title: Visual search efficiency is greater for human faces compared to animal faces.
abstract: The Animate Monitoring Hypothesis proposes that humans and animals were the most important categories of visual stimuli for ancestral humans to monitor, as they presented important challenges and opportunities for survival and reproduction; however, it remains unknown whether animal faces are located as efficiently as human faces. We tested this hypothesis by examining whether human, primate, and mammal faces elicit similar searches, or whether human faces are privileged. In the first three experiments, participants located a target (human, primate, or mammal face) among distractors (non-face objects). We found fixations on human faces were faster and more accurate than fixations on primate faces, even when controlling for search category specificity. A final experiment revealed that, even when task-irrelevant, human faces slowed searches for non-faces, suggesting some bottom-up processing may be responsible for the human face search efficiency advantage.
authors: University of Parma, Italy and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, <location>Poolesville, MD, USA</location>
authors: Elizabeth A
authors: EA
authors: Simpson
authors: James Madison University, <location>Harrisonburg, VA, USA</location>
authors: Haley L
authors: HL
authors: Husband
authors: James Madison University, <location>Harrisonburg, VA, USA</location>
authors: Krysten
authors: K
authors: Yee
authors: James Madison University, <location>Harrisonburg, VA, USA</location>
authors: Alison
authors: A
authors: Fullerton
authors: James Madison University, <location>Harrisonburg, VA, USA</location>
authors: Krisztina V
authors: KV
authors: Jakobsen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention; D005133:Eye Movements; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D000882:Haplorhini; D015186:Hominidae; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008322:Mammals; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: animal faces; attention; eye tracking; face detection; human face; search efficiency; visual search