Information Processing during Face Recognition: The Effects of Familiarity, Inversion, and Morphing on Scanning Fixations

Explanation strategies in humans versus current explainable artificial intelligence: Insights from image classification

Explainable AI (XAI) methods provide explanations of AI models, but our understanding of how they compare with human explanations remains limited. Here, we examined human participants' attention strategies when classifying images and when explaining how they classified the images through eye-tracking and compared their attention strategies with saliency-based explanations from current XAI methods. We found that humans adopted more explorative attention strategies for the explanation task than the classification task itself. Two representative explanation strategies were identified through clustering: One involved focused visual scanning on foreground objects with more conceptual explanations, which contained more specific information for inferring class labels, whereas the other involved explorative scanning with more visual explanations, which were rated higher in effectiveness for early category learning. Interestingly, XAI saliency map explanations had the highest similarity to the explorative attention strategy in humans, and explanations highlighting discriminative features from invoking observable causality through perturbation had higher similarity to human strategies than those highlighting internal features associated with higher class score. Thus, humans use both visual and conceptual information during explanation, which serve different purposes, and XAI methods that highlight features informing observable causality match better with human explanations, potentially more accessible to users.

Prospective comparative clinical study: Efficacy evaluation of collagen combined with hyaluronic acid injections for tear trough deformity

BACKGROUND

Tear trough filling is a popular facial rejuvenation procedure, and hyaluronic acid is typically used as the filler of choice. However, Tyndall's phenomenon, a common complication following hyaluronic acid injection, can occur, leading to skin discoloration of the lower eyelid.

AIMS

This single-center, prospective, comparative clinical study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of collagen and hyaluronic acid injections in treating tear trough deformity.

METHODS

Sixty patients were enrolled between June 2022 and January 2023. Patients were randomly allocated into three groups: Group A received hyaluronic acid, Group B received hyaluronic acid combined with collagen, and Group C received collagen alone. Baseline characteristics, including age, sex, and tear trough deformity grade were considered before therapy. Changes in tear trough deformity scores, Global Aesthetic Improvement Scores, and the presence of the Tyndall effect were analyzed at 1 and 3 months postinjection to determine differences among the three groups.

RESULTS

Baseline profiles of the three groups were similar. In the first month postinjection, there was no difference in the Global Aesthetic Improvement Scores and tear trough deformity between the three groups. However, in the third-month postinjection, there was a significant difference in scores between patients in Group C and those in Groups A or B. The Tyndall effect manifested in three patients in Group A, which was significantly different from that in Groups B and C.

CONCLUSION

The combined use of hyaluronic acid with collagen in injectable fillers corrected tear trough deformities and reduced the occurrence of the Tyndall phenomenon, which can be problematic with hyaluronic acid alone. Additionally, this combination may help overcome the disadvantage of a shorter retention period when using collagen alone.

Seeing in the dark: High-order visual functions under scotopic conditions

It is unknown how and to what degree people function visually in almost complete darkness, where only rod photoreceptors are active (scotopic conditions). To explore this, we first tested scotopic acuity and crowding. We demonstrated the ∼1° foveal scotoma and found that crowding increases with eccentricity, resulting in optimal scotopic discrimination 2° into the periphery. We then investigated whether these limitations affect high-level foveal tasks. We recorded eye movements while testing reading and upright/inverted face matching under photopic and scotopic conditions. Under scotopic conditions, participants read accurately and showed a face inversion effect. Temporally, fixation durations were longer. Spatially, surprisingly, participants did not avert their gaze 2° into the periphery. Instead, they fixated on similar locations as under photopic conditions, locations that were shown to correlate with global perception. We propose that this result suggests global perception governs under scotopic conditions, and we discuss how receptive-field properties support this conclusion.

Inactivation of face-selective neurons alters eye movements when free viewing faces

During free viewing, faces attract gaze and induce specific fixation patterns corresponding to the facial features. This suggests that neurons encoding the facial features are in the causal chain that steers the eyes. However, there is no physiological evidence to support a mechanistic link between face-encoding neurons in high-level visual areas and the oculomotor system. In this study, we targeted the middle face patches of the inferior temporal (IT) cortex in two macaque monkeys using an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) localizer. We then utilized muscimol microinjection to unilaterally suppress IT neural activity inside and outside the face patches and recorded eye movements while the animals free viewing natural scenes. Inactivation of the face-selective neurons altered the pattern of eye movements on faces: The monkeys found faces in the scene but neglected the eye contralateral to the inactivation hemisphere. These findings reveal the causal contribution of the high-level visual cortex in eye movements.

Neuromodulator Assessment and Treatment for the Upper Face: An Update

Neuromodulator treatment of the upper face has been extensively studied and serves as an excellent tool to enhance facial appearance, non-verbal communication, and social functioning. Optimal outcomes are best achieved when health care providers take an individualized approach, based on knowledge of structural and functional anatomy, thorough facial assessment, and customized injection techniques and patterns.

Inactivation of face selective neurons alters eye movements when free viewing faces

During free viewing, faces attract gaze and induce specific fixation patterns corresponding to the facial features. This suggests that neurons encoding the facial features are in the causal chain that steers the eyes. However, there is no physiological evidence to support a mechanistic link between face encoding neurons in high-level visual areas and the oculomotor system. In this study, we targeted the middle face patches of inferior temporal (IT) cortex in two macaque monkeys using an fMRI localizer. We then utilized muscimol microinjection to unilaterally suppress IT neural activity inside and outside the face patches and recorded eye movements while the animals free viewing natural scenes. Inactivation of the face selective neurons altered the pattern of eye movements on faces: the monkeys found faces in the scene but neglected the eye contralateral to the inactivation hemisphere. These findings reveal the causal contribution of the high-level visual cortex in eye movements.

Significance

It has been shown, for more than half a century, that eye movements follow distinctive patterns when free viewing faces. This suggests causal involvement of the face-encoding visual neurons in the eye movements. However, the literature is scant of evidence for this possibility and has focused mostly on the link between low-level image saliency and eye movements. Here, for the first time, we bring causal evidence showing how face-selective neurons in inferior temporal cortex inform and steer eye movements when free viewing faces.

