ArticleScientific reports2024
A behavioral advantage for the face pareidolia illusion in peripheral vision.
Article in Scientific reports, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- How field of view impacts visual search strategies.Journal of vision · 2026Article
- Article
- Does radial bias contribute to fast saccades toward faces in the periphery?Journal of vision · 2025Article
- Attentional capture by real and illusory faces: a failure to replicate.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Neural correlates reveal separate stages of spontaneous face perception.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Dynamic brain communication underlying face pareidolia in male schizophrenia.Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Face pareidolia minimally engages macaque face selective neurons.Progress in neurobiology · 2025Article
- The neural basis of face pareidolia with human intracerebral recordings.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Investigation of visual illusions helps us understand how we process visual information. For example, face pareidolia, the misperception of illusory faces in objects, could be used to understand how we process real faces. However, it remains unclear whether this illusion emerges from errors in face detection or from slower, cognitive processes. Here, our logic is straightforward; if examples of face pareidolia activate the mechanisms that rapidly detect faces in visual environments, then participants will look at objects more quickly when the objects also contain illusory faces. To test this hypothesis, we sampled continuous eye movements during a fast saccadic choice task-participants were required to select either faces or food items. During this task, pairs of stimuli were positioned close to the initial fixation point or further away, in the periphery. As expected, the participants were faster to look at face targets than food targets. Importantly, we also discovered an advantage for food items with illusory faces but, this advantage was limited to the peripheral condition. These findings are among the first to demonstrate that the face pareidolia illusion persists in the periphery and, thus, it is likely to be a consequence of erroneous face detection.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.