An eye-tracking study shows the first fixation location in face recognition mediates the other-race Effect

There is a well-documented phenomenon that individuals generally recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. This phenomenon is called the other-race effect (ORE). An array of researches showed that eye region is the most important part in the face recognition and the ORE. For example, participants recognized eyes better than nose and mouse, and are more sensitive to the changes in the eye region of own-race faces than that of other-race faces. However, using the eye-tracking techniques, plenty of researches demonstrated that Asian participants view eye region less than nose region when they see a whole face. Why Asian individuals do not look at the eye region of face for a longer time? One possibility is that recognizing a face does not need so many fixations, only one single fixation, that is the first fixation, might be enough. For example, Hills demonstrated that African Participants can recognize Caucasian faces better when their first fixations are attracted to the eye region of the faces than to the nose region. Hsian and Cottrell showed that both Caucasian and Asian participants recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces, and their performance was above chance when only one fixation was allowed. The current study is aiming to examine two specific questions: where is the first fixation located when Asian individuals recognize an own- or other-race face? Will the ORE be affected when the position of the first fixation is manipulated? To answer these questions, we conducted a standard old/new task in Experiment 1 and we reasoned that if the ORE for Asian and Caucasian faces is affected by the first fixation location, we should observe that the first fixations of Asian participants are located on the eye region of both races of faces. Basing on the findings from experiment 1, we manipulated the first fixation of Asian participants by forcing participants to look at a fixation cross, which presented on the region of eyes or nose of the face, and display a face immediately after the fixation cross disappeared in Experiment 2. We expected that the ORE is shown when participants are guided to gaze at eye region and the ORE is disappeared when participants are guided to gaze at nose region. Read more about stuies about life science here>>>http://www.cusabio.com/Polyclonal-Antibody/FGL2--Antibody-Biotin-conjugated-11098192.html