Turning Heads: The Effects of Face View and Eye Gaze Direction on the Perceived Attractiveness of Expressive Faces

Perception ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-356
Author(s):  
Pik Ki Ho ◽  
Fiona N. Newell
Keyword(s):  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Head Turn ◽  
Relative Duration ◽  
Front View ◽  
The Face ◽  
Face View ◽  
Full Face ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces ◽  
Perceived Attractiveness

We investigated whether the perceived attractiveness of expressive faces was influenced by head turn and eye gaze towards or away from the observer. In all experiments, happy faces were consistently rated as more attractive than angry faces. A head turn towards the observer, whereby a full-face view was shown, was associated with relatively higher attractiveness ratings when gaze direction was aligned with face view (Experiment 1). However, preference for full-face views of happy faces was not affected by gaze shifts towards or away from the observer (Experiment 2a). In Experiment 3, the relative duration of each face view (front-facing or averted at 15°) during a head turn away or towards the observer was manipulated. There was benefit on attractiveness ratings for happy faces shown for a longer duration from the front view, regardless of the direction of head turn. Our findings support previous studies indicating a preference for positive expressions on attractiveness judgements, which is further enhanced by the front views of faces, whether presented during a head turn or shown statically. In sum, our findings imply a complex interaction between cues of social attention, indicated by the view of the face shown, and reward on attractiveness judgements of unfamiliar faces.

Visual cells in the temporal cortex sensitive to face view and gaze direction

1985 ◽  
Vol 223 (1232) ◽  
pp. 293-317 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Macaque Monkey ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Head Orientation ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Response Latencies ◽  
Visual Cells ◽  
The Face ◽  
Full Face

The direction of eye gaze and orientation of the face towards or away from another are important social signals for man and for macaque monkey. We have studied the effects of these signals in a region of the macaque temporal cortex where cells have been found to be responsive to the sight of faces. Of cells selectively responsive to the sight of the face or head but not to other objects (182 cells) 63% were sensitive to the orientation of the head. Different views of the head (full face, profile, back or top of the head, face rotated by 45° up to the ceiling or down to the floor) maximally activated different classes of cell. All classes of cell, however, remained active as the preferred view was rotated isomorphically or was changed in size or distance. Isomorphic rotation by 90–180° increased cell response latencies by 10–60 ms. Sensitivity to gaze direction was found for 64% of the cells tested that were tuned to head orientation. Eighteen cells most responsive to the full face preferred eye contact, while 18 cells tuned to the profile face preferred averted gaze. Sensitivity to gaze was thus compatible with, but could be independent of, sensitivity to head orientation. Results suggest that the recognition of one type of object may proceed via the independent high level analysis of several restricted views of the object (viewer-centred descriptions).

Perception of eye gaze direction in a case of acquired prosopagnosia

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Fall 2019) ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Britt Erni ◽  
Roland Maurer ◽  
Dirk Kerzel ◽  
Nicolas Burra
Keyword(s):  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Superior Temporal Sulcus ◽  
Brain Lesions ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Healthy Women ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Face

The ability to perceive the direction of eye gaze is critical in social settings. Brain lesions in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) impair this ability. We investigated the perception of gaze direction of PS, a patient suffering from acquired prosopagnosia (Rossion et al., 2003). Despite lesions in the face network, the STS was spared in PS. We assessed perception of gaze direction in PS with upright, inverted, and contrast-reversed faces. Compared to the performance of 11 healthy women matched for age and education, PS demonstrated abnormal discrimination of gaze direction with upright and contrast-reversed faces, but not with inverted faces. Our findings suggest that the inability of the patient to process faces holistically weakened her perception of gaze direction, especially in demanding tasks.

scholarly journals Familiarity and Face-Inversion Effect in Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata) during the Preferential Looking Task

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masaki Tomonaga
Keyword(s):  
Macaca Fuscata ◽  
Japanese Macaques ◽  
Inversion Effect ◽  
Front View ◽  
Face Inversion Effect ◽  
Processing Mode ◽  
Preferential Looking ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

