Abstract
Humans are social animals and typically tend to seek social interactions. In our daily life we constantly move our gaze to collect visual information which often includes social information, such as others’ emotions and intentions. Recent studies began to explore how individuals vary in their gaze behavior. However, these studies focused on basic features of eye movements (such as the length of movements) and did not examine the observer predilection for specific social features such as faces. We preformed two test-retest experiments examining the amount of time individuals fixate directly on faces embedded in images of naturally occurring scenes. We report on stable and robust individual differences in visual predilection for faces across time and tasks. Individuals’ preference to fixate on faces could not be explained by a preference for fixating on low-level salient regions (e.g. color, intensity, orientation) nor by individual differences in the Big-Five personality traits. We conclude that during visual exploration individuals vary in the amount of time they direct their gaze towards faces. This tendency is a trait that not only reflects individuals’ preferences but also influences the amount of information gathered by each observer, therefore influencing the basis for later cognitive processing and decisions.
Highlights
When we explore complex scenes, we frequently move our gaze to different locations within our visual surroundings
In order to account for the possibility that face-preference is a result of the preference to fixate on regions that are conspicuous in their visual saliency, we explored the individual differences in saliency-preference and examined whether it could predict face-preference
In experiment 2 the time between sessions varied between participants, we examined whether the length of the interval between sessions influences the consistency in face preference
Summary
When we explore complex scenes, we frequently move our gaze to different locations within our visual surroundings. Mean saccade amplitude (i.e., the distance of the rapid and frequent gaze movements, termed saccades) and mean fixation duration (i.e., the duration in which gaze is relatively stable between saccades) differ between individuals These measures were consistent across different tasks and across several days. These studies highlight an interesting and consistent pattern of variation, systematic individual differences in generalized features underlying gaze behavior, suggesting that individuals vary in their capacity to scan their environment for visual information. If such a reliable difference exists, it means that different participants incorporate some kind of “perceptual trait” that influences the amount of information they accumulate on specific contents in their environment Such traits may lead to entirely different experiences and memories[1] from a given situation, and these are expected to affect higher level processes such as planning and decisions. These differences between individuals were found to be consistent across 18 months
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