Linguistic/cultural priming on face processing

Studies have found differing looking strategies in East Asians, who fixate preferentially on the centre of the face, possibly indicating a more global processing style, and White Caucasians who tend to fixate primarily on the eyes and the mouth, possibly indicating a more local processing style (Blais et al., 2008; Jack et al., 2009). East Asian people brought up in Western countries (Kelly et al., 2011) and Malaysian Chinese people living in a highly multicultural society (Tan et al., 2012) show an intermediate looking strategy, with fixations falling primarily on the eyes and nose. We propose two competing hypotheses to explain this phenomenon: the facial information

hypothesis proposed that individuals develop race-of-face-specific face recognition

expertise, learning from the faces encountered during development which features are most effective for distinguishing between faces, and the cultural explanation, which posits that facial processing is performed in a similar way to other cognitive processing in the culture in which the individual develops. In Chapter 3, we developed a series of testable hypotheses that followed from these two explanations, and performed two studies that aimed to address these hypotheses.

We predicted that, if the cultural explanation was correct, that cultural and linguistic priming, which has been shown to induce cultural “frame shifting” in bilingual participants (Hong et al, 2000; Pavlenko, 2003), should induce significant changes in face processing, which could be detected through changes in looking

patterns measured using an eye tracker, and through description patterns given of faces. Alternatively, if the facial information hypothesis was correct, participants would fixate upon, and describe, the facial features that are most effective at discriminating between individuals for each race of face.

In Chapter 3, we tested these two competing hypotheses by using a cultural/linguistic priming paradigm for a face perception and description task. Participants completed a task in which they observed and described 4 Asian and 4 Caucasian faces. Participants completed this task twice (with different faces) in both English and either Chinese (Malaysian participants) or German (Austrian participants), after completing a cultural priming task in each language. It was found that the looking pattern of the participants differed significantly according to the race of the faces being observed, but not according to the cultural/linguistic condition. This suggests that the looking strategy used was dependent on the salient diagnostic features of the faces, and not on the cultural “frame”, thus supporting the facial information hypothesis.

These results are in line with previous studies showing different looking

patterns for own- and other-race faces. For example, Wang, Xiao, Quinn, Hu, Qian, Fu et al. (2015) reported different patterns by mainland Chinese participants when looking at own- and other-race faces, consistent with the findings of Fu et al. (2012) and Hu et al. (2014). The Chinese participants in Wang et al (2015) fixated on Caucasian eyes for a greater proportion of time than on Asian eyes, but spent a greater proportion of time fixating on Asian noses than on Caucasian noses. Similarly, Fu et al. found the Chinese participants to fixate more on Asian noses and mouths, but fixate more on Caucasian eyes. Wang et al. also explained these differences along the lines of the differing facial features that may be deemed diagnostic for East Asian and White Caucasian own-race faces. Again, this hypothesis is supported by our data, with both Caucasian and Asian participants showing similar differences between the looking patterns used to recognise Asian and Caucasian faces. Both Austrian Caucasian and Malaysian Chinese

participants fixated more, and for longer on Caucasian hair and eyes than on Asian hair and eyes (both of which are more variable in Caucasian than in Asian faces). This

suggests that it is the diagnostic features of different ethnic faces that drives the differences. However, other studies have shown mixed results, with some studies showing significant differences in fixations on own- vs other-race faces (Goldinger, He & Papesh, 2009) and other not (Blais et al., 2008; Tan et al., 2012). Arizpe, Kravitz, Walsh, Yovel & Baker (2016) suggest that this may be due to differences in the techniques used to analyse eye movements.

Studies have found quantitative support for differences in facial features across ethnic groups (Fang, Clapham, & Chung, 2011; Le et al., 2002). Le et al. (2002) found systematic variation in East Asian and North American Caucasian facial morphology such as a wider intercanthal distance (distance between the medial corners of both eyes) in relation to a shorter palpebral fissure (the opening for the eyes between the eyelids), a much wider soft nose within wide facial contours, a smaller mouth width, and a lower face smaller than the forehead height in East Asian faces than the North American Caucasian faces. It is not known, however, whether the parts of the face with the greatest within-race variance differ between ethnic groups.

Interestingly, the looking pattern seen in Malaysians was similar to that of the Austrian sample, inconsistent with the results of Blais et al. (2008), Tan et al. (2012), as well as those reported in Chapter 2. This could have been an effect of trial duration, or a result of simultaneously looking and describing the stimuli. In previous studies, participants passively looked at faces for 5 seconds per trial (Blais et al., 2008; Tan et al., 2012). In this study, participants described the faces (presented for 60 seconds) simultaneously while looking at it. It should be noted that the description task with target faces presented for 60 seconds (as detailed in Chapter 2) also produced a similar looking pattern. It has previously been shown that verbally describing faces induces a shift to a more featural processing style (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). The

effect of trial duration on looking and description patterns, as well as the nature of the looking task, should be further investigated in future studies.

The looking strategy deployed by the Caucasian and Asian participants did not differ according to the language spoken. This suggests that any cultural frame shifting induced by the cultural/linguistic priming did not influence cognition to the extent that face processing (as measured by fixation strategy) was affected. This is not consistent with the cultural explanation.

Descriptions

While previous studies have not examined the effect of cultural and cognitive frame shifting on looking strategies in a face perception task, this effect has been observed in participants’ verbal responses to non-face related questions (Hong et al., 2000; Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2007; Pavlenko, 2003). In the current study, we also assessed the role of language spoken on the descriptions made of Asian and Caucasian faces. The language spoken did influence the facial features described for the

Malaysian participants, with participants describing the hair more frequently when speaking English, but describing the nose more frequently when speaking Chinese. This may be interpreted as supporting the cultural explanation, with participants’

descriptions of faces changing in response to different cultural primes. However, we are hesitant to interpret the results this way for a number of reasons. First, any effects of the linguistic/cultural priming did not extend to the other measured cognitive domain (looking strategy), suggesting that any frame shifting effects were limited. Second, the frequency of featural vs configural descriptions was not affected by the priming condition, with participants making overwhelmingly featural descriptions in both languages. We suggest, instead, that the description pattern may be determined by the

conventions of the language (Gelman & Tardif, 1998; Winawer et al., 2007), such as the extent of vocabulary in a language to describe certain features.

Of course, it is also possible that the linguistic conventions of describing faces in different languages have developed to best describe faces of the dominant ethnic group in the culture. This explanation is supported by our results, with participants making more descriptions of hair when speaking English (a language that evolved in a geographical region where hair colour and texture is highly variable) than when speaking Chinese (which evolved in a region where hair is near-universally black and straight).

It does not, however, appear that participants are adjusting their description patterns in response to different ethnicities of faces in the same way that they adjust their looking strategies. Neither Austrian nor Malaysian participants made significantly different patterns of descriptions of Asian, compared to Caucasian faces. For both races of face, the hair and eyes were described more frequently than the nose and the mouth, again potentially reflecting linguistic conventions.

No difference in description patterns was found for Austrian participants speaking English, compared to when they were speaking German, other than a slightly higher overall number of descriptions in the German condition. Again, this is consistent with both the cultural explanation and a linguistic constraints model, since English and German are similar, both linguistically, and as cultures.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (which proposes that language influences aspects of cognitive processes), then, may be partially supported (see 5.1.5 for further

discussion on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis). While Malaysian Chinese participants’ description patterns differed according to the language spoken, no evidence of language

affecting cognition was found in the eye tracking data, suggesting that, if language did indeed influence cognition, this influence does not extend to face recognition.