Greater reliance on the eye region predicts better face recognition ability

Royer, Jessica; Blais, Caroline; Charbonneau, Isabelle; Déry, Karine; Tardif, Jessica; Duchaine, Brad; Gosselin, Frédéric; Fiset, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.004

Cited by 84 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…As in previous bubbles (e.g., Dupuis-Roy et al, 2009, 2018Gosselin & Schyns, 2001;Ince et al, 2016), eye-tracking (Butler et al, 2005), and chimeric faces studies (Butler et al, 2005;Innes, Burt, Birch, & Hausmann, 2016), there appeared to be a slight bias for the use of the left-eye region from the observer's perspective compared with the right-eye region (see Figure 2a). We showed that this bias is statistically significant by averaging z scores in two regions of interest (ROI)-the right-eye and the left-eye anatomically defined ROIs-for each individual unsmoothed CI and compared average ROI scores with a two-tailed paired t test (M and 3).…”

Section: Average Use Of Informationsupporting

confidence: 70%

“…A group-average analysis (N ϭ 140) replicated previous results showing that the eyes and eyebrows and, to a lesser extent, the mouth are the most important facial cues for face-sex discrimination (e.g., Dupuis-Roy et al, 2009;2018;Gosselin & Schyns, 2001;Russell, 2003;Schyns et al, 2002). For each individual, we computed the sum of bubble masks weighted by accuracies transformed in z scores (see Figure 1c).…”

Section: Average Use Of Informationsupporting

confidence: 55%

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Inducing the use of right eye enhances face-sex categorization performance.

Faghel-Soubeyrand

Dupuis-Roy

Gosselin

2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Face recognition ability varies tremendously among neurologically typical individuals. What causes these differences is still largely unknown. Here, we first used a data-driven experimental techniquebubbles-to measure the use of local facial information in 140 neurotypical individuals during a face-sex categorization task. We discovered that the use of the eye and eyebrow area located on the right side of the face image from the observer's viewpoint correlates positively with performance, whereas the use of the left-eye and eyebrow area correlates negatively with performance. We then tested if performance could be altered by inducing participants to use either the right-or the left-eye area. One hundred of these participants thus underwent a 1-hr session of a novel implicit training procedure aimed at inducing the use of specific facial information. Afterward, participants repeated the bubbles face-sex categorization task to assess the changes in use of information and its effect on performance. Participants that underwent right-eye induction used this facial region more than they initially did and, as expected, improved their performance more than the participants who underwent the left-eye induction. This is the first clear evidence of a causal link between the use of specific face information and face recognition ability: Use of right-eye region not only predicts but causes better face-sex categorization.

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Section: Average Use Of Informationsupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Average Use Of Informationsupporting

confidence: 55%

Inducing the use of right eye enhances face-sex categorization performance.

Faghel-Soubeyrand

Dupuis-Roy

Gosselin

2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Importantly, the Poor Information Hypothesis concerns how choice of fixation modulates the amount of information available for cortical processing. This is distinct from hypothesized inefficiencies in how well cortex is able to use the information it receives, such as reports of impaired cortical processing of the eye region in acquired prosopagnosia (Caldara et al, 2005;Fiset et al, 2017), DP (Tardif et al, 2019), and low face recognition ability NTs (Royer et al, 2018). Thus, this hypothesis predicts that DP individuals will look outside the region between the eyes and the tip of the nose.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Eye movements and retinotopic tuning in developmental prosopagnosia

et al. 2019

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Despite extensive investigation, the causes and nature of developmental prosopagnosia (DP)-a severe face identification impairment in the absence of acquired brain injury-remain poorly understood. Drawing on previous work showing that individuals identified as being neurotypical (NT) show robust individual differences in where they fixate on faces, and recognize faces best when the faces are presented at this location, we defined and tested four novel hypotheses for how atypical face-looking behavior and/or retinotopic face encoding could impair face recognition in DP: (a) fixating regions of poor information, (b) inconsistent saccadic targeting, (c) weak retinotopic tuning, and (d) fixating locations not matched to the individual's own face tuning. We found no support for the first three hypotheses, with NTs and DPs consistently fixating similar locations and showing similar retinotopic tuning of their face perception performance. However, in testing the fourth hypothesis, we found preliminary evidence for two distinct phenotypes of DP: (a) Subjects characterized by impaired face memory, typical face perception, and a preference to look high on the face, and (b) Subjects characterized by profound impairments to both face memory and perception and a preference to look very low on the face. Further, while all NTs and upper-looking DPs performed best when faces were presented near their preferred fixation location, this was not true for lower-looking DPs. These results suggest that face recognition deficits in a substantial proportion of people with DP may arise not from aberrant face gaze or compromised retinotopic tuning, but from the suboptimal matching of gaze to tuning.

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“…[56]) and perceptual skills (e.g. [44,[57][58][59][60][61]). The main aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of implicit racial attitudes on the visual extraction strategies used during a face trustworthiness comparison task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit race attitudes modulate visual information extraction for trustworthiness judgments

et al. 2020

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Black people are still considered to be one of the most stigmatized groups and have to face multiple prejudices that undermine their well-being. Assumptions and beliefs about other racial groups are quite pervasive and have been shown to impact basic social tasks such as face processing. For example, individuals with high racial prejudice conceptualize otherrace faces as less trustworthy and more criminal. However, it is unknown if implicit racial bias could modulate even low-level perceptual mechanisms such as spatial frequency (SF) extraction when judging the level of trustworthiness of other-race faces. The present study showed that although similar facial features are used to judge the trustworthiness of White and Black faces, own-race faces are processed in lower SF (i.e. coarse information such as the contour of the face and blurred shapes as opposed to high SF representing fine-grained information such as eyelashes or fine wrinkles). This pattern was modulated by implicit race biases: higher implicit biases are associated with a significantly higher reliance on low SF with White than with Black faces.

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Greater reliance on the eye region predicts better face recognition ability

Cited by 84 publications

References 86 publications

Inducing the use of right eye enhances face-sex categorization performance.

Inducing the use of right eye enhances face-sex categorization performance.

Eye movements and retinotopic tuning in developmental prosopagnosia

Implicit race attitudes modulate visual information extraction for trustworthiness judgments

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