Mapping face recognition information use across cultures

Face recognition is not rooted in a universal eye movement information-gathering strategy. Western observers favor a local facial feature sampling strategy, whereas Eastern observers prefer sampling face information from a global, central fixation strategy.Yet, the precise qualitative (the diagnostic) and quantitative (the amount) information underlying these cultural perceptual biases in face recognition remains undetermined.To this end, we monitored the eye movements of Western and Eastern observers during a face recognition task, with a novel gaze-contingent technique: the Expanding Spotlight.