Removing the own-race bias in face recognition by attentional shift using fixation crosses to diagnostic features: An eye-tracking study

Hills and Lewis (2011) have demonstrated that the own-race bias in face recognition can be reduced or even removed by guiding participants' attention and potentially eye movements to the most diagnostic visual features. Using the same old/new recognition paradigm as Hills and Lewis, we recorded Black and White participants' eye movements whilst viewing Black and White faces following fixation crosses that preceded the bridge of the nose (between the eyes) or the tip of the nose. White faces were more accurately recognized when following high fixation crosses (that preceded the bridge of the nose) than when following low fixation crosses. The converse was true for Black faces. These effects were independent of participant race. The fixation crosses attracted the first fixation but had less effect on other eye-tracking measures. Furthermore, the location of the first fixation was predictive of recognition accuracy. These results are consistent with an attentional allocation model of the own-race bias in face recognition and highlight the importance of the first fixation for face perception (cf. Hsiao & Cottrell, 2008).

[1]  A. L. I︠A︡rbus.  Eye Movements and Vision , 1967 .

[2]  A. L. Yarbus,et al.  Eye Movements and Vision , 1967, Springer US.

[3]  R. Malpass,et al.  Recognition for faces of own and other race. , 1969, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[4]  K. Laughery,et al.  Recognition of human faces: effects of target exposure time, target position, pose position, and type of photograph. , 1971, The Journal of applied psychology.

[5]  J. F. Cross,et al.  Sex, race, age, and beauty as factors in recognition of faces , 1971 .

[6]  S. Coren,et al.  Effect of Non-Target Stimuli upon Length of Voluntary Saccades , 1972, Perceptual and motor skills.

[7]  H. Ellis,et al.  Description of White and Black Faces by White and Black Subjects , 1975 .

[8]  H. Huynh,et al.  Estimation of the Box Correction for Degrees of Freedom from Sample Data in Randomized Block and Split-Plot Designs , 1976 .

[9]  M. S. Mayzner,et al.  A perspective on the recognition of other-race faces , 1976 .

[10]  S Hollander,et al.  Recognition memory for typical and unusual faces. , 1979, Journal of experimental psychology. Human learning and memory.

[11]  Races and faces — a comparison of the responses of Africans and Europeans to faces of the same and different races , 1981 .

[12]  V. Bruce.  Changing faces: visual and non-visual coding processes in face recognition. , 1982, British journal of psychology.

[13]  B. Berggren,et al.  Smooth pursuit eye tracking, neuropsychological test performance, and computed tomography in schizophrenia , 1985, Psychiatry Research.

[14]  Asghar Iran-Nejad,et al.  Comprehension Processes and Eye Movement Patterns in the Reading of Surprise-Ending Stories. Technical Report No. 344. , 1985 .

[15]  J. B. Mcconahay,et al.  Modern racism, ambivalence, and the Modern Racism Scale. , 1986 .

[16]  N D Haig,et al.  High-Resolution Facial Feature Saliency Mapping , 1986, Perception.

[17]  J. Brigham,et al.  Cross-Racial Identification , 1989 .

[18]  Ellen R. Girden,et al.  ANOVA: Repeated Measures , 1991 .

[19]  Neil A. Macmillan,et al.  Detection Theory: A User's Guide , 1991 .

[20]  Hadyn D. Ellis,et al.  The effects of distinctiveness, presentation time and delay on face recognition , 1991 .

[21]  T. Valentine.  The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology a Unified Account of the Effects of Distinctiveness, Inversion, and Race in Face Recognition , 2022 .

[22]  T. Valentine,et al.  Towards an Exemplar Model of Face Processing: The Effects of Race and Distinctiveness , 1992, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[23]  P. Kuhl.  Learning and representation in speech and language , 1994, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[24]  J. Schall,et al.  Neural Control of Voluntary Movement Initiation , 1996, Science.

[25]  G Tiberghien,et al.  Encoding activity and face recognition. , 1997, Memory.

[26]  James L. McClelland,et al.  Familiarity breeds differentiation: a subjective-likelihood approach to the effects of experience in recognition memory. , 1998, Psychological review.

[27]  N. J. Cohen,et al.  Eye-movement-based memory effect: a reprocessing effect in face perception. , 1999, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[28]  Otto H. MacLin,et al.  Racial categorization of faces: The ambiguous race face effect. , 2001 .

[29]  J. Brigham,et al.  Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review , 2001 .

[30]  R. Nisbett,et al.  Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition. , 2001, Psychological review.

[31]  S. L. Sporer,et al.  Recognizing faces of other ethnic groups: An integration of theories. , 2001 .

