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Abstract
In 33 male and female adult volunteers, eye position recordings were performed by
means of an infrared reflection technique. Slides of randomly shuffled black-and-white
photographs (7.5 x 10 degrees) of faces and vases were projected for 6 or 20 sec respectively
in a visual memory task. In each series, 10 slides of art nouveau vases and of the
"inner part" of masked Caucasian faces were used. During recording the head was fixed
by a bite-board. (a) For faces the preferred targets of the centre of gaze were the
eyes, the mouth and nose region, for vases the contours and some prominent ornaments.
(b) Left-right asymmetries in the gaze-movement sampling strategy appeared with faces,
but not with vases. In faces, the overall time that the centre of gaze remained in
the left half of the field of gaze was significantly longer than in the right half.
(c) When, however, the amplitude of the gaze excursions into the left and right halves
of the inspected items was taken as a measure and normalized, a preference for the
right gaze field was observed. (d) The relative left-right bias during face inspection
was stronger with the 6 sec than with the 20 sec inspection period and significantly
stronger in female than in male subjects for the 6 sec tasks. (e) Left/right inversion
of the face stimuli did not abolish the side bias. Thus the asymmetric sampling strategy
when faces were inspected as compared to vases was due to "internal" factors on the
part of the subjects. It is hypothesized that a left-right asymmetry in hemispheric
visual data processing for face stimuli was the cause of a left-right asymmetry in
gaze motor strategies when faces were inspected.