Abstract
The eyes play an important role in conveying social cues, including identity. Previous studies have shown that face recognition performance is higher when the eyes are visible or cued during encoding, compared to when the eyes are absent or when other features are cued. Here we explored the relationship between time spent looking at the eyes during encoding and face recognition performance, and whether this link might vary with task demands. Eye movements were compared while participants mentally assessed the trustworthiness of faces (implicit encoding task), and when they memorized the identity of faces (explicit encoding task). Behavioural performance was obtained during a surprise old/new face recognition test following the implicit task, and during an expected old/new face recognition test following the explicit task. With a preliminary sample (N = 38), participants spent less time looking at the mouth during encoding, compared to the left eye, right eye, and nose, which did not differ from each other. However, task demands did not differentially affect feature viewing times. Face recognition accuracy (d') was higher following the explicit encoding task compared to accuracy following the implicit encoding task. Moreover, for the explicit task only, longer viewing time to the left eye was weakly associated with higher accuracy, whereas longer viewing time on the nose was weakly associated with lower accuracy. These findings support a link between time spent looking at specific facial features and face recognition performance that seems dependent on the task demands at encoding, such that only the left eye seems to play a role in facilitating intentional face recognition.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018