Where on the face do we look during phonemic restoration: An eye-tracking study

Face to face communication typically involves audio and visual components to the speech signal. To examine the effect of task demands on gaze patterns in response to a speaking face, adults participated in two eye-tracking experiments with an audiovisual (articulatory information from the mouth was visible) and a pixelated condition (articulatory information was not visible). Further, task demands were manipulated by having listeners respond in a passive (no response) or an active (button press response) context. The active experiment required participants to discriminate between speech stimuli and was designed to mimic environmental situations which require one to use visual information to disambiguate the speaker's message, simulating different listening conditions in real-world settings. Stimuli included a clear exemplar of the syllable /ba/ and a second exemplar in which the formant initial consonant was reduced creating an /a/-like consonant. Consistent with our hypothesis, results revealed that the greatest fixations to the mouth were present in the audiovisual active experiment and visual articulatory information led to a phonemic restoration effect for the /a/ speech token. In the pixelated condition, participants fixated on the eyes, and discrimination of the deviant token within the active experiment was significantly greater than the audiovisual condition. These results suggest that when required to disambiguate changes in speech, adults may look to the mouth for additional cues to support processing when it is available.

The role of the upper and lower face in the recognition of facial identity in dynamic stimuli

Studies with static faces find that upper face halves are more easily recognized than lower face halves-an upper-face advantage. However, faces are usually encountered as dynamic stimuli, and there is evidence that dynamic information influences face identity recognition. This raises the question of whether dynamic faces also show an upper-face advantage. The objective of this study was to examine whether familiarity for recently learned faces was more accurate for upper or lower face halves, and whether this depended upon whether the face was presented as static or dynamic. In Experiment 1, subjects learned a total of 12 faces--6 static images and 6 dynamic video-clips of actors in silent conversation. In experiment 2, subjects learned 12 faces, all dynamic video-clips. During the testing phase of Experiments 1 (between subjects) and 2 (within subjects), subjects were asked to recognize upper and lower face halves from either static images and/or dynamic clips. The data did not provide evidence for a difference in the upper-face advantage between static and dynamic faces. However, in both experiments, we found an upper-face advantage, consistent with prior literature, for female faces, but not for male faces. In conclusion, the use of dynamic stimuli may have little effect on the presence of an upper-face advantage, especially when the static comparison contains a series of static images, rather than a single static image, and is of sufficient image quality. Future studies could investigate the influence of face gender on the presence of an upper-face advantage.

Face masks are less effective than sunglasses in masking face identity

The effect of covering faces on face identification is recently garnering interest amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we investigated how face identification performance was affected by two types of face disguise: sunglasses and face masks. Observers studied a series of faces; then judged whether a series of test faces, comprising studied and novel faces, had been studied before or not. Face stimuli were presented either without coverings (full faces), wearing sunglasses covering the upper region (eyes, eyebrows), or wearing surgical masks covering the lower region (nose, mouth, chin). We found that sunglasses led to larger reductions in sensitivity (d') to face identity than face masks did, while both disguises increased the tendency to report faces as studied before, a bias that was absent for full faces. In addition, faces disguised during either study or test only (i.e. study disguised faces, test with full faces; and vice versa) led to further reductions in sensitivity from both studying and testing with disguised faces, suggesting that congruence between study and test is crucial for memory retrieval. These findings implied that the upper region of the face, including the eye-region features, is more diagnostic for holistic face-identity processing than the lower face region.

Face race and sex impact visual fixation strategies for upright and inverted faces in 3- to 6-year-old children

Everyday face experience tends to be biased, such that infants and young children interact more often with own-race and female faces leading to differential processing of faces within these groups relative to others. In the present study, visual fixation strategies were recorded using eye tracking to determine the extent to which face race and sex/gender impact a key index of face processing in 3- to 6-year-old children (n = 47). Children viewed male and female upright and inverted White and Asian faces while visual fixations were recorded. Face orientation was found to have robust effects on children's visual fixations, such that children exhibited shorter first fixation and average fixation durations and a greater number of fixations for inverted compared to upright face trials. First fixations to the eye region were also greater for upright compared to inverted faces. Fewer fixations and longer duration fixations were found for trials with male compared to female faces and for upright compared to inverted unfamiliar-race faces, but not familiar-race faces. These findings demonstrate evidence of differential fixation strategies toward different types of faces in 3- to 6-year-old children, illustrating the importance of experience in the development of visual attention to faces.

Active Viewing Facilitates Gaze to the Eye Region in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Previous studies have shown reduced attention to the eyes in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, most eye-tracking evidence regarding this impairment has been derived from passive viewing tasks. Here, we compared the passive viewing of faces with an active task involving face identification with morphing faces. While typical controls prioritized the eyes over other facial features regardless of viewing condition, autistic children exhibited reduced eye-looking in passive viewing, but displayed increased attention allocation to the eyes when instructed to identify faces. The proportional eye-looking in ASD during facial recognition was negatively related to the autism symptoms severity. These findings provide evidence regarding the specific situations in which diminished eye-looking may rise in young ASD children.

Looking at the upper facial half enlarges the range of holistic face processing

Previous studies suggested that upper and lower facial halves might be involved in the human holistic face processing differently. In this study, we replicated and extended the finding above. In Experiment 1, we used the standard composite-face task to measure holistic face processing when participants made judgements on the upper and lower facial halves separately. Results showed that the composite-face effect was stronger for the upper facial half compared to the lower half. In Experiment 2, we investigated how facial information was integrated when participants focused on different features, using the perceptual field paradigm. Results showed that: (1) more "peripheral faces" were chosen when participants fixated at the eyes than when they fixated at the mouth; (2) less "peripheral faces" were chosen for inverted faces regardless of the fixated features. Findings from both experiments together indicate that more peripheral facial information were integrated when participants focused on the upper facial half, highlighting the significance of focusing on the upper facial half in face processing.

A more featural based processing for the self-face: An eye-tracking study

Studies have suggested that the holistic advantage in face perception is not always reported for the own face. With two eye-tracking experiments, we explored the role of holistic and featural processing in the processing and the recognition of self, personally familiar, and unfamiliar faces. Observers were asked to freely explore (Exp.1) and recognize (Exp.2) their own, a friend's, and an unfamiliar face. In Exp.1, self-face was fixated more and longer and there was a preference for the mouth region when seeing the own face and for the nose region when seeing a friend and unfamiliar faces. In Exp.2, the viewing strategies did not differ across all faces, with eye fixations mostly directed to the nose region. These results suggest that task demands might modulate the way that the own face is perceived and highlights the importance of considering the role of the distinct visual experience people have for the own face in the processing and recognition of the self-face.

