Faces distort eye movement trajectories, but the distortion is not stronger for your own face

It is currently unclear whether a person’s own face has greater capacity in absorbing his/her attention than faces of others. With two visual distractor tasks, the present study assessed the extent to which a person’s own face attracts his/her attention, by measuring face distractor elicited distortion of saccade trajectories. Experiment 1 showed that upright faces induced stronger distortion of saccade trajectories than inverted ones. This face inversion effect, however, was not stronger for the participant’s own face than for unfamiliar other’s faces. By manipulating fixation stimulus offset and using peripheral onset target, Experiment 2 further demonstrated that these observations were not contingent on saccade latency. Together, these findings suggest that a person’s own face is not more salient or attention-absorbing than unfamiliar other’s faces.