Cultural influences on face scanning are consistent across infancy and adulthood

Examining the Contribution of Physical Cues for Same- and Cross-Race Face Individuation

Face individuation involves sensitivity to physical characteristics that provide information about identity. We examined whether Black and White American faces differ in terms of individuating information, and whether Black and White perceivers differentially weight information when judging same-race and cross-race faces. Study 1 analyzed 20 structural metrics (e.g., eye width, nose length) of 158 Black and White faces to determine which differentiate faces within each group. High-utility metrics (e.g., nose length, eye height, chin length) differentiated faces of both groups, low-utility metrics (e.g., face width, eye width, face length) offered less individuating information. Study 2 (N = 4,510) explored Black and White participants' sensitivity to variation on structural metrics using similarity ratings. High-utility metrics affected perceived dissimilarity more than low-utility metrics. This relationship was non-significantly stronger for same-race faces rather than cross-race faces. Perceivers also relied more on features that were racially stereotypic of the faces they were rating.

A dual mobile eye tracking study on natural eye contact during live interactions

Human eyes convey a wealth of social information, with mutual looks representing one of the hallmark gaze communication behaviors. However, it remains relatively unknown if such reciprocal communication requires eye-to-eye contact or if general face-to-face looking is sufficient. To address this question, while recording looking behavior in live interacting dyads using dual mobile eye trackers, we analyzed how often participants engaged in mutual looks as a function of looking towards the top (i.e., the Eye region) and bottom half of the face (i.e., the Mouth region). We further examined how these different types of mutual looks during an interaction connected with later gaze-following behavior elicited in an individual experimental task. The results indicated that dyads engaged in mutual looks in various looking combinations (Eye-to-eye, Eye-to-mouth, and Mouth-to-Mouth) but proportionately spent little time in direct eye-to-eye gaze contact. However, the time spent in eye-to-eye contact significantly predicted the magnitude of later gaze following response elicited by the partner's gaze direction. Thus, humans engage in looking patterns toward different face parts during interactions, with direct eye-to-eye looks occurring relatively infrequently; however, social messages relayed during eye-to-eye contact appear to carry key information that propagates to affect subsequent individual social behavior.

Do subtle cultural differences sculpt face pareidolia?

Face tuning to non-face images such as shadows or grilled toasts is termed face pareidolia. Face-pareidolia images represent a valuable tool for investigation of social cognition in mental disorders. Here we examined (i) whether, and, if so, how face pareidolia is affected by subtle cultural differences; and (ii) whether this impact is modulated by gender. With this purpose in mind, females and males from Northern Italy were administered a set of Face-n-Thing images, photographs of objects such as houses or waves to a varying degree resembling a face. Participants were presented with pareidolia images with canonical upright orientation and display inversion that heavily affects face pareidolia. In a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, beholders had to indicate whether each image resembled a face. The outcome was compared with the findings obtained in the Southwest of Germany. With upright orientation, neither cultural background nor gender affected face pareidolia. As expected, display inversion generally mired face pareidolia. Yet, while display inversion led to a drastic reduction of face impression in German males as compared to females, in Italians, no gender differences were found. In a nutshell, subtle cultural differences do not sculpt face pareidolia, but instead affect face impression in a gender-specific way under unusual viewing conditions. Clarification of the origins of these effects requires tailored brain imaging work. Implications for transcultural psychiatry, in particular, for schizophrenia research, are highlighted and discussed.

Face Processing in Early Development: A Systematic Review of Behavioral Studies and Considerations in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic

Human faces are one of the most prominent stimuli in the visual environment of young infants and convey critical information for the development of social cognition. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mask wearing has become a common practice outside the home environment. With masks covering nose and mouth regions, the facial cues available to the infant are impoverished. The impact of these changes on development is unknown but is critical to debates around mask mandates in early childhood settings. As infants grow, they increasingly interact with a broader range of familiar and unfamiliar people outside the home; in these settings, mask wearing could possibly influence social development. In order to generate hypotheses about the effects of mask wearing on infant social development, in the present work, we systematically review N = 129 studies selected based on the most recent PRISMA guidelines providing a state-of-the-art framework of behavioral studies investigating face processing in early infancy. We focused on identifying sensitive periods during which being exposed to specific facial features or to the entire face configuration has been found to be important for the development of perceptive and socio-communicative skills. For perceptive skills, infants gradually learn to analyze the eyes or the gaze direction within the context of the entire face configuration. This contributes to identity recognition as well as emotional expression discrimination. For socio-communicative skills, direct gaze and emotional facial expressions are crucial for attention engagement while eye-gaze cuing is important for joint attention. Moreover, attention to the mouth is particularly relevant for speech learning. We discuss possible implications of the exposure to masked faces for developmental needs and functions. Providing groundwork for further research, we encourage the investigation of the consequences of mask wearing for infants' perceptive and socio-communicative development, suggesting new directions within the research field.