A practical test of the link between perceived identifiability and prosociality with two field studies

Covering the face with masks in public settings has been recommended since the start of the pandemic. Because faces provide information about identity, and that face masks hide a portion of the face, it is plausible to expect individuals who wear a mask to consider themselves less identifiable. Prior research suggests that perceived identifiability is positively related to prosocial behavior, and with two pre-registered field studies (total N = 5706) we provide a currently relevant and practical test of this relation. Our findings indicate that mask wearers and non-wearers display equivalent levels of helping behavior (Studies 1 and 2), although mask wearers have a lower level of perceived identifiability than those without a mask (Study 2). Overall, our findings suggest that claims that face masks are related to selfish behavior are not warranted, and that there is no practical link between perceived identifiability and prosocial behavior.

A featural account for own-face processing? Looking for support from face inversion, composite face, and part-whole tasks

It is widely accepted that face perception relies on holistic processing. However, this holistic advantage is not always found in the processing of the own face. Our study aimed to explore the role of holistic and featural processing in the identification of the own face, using three standard, but largely independent measures of holistic face processing: the face inversion task, the composite face task, and the part-whole task. Participants were asked to identify their face, a friend’s face, and an unfamiliar face in three different experimental blocks: (a) inverted versus upright; (b) top and bottom halves of the face aligned versus misaligned; and (c) facial features presented in isolation versus whole foil face context. Inverting a face impaired its identification, regardless of the identity. However, alignment effects were only found when identifying a friend or an unfamiliar face. In addition, a stronger feature advantage (i.e., better recognition for isolated features compared to in a whole-face context) was observed for the own face compared to the friend and unfamiliar faces. Altogether, these findings suggest that the own face is processed in a more featural manner but also relies on holistic processing. This work also highlights the importance of taking into consideration that different holistic processing paradigms could tap different forms of holistic processing.

Endocapsular artificial iris implantation for iris defects: Reducing symptoms, restoring visual function and improving cosmesis

Background

To investigate repair of iris defects by endocapsular implantation of an artificial iris, in relation to visual outcomes, safety profile and patient satisfaction.

Methods

Retrospective, consecutive case series from Greenlane tertiary teaching hospital and Eye Institute, Auckland, New Zealand. Medical records of patients implanted with an endocapsular artificial iris were reviewed and followed for minimum 3 months. Patient characteristics, surgical management, clinical outcomes and subjective responses were recorded.

Results

Nineteen artificial irises were implanted in 18 patients. Etiologies were iris melanotic lesion excision (73.7%), trauma (10.5%), congenital aniridia (10.5%) and Urrets‐Zavalia syndrome (5.3%). During postoperative follow‐up [14.1 ± 12.4 months (range: 3 to 59 months)], best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and intraocular pressure (IOP) did not change significantly [BCVA, 0.23 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) (20/32 Snellen) preoperatively vs. 0.18 logMAR postoperatively (20/25 Snellen) (Z = −0.222, p = 0.824); IOP, 15 mmHg preoperatively vs. 17 mmHg postoperatively (Z = 1.377, p = 0.1447)]. Mild or self‐limiting complications included: elevated IOP (42.1%), cystoid macular oedema (15.8%); persisting postoperative uveitis (15.8%) and minor vaulting of the prosthesis (15.7%). Moderate or severe complications included significant vaulting of prosthesis requiring surgical revision (5.3%) and a single eye (5.3%) with trabeculectomy and corneal graft failure. 94.4% of patients were very satisfied with the cosmesis and would be highly likely to have the procedure again.

Conclusions

This study confirms that endocapsular insertion of an artificial iris is typically associated with good functional and cosmetic results and a relatively low risk of significant complications.

Eye movement analysis of children's attention for midline diastema

No previous studies have investigated eye-movement patterns to show children's information processing while viewing clinical images. Therefore, this study aimed to explore children and their educators' perception of a midline diastema by applying eye-movement analysis using the hidden Markov models (EMHMM). A total of 155 children between 2.5 and 5.5 years of age and their educators (n = 34) viewed pictures with and without a midline diastema while Tobii Pro Nano eye-tracker followed their eye movements. Fixation data were analysed using data-driven, and fixed regions of interest (ROIs) approaches with EMHMM. Two different eye-movement patterns were identified: explorative pattern (76%), where the children's ROIs were predominantly around the nose and mouth, and focused pattern (26%), where children's ROIs were precise, locating on the teeth with and without a diastema, and fixations transited among the ROIs with similar frequencies. Females had a significantly higher eye-movement preference for without diastema image than males. Comparisons between the different age groups showed a statistically significant difference for overall entropies. The 3.6-4.5y age groups exhibited higher entropies, indicating lower eye-movement consistency. In addition, children and their educators exhibited two specific eye-movement patterns. Children in the explorative pattern saw the midline diastema more often while their educators focussed on the image without diastema. Thus, EMHMMs are valuable in analysing eye-movement patterns in children and adults.

Perception of the Nose and Lower Face Before and After Orthognathic Surgery in Subjects with Dento-maxillofacial Deformities: An Eye-Tracking Study

BACKGROUND

Dento-maxillofacial deformities are often associated with nasal deviation, and patients often complain of nasal deviation after orthognathic surgery. This study aimed to quantitatively evaluate the facial visual attention given to dento-maxillofacial deformities accompanying nasal deviation from the perspective of patients and determine whether orthognathic surgery could alter this outcome.

METHODS

The scanning paths of 137 patients were recorded using an eye-tracking device; recordings were made while the patients viewed images of dento-maxillofacial deformities associated with various degrees of nasal deviation before or after orthognathic surgery. Visual attention focused on the lower face and nose was analyzed.

