A Study Of Preschooler's Real And Cartoon Face Recognition And The Mechanism Of Eye Movement

The face contains complex and diverse visual information,so it is necessary for children to recognize faces timely and accurately in order to complete a good social activity.With the rapid development of information technology,watching cartoons has become one of the most important entertainments in children's daily life,which greatly impacts their cognitive and social development.Combined with behavioral experiment and eye tracking technology,we tried to explore the differences between real and cartoon face recognition in 4 to 6-year-old children,also its mechanism of eye movement,to examine whether the memory of real faces are consistent with the cartoon faces.We tried to find out what kind of cartoon face styles children prefer,and what factors affect the memory of cartoon face.By studying the face cognition pattern that children have developed,it could provide scientific guidance for designing cartoon animation.The paper includes five experiments,all of which use the "earning-recognition"paradigm.In experiment 1,we took real pictures,hand-drawings and computer cartoon of children's face as stimulant materials,to explore the differences between the real and cartoon face cognition of 4 to 6-year-old children and their development patterns.In experiment 2,we selected real picture and the computer cartoon of children's faces from experiment 1 as stimuli,to investigate whether the memory clue of the real and the cartoon face are the same.In experiment 3,Chinese-style,Western-style,Japanese-style cartoon faces were used as stimuli to understand children's cognition preference.In the latter part,eye movement technology was applied to interpret the results of the front part by eye movement index.The results are as follows:(1)The comparative study of real and cartoon face recognition shows:the real face recognition is significantly more accurate than cartoon face(hand-drawings and computer cartoon face);and the group of 6-year-old children's grades are significantly higher than 5-year-old and 4-year-oid's.(2)The comparative study of real and cartoon face's memory clues shows that the interaction between face type and memory clue is significant.For the real face,the recognition accuracy of the whole face is significantly higher than internal-clue-face and external-clue-face,but there is not much difference between the latter two.For cartoon face,external-clue-faces' accuracy score is the highest,followed by the whole face and then internal-clue-face,the disparities being significant.In addition,the interaction between age and memory clue is significant:6-year-old group shows that the rate of external-clue-face is the highest,following the whole face and internal-clue-face;the 5-year-old.group children shows that the ability of external-clue-face and the whole face memories are much higher than internal-clue-face;the result of 4-year-old group is similar to the 5-year-old group,but the whole face's score is slightly better than external-clue-face's.(3)The research of the different country styles' impact on face memory shows:,the accuracy rate of children's Japanese-style's cartoon face recognition is significantly higher than Chinese-style's and Western-style's.The adults' grades are similar,but difference is not significant.(4)In the study of what affect children and adults' memory of cartoon face,we found:cartoon face exaggeration has a significant predictive effect on cartoon face recognition of children;while for the adults,attractiveness is the most predictive factor.Moreover,there are significant differences in cartoon face attractiveness and exaggeration between different face styles.The exaggeration and attractiveness of Japanese-style cartoon faces are significantly greater than those of Chinese-style and Western-style.The attraction of Western-style faces is significantly greater than Chinese style's,while the exaggeration of Chinese style is greater than Western-style's.(5)The eye movement research of the real and cartoon face recognition shows:in terms of the learning stage,when watching the real faces,the children's pupil size is significantly larger than watching the cartoon face.However,for the total fixation times,the real face has the lowest score,the computer cartoon face has the greatest.In terms of the recognition stage,the results of eye movement index are the same as the learning stage's,and the differences are not all that significant.The total fixation times,the fixation counts and the saccade numbers of children who were watching cartoon face are all greater than watching the real face,except the pupil size,which is smaller than watching the real face.In addition,the total fixation times and the fixation counts of the internal interest area are both higher than the external interest area.We found that there is no difference between the real and the cartoon face for the internal interest area;but for the external interest area,the cartoon face is higher than the real face.The interaction of age and the face area is also significant.For the external interest area,the total fixation time and the fixation count for girls are much higher than boys(6)The eye movement research of different features of cartoon face recognition shows:in terms of the learning stage,when watching the Japanese-style cartoon faces,children's pupil size is much larger than watching Chinese-style and Western-style.In terms of the recognition stage,the total fixation times and the fixation counts of Japanese-style and Chinese-style cartoon faces are greater than Western-style faces.The analysis of the most focused area shows that children's most attention is on the eye area,following by the nose area.For the eye area,the total fixation times and the fixation counts on Japanese-style are the highest,then Chinese-style and Western-style.The disparities between those three are huge.Meanwhile,for the nose area,Western-style is the highest,Japanese-style and then Chinese-style falls much behind.However,there is not much disparity between the latter two.And for the mouth area,Western-style is the highest,followed by Chinese-style and Japanese-style.The disparity is not significant.In addition,boys' total eye fixations and the fixation counts are much higher than girls'.In conclusion,our findings confirmed that there are significant differences between real and cartoon face recognition and its eye movement mechanism.Compared with cartoon face,real face has more advantages in terms of memory,and processes faster with more focus.Also,the ability of face memory is quickly developed during 5 to 6 years old.Further study suggested that the real face memory needs the participation of both internal and external clues,and moreover,cartoon face relied more on the external clues.Along with the growth of the age,the cartoon face recognition becomes more easily influenced by the internal clues.According to cartoon facial feature,the result appeared that children and adults both do well in Japanese-style cartoon face recognition.The possible reason is that the traits of Japanese-style face are more popular among children and adults.Its attractiveness,exaggeration and simplicity,compared with the faces of the other styles,are all at the highest level.Results shows that the children are more concerned with exaggeration and the adults are more concerned with attractiveness.The study of eye movement suggests that the eye area should be the most important part for animator to design,since it has most focus of children.The above conclusions can be used as a scientific reference for animation design and a model of child face cognition.