When East meets West: gaze-contingent Blindspots abolish cultural diversity in eye movements for faces

Culture impacts on how people sample visual information for face processing. Westerners deploy fixations towards the eyes and the mouth to achieve face recognition. In contrast, Easterners reach equal performance by deploying more central fixations, suggesting an effective extrafoveal information use. However, this hypothesis has not been yet directly investigated, i.e. by providing only extrafoveal information to both groups of observers. We used a parametric gaze-contingent technique dynamically masking central vision - the Blindspot – with Western and Eastern observers during face recognition. Westerners shifted progressively towards the typical Eastern central fixation pattern with larger Blindspots, whereas Easterners were insensitive to the Blindspots. These observations clearly show that Easterners preferentially sample information extrafoveally for faces. Conversely, the Western data also show that culturally-dependent visuo-motor strategies can flexibly adjust to constrained visual situations.

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Visual asymmetries during face encoding Increased dwell time and fixations in the upper and left hemifields

10.31234/osf.io/pc649 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Fatima Maria Felisberti

Keyword(s):

Face Recognition ◽

Eye Movements ◽

Visual Field ◽

Face Processing ◽

Dwell Time ◽

The Other ◽

Environmental Cues ◽

Reading Habits ◽

The Right

Visual field asymmetries (VFA) in the encoding of groups rather than individual faces has been rarely investigated. Here, eye movements (dwell time (DT) and fixations (Fix)) were recorded during the encoding of three groups of four faces tagged with cheating, cooperative, or neutral behaviours. Faces in each of the three groups were placed in the upper left (UL), upper right (UR), lower left (LL), or lower right (LR) quadrants. Face recognition was equally high in the three groups. In contrast, the proportion of DT and Fix were higher for faces in the left than the right hemifield and in the upper rather than the lower hemifield. The overall time spent looking at the UL was higher than in the other quadrants. The findings are relevant to the understanding of VFA in face processing, especially groups of faces, and might be linked to environmental cues and/or reading habits.

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Start Position Strongly Influences Fixation Patterns during Face Processing: Difficulties with Eye Movements as a Measure of Information Use

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0031106 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. e31106 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

Joseph Arizpe ◽

Dwight J. Kravitz ◽

Galit Yovel ◽

Chris I. Baker

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Face Processing ◽

Information Use ◽

Start Position

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The function of “looking-at-nothing” for sequential sensorimotor tasks: Eye movements to remembered action-target locations

Journal of Eye Movement Research ◽

10.16910/jemr.12.2.2 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Rebecca Martina Foerster

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Memory Retrieval ◽

Visual Information ◽

Hand Movements ◽

Manual Control ◽

Blank Screen ◽

Visual Targets ◽

Target Locations ◽

Sensorimotor Performance ◽

Central Fixation

When performing manual actions, eye movements precede hand movements to target locations: Before we grasp an object, we look at it. Eye-hand guidance is even preserved when visual targets are unavailable, e.g., grasping behind an occlusion. This “looking-at-nothing” behavior might be functional, e.g., as “deictic pointer” for manual control or as memory-retrieval cue, or a by-product of automatization. Here, it is studied if looking at empty locations before acting on them is beneficial for sensorimotor performance. In five experiments, participants completed a click sequence on eight visual targets for 0-100 trials while they had either to fixate on the screen center or could move their eyes freely. During 50-100 consecutive trials, participants clicked the same sequence on a blank screen with free or fixed gaze. During both phases, participants looked at target locations when gaze shifts were allowed. With visual targets, target fixations led to faster, more precise clicking, fewer errors, and sparser cursor-paths than central fixation. Without visual information, a tiny free-gaze benefit could sometimes be observed and was rather a memory than a motor-calculation benefit. Interestingly, central fixation during learning forced early explicit encoding causing a strong benefit for acting on remembered targets later, independent of whether eyes moved then.

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Face Inversion Effect Emerges Under Critical Configural Discrepancy

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000018 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 161-167 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jisien Yang ◽

Adrian Schwaninger

Keyword(s):

Face Recognition ◽

Face Processing ◽

Underlying Mechanism ◽

Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Processing ◽

Major Contributor ◽

Face Inversion Effect ◽

Configural Information ◽

Face Inversion ◽

The Face

Configural processing has been considered the major contributor to the face inversion effect (FIE) in face recognition. However, most researchers have only obtained the FIE with one specific ratio of configural alteration. It remains unclear whether the ratio of configural alteration itself can mediate the occurrence of the FIE. We aimed to clarify this issue by manipulating the configural information parametrically using six different ratios, ranging from 4% to 24%. Participants were asked to judge whether a pair of faces were entirely identical or different. The paired faces that were to be compared were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed that the FIE was observed only when the ratio of configural alteration was in the intermediate range. These results indicate that even though the FIE has been frequently adopted as an index to examine the underlying mechanism of face processing, the emergence of the FIE is not robust with any configural alteration but dependent on the ratio of configural alteration.

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Eye movements in sports research and practice: Immersive technologies as optimal environments for the study of gaze behaviour

10.31234/osf.io/fbwvk ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

David Harris ◽

Mark Wilson ◽

Tim Holmes ◽

Toby de Burgh ◽

Samuel James Vine

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Eye Movements ◽

Eye Tracking ◽

Visual Information ◽

Successful Performance ◽

Experimental Control ◽

Research And Practice ◽

Gaze Behaviour ◽

Immersive Technologies

Head-mounted eye tracking has been fundamental for developing an understanding of sporting expertise, as the way in which performers sample visual information from the environment is a major determinant of successful performance. There is, however, a long running tension between the desire to study realistic, in-situ gaze behaviour and the difficulties of acquiring accurate ocular measurements in dynamic and fast-moving sporting tasks. Here, we describe how immersive technologies, such as virtual reality, offer an increasingly compelling approach for conducting eye movement research in sport. The possibility of studying gaze behaviour in representative and realistic environments, but with high levels of experimental control, could enable significant strides forward for eye tracking in sport and improve understanding of how eye movements underpin sporting skills. By providing a rationale for virtual reality as an optimal environment for eye tracking research, as well as outlining practical considerations related to hardware, software and data analysis, we hope to guide researchers and practitioners in the use of this approach.

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