Morand Stéphanie M, Grosbras Marie-Hélène, Caldara Roberto, Harvey Monika
Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
J Vis. 2010 Mar 30;10(3):16.1-10. doi: 10.1167/10.3.16.
Human faces capture attention more than other visual stimuli. Here we investigated whether such face-specific biases rely on automatic (involuntary) or voluntary orienting responses. To this end, we used an anti-saccade paradigm, which requires the ability to inhibit a reflexive automatic response and to generate a voluntary saccade in the opposite direction of the stimulus. To control for potential low-level confounds in the eye-movement data, we manipulated the high-level visual properties of the stimuli while normalizing their global low-level visual properties. Eye movements were recorded in 21 participants who performed either pro- or anti-saccades to a face, car, or noise pattern, randomly presented to the left or right of a fixation point. For each trial, a symbolic cue instructed the observer to generate either a pro-saccade or an anti-saccade. We report a significant increase in anti-saccade error rates for faces compared to cars and noise patterns, as well as faster pro-saccades to faces and cars in comparison to noise patterns. These results indicate that human faces induce stronger involuntary orienting responses than other visual objects, i.e., responses that are beyond the control of the observer. Importantly, this involuntary processing cannot be accounted for by global low-level visual factors.
人脸比其他视觉刺激更能吸引注意力。在此，我们研究了这种特定于面部的偏向是否依赖于自动（非自愿）或自愿的定向反应。为此，我们使用了一种反扫视范式，该范式要求具备抑制反射性自动反应并在与刺激相反方向产生自愿扫视的能力。为了控制眼动数据中潜在的低层次混淆因素，我们在对刺激的全局低层次视觉属性进行归一化的同时，操纵了刺激的高层次视觉属性。记录了21名参与者的眼动情况，他们对随机出现在注视点左侧或右侧的人脸、汽车或噪声模式进行顺向或反向扫视。对于每个试验，一个符号提示指示观察者进行顺向扫视或反向扫视。我们报告称，与汽车和噪声模式相比，人脸的反向扫视错误率显著增加，并且与噪声模式相比，对人脸和汽车的顺向扫视更快。这些结果表明，人脸比其他视觉对象引发更强的非自愿定向反应，即超出观察者控制的反应。重要的是，这种非自愿加工不能用全局低层次视觉因素来解释。
