Eves-advantages:The Region-specificity In Visual Search And Holistic Processing Of Human Face

The study of face perception found that the processing of the upper and lower half information of the face is different.For example,when people percept a face,the gaze point is mostly in the upper part of the face,especially the eyes region.Also,people are more sensitive to changes in the eyes region and less sensitive to changes in the mouth region.In a series of studies with the face adaptation paradigm,stimulation in the individual eyes has an adaptive effect,whereas stimulation in the individual mouth has no adaptive effect.In the face difference discriminate task,face inversion has less influence on the discriminate performance of the eyes region,and has greater influence on the discriminate of the mouth region.In summary,the processing of the eyes region is important of face perception.For above phenomena,the theory of face perception has three assumptions.The first is the early perceptual anchor point hypothesis,which proposes that the eyes region is the earliest processed part of face perception in time,while other regions(such as the nose or mouth region)are detected and processed by the human brain later.The second is the perceptual field hypothesis of holistic processing,which proposes a larger perceptual field when the face is upright,a smaller perceptual field when the face is invert,and concentrated in the eyes region.The third is the regional selectivity hypothesis of the holistic processing of face.It is proposed that the upper half of the face(mainly the eyes region)is the key region automated processing for holistic processing stronger in face perception,the lower half of the face(mainly the mouth region)is not.In summary,the above three theoretical hypotheses suggest that the cognitive processing of the eyes region has a temporal priority in the process of face perception,a spatial centrality in the holistic processing of the face,and a high degree of automation in the face process.In order to test the above hypotheses and find out exactly how cognitive process the eyes region during the face perception and holistic processing,we use visual search tasks to compare of the information processing efficiency and process of the eyes region and the mouth region,and conducted three studies.Experiment 1 included experiments 1A and 1B.The single-factor internal design was used to explore the impact of search components and search opening and closing on the face search performance,that is,whether people's search for eyes region information has priority in the face search process.Experiment 2 manipulated the orientation of the face(upright or inverted)to manipulate the holistic processing of the face,and explored the effect of the eyes region on the order of face processing and the center of the perceptual field.Experiment 3 uses eyes-tracking technology to measure behavior and eyes-movement indicators,and more precisely detects the visual processing of people's eyes region and other regions during the time and space process of face search and holistic face processing.The experiment 1 found that(1)subjects performed better in searching eyes and performed worse in searching mouths;(2)both eyes and mouths searching had opening and closing effects(the performance was better when opened,and the performance was worse when closed);(3)The amount of opening and closing effects of search eyes is large,and the amount of opening and closing effects of search mouths is small.Therefore,the results of Experiment 1 suggest that eyes have a search advantage in face search.The experiment 2 found that(1)the performance of the search eyes was not affected by the face inversion,and the performance of the search mouth was severely weakened by the face inversion;(2)the opening and closing effect of the search eyes was not affected by the face inversion,and the opening and closing effect of the search mouth was enlarged by face inversion.These findings suggest that subjects processed he eyes region preferentially and holistically,processed the mouth region postponed and holistically.The experiment 3 found that(1)the subjects processed eyes region earlier,the fixation proportion was smaller,and the fixation point was concentrated;the subjects processed mouth region later,the fixation proportion was larger,and the fixation point was scattered;(2)When searching for eyes,the number of fixation points is small,and when searching for the mouth,the number of fixation points is large;(3)The subjects processed the opened components earlier in the face,and processed the closed components later in the face.(4)Using the number of fixation points as an index,the search of eyes and mouths had an opening and closing effect(the number of fixation points was small when opened,and the number of fixation points was large when closed);(5)the amount of opening and closing effects of searching eyes was large,the amount of opening and closing effect of searching mouth was small;(6)when searching for eyes,the gaze points on the upright face and the inverted face were concentrated in the eyes region;when searching for the mouth,the gaze points on the upright face were concentrated in the mouth region,the gaze point on the inverted face is farther from the mouth region and closer to the eyes region.In summary,this study found that eyes region specificity occurs in both face search and holistic face processing.The experimental results suggest that in the process of perception and attention to(upright)faces,the eyes region(especially the opened eyes)is used as the anchoring center,and then the eyes are used as the center for the face holistic processing.By rapidly expanding the processing proportion to integrate information outside the eyes region,gradually build a complete face representation,and finally match this representation with the target face.In the process of perception and attention to(inverted)faces,the holistic processing of the face is weakened or destroyed,the eyes region(especially the open eyes)is still the anchor point of the entire perceptual process,but the speed of integrating information is slower and the region proportion becomes smaller.Then building a the partial region representation,and finally match this representation with the target face.In general,the findings of this study can integrate the anchor point hypothesis of face perception,the perceptual field hypothesis of regional holistic processing and the hypothesis of regional selectivity to more fully explain the mechanism of face perception and holistic processing.