Eye remember you: the effects of gaze direction on face recognition in children and adults

Children and adults were tested on a forced‐choice face recognition task in which the direction of eye gaze was manipulated over the course of the initial presentation and subsequent test phase of the experiment. To establish the effects of gaze direction on the encoding process, participants were presented with to‐be‐studied faces displaying either direct or deviated gaze (i.e. encoding manipulation). At test, all the faces depicted persons with their eyes closed. To investigate the effects of gaze direction on the efficiency of the retrieval process, a second condition (i.e. retrieval manipulation) was run in which target faces were presented initially with eyes closed and tested with either direct or deviated gaze. The results revealed the encoding advantages enjoyed by faces with direct gaze was present for both children and adults. Faces with direct gaze were also recognized better than faces with deviated gaze at retrieval, although this effect was most pronounced for adults. Finally, the advantage for direct gaze over deviated gaze at encoding was greater than the advantage for direct gaze over deviated gaze at retrieval. We consider the theoretical implications of these findings.     

Direct gaze modulates face recognition in young infants

From birth, infants prefer to look at faces that engage them in direct eye contact. In adults, direct gaze is known to modulate the processing of faces, including the recognition of individuals. In the present study, we investigate whether direction of gaze has any effect on face recognition in four-month-old infants. Four-month infants were shown faces with both direct and averted gaze, and subsequently given a preference test involving the same face and a novel one. A novelty preference during test was only found following initial exposure to a face with direct gaze. Further, face recognition was also generally enhanced for faces with both direct and with averted gaze when the infants started the task with the direct gaze condition. Together, these results indicate that the direction of the gaze modulates face recognition in early infancy.     

A developmental study of the own-age face recognition bias in children

The own-age bias is one in which people recognize faces of people their own age more accurately than faces of other ages (e.g., Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005, 2006) and appears to be, at least, partially based on experience (Harrison & Hole, 2009). Indeed, Hills and Lewis (2011a) have shown that 8-year-old faces are more accurately recognized by 8-year-old children than by 6- or 11-year-old children, suggesting the own-age bias develops rapidly. The present study explores the own-age bias in a developmental study in participants aged 6-10 years. Ninety participants (divided into 3 groups of 30 on the basis of their age at the first time of testing) undertook a standard old/new recognition paradigm in which their recognition accuracy was measured for 8- and 20-year-old faces. Results showed that when the participants were 8 years old, they recognized 8-year-old faces more accurately than when they were 7 or 9 years old. This effect was found to be based on mechanisms that differ from simple developmental improvement. This is the first study to show the development of the own-age bias in face recognition using a longitudinal design. These results show that the face recognition system is updated on the basis of recent experience and/or motivation to process faces, creating recognition biases.     

Spatial interference between gaze direction and gaze location: a study on the eye contact effect

Perceived gaze in faces is an important social cue that influences spatial orienting of attention. In three experiments, we examined whether the social relevance of gaze direction modulated spatial interference in response selection, using three different stimuli: faces, isolated eyes, and symbolic eyes (Experiments 1, 2, and 3, respectively). Each experiment employed a variant of the spatial Stroop paradigm in which face location and gaze direction were put into conflict. Results showed a reverse congruency effect between face location to the right or left of fixation and gaze direction only for stimuli with a social meaning to participants (Experiments 1 and 2). The opposite was observed for the nonsocial stimuli used in Experiment 3. Results are explained as facilitation in response to eye contact.     

Stare in the crowd: frontal face guides overt attention independently of its gaze direction

Whether or not a stare in the midst of many faces can guide visual attention is a controversial issue. Two experiments are reported that investigate the hypothesis that visual attention is guided toward a frontal face in the search for a stare among faces with varied head angles. The participants were required to search for a face with a direct gaze in a context where the target could be at any of various head angles and the target's head angle was unpredictable in one trial. The search performance was better for a frontal-face target than for deviated-face targets. Furthermore, eye-movement analyses revealed that a frontal-face stimulus tended to be initially fixated prior to deviated-face stimuli, and many of the initially fixated frontal-face stimuli had an averted gaze. The findings suggest that a frontal face guides overt attention independently of its gaze direction in the search for a stare in a crowd. The validity of prioritising a frontal face in order to find a direct gaze among faces and the characteristics of a human-face detection system are discussed.     

