Oculomotor Guidance and Capture by Irrelevant Faces

Even though it is generally agreed that face stimuli constitute a special class of stimuli, which are treated preferentially by our visual system, it remains unclear whether faces can capture attention in a stimulus-driven manner. Moreover, there is a long-standing debate regarding the mechanism underlying the preferential bias of selecting faces. Some claim that faces constitute a set of special low-level features to which our visual system is tuned; others claim that the visual system is capable of extracting the meaning of faces very rapidly, driving attentional selection. Those debates continue because many studies contain methodological peculiarities and manipulations that prevent a definitive conclusion. Here, we present a new visual search task in which observers had to make a saccade to a uniquely colored circle while completely irrelevant objects were also present in the visual field. The results indicate that faces capture and guide the eyes more than other animated objects and that our visual system is not only tuned to the low-level features that make up a face but also to its meaning

Super-recognisers show an advantage for other race face identification

The accurate identification of an unfamiliar individual from a face photo is a critical factor in several applied situations (e.g. border control). Despite this, matching faces to photographic ID is highly prone to error. In lieu of effective training measures which could reduce face matching errors, the selection of ‘super-recognisers’ (SRs) provides the most promising route to combat misidentification or fraud. However, to date, super-recognition has been defined and tested using almost exclusively ‘own-race’ face memory and matching tests. Here, across three studies we test Caucasian participants on tests of own-race (GFMT, MFMT, CFMT) and other-race (EFMT, CFMT-C) face identification. Our findings show that compared to controls, high performing typical recognisers (Studies 1 & 2) and super-recognisers (Study 3) show superior performance on both the own- and other-race tests. These findings suggest that recruiting SRs in ethnically diverse applied settings could be advantageous

High‐speed photoconductivity and infrared to visible up‐conversion in GaP light‐emitting diodes

In GaP:N (Zn,Te) light‐emitting diodes extrinsic photoconductivity and infrared to visible up‐conversion have been investigated by short laser pulses at 10‐μm wavelength. A time constant of the order of 1 ns was observed indicating that free infrared excited hole to bound donor recombination yields the fast response

Comparing Methods for Analysis of Pupillary Response

Changes in eye-pupil size index a range of cognitive processes. However, variations in the protocols used to analyze such data exist in the psychological literature. This raises the question of whether different approaches to pupillary response data influence the outcome of the analysis. To address this question, four methods of analysis were compared, using pupillary responses to sexually appetitive visual content as example data. These methods comprised analysis of the unadjusted (raw) pupillary response data,z-scored data, percentage-change data, and data transformed by a prestimulus baseline correction. Across two experiments, these methods yielded near-identical outcomes, leading to similar conclusions. This suggests that the range of approaches that are employed in the psychological literature to analyze pupillary response data do not fundamentally influence the outcome of the analysis. However, some systematic carryover effects were observed when a prestimulus baseline correction was applied, whereby dilation effects from an arousing target on one trial still influenced pupil size on the next trial. This indicates that the appropriate application of this analysis might require additional information, such as prior knowledge of the duration of carryover effects

Atypical disengagement from faces and its modulation by the control of eye fixation in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

By using the gap overlap task, we investigated disengagement from faces and objects in children (9–17 years old) with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its neurophysiological correlates. In typically developing (TD) children, faces elicited larger gap effect, an index of attentional engagement, and larger saccade-related event-related potentials (ERPs), compared to objects. In children with ASD, by contrast, neither gap effect nor ERPs differ between faces and objects. Follow-up experiments demonstrated that instructed fixation on the eyes induces larger gap effect for faces in children with ASD, whereas instructed fixation on the mouth can disrupt larger gap effect in TD children. These results suggest a critical role of eye fixation on attentional engagement to faces in both groups

Responding to social and symbolic extrafoveal cues: Cue shape trumps biological relevance

Social cues presented at visual fixation have been shown to strongly influence an observer’s attention and response selection. Here we ask whether the same holds for cues (initially) presented away from fixation, more alike how cues are commonly perceived in natural vision. In six experiments, we show that extrafoveally presented cues with a distinct outline, such as pointing hands, rotated heads, and arrow cues result in strong cueing of responses (either to the cue itself, or a cued object). In contrast, cues without a clear outline, such as gazing eyes and direction words have a much weaker effects on participants’ responses to a target cue. We also show that distraction effects on response times are relatively weak, but that strong interference effects can be obtained by measuring mouse trajectories. Eye tracking suggests that gaze cues are slower to respond to because their direction cannot easily be perceived in extrafoveal vision. Together these data suggest that the strength of an extrafoveal cue is determined by the shape of the outline of the cue, rather than its biological relevance (i.e., whether the cue is provided by another human being), and that this shape effect is due to how easily the direction of the cue can be perceived in extrafoveal vision

Identifying Hallmark Symptoms of Developmental Prosopagnosia for Non-Experts

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is characterised by a severe and relatively selective deficit in face recognition, in the absence of neurological injury. Because public and professional awareness of DP is low, many adults and children are not identified for formal testing. This may partly result from the lack of appropriate screening tools that can be used by non-experts in either professional or personal settings. To address this issue, the current study sought to (a) explore when DP can first be detected in oneself and another, and (b) identify a list of the condition’s everyday behavioural manifestations. Questionnaires and interviews were administered to large samples of adult DPs, their unaffected significant others, and parents of children with the condition; and data were analysed using inductive content analysis. It was found that DPs have limited insight into their difficulties, with most only achieving realisation in adulthood. Nevertheless, the DPs’ reflections on their childhood experiences, together with the parental responses, revealed specific indicators that can potentially be used to spot the condition in early childhood. These everyday hallmark symptoms may aid the detection of individuals who would benefit from objective testing, in oneself (in adults) or another person (for both adults and children)

Solving the border control problem: evidence of enhanced face matching in individuals with extraordinary face recognition skills.

Photographic identity documents (IDs) are commonly used despite clear evidence that unfamiliar face matching is a difficult and error-prone task. The current study set out to examine the performance of seven individuals with extraordinary face recognition memory, so called “super recognisers” (SRs), on two face matching tasks resembling border control identity checks. In Experiment 1, the SRs as a group outperformed control participants on the “Glasgow Face Matching Test”, and some case-by-case comparisons also reached significance. In Experiment 2, a perceptually difficult face matching task was used: the “Models Face Matching Test”. Once again, SRs outperformed controls both on group and mostly in case-by-case analyses. These findings suggest that SRs are considerably better at face matching than typical perceivers, and would make proficient personnel for border control agencies