Do facially disfiguring features influence attention and perception of faces? Evidence from an antisaccade task

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Facial disfigurements can elicit negative social responses, including disease avoidance, disgust, and fear.
• The impact of facial stigma on attentional and perceptual encoding of facial information remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether facial disfigurements influence the orienting of visual attention and the perceptual encoding of facial information.
• To determine if disease-signalling features on faces affect attention and face processing.

Main Methods:

• A mixed antisaccade task was employed to measure attention orienting speed and accuracy.
• Observers viewed upright and inverted unfamiliar faces with disease-signalling, control, or no features.
• Saccadic latency was recorded to assess attentional responses and face processing.

Main Results:

• The presence of disfiguring or control features did not affect attention orienting towards upright faces.
• Facial features significantly reduced the effect of face inversion on saccadic latency.
• This suggests an impact on the holistic processing of facial information, not necessarily avoidance during covert attention.

Conclusions:

• Avoidance responses to facial stigma do not appear to occur during covert attention.
• Facial disfigurements and control features influence the holistic processing of facial information.
• Findings have implications for understanding the encoding and appraisal of facial disfigurements.