The speed of continuous face detection suggests shortcuts in the visual hierarchy for upright faces

[摘要] The detection of faces in the visual field is a key cognitive task of high ecological importance. While a number of studies have shown human subjects' impressive ability to detect faces in individual images, we here report evidence that subjects are able to rapidly saccade towards 4000 faces continuously at rates approaching 6 faces a second when there is no background (including the time for blinks and eye movements). Surprisingly, pasting or hiding the faces by blending them into a large background pictures had little effect on detection rates, saccade reaction times, or accuracy. Saccade reaction times were similar to the "ultra-rapid" saccades found in studies which utilized pauses and fixations between experimental trials (Crouzet et al. 2010). Upright faces were found more quickly and more accurately than inverted faces; both with and without a cluttered background, and over a large range of eccentricities (4°-16°). These results argue for the existence of a face-selective shortcut in the visual hierarchy which enables ultra-rapid and high-throughput face detection.

[学科分类] 眼科学