Human Face and Attention: a review

The human face is a very important visual stimulus in the human experiential world. It is a powerful social stimulus and is also responsible for drawing inferences about individuals we come across in our day to day lives. Information can be gained from both its static form and also its dynamic form the human face. This review aims to explore various studies involving face perception with emphasis on how it influences cognitive processes along with special emphasis on attention and its underlying mechanisms. Existing literature indicates that facial stimuli does play a strong role in influencing attentional processes including sustained, spatial, covert and overt attention.