Initial fixation placement in face images is driven by top–down guidance

Guo, Kun

doi:10.1007/s00221-007-1038-5

Cited by 27 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…These results suggest that bonobos’ eye fixation was a well-automated response. A similar, rapid eye-fixation has been reported in humans [50, 51], from the early age [12], and also in several species of nonhuman primates (monkeys, gorillas, orangutans [16, 52]).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Social Attention in the Two Species of Pan: Bonobos Make More Eye Contact than Chimpanzees

2015

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Humans’ two closest primate living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, differ behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally in several ways despite their general similarities. While bonobos show more affiliative behaviors towards conspecifics, chimpanzees display more overt and severe aggression against conspecifics. From a cognitive standpoint, bonobos perform better in social coordination, gaze-following and food-related cooperation, while chimpanzees excel in tasks requiring extractive foraging skills. We hypothesized that attention and motivation play an important role in shaping the species differences in behavior, cognition, and emotion. Thus, we predicted that bonobos would pay more attention to the other individuals’ face and eyes, as those are related to social affiliation and social coordination, while chimpanzees would pay more attention to the action target objects, as they are related to foraging. Using eye-tracking we examined the bonobos’ and chimpanzees’ spontaneous scanning of pictures that included eyes, mouth, face, genitals, and action target objects of conspecifics. Although bonobos and chimpanzees viewed those elements overall similarly, bonobos viewed the face and eyes longer than chimpanzees, whereas chimpanzees viewed the other elements, the mouth, action target objects and genitals, longer than bonobos. In a discriminant analysis, the individual variation in viewing patterns robustly predicted the species of individuals, thus clearly demonstrating species-specific viewing patterns. We suggest that such attentional and motivational differences between bonobos and chimpanzees could have partly contributed to shaping the species-specific behaviors, cognition, and emotion of these species, even in a relatively short period of evolutionary time.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Social Attention in the Two Species of Pan: Bonobos Make More Eye Contact than Chimpanzees

2015

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“…Changing its location or surrounding context but keeping intact local structure and contrast (i.e. by scrambling faces) would significantly reduce the number of attracted fixations (Guo et al 2003(Guo et al , 2007. Furthermore, local facial regions with high image salience (based on the calculation of local image physical properties) are not necessarily correlated with the gaze distribution in face viewing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Spontaneous Gaze Patterns in Viewing of Faces of Different Species

2010

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Human studies have reported clear differences in perceptual and neural processing of faces of different species, implying the contribution of visual experience to face perception. Can these differences be manifested in our eye scanning patterns while extracting salient facial information? Here we systematically compared non-pet owners' gaze patterns while exploring human, monkey, dog and cat faces in a passive viewing task. Our analysis revealed that the faces of different species induced similar patterns of fixation distribution between left and right hemi-face, and among key local facial features with the eyes attracting the highest proportion of fixations and viewing times, followed by the nose and then the mouth. Only the proportion of fixation directed at the mouth region was species-dependent and could be differentiated at the earliest stage of face viewing. It seems that our spontaneous eye scanning patterns associated with face exploration were mainly constrained by general facial configurations; the species affiliation of the inspected faces had limited impact on gaze allocation, at least under free viewing conditions.

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“…The eyes are the first and the most extensively explored feature (Walker-Smith et al, 1977; Keating and Keating, 1982; Nahm et al, 1997; Parr et al, 2000; Pelphrey et al, 2002; Gothard et al, 2004, 2009; Dahl et al, 2007, 2009). The saliency of the eyes appears to result from top-down processes given that monkeys saccade towards the eye region even if the eyes are removed (Guo, 2007) or low-pass filtered (Gothard et al, 2009). The relative proportion of time spent looking at the eyes, mouth, ears, etc., depends on facial expression (Gothard et al, 2004), however, the scanpaths on various facial expressions are not sufficiently expression-specific to reliably predict each expression.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences in scanpaths correspond with serotonin transporter genotype and behavioral phenotype in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Gibboni

2009

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Scanpaths (the succession of fixations and saccades during spontaneous viewing) contain information about the image but also about the viewer. To determine the viewer-dependent factors in the scanpaths of monkeys, we trained three adult males (Macaca mulatta) to look for 3 s at images of conspecific facial expressions with either direct or averted gaze. The subjects showed significant differences on four basic scanpath parameters (number of fixations, fixation duration, saccade length, and total scanpath length) when viewing the same facial expression/gaze direction combinations. Furthermore, we found differences between monkeys in feature preference and in the temporal order in which features were visited on different facial expressions. Overall, the between-subject variability was larger than the within- subject variability, suggesting that scanpaths reflect individual preferences in allocating visual attention to various features in aggressive, neutral, and appeasing facial expressions. Individual scanpath characteristics were brought into register with the genotype for the serotonin transporter regulatory gene (5-HTTLPR) and with behavioral characteristics such as expression of anticipatory anxiety and impulsiveness/hesitation in approaching food in the presence of a potentially dangerous object.

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Initial fixation placement in face images is driven by top–down guidance

Cited by 27 publications

References 21 publications

Social Attention in the Two Species of Pan: Bonobos Make More Eye Contact than Chimpanzees

Social Attention in the Two Species of Pan: Bonobos Make More Eye Contact than Chimpanzees

Human Spontaneous Gaze Patterns in Viewing of Faces of Different Species

Individual differences in scanpaths correspond with serotonin transporter genotype and behavioral phenotype in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

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