AbstractFour young laboratory-born Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) looked at the photographs of familiar and unfamiliar persons presented at upright and inverted orientations by pressing the lever under the conjugate schedule of sensory reinforcement (successive preferential looking procedure). Three types of photographs were prepared: photographs with persons taken in front view, those taken in back, and those without persons. The monkeys looked longer when the face was upright than inverted only for the pictures containing unfamiliar person with front view. The other types of photographs did not cause inversion effect. Familiarity weakened the face-specific inversion effect in monkeys. This difference may be due to in part the lower preference for familiar faces and the difference in processing mode between familiar and unfamiliar faces.

Attention to Facial Regions in Segmental and Prosodic Visual Speech Perception Tasks

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 526-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa R. Lansing ◽  
George W. McConkie
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Visual Speech ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
The Face ◽  
Visual Speech Perception ◽  
Prosodic Categories

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that visual information related to segmental versus prosodic aspects of speech is distributed differently on the face of the talker. In the first experiment, eye gaze was monitored for 12 observers with normal hearing. Participants made decisions about segmental and prosodic categories for utterances presented without sound. The first experiment found that observers spend more time looking at and direct more gazes toward the upper part of the talker's face in making decisions about intonation patterns than about the words being spoken. The second experiment tested the Gaze Direction Assumption underlying Experiment 1—that is, that people direct their gaze to the stimulus region containing information required for their task. In this experiment, 18 observers with normal hearing made decisions about segmental and prosodic categories under conditions in which face motion was restricted to selected areas of the face. The results indicate that information in the upper part of the talker's face is more critical for intonation pattern decisions than for decisions about word segments or primary sentence stress, thus supporting the Gaze Direction Assumption. Visual speech perception proficiency requires learning where to direct visual attention for cues related to different aspects of speech.

Within and cross-sensory interactions in the perceived attractiveness of unfamiliar faces

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Brendan Cullen ◽  
Fiona N. Newell
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Sensory Modulation ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Face Images ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sensory Interactions ◽  
Multisensory Information ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces ◽  
Perceived Attractiveness

Major findings in attractiveness such as the role of averageness and symmetry have emerged primarily from neutral static visual stimuli. However it has increasingly been shown that ratings of attractiveness can be modulated within unisensory and multisensory modes by factors including emotional expression or by additional information about the person. For example, previous research has indicated that humorous individuals are rated as more desirable than their non-humorous equivalents (Bressler and Balshine, 2006). In two experiments we measured within and cross-sensory modulation of the attractiveness of unfamiliar faces. In Experiment 1 we examined if manipulating the number and type of expressions shown across a series of images of a person influences the attractiveness rating for that person. Results indicate that for happy expressions, ratings of attractiveness gradually increase as the proportional number of happy facial expressions increase, relative to the number of neutral expressions. In contrast, an increase in the proportion of angry expressions was not assocated with an increase in attractiveness ratings. In Experiment 2 we investigated if perceived attractiveness can be influenced by multisensory information provided during exposure to the face image. Ratings are compared across face images which were presented with or without voice information. In addition we provided either an auditory emotional cue (e.g., laughter) or neutral (e.g., coughing) cue to assess whether social information affects perceived attractiveness. Results shows that multisensory information about a person can increase attractiveness ratings, but that the emotional content of the cross-modal information can effect preference for some faces over others.

Supporting the Use of Rudimentary Vocalizations

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 132-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Zubow ◽  
Richard Hurtig
Keyword(s):  
Rett Syndrome ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Multiple Modalities ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Perceptual Judgments ◽  
The Face

