Different roles of foveal and extrafoveal vision in ensemble representation for facial expressions

Abstract

People could extract mean expression of multiple faces pretty precisely. However, the mechanism of how we make such ensemble representation was far from clear. This study aimed to explore how faces in the foveal and extrafoveal vision contribute to the ensemble representation and whether the emotion of faces modulates the contribution. In the experiment, the expressions of foveal and extrafoveal faces were independently manipulated by changing the ratio of happy vs. angry faces. The participants reported whether the overall emotion was positive or negative. The results showed that faces in the foveal vision were given more weight than those in the extrafoveal vision in ensemble emotional representation. In addition, the ensemble perception was more accurate when faces in the extrafoveal vision were positive. These findings have great implications for the emotional design in interactive systems, especially when there are multiple users or multiple avatars presented on the screen. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.