PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Anya Chakraborty
AU  - Bhismadev Chakrabarti
TI  - Looking at my own Face: Visual Processing Strategies in Physical Self-representation
AID  - 10.1101/096073
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 096073
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/13/096073.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/03/13/096073.full
AB  - We live in an age of ‘selfies’. Yet, how we look at our own faces has seldom been systematically investigated. In this study we test if visual processing of self-faces is different from other faces, using psychophysics and eye-tracking. Specifically, the association between the psychophysical properties of self-face representation and visual processing strategies involved in self-face recognition was tested. Thirty-three adults performed a self-face recognition task from a series of self-other face morphs with simultaneous eye-tracking. Participants were found to look at lower part of the face for longer duration for self-face compared to other-face. Participants with a reduced overlap between self and other face representations, as indexed by a steeper slope of the psychometric response curve for self-face recognition, spent a greater proportion of time looking at the upper regions of faces identified as self. Additionally, the association of autism-related traits with self-face processing metrics was tested, since autism has previously been associated with atypical self-processing, particularly in the psychological domain. Autistic traits were associated with reduced looking time to both self and other faces. However, no self-face specific association was noted with autistic traits, suggesting that autism-related features may be related to self-processing in a domain specific manner.