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Eye movements during a face race categorization task
{In a previous study we paired Asian to Caucasian faces and exchanged a single facial feature between both faces of a pair (e.g. the eyes). These manipulations resulted for example in a Caucasian face with an Asian nose. We could show that participants\textquoteright race decision about such modified faces is mostly influenced by the ethnicity of the eyes and the skin, while the ethnicity of other facial features (shape, contour, nose, mouth) affected their decision less. Here we repeated this study with an eye tracker recording participants\textquoteright gaze during the task. Our aim was to assess whether modifying the faces would alter participants\textquoteright gaze distribution, in particular, whether exchanged features (i.e. displaying another ethnicity than all other facial components in the test face) would attract more fixations than when the features were unaltered. The categorization results of 24 Caucasian participants confirmed our previous findings; face ethnicity perception is strongly dependent on the eyes. The eye gaze results suggest that participants fixated the eyes more when other features than the eyes (especially shape, skin or facial contour) were manipulated in Caucasian faces, thus when the perceived race of the face was less clear.}
@misc{item_3134989, title = {{Eye movements during a face race categorization task}}, journal = {{Perception}}, abstract = {{In a previous study we paired Asian to Caucasian faces and exchanged a single facial feature between both faces of a pair (e.g. the eyes). These manipulations resulted for example in a Caucasian face with an Asian nose. We could show that participants\textquoteright race decision about such modified faces is mostly influenced by the ethnicity of the eyes and the skin, while the ethnicity of other facial features (shape, contour, nose, mouth) affected their decision less. Here we repeated this study with an eye tracker recording participants\textquoteright gaze during the task. Our aim was to assess whether modifying the faces would alter participants\textquoteright gaze distribution, in particular, whether exchanged features (i.e. displaying another ethnicity than all other facial components in the test face) would attract more fixations than when the features were unaltered. The categorization results of 24 Caucasian participants confirmed our previous findings; face ethnicity perception is strongly dependent on the eyes. The eye gaze results suggest that participants fixated the eyes more when other features than the eyes (especially shape, skin or facial contour) were manipulated in Caucasian faces, thus when the perceived race of the face was less clear.}}, volume = {48}, pages = {116}, publisher = {Pion Ltd.}, address = {London}, year = {2019}, slug = {item_3134989}, author = {Baskurt, B and Wallraven, C and B\"ulthoff, I} }