RESULTS

When viewing postoperative faces, the participants focused more visual attention on noses and less on the lower face than they did on preoperative faces. Interestingly, for preoperative faces, nasal deviation could significantly increase participants' visual attention to the lower face, and visual attention to noses was significantly increased when noses were deviated 12°, while for postoperative faces, a nasal deviation of 4° or more was associated with a significant increase in participants' visual attention to the nose.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients tended to focus their visual attention on the lower region of preoperative faces and ignored nose irregularities. Orthognathic surgery can alter visual attention, shifting it from the lower face to the nose, and a deviation of 4° or more could be a potential concern for patients. Clinicians must inform patients preoperatively about preexisting nasal deviations, which can guide surgical planning and help manage patient expectations.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE IV

This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

The Anatomy behind Eyebrow Positioning: A Clinical Guide Based on Current Anatomic Concepts

BACKGROUND

The position of the eyebrow is known to reflect emotional status and to provide a plethora of nonverbal information. Although the eyebrow has no direct attachment to underlying bone, it is subject to the interplay between the various periorbital muscles, which when acting together, permit important nonverbal cues to be conveyed. Understanding the balance and interplay between these muscles is of crucial importance when targeting the periorbital area with neuromodulators. The authors' aims were to summarize current anatomic and clinical knowledge so as to provide a foundation that physicians can rely on to improve and increase the predictability of patient outcomes when treating the periorbital region with neuromodulators for aesthetic purposes.

METHODS

This narrative review is based on the anatomic and clinical experience of the authors dissecting and treating the periorbital region with specific focus on the glabella and the forehead.

RESULTS

This narrative review covers (1) a brief description of the relevant periorbital muscle anatomy, (2) an analysis of each muscle's contribution to various facial expressions, and (3) an anatomic and physiologic simulation of the muscular effects of specific neuromodulator injection sites.

CONCLUSION

By understanding functional anatomy of the periorbital muscles and combining this knowledge with individualized assessment and treatment planning, it is possible to achieve aesthetically pleasing, predictable, and reproducible treatment outcomes that positively impact perception of nonverbal cues when administering neuromodulators.

An own-race bias in the categorisation and recall of associative information

ABSTRACTPeople tend to better remember same-race faces relative to other-race faces (an "own-race" bias). We examined whether the own-race bias extends to associative memory, particularly in the identification and recall of information paired with faces. In Experiment 1, we presented white participants with own- and other-race faces which either appeared alone or accompanied by a label indicating whether the face was a "criminal" or a "victim". Results revealed an own-race facial recognition advantage regardless of the presence of associative information. In Experiment 2, we again paired same- and other-race faces with either "criminal" or "victim" labels, but rather than a recognition test, participants were asked to identify whether each face had been presented as a criminal or a victim. White criminals were better categorised than Black criminals, but race did not influence the categorisation of victims. In Experiment 3, white participants were presented with same- and other-race faces and asked to remember where the person was from, their occupation, and a crime they committed. Results revealed a recall advantage for the associative information paired with same-race faces. Collectively, these findings suggest that the own-race bias extends to the categorisation and recall of information in associative memory.

How Does Wearing a Facecover Influence the Eye Movement Pattern in Times of COVID-19?

Background

Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic facecovers have become a common sight. The effect of facecovers on the gaze when looking at faces has not been assessed yet.

Objective

The aim of the present study is to investigate a potential difference in eye movement pattern in observes which are exposed to images showing a face without and with facecover to identify if there is truly a change of gaze when identifying (masked) facial features.

Materials and Methods

The eye movement of a total of 64 study participants (28 males and 36 females) with a mean age of 31.84±9.0 years was analyzed in this cross-sectional observational study. Eye movement analysis was conducted based on positional changes of eye features within an x- and y- coordinate system while two images (face without/with facecover) were displayed for 8 seconds.

Results

The results of this study revealed that the sequence of focussing on facial regions was not altered when wearing a facecover and followed the sequence: perioral, nose, periorbital. Wearing a facecover significantly increased the time of focussing on the periorbital region and increased also the number of repeated eye fixations during the interval of visual stimulus presentation. No statistically significant differences were observed between male and female participants in their eye movement pattern across all investigated variables with p > 0.433.

Conclusion

Aesthetic practitioners could utilized the presented data and develop marketing and treatment strategies which majorly target the periorbital area understanding the altered eye movement pattern in times of COVID-19.

Iris reconstruction: A perspective on the modern surgical armamentarium

The surgical reconstruction of eyes with iris defects is almost invariably complex and challenging. A number of prosthetic iris devices are available including large-incision, rigid diaphragm, aniridic intraocular lens style devices, small-incision devices incorporating a capsular ring, and flexible, customized, small-incision iris prostheses. The surgical techniques for rehabilitation are dictated by the configuration of the iris defect, the presence of concurrent ocular pathology, and the functional complaint of the patient. Successful rehabilitation requires careful surgical planning and appropriate patient selection. Nonetheless, endowed with the modern surgical armamentarium, the reconstructive surgeon may achieve significant functional and cosmetic improvement.

Restricted Visual Scanpaths During Emotion Recognition in Childhood Social Anxiety Disorder

Background: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) has its typical onset in childhood and adolescence. Maladaptive processing of social information may contribute to the etiology and maintenance of SAD. During face perception, individuals execute a succession of visual fixations known as a scanpath which facilitates information processing. Atypically long scanpaths have been reported in adults with SAD, but no data exists from pediatric samples. SAD has also been linked to atypical arousal during face perception. Both metrics were examined in one of the largest eye-tracking studies of pediatric SAD to date. Methods: Participants were children and adolescents with SAD (n = 61) and healthy controls (n = 39) with a mean age of 14 years (range 10-17) who completed an emotion recognition task. The visual scanpath and pupil dilation (an indirect index of arousal) were examined using eye tracking. Results: Scanpaths of youth with SAD were shorter, less distributed, and consisted of a smaller number of fixations than those of healthy controls. These findings were supported by both frequentist and Bayesian statistics. Higher pupil dilation was also observed in the SAD group, but despite a statistically significant group difference, this result was not supported by the Bayesian analysis. Conclusions: The results were contrary to findings from adult studies, but similar to what has been reported in neurodevelopmental conditions associated with social interaction impairments. Restricted scanpaths may disrupt holistic representation of faces known to favor adaptive social understanding.