Anticipatory models in gaze control: a developmental model

Infants gradually learn to predict the motion of moving targets and change from a strategy that mainly depends on saccades to one that depends on anticipatory control of smooth pursuit. A model is described that combines three types of mechanisms for gaze control that develops in a way similar to infants. Initially, gaze control is purely reactive, but as the anticipatory models become more accurate, the gain of the pursuit will increase and lead to a larger fraction of smooth eye movements. Finally, a third system learns to predict changes in target motion, which will lead to fast retuning of the parameters in the anticipatory model.     

The face behind the mask: a developmental study

Faces are a rich and available source of social information, and the representation for faces is robust in adults (i.e. the face detection effect; Purcell & Stewart, 1988). The current study compared the developmental trajectory of the robustness of face perception against the trajectory for a non-face object. Participants (5-35 years old) were presented with rapid (17 and 33 millisecond) presentations of face and house stimuli and were instructed to identify the object category of the stimulus (face or house). There was an interaction between object type and age such that the developmental slope for face identification was steeper than the slope for house identification for the 17-millisecond presentation. These data show that faces are processed in a different way than a non-face object during the period from middle childhood through adolescence and adulthood, and this differential processing may involve the massive amount of exposure we have to faces.     

Spatial interference between gaze direction and gaze location: A study on the eye contact effect

Perceived gaze in faces is an important social cue that influences spatial orienting of attention. In three experiments, we examined whether the social relevance of gaze direction modulated spatial interference in response selection, using three different stimuli: faces, isolated eyes, and symbolic eyes (Experiments 1, 2, and 3, respectively). Each experiment employed a variant of the spatial Stroop paradigm in which face location and gaze direction were put into conflict. Results showed a reverse congruency effect between face location to the right or left of fixation and gaze direction only for stimuli with a social meaning to participants (Experiments 1 and 2). The opposite was observed for the nonsocial stimuli used in Experiment 3. Results are explained as facilitation in response to eye contact.     

Kinematics of aiming in direction and amplitude: a developmental study.

The patterns of aimed movements to visual targets were analyzed in children aged 6, 8 and 10. Tasks with direction and/or amplitude requirements were used. The tasks were performed both with and without vision. Peak velocity, acceleration and deceleration and their relative temporal occurrence were evaluated. Overall, the 6- and 10-year-olds exhibited higher peak velocity and acceleration when performing the pure directional task than when performing tasks with an amplitude or stopping requirement. On the contrary, 8-year-olds showed similar peak acceleration and velocity across all three tasks. Similarly, when performing the pure directional task, the 6- and 10-year-olds reached their peak velocity and acceleration relatively later in time than the 8-year-olds. Vision of movement increased the peak velocity in all experimental tasks and peak acceleration was increased only in the pure directional task. Thus, movement kinematics varied according to the task requirements and age. Eight-year-olds showed greater propensity to feedback control in all tasks, suggesting an over-inhibition in their approach patterns, whereas 10-year-olds tended to use feedforward processes, with a shortened deceleration phase.     

Class, race, and the face: social context modulates the cross-race effect in face recognition

The current research investigates the hypothesis that the well-established cross-race effect (CRE; better recognition for same-race than for cross-race faces) is due to social-cognitive mechanisms rather than to differential perceptual expertise with same-race and cross-race faces. Across three experiments, the social context in which faces are presented has a direct influence on the CRE. In the first two experiments, middle-class White perceivers show superior recognition for same-race White faces presented in wealthy but not in impoverished contexts. The second experiment indicates this effect is due to the tendency to categorize White faces in impoverished contexts as outgroup members (e.g., "poor Whites"). In the third experiment, this effect is replicated using different ingroup and outgroup categorizations (university affiliation), with ingroup White faces being recognized better than outgroup White faces. In line with a social-cognitive model of the CRE, context had no influence on recognition for cross-race Black faces across the three experiments.     

