Individual fixation tendencies in person viewing generalize from images to videos

Abstract

Fixation behavior toward persons in static scenes varies considerably between individuals. However, it is unclear whether these differences generalize to dynamic stimuli. Here, we examined individual differences in the distribution of gaze across seven person features (i.e. body and face parts) in static and dynamic scenes. Forty-four participants freely viewed 700 complex static scenes followed by eight director-cut videos (28,925 frames). We determined the presence of person features using hand-delineated pixel masks (images) and Deep Neural Networks (videos). Results replicated highly consistent individual differences in fixation tendencies for all person features in static scenes and revealed that these tendencies generalize to videos. Individual fixation behavior for both, images and videos, fell into two anticorrelated clusters representing the tendency to fixate faces versus bodies. These results corroborate a low-dimensional space for individual gaze biases toward persons and show they generalize from images to videos.

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

“…Even though most humans tend to fixate close to the eye region within a face ( Birmingham, Bischof, & Kingstone, 2008 ; Foulsham, Cheng, Tracy, Henrich, & Kingstone, 2010 ; Klin, Jones, Schultz, Volkmar, & Cohen, 2002 ; Peterson & Eckstein, 2012 ), significant individual differences exist. Preferred fixation landing positions can be as low as the mouth and prove consistent for complex static scenes ( Broda & de Haas, 2022b ), portraits ( Peterson & Eckstein, 2013 ), director-cut videos ( Broda & de Haas, 2022a ), and natural free-viewing situations ( Peterson, Lin, Zaun, & Kanwisher, 2016 ). Future studies should test whether interindividual variability in the saccadic reaction time advantage afforded by faces and eyes is linked to individual differences in face and eye salience.…”

“…Finally, it is unclear to which extent rapid saccades in the saccadic choice paradigm rely on general mechanisms of gaze control. Recently, we found that the individual tendency to fixate faces in scenes is strongly correlated to the tendency to fixate eyes within faces ( Broda & de Haas, 2022a ; Broda & de Haas, 2022b ). Even though most humans tend to fixate close to the eye region within a face ( Birmingham, Bischof, & Kingstone, 2008 ; Foulsham, Cheng, Tracy, Henrich, & Kingstone, 2010 ; Klin, Jones, Schultz, Volkmar, & Cohen, 2002 ; Peterson & Eckstein, 2012 ), significant individual differences exist.…”

Individual differences in looking at persons in scenes

“…Specifically, observers are more likely to look at the eye region when the depicted person looks at the camera while talking increases the number of mouth fixations ( Vo et al, 2012 ). At the same time, a recent study found that individual biases in person viewing generalize from static to dynamic scene viewing ( Broda & de Haas, 2022 ) and individual fixation behavior toward static faces is highly predictive of gaze behavior during real world interactions ( Peterson et al, 2016 ). Additionally, even screen-based gaze behavior that does not generalize to real-world interactions may have diagnostic value in clinical contexts ( Adolph & West, 2022 ).…”

Reading the mind in the nose

“…Most research has focused on the eye and mouth regions (e.g., Kim et al, 2022), even though average and expert face observers tend to look somewhere in between (Linka et al, 2022;Peterson & Eckstein, 2012). In fact, we ourselves plead guilty to this oversight (Broda & de Haas, 2022a, 2022bde Haas et al, 2016de Haas et al, , 2021de Haas & Schwarzkopf, 2018). But there is more to faces.…”