Eye movement analysis with hidden Markov models (EMHMM) with co-clustering

The eye movement analysis with hidden Markov models (EMHMM) method provides quantitative measures of individual differences in eye-movement pattern. However, it is limited to tasks where stimuli have the same feature layout (e.g., faces). Here we proposed to combine EMHMM with the data mining technique co-clustering to discover participant groups with consistent eye-movement patterns across stimuli for tasks involving stimuli with different feature layouts. Through applying this method to eye movements in scene perception, we discovered explorative (switching between the foreground and background information or different regions of interest) and focused (mainly looking at the foreground with less switching) eye-movement patterns among Asian participants. Higher similarity to the explorative pattern predicted better foreground object recognition performance, whereas higher similarity to the focused pattern was associated with better feature integration in the flanker task. These results have important implications for using eye tracking as a window into individual differences in cognitive abilities and styles. Thus, EMHMM with co-clustering provides quantitative assessments on eye-movement patterns across stimuli and tasks. It can be applied to many other real-life visual tasks, making a significant impact on the use of eye tracking to study cognitive behavior across disciplines.

Combined frequency-tagging EEG and eye-tracking measures provide no support for the "excess mouth/diminished eye attention" hypothesis in autism

BACKGROUND

Scanning faces is important for social interactions. Difficulty with the social use of eye contact constitutes one of the clinical symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It has been suggested that individuals with ASD look less at the eyes and more at the mouth than typically developing (TD) individuals, possibly due to gaze aversion or gaze indifference. However, eye-tracking evidence for this hypothesis is mixed. While gaze patterns convey information about overt orienting processes, it is unclear how this is manifested at the neural level and how relative covert attention to the eyes and mouth of faces might be affected in ASD.

METHODS

We used frequency-tagging EEG in combination with eye tracking, while participants watched fast flickering faces for 1-min stimulation sequences. The upper and lower halves of the faces were presented at 6 Hz and 7.5 Hz or vice versa in different stimulation sequences, allowing to objectively disentangle the neural saliency of the eyes versus mouth region of a perceived face. We tested 21 boys with ASD (8-12 years old) and 21 TD control boys, matched for age and IQ.

RESULTS

Both groups looked longer at the eyes than the mouth, without any group difference in relative fixation duration to these features. TD boys looked significantly more to the nose, while the ASD boys looked more outside the face. EEG neural saliency data partly followed this pattern: neural responses to the upper or lower face half were not different between groups, but in the TD group, neural responses to the lower face halves were larger than responses to the upper part. Face exploration dynamics showed that TD individuals mostly maintained fixations within the same facial region, whereas individuals with ASD switched more often between the face parts.

LIMITATIONS

Replication in large and independent samples may be needed to validate exploratory results.

CONCLUSIONS

Combined eye-tracking and frequency-tagged neural responses show no support for the excess mouth/diminished eye gaze hypothesis in ASD. The more exploratory face scanning style observed in ASD might be related to their increased feature-based face processing style.

How We Perceive Others Resembling Us

Eye contact is essential for social cognition, acting as an important tool for social communication. While differences in face scanning patterns concerning familiarity have been thoroughly investigated, the impact of facial similarity on gaze behavior has not been examined yet. We addressed this topic by recording subjects' eye-directed gazing while looking at faces that were individually created systematically varying in terms of similarity to the self-face and familiarity. Subjects' self-faces were morphed into three other faces including a close friend of the same sex. Afterwards, they rated similarity to their self-face of those morphed face stimuli in a separate rating task. Our results show a general preference for the eyes' area as well as differences regarding fixation patterns depending on similarity to the self-face. The lower the similarity to the self-face, the more fixations on the eyes' area. Subjects' ratings followed a linear line, indicating well-pronounced face perception. Nevertheless, other faces were rated faster than the self-face independent of familiarity, while morphed faces got the slowest ratings. Our results mirror the importance of similarity to the self-face as a factor shaping the way we look at the eyes of others explaining variance apart from familiarity.

Face Inversion Effect on Perceived Cuteness and Pupillary Response

The face inversion effect reflects the special nature of facial processing and appears not only in recognizing facial identity or expression but also in subjective evaluation, such as facial attractiveness. Previous studies have revealed that the way in which we perceive attractiveness (beauty versus cuteness) differs our perceptual behavior. Therefore, the face inversion effect on attractiveness might differ based on the viewpoint of attractiveness. In this study, we measured pupillary response when judging the cuteness of facial stimuli and focused on the mechanism of perceiving attractiveness in terms of the effect of involuntary physical reaction. We investigated whether perceived cuteness – a kind of attractiveness – was affected by face inversion and whether the face inversion effect appeared in pupillary responses. We then conducted experiments in which participants observed inverted faces and rated the subjective cuteness of the faces, and we measured the participants’ pupil size while they observed the facial stimuli. The results revealed a negative correlation between pupil changes and the perceived cuteness of inverted faces, which is consistent with the previous result of upright faces. Thus, we found that the perception of facial cuteness is little affected by face inversion, suggesting that the judgment of cuteness is processed differently from other types of attractiveness such as beauty. We also found that pupillary response is related to perceiving cuteness, which could lead to consistency in the perception of cuteness.

The role of cognitive load in modulating social looking: a mobile eye tracking study

The effect of cognitive load on social attention was examined across three experiments in a live pedestrian passing scenario (Experiments 1 and 2) and with the same scenario presented as a video (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, the load was manipulated using an auditory 2-back task. While the participant was wearing a mobile eye-tracker, the participant's fixation behavior toward a confederate was recorded and analyzed based on temporal proximity from the confederate (near or far) and the specific regions of the confederate being observed (i.e., head or body). In Experiment 1 we demonstrated an effect of cognitive load such that there was a lower proportion of fixations and time spent fixating toward the confederate in the load condition. A similar pattern of results was found in Experiment 2 when a within-subject design was used. In Experiment 3, which employed a less authentic social situation (i.e., video), a similar effect of cognitive load was observed. Collectively, these results suggest attentional resources play a central role in social attentional behaviors in both authentic (real-world) and less authentic (video recorded) situations.

Recommendations for the treatment of tear trough deformity with cross-linked hyaluronic acid filler

Background

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the appearance of the eyes among the concerns expressed by patients in cosmetic clinics. This has led to an increase in the frequency of diagnosis of tear trough deformity, and, as a result, the number of treatments performed by specialized professionals has also risen. Hyaluronic acid filler injection is a rapid, nonsurgical technique that gives good long‐lasting, but not permanent, results. However, to achieve optimal results, the attending physician must have good anatomical knowledge of the area and involvement of the structures in the tear trough, carry out proper clinical assessment of the patient, and use an appropriate injection technique with the right product.

