Differences in eye movements for face recognition between Canadian and Chinese participants are not modulated by social orientation.

Face recognition strategies do not generalize across individuals. Many studies have reported robust cultural differences between West Europeans/North Americans and East Asians in eye movement strategies during face recognition. The social orientation hypothesis posits that individualistic vs. collectivistic (IND/COL) value systems, respectively defining West European/North American and East Asian societies, would be at the root of many cultural differences in visual perception. Whether social orientation is also responsible for such cultural contrast in face recognition remains to be clarified. To this aim, we conducted two experiments with West European/North American and Chinese observers. In Experiment 1, we probed the existence of a link between IND/COL social values and eye movements during face recognition, by using an IND/COL priming paradigm. In Experiment 2, we dissected the latter relationship in greater depth, by using two IND/COL questionnaires, including subdimensions to those concepts. In both studies, cultural differences in fixation patterns were revealed between West European/North American and East Asian observers. Priming IND/COL values did not modulate eye movement visual sampling strategies, and only specific subdimensions of the IND/COL questionnaires were associated with distinct eye-movement patterns. Altogether, we show that the typical contrast between IND/COL cannot fully account for cultural differences in eye movement strategies for face recognition. Cultural differences in eye movements for faces might originate from mechanisms distinct from social orientation.

Cultural Differences in Face Recognition and Potential Underlying Mechanisms.

The ability to recognize a face is crucial for the success of social interactions. Understanding the visual processes underlying this ability has been the focus of a long tradition of research. Recent advances in the field have revealed that individuals having different cultural backgrounds differ in the type of visual information they use for face processing. However, the mechanisms that underpin these differences remain unknown. Here, we revisit recent findings highlighting group differences in face processing. Then, we integrate these results in a model of visual categorization developed in the field of psychophysics: the RAP framework. On the basis of this framework, we discuss potential mechanisms, whether face-specific or not, that may underlie cross-cultural differences in face perception.

The use of visual information in the recognition of posed and spontaneous facial expressions.

Recognizing facial expressions is crucial for the success of social interactions, and the visual processes underlying this ability have been the subject of many studies in the field of face perception. Nevertheless, the stimuli used in the majority of these studies consist of facial expressions that were produced on request rather than spontaneously induced. In the present study, we directly compared the visual strategies underlying the recognition of posed and spontaneous expressions of happiness, disgust, surprise, and sadness. We used the Bubbles method with pictures of the same individuals spontaneously expressing an emotion or posing with an expression on request. Two key findings were obtained: Visual strategies were less systematic with spontaneous than with posed expressions, suggesting a higher heterogeneity in the useful facial cues across identities; and with spontaneous expressions, the relative reliance on the mouth and eyes areas was more evenly distributed, contrasting with the higher reliance on the mouth compared to the eyes area observed with posed expressions.

Time Course of Cultural Differences in Spatial Frequency Use for Face Identification.

Several previous studies of eye movements have put forward that, during face recognition, Easterners spread their attention across a greater part of their visual field than Westerners. Recently, we found that culture's effect on the perception of faces reaches mechanisms deeper than eye movements, therefore affecting the very nature of information sampled by the visual system: that is, Westerners globally rely more than Easterners on fine-grained visual information (i.e. high spatial frequencies; SFs), whereas Easterners rely more on coarse-grained visual information (i.e. low SFs). These findings suggest that culture influences basic visual processes; however, the temporal onset and dynamics of these culture-specific perceptual differences are still unknown. Here, we investigate the time course of SF use in Western Caucasian (Canadian) and East Asian (Chinese) observers during a face identification task. Firstly, our results confirm that Easterners use relatively lower SFs than Westerners, while the latter use relatively higher SFs. More importantly, our results indicate that these differences arise as early as 34 ms after stimulus onset, and remain stable through time. Our research supports the hypothesis that Westerners and Easterners initially rely on different types of visual information during face processing.

Culture shapes spatial frequency tuning for face identification.

Many studies have revealed cultural differences in the way Easterners and Westerners attend to their visual world. It has been proposed that these cultural differences reflect the utilization of different processes, namely holistic processes by Easterners and analytical processes by Westerners. In the face processing literature, eye movement studies have revealed different fixation patterns for Easterners and Westerners that are congruent with a broader spread of attention by Easterners: compared with Westerners, Easterners tend to fixate more toward the center of the face even if they need the information provided by the eyes and mouth. Although this cultural difference could reflect an impact of culture on the visual mechanisms underlying face processing, this interpretation has been questioned by the finding that Easterners and Westerners do not differ on the location of their initial fixations, that is, those that have been shown as being sufficient for face recognition. Because a broader spread of attention is typically linked with the reduced sensitivity to higher spatial frequency, the present study directly compared the spatial frequency tuning of Easterners (Chinese) and Westerners (Canadians) in 2 face recognition tasks (Experiment 1 and 2), along with their general low-level sensitivity to spatial frequencies (Experiment 3). Consistent with our hypothesis, Chinese participants were tuned toward lower spatial frequencies than Canadians participants during the face recognition tasks, despite comparable low-level contrast sensitivity functions. These results strongly support the hypothesis that culture impacts the nature of the visual information extracted during face recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record