Boutsen Luc, Pearson Nathan A, Jüttner Martin
Aston University, Birmingham, UK.
Aston University, Birmingham, UK.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018 Oct;190:122-134. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.08.003. Epub 2018 Aug 11.
Observers can form negative impressions about faces that contain disfiguring features (e.g., scars). Previous research suggests that this might be due to the ability of disfiguring features to capture attention - as evidenced by contrasting observers' responses to faces with or without disfiguring features. This, however, confounds the effects of salience and perceptual interpretation, i.e. whether the feature is seen as integral to the face, or separate from it. Furthermore, it remains unclear to what extent disfiguring features influence covert as well as overt attention. We addressed these issues by studying attentional effects by photographs of unfamiliar faces containing a unilateral disfigurement (a skin discoloration) or a visually similar control feature that was partly occluding the face. Disfiguring and occluding features were first matched for salience (Experiment 1). Experiments 2 and 3 assessed the effect of these features on covert attention in two cueing tasks involving discrimination of a (validly or invalidly cued) target in the presence of, respectively, a peripheral or central distractor face. In both conditions, disfigured and occluded faces did not differ significantly in their impact on response-time costs following invalid cues. In Experiment 4 we compared overt attention to these faces by analysing patterns of eye fixations during an attractiveness rating task. Critically, faces with disfiguring features attracted more fixations on the eyes and incurred a higher number of recurrent fixations compared to faces with salience-matched occluding features. Together, these results suggest a differential impact of disfiguring facial features on overt and covert attention, which is mediated both by the visual salience of such features and by their perceptual interpretation.
观察者会对带有毁容特征（如疤痕）的面孔形成负面印象。先前的研究表明，这可能是由于毁容特征能够吸引注意力——这一点通过对比观察者对有或没有毁容特征的面孔的反应得到了证明。然而，这混淆了显著性和感知解释的影响，即该特征是被视为面部整体的一部分，还是与面部分离。此外，尚不清楚毁容特征在多大程度上会影响隐蔽性注意力和显性注意力。我们通过研究包含单侧毁容（皮肤变色）或视觉上相似的控制特征（部分遮挡面部）的陌生面孔照片的注意力效应来解决这些问题。首先使毁容特征和遮挡特征在显著性上相匹配（实验1）。实验2和实验3在两个线索任务中评估了这些特征对隐蔽性注意力的影响，这两个任务分别涉及在存在外周或中央干扰面孔的情况下对（有效或无效提示的）目标进行辨别。在这两种情况下，毁容面孔和遮挡面孔对无效提示后的反应时间成本的影响没有显著差异。在实验4中，我们通过分析吸引力评级任务期间的眼睛注视模式，比较了对这些面孔的显性注意力。至关重要的是，与具有显著性匹配的遮挡特征的面孔相比，具有毁容特征的面孔吸引了更多对眼睛的注视，并产生了更高数量的反复注视。总之，这些结果表明毁容面部特征对显性和隐蔽性注意力有不同的影响，这种影响是由这些特征的视觉显著性及其感知解释共同介导的。
