Distinct Contributions to Facial Emotion Perception of Foveated versus Nonfoveated Facial Features Published by:

er.sagepub.com This article is premised on three facts whose combined implica-tions are easily overlooked in research on face perception. First, face stimuli elicit characteristic patterns of fixation on facial features. Second, there are well-established differences between foveal and extrafoveal vision that are not limited to differences in spatial frequency sensitivity. Third, at normal interpersonal distances, another’s face occupies an area of the visual field large enough that not all features can fall within the fovea at once. In the first section, we introduce the basic behavioural and neurophysiological differences between foveal and extrafoveal vision and their relevance for face perception. In the second sec-tion, we review findings showing the characteristic patterns of fixation on facial features and how those features thus foveated inform judgments of facially expressed emotions. In the thir