Abstract
Normally-sighted participants (N=6) viewed 150 images of famous faces or selfies under 4 conditions: upright, inverted, Mooney or Canny line drawings. Face images were 17x23 degrees, and normalized by aligning the pupils at a separation of 7 degrees. After viewing each image for 5 seconds, in separate blocks, observers identified either the written name or an image feature (right eye, left eye, left ear, right ear, nose, chin, mouth and forehead, at random across trials) in a 2AFC task. The name or feature of the test face was paired with a name or same feature from a different face. Binocular gaze direction was tracked using a 60Hz eye tracker. Face identification was significantly worse for line drawings than upright faces (p< .0001). Gaze direction varied as a function of face feature (p< 0.001) with more fixations towards the eyes and nose than any other features (all p< 0.05), and more fixations to left than right eye (all p< 0.05). Participants made fewer fixations on the eyes of all non-upright faces or selfies compared to upright faces (all p< 0.05), but fixation patterns were not significantly different for face naming than feature recognition (p< 0.87). In agreement with previous research, gaze direction is not uniformly distributed across faces. However, changes in image type can modify the pattern of eye movements at no expense to identification accuracy. Furthermore, changes in task type failed to modify fixation patterns. These findings are not consistent with a single information-driven goal of eye movements.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018