Abstract
Stereopsis is a powerful depth cue for humans, which may also contribute to object recognition. In particular, we surmise that face identification would benefit from the availability of stereoscopic depth cues, since facial perception may be based on three-dimensional (3D) representations. In this study, a virtual reality (VR) headset with integrated eye-tracking was used to present stereoscopic images of faces. As a monoscopic contrast condition, identical images of faces were displayed to the two eyes. We monitored the participants' gaze behavior and pupil diameters while they performed a sample-to-match face identification task. We found that accuracy was superior in the stereoscopic condition compared to the monoscopic condition for frontal and intermediate views, but not profiles. Moreover, pupillary diameters were smaller when identifying stereoscopically seen faces than when viewing them without stereometric cues, which we interpret as lower processing load for the former than the latter conditions. The analysis of gaze showed that participants tended to focus on regions of the face rich in volumetric information, more so in the stereoscopic condition than the monoscopic condition. Together, these findings suggest that a 3D representation of faces may be the natural format used by the visual system when assessing face identity. Stereoscopic information, by providing depth information, assists the construction of robust facial representations in memory.
Highlights
Humans almost universally excel in face perception and recognize individual faces better than instances of other classes of objects, such as chairs or birds (Farah et al, 1998; Moscovitch et al, 1997; Yovel & Kanwisher, 2004)
Our head-mounted displayed (HMD) was custom fitted with an eye-tracking and pupillometry system developed by SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI), allowing gaze information to be collected at 250 Hz with 0.03 visual degree precision
The accuracy rate was significantly larger in the stereoscopic condition than the monoscopic condition for frontal view, mean difference = 0.059, SE = 0.016, t (31) = 3.666, pBonf = 0.0014, d = 0.648, BF10 = 35.194, and for intermediate view, mean difference = 0.074, SE = 0.017, t (31) = 4.346, pBonf < 0.001, d = 0.768, BF10 = 190.754, while there was no significant difference between the monoscopic and the
Summary
Humans almost universally excel in face perception and recognize individual faces better than instances of other classes of objects, such as chairs or birds (Farah et al, 1998; Moscovitch et al, 1997; Yovel & Kanwisher, 2004). The response times are longer, and the accuracy rate is lower when people attempt to recognize faces across different views compared to other objects Recognition is superior when the face is seen from an “intermediate” (or 3⁄4) view than from other views, such as frontal or profile (e.g., Bruce et al, 1987; Hill et al, 1997; Id & Palmisano, 2018; Troje & Bülthoff, 1996). A plausible account for the superiority of the intermediate view in facial perception is that a more “robust” geometric representation can be constructed from this pose, than from head-on or side views
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