Aims

To support good practice among the professionals who carry out these procedures, this interdisciplinary consensus document describes the relevant issues and recommendations, in order to improve safety standards and to help successfully resolve this aesthetic problem.

Eye spy a liar: assessing the utility of eye fixations and confidence judgments for detecting concealed recognition of faces, scenes and objects

BACKGROUND

In criminal investigations, uncooperative witnesses might deny knowing a perpetrator, the location of a murder scene or knowledge of a weapon. We sought to identify markers of recognition in eye fixations and confidence judgments whilst participants told the truth and lied about recognising faces (Experiment 1) and scenes and objects (Experiment 2) that varied in familiarity. To detect recognition we calculated effect size differences in markers of recognition between familiar and unfamiliar items that varied in familiarity (personally familiar, newly learned).

RESULTS

In Experiment 1, recognition of personally familiar faces was reliably detected across multiple fixation markers (e.g. fewer fixations, fewer interest areas viewed, fewer return fixations) during honest and concealed recognition. In Experiment 2, recognition of personally familiar non-face items (scenes and objects) was detected solely by fewer fixations during honest and concealed recognition; differences in other fixation measures were not consistent. In both experiments, fewer fixations exposed concealed recognition of newly learned faces, scenes and objects, but the same pattern was not observed during honest recognition. Confidence ratings were higher for recognition of personally familiar faces than for unfamiliar faces.

CONCLUSIONS

Robust memories of personally familiar faces were detected in patterns of fixations and confidence ratings, irrespective of task demands required to conceal recognition. Crucially, we demonstrate that newly learned faces should not be used as a proxy for real-world familiarity, and that conclusions should not be generalised across different types of familiarity or stimulus class.

Global visual salience of competing stimuli

Current computational models of visual salience accurately predict the distribution of fixations on isolated visual stimuli. It is not known, however, whether the global salience of a stimulus, that is, its effectiveness in the competition for attention with other stimuli, is a function of the local salience or an independent measure. Further, do task and familiarity with the competing images influence eye movements? Here, we investigated the direction of the first saccade to characterize and analyze the global visual salience of competing stimuli. Participants freely observed pairs of images while eye movements were recorded. The pairs balanced the combinations of new and already seen images, as well as task and task-free trials. Then, we trained a logistic regression model that accurately predicted the location-left or right image-of the first fixation for each stimulus pair, accounting too for the influence of task, familiarity, and lateral bias. The coefficients of the model provided a reliable measure of global salience, which we contrasted with two distinct local salience models, GBVS and Deep Gaze. The lack of correlation of the behavioral data with the former and the small correlation with the latter indicate that global salience cannot be explained by the feature-driven local salience of images. Further, the influence of task and familiarity was rather small, and we reproduced the previously reported left-sided bias. Summarized, we showed that natural stimuli have an intrinsic global salience related to the human initial gaze direction, independent of the local salience and little influenced by task and familiarity.

The Role of Extraversion, IQ and Contact in the Own-Ethnicity Face Recognition Bias

While IQ is weakly related to the overall face recognition (Shakeshaft & Plomin, 2015), it plays a larger role in the processing of misaligned faces in the composite face task (Zhu et al., 2010). This type of stimuli are relatively novel and may reflect the involvement of intelligence in the processing of infrequently encountered faces, such as those of other-ethnicities. Extraversion is associated with increased eye contact which signifies less viewing of diagnostic features for Black faces. Using an old/new recognition paradigm, we found that IQ negatively correlated with the magnitude of the own-ethnicity bias (OEB) and that this relationship was moderated by contact with people from another ethnicity. We interpret these results in terms of IQ enhancing the ability to process novel stimuli by utilising multiple forms of coding. Extraversion was positively correlated with the OEB in White participants and negatively correlated with the OEB in Black participants suggesting that extraverts have lower attention to diagnostic facial features of Black faces, leading to poorer recognition of Black faces in both White and Black participants, thereby contributing to the relative OEB in these participants. The OEB is dependent on participant variables such as intelligence and extraversion.

The Scanpaths of Subjects with Developmental Prosopagnosia during a Face Memory Task

The scanpaths of healthy subjects show biases towards the upper face, the eyes and the center of the face, which suggests that their fixations are guided by a feature hierarchy towards the regions most informative for face identification. However, subjects with developmental prosopagnosia have a lifelong impairment in face processing. Whether this is reflected in the loss of normal face-scanning strategies is not known. The goal of this study was to determine if subjects with developmental prosopagnosia showed anomalous scanning biases as they processed the identity of faces. We recorded the fixations of 10 subjects with developmental prosopagnosia as they performed a face memorization and recognition task, for comparison with 8 subjects with acquired prosopagnosia (four with anterior temporal lesions and four with occipitotemporal lesions) and 20 control subjects. The scanning of healthy subjects confirmed a bias to fixate the upper over the lower face, the eyes over the mouth, and the central over the peripheral face. Subjects with acquired prosopagnosia from occipitotemporal lesions had more dispersed fixations and a trend to fixate less informative facial regions. Subjects with developmental prosopagnosia did not differ from the controls. At a single-subject level, some developmental subjects performed abnormally, but none consistently across all metrics. Scanning distributions were not related to scores on perceptual or memory tests for faces. We conclude that despite lifelong difficulty with faces, subjects with developmental prosopagnosia still have an internal facial schema that guides their scanning behavior.

The effects of face inversion on perceiving- and sensing-based change detection

Face perception is more difficult when faces are inverted compared to when they are upright. However, it is not known whether face inversion disrupts the ability to make perceiving-based discriminations (i.e., the ability to identify a specific feature change), or sensing-based discriminations (i.e., the ability to detect there was a change without the ability to identify what changed). In the current study, we used confidence-based receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) in a change detection test to examine the effect of face inversion on perceiving and sensing. In Experiment 1, face inversion led to a reduction in the probability of perceiving but did not impact sensing-based discriminations. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results, and verified that the findings based on ROC estimates paralleled participants' phenomenological experiences of perceiving and sensing. Furthermore, the perceiving-based face inversion effect was found to reflect a reduction in the ability to accurately report specific feature changes. These findings indicate that face inversion does not reduce the ability to sense there was a change in the absence of identification, but rather it reduces the ability to consciously identify specific characteristics of faces in service of perceiving-based discriminations. In addition, they suggest that sensing responds to global differences across the visual image, rather than to changes in holistic processing of the visual input. These results further our understanding of the face inversion effect and clarify the nature of the processes underlying visual perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Eye Movement Dynamics Differ between Encoding and Recognition of Faces