[32]  Alice J. O'Toole,et al.  Face recognition algorithms and the other-race effect: computational mechanisms for a developmental contact hypothesis , 2002, Cogn. Sci..

[33]  Derrick J. Parkhurst,et al.  Modeling the role of salience in the allocation of overt visual attention , 2002, Vision Research.

[34]  Bruno Rossion,et al.  Same-race faces are perceived more holistically than other-race faces , 2004 .

[35]  Denise C. Park,et al.  A lifespan database of adult facial stimuli , 2004, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.

[36]  Frédéric Gosselin,et al.  Spatio-temporal dynamics of face recognition in a flash: it's in the eyes , 2004, Cogn. Sci..

[37]  Michael B. Lewis,et al.  Face‐space‐R: Towards a unified account of face recognition , 2004 .

[38]  N. Scott-Samuel,et al.  Idiosyncratic initiation of saccadic face exploration in humans , 2005, Vision Research.

[39]  Bruno Rossion,et al.  Holistic Processing Is Finely Tuned for Faces of One's Own Race , 2006, Psychological science.

[40]  Peter J. Hills,et al.  Short Article: Reducing the Own-Race Bias in Face Recognition by Shifting Attention , 2006 .

[41]  Vladas Griskevicius,et al.  They All Look the Same to Me (Unless They're Angry) , 2006, Psychological science.

[42]  Rachel A Robbins,et al.  Aftereffects for face attributes with different natural variability: adapter position effects and neural models. , 2007, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[43]  John M Henderson,et al.  The face inversion effect is not a consequence of aberrant eye movements , 2007, Memory & cognition.

[44]  Kurt Hugenberg,et al.  Categorization and individuation in the cross-race recognition deficit : Toward a solution to an insidious problem , 2007 .

[45]  G. Cottrell,et al.  Two Fixations Suffice in Face Recognition , 2008, Psychological science.

[46]  J. Findlay,et al.  Rapid Detection of Person Information in a Naturalistic Scene , 2008, Perception.

[47]  Rachael E. Jack,et al.  Culture Shapes How We Look at Faces , 2008, PloS one.

[48]  Christian A Meissner,et al.  Recognizing faces across continents: The effect of within-race variations on the own-race bias in face recognition , 2008, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[49]  K. Hugenberg,et al.  Class, Race, and the Face: Social Context Modulates the Cross-Race Effect in Face Recognition , 2008, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[50]  Werner Van Belle,et al.  Anchoring gaze when categorizing faces’ sex: Evidence from eye-tracking data , 2009, Vision Research.

[51]  Megan H. Papesh,et al.  Deficits in cross-race face learning: insights from eye movements and pupillometry. , 2009, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[52]  M. Grabowecky,et al.  Rapid eye-fixation training without eyetracking , 2009, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[53]  Lara J Pierce,et al.  The neural plasticity of other-race face recognition , 2009, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[54]  James W. Tanaka,et al.  Perceptual Other-Race Training Reduces Implicit Racial Bias , 2009, PloS one.

[55]  Galit Yovel,et al.  The Role of Skin Colour in Face Recognition , 2009, Perception.

[56]  M. Bindemann,et al.  Viewpoint and center of gravity affect eye movements to human faces. , 2009, Journal of vision.

[57]  S. Schweinberger,et al.  Configural processing of other-race faces is delayed but not decreased , 2009, Biological Psychology.

[58]  Michael B. Lewis,et al.  Aftereffects for face attributes with different natural variability: Children are more adaptable than adolescents , 2010 .

[59]  R. Caldara,et al.  Putting Culture Under the ‘Spotlight’ Reveals Universal Information Use for Face Recognition , 2010, PloS one.

[60]  Michael B. Lewis,et al.  Reducing the own-race bias in face recognition by attentional shift using fixation crosses preceding the lower half of a face , 2011 .

[61]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  WHAT PREDICTS THE OWN-AGE BIAS IN FACE RECOGNITION MEMORY? , 2011, Social cognition.

[62]  Isabel Gauthier,et al.  Race-Specific Perceptual Discrimination Improvement Following Short Individuation Training With Faces , 2010, Cogn. Sci..

[63]  Svein Magnussen,et al.  Through the eyes of the own-race bias: Eye-tracking and pupillometry during face recognition , 2012, Social neuroscience.

[64]  K. Jantzen,et al.  Thatcherization impacts the processing of own-race faces more so than other-race faces: An ERP study , 2012, Social neuroscience.

[65]  Q. Vuong,et al.  The contribution of shape and surface information in the other-race face effect , 2013 .