Selective Changes in Complexity of Visual Scanning for Social Stimuli in Infancy

In the 1st year of life, infants gradually gain the ability to control their eye movements and explore visual scenes, which support their learning and emerging cognitive skills. These gains include domain-general skills such as rapid orienting or attention disengagement as well as domain-specific ones such as increased sensitivity to social stimuli. However, it remains unknown whether these developmental changes in what infants fixate and for how long in naturalistic scenes lead to the emergence of more complex, repeated sequences of fixations, especially when viewing human figures and faces, and whether these changes are related to improvements in domain-general attentional skills. Here we tested longitudinally the developmental changes in the complexity of fixation sequences at 5.5 and 11 months of age using Recurrence Quantification Analysis. We measured changes in how fixations recur in the same location and changes in the patterns (repeated sequences) of fixations in social and non-social scenes that were either static or dynamic. We found more complex patterns (i.e., repeated and longer sequences) of fixations in social than non-social scenes, both static and dynamic. There was also an age-related increase in the length of repeated fixation sequences only for social static scenes, which was independent of individual differences in orienting and attention disengagement. Our results can be interpreted as evidence for fine-tuning of infants' visual scanning skills. They selectively produce longer and more complex sequences of fixations on faces and bodies before reaching the end of the 1st year of life.

Cross-cultural asymmetries in oculomotor interference elicited by gaze distractors belonging to Asian and White faces

The averted gaze of others triggers reflexive attentional orienting in the corresponding direction. This phenomenon can be modulated by many social factors. Here, we used an eye-tracking technique to investigate the role of ethnic membership in a cross-cultural oculomotor interference study. Chinese and Italian participants were required to perform a saccade whose direction might be either congruent or incongruent with the averted-gaze of task-irrelevant faces belonging to Asian and White individuals. The results showed that, for Chinese participants, White faces elicited a larger oculomotor interference than Asian faces. By contrast, Italian participants exhibited a similar oculomotor interference effect for both Asian and White faces. Hence, Chinese participants found it more difficult to suppress eye-gaze processing of White rather than Asian faces. The findings provide converging evidence that social attention can be modulated by social factors characterizing both the face stimulus and the participants. The data are discussed with reference to possible cross-cultural differences in perceived social status.

Atypical gaze patterns to facial feature areas in autism spectrum disorders reveal age and culture effects: A meta-analysis of eye-tracking studies

Children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often present with atypical gaze patterns to others' faces, a finding substantiated throughout the literature. Yet, a quantification of atypical gaze patterns to different facial regions (e.g., eyes versus mouth) in ASD remains controversial. Also few study has investigated how age and culture impacted the pattern of gaze abnormalities in ASD. This research therefore conducted a meta-analysis of eye-tracking studies to evaluate age and culture effect on atypical gaze patterns of face processing in ASD. A total of 75 articles (91 studies) and 4209 individuals (ASD: 2027; controls: 2182) across all age ranges (i.e., childhood through to adulthood) from both Eastern and Western cultures were included in this meta-analysis. Individuals with ASD yielded shorter fixation durations to the eyes than individuals without ASD. Group differences in the time spent fixating on the eyes were not modulated by age, but affected by culture. Effect size in the eastern culture was larger than that in the western culture. In contrast, group differences on time spent looking at the mouth were not significant, but changed with age and modulated by culture. Relative to the neurotypical controls, Western individuals with ASD spent more time looking at the mouth from school age, whereas Eastern individuals with ASD did not gaze longer on mouth until adulthood. These results add to the body of evidence supporting atypical gaze behaviors to eyes in ASD and provide new insights into a potential mouth compensation strategy that develops with age in ASD. LAY SUMMARY: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show atypical gaze patterns when looking at others' faces compared to neurotypical individuals. This paper examines the role of age and culture on pattern of gaze abnormalities in individuals with ASD. Results show that reduction of gaze on eyes in ASD is stable across all ages and cultures, while increase of gaze on mouth emerges as individuals with ASD get older. The findings provide a developmental insight to the gaze patterns on the autism spectrum across culture.