Eye gaze versus arrows as spatial cues: two qualitatively different modes of attentional selection

This study aimed to evaluate the type of attentional selection (location- and/or object-based) triggered by two different types of central noninformative cues: eye gaze and arrows. Two rectangular objects were presented in the visual field, and subjects' attention was directed to the end of a rectangle via the observation of noninformative directional arrows or eye gaze. Similar experiments with peripheral cues have shown an object-based effect: faster target identification when the target is presented on the cued object as compared to the uncued object, even when the distance between target and cue was the same. The three reported experiments aimed to compare the location- and object-based attentional orienting observed with arrows and eye gaze, in order to dissociate the orienting mechanisms underlying the two types of orienting cues. Results showed similar cueing effects on the cued versus oppositely cued locations for the two cue types, replicating several studies with nonpredictive gaze and arrow cues. However, a pure object-based effect occurred only when an arrow cue was presented, whereas a pure location-based effect was only found for eye-gaze cues. It is suggested that attention is nonspecifically directed to nearby objects when a noninformative arrow is used as cue, whereas it is selectively directed to a specific cued location when noninformative eye gaze is used. This may be mediated by theory of mind mechanisms.     

Emotional face expressions recognition in childhood: developmental markers,age and sex effect

Cognitive Processing - Recognizing emotional face expressions in others is a valuable non-verbal communication and particularly relevant throughout childhood given that children’s language...     

Diminished emotion recognition with reduced face gaze in complex situation in individuals with broad autism phenotype

Background/objectiveIndividuals with broad autism phenotype (BAP) showed a diminished ability to recognize emotion. This study aims to examine whether their decline in emotion recognition ability could be more clearly identified as task complexity increased and whether their decline could be influenced by their eye-gaze patterns.Method41 individuals with BAP and 40 healthy controls performed two types of emotion recognition tasks. After confirming conditions wherein the BAP group did not perform well compared to the control group, we compared gaze proportion on faces and context between groups when performing the conditions.ResultsThe more difficult the task, the clearer the significant relationships between the level of autistic traits and emotion recognition ability. The BAP group showed lower accuracy compared to the control group when a face with mild emotional intensity was presented with context. In terms of gaze proportion, the BAP group looked less at faces when recognizing emotions compared to the control group.ConclusionThese findings indicate that diminished emotion recognition ability in individuals with BAP may be influenced by face gaze.     

Knowing what to remember and forget: A developmental study of cue memory in intentional forgetting

These experiments are the first to investigate children’s encoding and use of information about a memory cue in Bjork’s (1972) intentional forgetting task. In Experiment 1, children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 and college students were given cues to either remember or forget after the presentation of each picture. Recall and recognition tests of pictures and cues followed. The procedure in Experiment 2 was identical to that in Experiment 1 except that the list of presentation pictures was altered for some children (Grades 3 and 4) and adolescents (Grades 8 and 9) so that remember and forget cues were associated with particular taxonomic categories. In Experiment 3, the testing component was modified so that children (Grades 2, 3, and 4) and college students were asked to recall only the cue associated with each picture. The results indicated that (1) children as young as second graders encode the cue associated with each picture, although to a lesser extent than do college students, (2) much improvement in intentional forgetting is still occurring during adolescence, (3) only adults adequately cluster their recall by cue, (4) associating remember and forget cues with items from different categories does not increase the differentiation between cues, and (5) eliminating picture recall and recognition has minimal effects on the magnitude of cue judgments. These results suggest that children’s difficulties on intentional forgetting tasks stem, at least in part, from their poorer encoding of information about whether an item should be remembered or forgotten.     

The influence of action perception on object recognition: a developmental study

Two experiments explored the existence and the development of relations between action representations and object representations. A priming paradigm was used in which participants viewed an action pantomime followed by the picture of a tool, the tool being either associated or unassociated with the preceding action. Overall, we observed that the perception of an action pantomime can facilitate the recognition of a corresponding tool. Experiment 1 was based on a naming task and was conducted with 9- to 12-year-old children and a group of young adults. While substantial priming effects were obtained for all age groups, they were especially important for the youngest participants. Smaller priming effects were obtained in Experiment 2, using a categorization task and conducted on 5- to 11-year-old children and young adults, but again the results suggest that these action priming effects diminish with increasing age. Implications of these results for the organization and development of conceptual knowledge are discussed.     

