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.

对视错觉的研究有助于我们了解如何处理视觉信息。例如，面部空想性错觉，即对物体中虚幻面孔的误解，可以用来理解我们如何处理真实的面孔。然而，目前尚不清楚这种错觉是来自面部检测错误还是来自较慢的认知过程。在这里，我们的逻辑很简单；如果面部幻想性视错觉的例子激活了在视觉环境中快速检测面部的机制，那么当物体也包含虚幻的面部时，参与者会更快地观察物体。为了检验这个假设，我们在快速扫视选择任务中对连续的眼球运动进行了采样——参与者被要求选择面孔或食物。在此任务期间，成对的刺激物被放置在靠近初始注视点或更远的外围。正如预期的那样，参与者看面部目标的速度比看食物目标的速度快。重要的是，我们还发现了具有虚幻面孔的食品的优势，但这种优势仅限于外围条件。这些发现首次证明面部空想性错觉在外围持续存在，因此，这很可能是错误的面部检测的结果。