Faces capture the visuospatial attention of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): evidence from a cueing experiment

Tomonaga, Masaki; Imura, Tomoko · 2009 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-6-14

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Summary

This study investigates whether chimpanzees (*Pan troglodytes*) exhibit stimulus-driven attentional capture by faces, a phenomenon well-documented in humans. While faces are socially significant for chimpanzees, it was unclear if they automatically capture visuospatial attention in a manner similar to humans. The researchers hypothesized that chimpanzees would demonstrate faster response times when a target appeared at the location previously occupied by a face compared to other locations, and that this effect would be specific to upright faces due to configural processing. The experiment involved three young chimpanzees (aged 5–6 years) performing a manual response task on a touch-screen monitor. The study utilized a "double-cueing" paradigm where two photographs were presented briefly (200 ms) before a target appeared at either the left or right location. In valid trials, the target appeared at the same location as the cue; in invalid trials, it appeared at the opposite location. The cues included upright chimpanzee faces, bananas (as an ecologically relevant control), and various non-face objects. Additional conditions tested upright human faces and inverted chimpanzee faces to assess species generality and orientation specificity. Response times were recorded, with outliers excluded. The results demonstrated that chimpanzees’ attention was significantly captured by upright chimpanzee faces. In the double-cue condition, response times were significantly faster for valid trials involving faces compared to invalid trials, whereas no such validity effect was observed for bananas or other non-face objects. This attentional capture generalized to upright human faces, which also elicited significantly faster responses in valid trials. However, when inverted chimpanzee faces were presented, the attentional capture effect was weakened and did not reach statistical significance. The authors ruled out low-level visual features like brightness as the cause, noting that human faces were brighter than chimpanzee faces yet still captured attention, while chimpanzee faces were darker than controls but still effective. The findings indicate that chimpanzees share with humans a specialized, automatic attentional bias toward upright faces. The weakening of this effect with inverted faces suggests that the capture relies on configural processing of facial features rather than local features alone. This study provides comparative cognitive evidence that the neural and behavioral mechanisms for face-driven attentional capture are evolutionarily conserved between humans and chimpanzees, highlighting the social importance of face perception in our closest living relatives.

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• attention selective divided