Dataset Information

Putting culture under the 'spotlight' reveals universal information use for face recognition.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Eye movement strategies employed by humans to identify conspecifics are not universal. Westerners predominantly fixate the eyes during face recognition, whereas Easterners more the nose region, yet recognition accuracy is comparable. However, natural fixations do not unequivocally represent information extraction. So the question of whether humans universally use identical facial information to recognize faces remains unresolved.

Methodology/principal findings

We monitored eye movements during face recognition of Western Caucasian (WC) and East Asian (EA) observers with a novel technique in face recognition that parametrically restricts information outside central vision. We used 'Spotlights' with Gaussian apertures of 2 degrees, 5 degrees or 8 degrees dynamically centered on observers' fixations. Strikingly, in constrained Spotlight conditions (2 degrees and 5 degrees) observers of both cultures actively fixated the same facial information: the eyes and mouth. When information from both eyes and mouth was simultaneously available when fixating the nose (8 degrees), as expected EA observers shifted their fixations towards this region.

Conclusions/significance

Social experience and cultural factors shape the strategies used to extract information from faces, but these results suggest that external forces do not modulate information use. Human beings rely on identical facial information to recognize conspecifics, a universal law that might be dictated by the evolutionary constraints of nature and not nurture.

SUBMITTER: Caldara R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2841167 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Putting culture under the 'spotlight' reveals universal information use for face recognition.

Caldara Roberto R Zhou Xinyue X Miellet Sébastien S

PloS one 20100318 3

<h4>Background</h4>Eye movement strategies employed by humans to identify conspecifics are not universal. Westerners predominantly fixate the eyes during face recognition, whereas Easterners more the nose region, yet recognition accuracy is comparable. However, natural fixations do not unequivocally represent information extraction. So the question of whether humans universally use identical facial information to recognize faces remains unresolved.<h4>Methodology/principal findings</h4>We monito ...[more]

PMID: 20305776

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Dataset Information

Putting culture under the 'spotlight' reveals universal information use for face recognition.

Background

Methodology/principal findings

Conclusions/significance

Publications

Putting culture under the 'spotlight' reveals universal information use for face recognition.

Similar Datasets

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