Facial recognition is widely thought to involve a holistic perceptual process, and optimal recognition performance can be rapidly achieved within two fixations. However, is facial identity encoding likewise holistic and rapid, and how do gaze dynamics during encoding relate to recognition? While having eye movements tracked, participants completed an encoding ("study") phase and subsequent recognition ("test") phase, each divided into blocks of one- or five-second stimulus presentation time conditions to distinguish the influences of experimental phase (encoding/recognition) and stimulus presentation time (short/long). Within the first two fixations, several differences between encoding and recognition were evident in the temporal and spatial dynamics of the eye-movements. Most importantly, in behavior, the long study phase presentation time alone caused improved recognition performance (i.e., longer time at recognition did not improve performance), revealing that encoding is not as rapid as recognition, since longer sequences of eye-movements are functionally required to achieve optimal encoding than to achieve optimal recognition. Together, these results are inconsistent with a scan path replay hypothesis. Rather, feature information seems to have been gradually integrated over many fixations during encoding, enabling recognition that could subsequently occur rapidly and holistically within a small number of fixations.

Facial expressions yielding Context-Dependent Effect: The additive contribution of eye movements

This study tested Context-Dependent Effect (CDE) on face recognition by viewing facial expressions as context and face identity as the target. Three groups were defined - Neutral, Happy and Angry, reflecting the facial expressions of the faces presented at the study phase. At the study phase, participants were presented with 42 color photos of faces for 5 s each. At the test phase, participants were presented with 84 pictures of faces, half of which had been viewed beforehand (old). One-third of the old and new faces displayed the same facial expression shown at study, and the remaining two-thirds had one of the other two expressions. Behavioral results show that consistency of facial expressions between study and test facilitated face recognition (i.e., CDE). Eye-tracking results showed that lengthier focus on a face at the study phase gives the participant an advantage only when the same face is presented again at the test phase. Angry expressions intensify binding more than happy or neutral expressions, resulting in higher costs when changing facial expression between study and test. The theoretical implications of these results in terms of the relationship between facial identity and facial expression are discussed. The practical implications, particularly for eyewitness memory literature, are also discussed.

The Upper Eye Bias: Rotated Faces Draw Fixations to the Upper Eye

There is a consistent left-gaze bias when observers fixate upright faces, but it is unknown how this bias manifests in rotated faces, where the two eyes appear at different heights on the face. In two eye-tracking experiments, we measured participants' first and second fixations, while they judged the expressions of upright and rotated faces. We hypothesized that rotated faces might elicit a bias to fixate the upper eye. Our results strongly confirmed this hypothesis, with the upper eye bias completely dominating the left-gaze bias in ±45° faces in Experiment 1, and across a range of face orientations (±11.25°, ±22.5°, ±33.75°, ±45°, and ±90°) in Experiment 2. In addition, rotated faces elicited more overall eye-directed fixations than upright faces. We consider potential mechanisms of the upper eye bias in rotated faces and discuss some implications for research in social cognition.

Visual Fixation Patterns During Viewing of Half-Face Stimuli in Adults: An Eye-Tracking Study

Human faces play a special role in social cognition, since as a core signal of interpersonal communication, they convey various kinds of information (e.g., about sex, age, race, emotions, intentions). Study 1 aimed to explore how this specialization manifests itself in eye movements when looking at neutral, static, female faces. We monitored the gaze pattern of 23 adult participants using eye-tracking method. To test if template-driven processes are involved in face perception, and to see how inversion affects fixations on special facial stimuli, we presented vertically cut half-faces in upright and inverted positions (so half of each stimulus represented a half-face, whereas the other half was left blank). Our results corroborate prior findings consistently demonstrating the dominance of the triangular area marked by the eyes and the mouth, measured by the number and duration of fixations. In addition, we found evidence for so-called complementary fixations, targeted at the non-informative parts (i.e., the half that does not contain any facial information) of the pictures, suggesting that other mechanisms beyond purely stimulus-driven ones might drive looking behavior when scanning faces. Study 2 was intended to test if these systematic eye movements are face-specific or occur in case of other visual objects as well.

Eye movements while judging faces for trustworthiness and dominance

Past studies examining how people judge faces for trustworthiness and dominance have suggested that they use particular facial features (e.g. mouth features for trustworthiness, eyebrow and cheek features for dominance ratings) to complete the task. Here, we examine whether eye movements during the task reflect the importance of these features. We here compared eye movements for trustworthiness and dominance ratings of face images under three stimulus configurations: Small images (mimicking large viewing distances), large images (mimicking face to face viewing), and a moving window condition (removing extrafoveal information). Whereas first area fixated, dwell times, and number of fixations depended on the size of the stimuli and the availability of extrafoveal vision, and varied substantially across participants, no clear task differences were found. These results indicate that gaze patterns for face stimuli are highly individual, do not vary between trustworthiness and dominance ratings, but are influenced by the size of the stimuli and the availability of extrafoveal vision.

Sustained conscious access to incidental memories in RSVP

In visual search of natural scenes, differentiation of briefly fixated but task-irrelevant distractor items from incidental memory is often comparable to explicit memorization. However, many characteristics of incidental memory remain unclear, including the capacity for its conscious retrieval. Here, we examined incidental memory for faces in either upright or inverted orientation using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). Subjects were instructed to detect a target face in a sequence of 8-15 faces cropped from natural scene photographs (Experiment 1). If the target face was identified within a brief time window, the subject proceeded to an incidental memory task. Here, subjects used incidental memory to discriminate between a probe face (a distractor in the RSVP stream) and a novel, foil face. In Experiment 2 we reduced scene-related semantic coherency by intermixing faces from multiple scenes and contrasted incidental memory with explicit memory, a condition where subjects actively memorized each face from the sequence without searching for a target. In both experiments, we measured objective performance (Type 1 AUC) and metacognitive accuracy (Type 2 AUC), revealing sustained and consciously accessible incidental memory for upright and inverted faces. In novel analyses of face categories, we examined whether accuracy or metacognitive judgments are affected by shared semantic features (i.e., similarity in gender, race, age). Similarity enhanced the accuracy of incidental memory discriminations but did not influence metacognition. We conclude that incidental memory is sustained and consciously accessible, is not reliant on scene contexts, and is not enhanced by explicit memorization.

