ИСТИНА

Recent research suggests that eye movements in face perception reflect underlying holistic and analytic processes. The existence of holistic processing is demonstrated in the face-inversion effect (FIE). Our aim was to study eye movement strategies in FIE. Fifty-seven participants (27 F, 30 M, age range 18-28) were tested. Stimuli were 10 photographs. For each photograph nine modifications were created to alter the facial attractiveness: namely the distance between the eyes or between the nose and the mouth was changed. Stimuli were presented in both upright and inverted conditions for 2 seconds. The task was to rate the facial attractiveness on a scale from 1 to 9. During the performance eye movements were recorded. The results showed the significantly lower dispersion of attractiveness scores for inverted faces. The eye movement analysis revealed the impact of FIE on mean fixations durations (FD), saccade amplitudes (SA) and distributions of AOI regions. The values of FD significantly decreased, when SA significantly increased for inverted faces. The AOI analysis showed that the mean dwell time decreased on the eye and the nose bridge regions and increased on the nose and the mouth regions for inverted faces. We examined the ratio of fixation durations to saccade amplitudes to divide the entire sample into 2 groups –one using a static eye movement strategy (SS) and the other – using a dynamic strategy (DS). In the upright face condition SS participants spent significantly more time in the nose and nose bridge regions compared to DS participants who spent significantly more time in the eyes regions. The inversion condition led to specific changes in AOI distributions for each group. Thus, individual eye movement strategies should be considered as an important factor when studying holistic processing in face perception. The study was funded by RFBR grant, project №18-013-01087.