Fixed or flexible? Orientation preference in identity and gaze processing in humans.

ABSTRACT: Vision begins with the encoding of contrast at specific orientations. Several works showed that humans identify their conspecifics best based on the horizontally-oriented information contained in the face image; this range conveys the main morphological features of the face. In contrast, the vertical structure of the eye region seems to deliver optimal cues to gaze direction. The present work investigates whether the human face processing system flexibly tunes to vertical information contained in the eye region when processing gaze direction. Alternatively, face processing may invariantly rely on the horizontal range, supporting the domain specificity of orientation tuning for faces and the gateway role of horizontal content to access any type of facial information. Participants judged the

SUBMITTER: Goffaux V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6347268 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature