated for centrally presented faces. Finally, fearful and neutral faces did not differ during the EPN window at any spatial location. Trait anxiety was unrelated to fearful-neutral ERP differences for each examined location. Our findings show that differential P1 responses are less constrained by the stimulus location, possibly due to coarse low-level stimulus information processing. However, the relative N170 increase for fearful faces depends on the central stimulus location. Furthermore, findings support the view that differential processing at the stage of the EPN depends on attentional conditions. Finally, our results question the hypothesis that trait anxiety differences correlate with mandatorily altered processing of threatening stimuli.

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From eye to face: The impact of face outline, feature number, and feature saliency on the early neural response to faces

Cited by 8 publications

References 62 publications

From Gaze Perception to Social Cognition: The Shared-Attention System

From Gaze Perception to Social Cognition: The Shared-Attention System

Looking at the upper facial half enlarges the range of holistic face processing

Fearful faces straight ahead or in the periphery: Early neuronal responses independently of trait anxiety.

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