Behavioral Characteristics Of Face Recognition:Evidence From Binocular Rivalry

Binocular rivalry is an interesting visual perception phenomenon,which presents different visual stimuli to the left and right eyes at the same time,forming an alternating perception of the corresponding objects of the left and right eyes instead of a stable perception of one stimulus.Therefore,its uniqueness lies in that it induces alternating changes in perception under the condition that the visual stimuli remain constant,and reflects the perceptual selection process inside the brain.In previous studies on binocular rivalry,some researches explored subjects’ perception characteristics of facial emotion or attractiveness in different dimensions under autonomous state,and researchers also used Continuous Flash Suppression paradigm to explore unconscious perception of faces with different features.However,there are few studies have explored how different gaze instructions affect the perception of face-related stimuli(face-like stimuli and human face)during binocular rivalry.Therefore,this study will investigate the effects of exogenous concept-driven gaze instructions and innate attentional tendencies on perception of the facerelated stimuli during binocular rivalry.In the study 1,face-like stimuli,human faces and ordinary objects were used as experimental materials to explore whether face-like stimuli would show face perception advantages and whether this would be affected by gaze instructions.In the study 2,human faces with different identities were used as experimental materials to explore whether the familiarity effect and self-dominance effect of faces were affected by exogenous gaze instructions.All two studies presented upright and inverted stimuli in order to examine how subjects processed face-like stimuli and human faces of different identities.Study 1 explores the perceptual characteristics of face-like stimuli during binocular rivalry.In experiment 1,we used the binocular rivalry image formed with face-like stimuli and human face to explore responses when face-like stimuli and human face were simultaneously presented in the center of the retina.We found that under the free gaze instructions,the perceptual response to the human face was faster;and face-like stimulus has longer perceptual duration and it has inverted effect.In experiment 2,binocular rivalry images of face-like stimuli and common stimuli(house)were used to explore the perception characteristics between face-like stimuli and common inanimate objects.The experimental results showed that there was no significant difference in the perceptual suppress time and duration between face-like stimuli and common stimuli(house),and the perception of binocular rivalry stimuli composed of the two was affected by gaze instructions.Experiment1 and 2 all found that the perceptual time of binocular rivalry stimuli was influenced by gaze instruction prior to attention tendency.Study 2 used binocular rivalry paradigm to explore the perceptual characteristics of faces with different identities.Experiment 3 used binocular rivalry images of familiar faces and unfamiliar faces to explore the face familiarity effect.Experiment 4 used binocular rivalry images of self-faces and other-faces to explore the dominance effect of self-faces.The results confirmed the familiarity effect and self-dominance effect respectively,we also found that gaze instructions and attentional tendencies affect the perceptual process of faces with different identities during binocular rivalry.The results show that the perception of face-related stimuli under the binocular rivalry paradigm is influenced by exogenous concept-driven gaze instructions and innate tendency for attention,and the gaze instruction has a greater effect on the perception time.For one of the face-related stimuli that make up the binocular rivalry image,it shows different perceptual time characteristics under the three gaze instruction conditions.