Differential impact of disfiguring facial features on overt and covert attention

Observers can form negative impressions about faces that contain disfiguring features (e.g., scars). Previous research suggests that this might be due to the ability of disfiguring features to capture attention - as evidenced by contrasting observers' responses to faces with or without disfiguring features. This, however, confounds the effects of salience and perceptual interpretation, i.e. whether the feature is seen as integral to the face, or separate from it. Furthermore, it remains unclear to what extent disfiguring features influence covert as well as overt attention. We addressed these issues by studying attentional effects by photographs of unfamiliar faces containing a unilateral disfigurement (a skin discoloration) or a visually similar control feature that was partly occluding the face. Disfiguring and occluding features were first matched for salience (Experiment 1). Experiments 2 and 3 assessed the effect of these features on covert attention in two cueing tasks involving discrimination of a (validly or invalidly cued) target in the presence of, respectively, a peripheral or central distractor face. In both conditions, disfigured and occluded faces did not differ significantly in their impact on response-time costs following invalid cues. In Experiment 4 we compared overt attention to these faces by analysing patterns of eye fixations during an attractiveness rating task. Critically, faces with disfiguring features attracted more fixations on the eyes and incurred a higher number of recurrent fixations compared to faces with salience-matched occluding features. Together, these results suggest a differential impact of disfiguring facial features on overt and covert attention, which is mediated both by the visual salience of such features and by their perceptual interpretation.

Distinct neural processes for the perception of familiar versus unfamiliar faces along the visual hierarchy revealed by EEG

Humans recognize faces with ease, despite the complexity of the task and of the visual system which underlies it. Different spatial regions, including both the core and extended face processing networks, and distinct temporal stages of processing have been implicated in face recognition, but there is ongoing controversy regarding the extent to which the mechanisms for recognizing a familiar face differ from those for an unfamiliar face. Here, we used electroencephalogram (EEG) and flicker SSVEP, a high signal-to-noise approach, and searchlight decoding methods to elucidate the mechanisms mediating the processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces in the time domain. Familiar and unfamiliar faces were presented periodically at 15 Hz, 6 Hz and 3.75 Hz either upright or inverted in separate blocks, with the rationale that faster frequencies require shorter processing times per image and tap into fundamentally different levels of visual processing. The 15 Hz trials, likely to reflect early visual processing, exhibited enhanced neural responses for familiar over unfamiliar face trials, but only when the faces were upright. In contrast, decoding methods revealed similar classification accuracies for upright and inverted faces for both familiar and unfamiliar faces. For the 6 Hz frequency, familiar faces had lower amplitude responses than unfamiliar faces, and decoding familiarity was more accurate for upright compared with inverted faces. Finally, the 3.75 Hz frequency revealed no main effects of familiarity, but decoding showed significant correlations with behavioral ratings of face familiarity, suggesting that activity evoked by this slow presentation frequency reflected higher-level, cognitive aspects of familiarity processing. This three-way dissociation between frequencies reveals that fundamentally different stages of the visual hierarchy are modulated by face familiarity. The combination of experimental and analytical approaches used here represent a novel method for elucidating spatio-temporal characteristics within the visual system.

Beauty-related perceptual bias: Who captures the mind of the beholder?

INTRODUCTION

To explore the beauty-related perceptual bias and answers the question: Who can capture the mind of the beholder? Many studies have explored the specificity of human faces through ERP or other ways, and the materials they used are general human faces and other objects. Therefore, we want to further explore the difference between attractive faces and beautiful objects such as flowers.

METHODS

We recorded the eye movement of 22 male observers and 23 female observers using a standard two-alternative forced choice.

RESULTS

(1) The attractive faces were looked at longer and more often in comparison with the beautiful flowers; (2) fixation counts of female participants are more than male participants; and (3) the participants watched the beautiful flowers first, followed by the attractive faces, but there was no significant difference on the first fixation duration between the beautiful flowers and the attractive faces.

CONCLUSIONS

The data in this study may suggest that people prefer attractive faces to beautiful flowers.

Gender Classification Based on Eye Movements: A Processing Effect During Passive Face Viewing

Studies have revealed superior face recognition skills in females, partially due to their different eye movement strategies when encoding faces. In the current study, we utilized these slight but important differences and proposed a model that estimates the gender of the viewers and classifies them into two subgroups, males and females. An eye tracker recorded participant’s eye movements while they viewed images of faces. Regions of interest (ROIs) were defined for each face. Results showed that the gender dissimilarity in eye movements was not due to differences in frequency of fixations in the ROI s per se. Instead, it was caused by dissimilarity in saccade paths between the ROIs. The difference enhanced when saccades were towards the eyes. Females showed significant increase in transitions from other ROI s to the eyes. Consequently, the extraction of temporal transient information of saccade paths through a transition probability matrix, similar to a first order Markov chain model, significantly improved the accuracy of the gender classification results.

Hidden Markov model analysis reveals the advantage of analytic eye movement patterns in face recognition across cultures

It remains controversial whether culture modulates eye movement behavior in face recognition. Inconsistent results have been reported regarding whether cultural differences in eye movement patterns exist, whether these differences affect recognition performance, and whether participants use similar eye movement patterns when viewing faces from different ethnicities. These inconsistencies may be due to substantial individual differences in eye movement patterns within a cultural group. Here we addressed this issue by conducting individual-level eye movement data analysis using hidden Markov models (HMMs). Each individual's eye movements were modeled with an HMM. We clustered the individual HMMs according to their similarities and discovered three common patterns in both Asian and Caucasian participants: holistic (looking mostly at the face center), left-eye-biased analytic (looking mostly at the two individual eyes in addition to the face center with a slight bias to the left eye), and right-eye-based analytic (looking mostly at the right eye in addition to the face center). The frequency of participants adopting the three patterns did not differ significantly between Asians and Caucasians, suggesting little modulation from culture. Significantly more participants (75%) showed similar eye movement patterns when viewing own- and other-race faces than different patterns. Most importantly, participants with left-eye-biased analytic patterns performed significantly better than those using either holistic or right-eye-biased analytic patterns. These results suggest that active retrieval of facial feature information through an analytic eye movement pattern may be optimal for face recognition regardless of culture.