Conceived and designed the experiments: CT IS ES. Performed the experiments: CT. Analyzed the data: CT. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RW. Wrote the paper: CT IS ES.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
East Asian and white Western observers employ different eye movement strategies for a variety of visual processing tasks, including face processing. Recent eye tracking studies on face recognition found that East Asians tend to integrate information holistically by focusing on the nose while white Westerners perceive faces featurally by moving between the eyes and mouth. The current study examines the eye movement strategy that Malaysian Chinese participants employ when recognizing East Asian, white Western, and African faces. Rather than adopting the Eastern or Western fixation pattern, Malaysian Chinese participants use a mixed strategy by focusing on the eyes and nose more than the mouth. The combination of Eastern and Western strategies proved advantageous in participants' ability to recognize East Asian and white Western faces, suggesting that individuals learn to use fixation patterns that are optimized for recognizing the faces with which they are more familiar.
Studies examining cultural differences in perceptual tasks, such as scene perception
Recent studies on face recognition found similar cross-cultural differences in the eye movement strategies that observers use when perceiving faces. Human faces provide vital information about individuals' identities and characteristics (including gender, age, health, and attractiveness). Although faces are similar, in that they comprise the same basic features in approximately the same configuration, they are easily distinguished by observers. Evidence from neuroimaging studies suggests that there is a specialized mental module, possibly located in the fusiform face area
A further study suggested that British-born Chinese observers show either Eastern or Western eye movement strategies, with fixations landing predominantly around either the eyes or nose region
The current study aimed to investigate whether exposure and familiarity with Western culture affects Malaysian Chinese participants' recognition accuracy and eye movement strategies by requiring participants to perform a face recognition task on East Asian, white Western, and African faces. Although Malaysia is an East Asian country, it is strongly multicultural and influenced by Western culture. Malaysian FM radio stations are composed of 40% Malay language stations, 26% English, and 15% Chinese
Twenty-two East Asian young adults (10 males, 12 females, mean age 21.86 years) participated in this study. All participants were Malaysian Chinese students attending the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, and have not lived outside of Malaysia for more than three years. All participants had normal or corrected vision and were given a bar of chocolate for their participation. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants and the protocol was approved by the University of Nottingham, School of Psychology Ethics Committee.
Stimuli consisted of 60 images distributed equally among race (East Asian, white Western, and African) and sex, photographed in a lighting booth painted with Munsell N5 neutral gray paint and illuminated with d65 fluorescent tubes, in high-frequency fixtures to reduce the effects of flicker (Verivide, UK). The East Asian and white Western stimuli were obtained from a set of images collected at the University of St Andrews, UK while the African stimuli were collected from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. All images were color calibrated after Stephen et al.
Eye movements were recorded with an on-screen remote eye tracking system (Tobii T60), in which an infrared camera is integrated to the lower part of the 17in TFT monitor. The eye tracker performs binocular tracking at a data sampling rate of 60 Hz and has high accuracy (0.5°) and drift compensation (less than 0.3°). Each task began with a calibration procedure as implemented in the Tobii Studio software to ensure accurate tracking of eye gaze.
The experiment involved two phases: the learning phase and the face recognition phase. During the learning phase, 30 faces (5 male, 5 female East Asian, 5 male, 5 female white Western, and 5 male, 5 female African) were shown on a Tobii eye tracker and participants were asked to rate the faces for attractiveness on a seven-point Likert scale. Participants then filled out a questionnaire to distract them from remembering the faces. Upon completion of the questionnaire, participants performed a face recognition task in which 60 faces (10 male, 10 female East Asian, 10 male, 10 female white Western, and 10 male, 10 female African, of which half were new faces) were presented. Participants gave a yes or no response to indicate if they had seen the face before.
On each trial, a central fixation cross was presented for one second followed by a face presented pseudorandomly in one of four quadrants of the computer screen to avoid fixation bias. The face stimulus was presented for 5 seconds in both phases and was followed by a question that required a response in relation to the task (e.g. a forced-choice question as to whether the participant had seen the face before). Each response was subsequently followed by the central fixation cross, which preceded the next face stimulus.
A' values were calculated to determine participants' recognition accuracy. A', which is a non-parametric equivalent of d', indexes participants' sensitivity to old and new faces taking into account both hits (i.e. correct detection of an old face) and false alarms (i.e. incorrect identification of a new face as an old face).
The data was processed directly from the eye tracker using the Tobii Studio software. The eye tracker samples at 60 Hz (approximately every 17 milliseconds). Fixation, which is the main measurement used in this study, is defined by the standard Tobii fixation filter as two or more consecutive samples falling within a 35 pixel radius. The total number of fixations a participant made within the predefined areas (eyes, mouth, and nose) was accumulated using the area of interest (AOI) analysis, see
Composite images are shown for illustration purposes. Real faces were used in the actual experiment.
A' values were not normally distributed. Hence, data was reflected and transformed using a square root function (i.e. the square root of one minus A') before analysis. However, the bar graph below (
Error bars report standard errors of the mean. Participants recognized East Asian faces significantly better than African faces.
A one-way repeated measures ANOVA showed that there was a significant effect of race on participants' recognition accuracy (a'),
The mean number of fixations over each 5 second trial during the face recognition task was 9.43.
A 3 (Race of Face: East Asian, white Western, or African)×3 (Feature of Face: Eyes, Mouth, or Nose) ANOVA was conducted on the percentage of all fixations falling on the eyes, nose, and mouth for each participant. There was a main effect of Feature only,
Error bars report standard errors of mean.
The current study examined Malaysian Chinese participants' fixation patterns and recognition accuracy for East Asian, white Western, and African faces. The primary findings were that (a) Malaysian Chinese participants performed equally well at recognizing East Asian and white Western faces, but less well at recognizing African faces, and (b) when perceiving all three races of faces, Malaysian Chinese participants displayed a combination of Eastern and Western eye movement strategies with fixations clustered around the eyes and nose more than the mouth. These findings suggest that Malaysian Chinese participants learn to use a fixation pattern that is advantageous for recognizing the multicultural faces that they encounter.
As compared with the Chinese or Japanese population, who are largely influenced by their respective cultures, Malaysian Chinese individuals have greater exposure to the West, as reflected in the high percentage of English radio stations and Western movies shown in Malaysian cinema
However, the recognition accuracy for African faces was significantly lower than for East Asian faces, perhaps due to participants' lack of attention to features believed to be of high diagnostic value for African faces (i.e. the lower facial features). Previous studies have shown that people of different races use different facial features to describe
Finally, our results suggest that the cognitive mechanisms involved in face recognition show plasticity (as predicted by evolutionary theory
We would especially like to thank Dr. Vinet Coetzee for allowing us to use the African images.