An exploratory study of gaze behaviour in young adults with developmental coordination disorder

Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is characterized by substantial difficulties with motor coordination to the extent that it has a clear impact on the daily functioning of those who suffer from the disorder. Laboratory-based research indicated impaired oculomotor control in individuals with DCD. However, it is not clear how these oculomotor problems contribute to control and coordination in daily tasks. This study explored differences and similarities in gaze behaviour during reading and cup stacking between young adults with DCD and their matched typically developing counterparts (TD; aged 20–23 years). Gaze behaviour was recorded using eye-tracking, and hand movements were registered using a digital camera. Results of the reading tasks demonstrated similar behaviour between the groups, apart from a lower number of characters recorded per fixation in the DCD group. In cup stacking, the individuals with DCD were slower than their counterparts when three cups had to be displaced to a central target using the dominant hand. The gaze strategy of individuals with DCD involved systematic fixations on the cup or target prior to the hand movement to that cup or target, whereas these alternating saccades between cup and target were less obvious in the TD group. In the bimanual stacking task, where a pyramid of six cups had to be built on a central target using both hands, both groups mainly fixated the central target for the whole duration of the task, without distinct differences in gaze behaviour and duration of performance between individuals with and those without DCD. In conclusion, gaze behaviour of young adults with DCD shows differences from that of their typically developing counterparts that may be related to underlying oculomotor deficits in some but not all daily tasks.     

Capgras delusion: a window on face recognition

Capgras delusion is the belief that significant others have been replaced by impostors, robots or aliens. Although it usually occurs within a psychiatric illness, it can also be the result of brain injury or other obviously organic disorder. In contrast to patients with prosopagnosia, who cannot consciously recognize previously familiar faces but display autonomic or covert recognition (measured by skin conductance responses), people with Capgras delusion do not show differential autonomic activity to familiar compared with unknown faces. This challenges traditional models of the way faces are identified and presents some epistemological questions concerning identity. New data also indicate that, contrary to previous evidence, covert recognition can be fractionated into autonomic and behavioural/cognitive types, which is consistent with a recently proposed modification of the modal face recognition model.     

The evil eye: Eye gaze and competitiveness in social decision making

We demonstrate that a person's eye gaze and his/her competitiveness are closely intertwined in social decision making. In an exploratory examination of this relationship, Study 1 uses field data from a high‐stakes TV game show to demonstrate that the frequency by which contestants gaze at their opponent's eyes predicts their defection in a variant on the prisoner's dilemma. Studies 2 and 3 use experiments to examine the underlying causality and demonstrate that the relationship between gazing and competitive behavior is bi‐directional. In Study 2, fixation on the eyes, compared to the face, increases competitive behavior toward the target in an ultimatum game. In Study 3, we manipulate the framing of a negotiation (cooperative vs. competitive) and use an eye tracker to measure fixation number and time spent fixating on the counterpart's eyes. We find that a competitive negotiation elicits more gazing, which in turn leads to more competitive behavior.     

Syntactic context effects on word recognition: A developmental study

In the present study, grammatical context effects on word recognition were examined among skilled and less skilled second and sixth grade readers. Of particular interest was how the word decoding ability may correlate with the grammatical context effect. For this purpose the rich case-marking system of the Finnish language was exploited. Recognition latencies for sentence-final nouns were measured as a function of their syntactic agreement with the preceding adjective. The naming and lexical decision tasks were used as critical measures.
The study showed a clear syntactic context effect for each of the four experimental groups. The magnitude of the observed syntactic effect was substantially larger compared to earlier results. Furthermore, the effect emerged both in naming and lexical decision. In naming, less skilled 2nd grade decoders were more affected by grammatical incongruency than their more competent peers, whereas in lexical decision the skilled 6th graders differed from other groups by showing a smaller syntactic effect. The results are discussed in the light of Stanovich's interactive-compensatory model of word recognition.     

Perceptual learning in face processing: Comparison facilitates face recognition

Theoretical analyses of perceptual learning suggest that comparison between similar stimuli aids subsequent discrimination between them. The current studies examined whether the opportunity to compare a target face to other similar faces during a preexposure phase facilitated performance on a matching task. Performance was better when the target face had been presented in alternation with similar comparator faces than if that target had not been exposed before test. Exposure to the target face without comparators, or exposure alternating with dissimilar faces, improved performance relative to the nonexposed control but performance was not as good as when target exposure was given in alternation to similar comparison faces. The effects were not influenced by image changes between exposure and test. It is suggested that exposure to a face in comparison to similar stimuli focuses the central representation of a face on its unique features. In practical terms these results suggest that reliable identification of an individual from their photograph would be improved by viewing that photograph in comparison with photographs of similar people.