Children with Rett Syndrome (RS) are reported to use multiple modalities to communicate although their intentionality is often questioned (Bartolotta, Zipp, Simpkins, & Glazewski, 2011; Hetzroni & Rubin, 2006; Sigafoos et al., 2000; Sigafoos, Woodyatt, Tuckeer, Roberts-Pennell, & Pittendreigh, 2000). This paper will present results of a study analyzing the unconventional vocalizations of a child with RS. The primary research question addresses the ability of familiar and unfamiliar listeners to interpret unconventional vocalizations as “yes” or “no” responses. This paper will also address the acoustic analysis and perceptual judgments of these vocalizations. Pre-recorded isolated vocalizations of “yes” and “no” were presented to 5 listeners (mother, father, 1 unfamiliar, and 2 familiar clinicians) and the listeners were asked to rate the vocalizations as either “yes” or “no.” The ratings were compared to the original identification made by the child's mother during the face-to-face interaction from which the samples were drawn. Findings of this study suggest, in this case, the child's vocalizations were intentional and could be interpreted by familiar and unfamiliar listeners as either “yes” or “no” without contextual or visual cues. The results suggest that communication partners should be trained to attend to eye-gaze and vocalizations to ensure the child's intended choice is accurately understood.

Incidence of the Half-Left Profile Pose in Single-Subject Portraits

1995 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 920-922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Conesa ◽  
Cynthia Brunold-Conesa ◽  
Mama Miron
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Single Subject ◽  
Face View ◽  
Media Authorship ◽  
Full Face

The present work recorded frequencies of five poses (left profile, half-left profile, full-face view, half-right profile, and right profile) by examining 4,180 single-subject portraits of various media. Statistically significant differences were found between the incidence of half-left and half-right profiles. These differences found across media, authorship, and five centuries of portrait work are consistent with right-hemisphere activation models in attentional bias and perception of emotion.

Within-person variability can improve the identification of unfamiliar faces across changes in viewpoint

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110097
Author(s):  
Niamh Hunnisett ◽  
Simone Favelle
Keyword(s):  
Image Matching ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Target Image ◽  
Front View ◽  
Multiple Image ◽  
Profile View ◽  
Unfamiliar Face ◽  
Matching Performance ◽  
Sequential Matching ◽  
Unfamiliar Faces

Unfamiliar face identification is concerningly error prone, especially across changes in viewing conditions. Within-person variability has been shown to improve matching performance for unfamiliar faces, but this has only been demonstrated using images of a front view. In this study, we test whether the advantage of within-person variability from front views extends to matching to target images of a face rotated in view. Participants completed either a simultaneous matching task (Experiment 1) or a sequential matching task (Experiment 2) in which they were tested on their ability to match the identity of a face shown in an array of either one or three ambient front-view images, with a target image shown in front, three-quarter, or profile view. While the effect was stronger in Experiment 2, we found a consistent pattern in match trials across both experiments in that there was a multiple image matching benefit for front, three-quarter, and profile-view targets. We found multiple image effects for match trials only, indicating that providing observers with multiple ambient images confers an advantage for recognising different images of the same identity but not for discriminating between images of different identities. Signal detection measures also indicate a multiple image advantage despite a more liberal response bias for multiple image trials. Our results show that within-person variability information for unfamiliar faces can be generalised across views and can provide insights into the initial processes involved in the representation of familiar faces.

scholarly journals Recognition of Emotion from Facial Expressions with Direct or Averted Eye Gaze and Varying Expression Intensities in Children with Autism Disorder and Typically Developing Children

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Tell ◽  
Denise Davidson ◽  
Linda A. Camras
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Gaze Direction ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Expression Intensity ◽  
Autism Disorder

Eye gaze direction and expression intensity effects on emotion recognition in children with autism disorder and typically developing children were investigated. Children with autism disorder and typically developing children identified happy and angry expressions equally well. Children with autism disorder, however, were less accurate in identifying fear expressions across intensities and eye gaze directions. Children with autism disorder rated expressions with direct eyes, and 50% expressions, as more intense than typically developing children. A trend was also found for sad expressions, as children with autism disorder were less accurate in recognizing sadness at 100% intensity with direct eyes than typically developing children. Although the present research showed that children with autism disorder are sensitive to eye gaze direction, impairments in the recognition of fear, and possibly sadness, exist. Furthermore, children with autism disorder and typically developing children perceive the intensity of emotional expressions differently.

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