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

ABSTRACT:

Background

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

Methodology/principal findings

We monitored eye movements during face recognition of Western Caucasian (WC) and East Asian (EA) observers with a novel technique in face recognition that parametrically restricts information outside central vision. We used 'Spotlights' with Gaussian apertures of 2 degrees, 5 degrees or 8 degrees dynamically

SUBMITTER: Caldara R 

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

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature