If Zerouali et al. (2013)were correct,we expected to find an interaction
between face orientation and fixation location such that the largest
N170 responses would be seen for nasion fixation with upright faces
and the largest N170 responses would be seen for mouth fixation with
inverted faces, reproducing the upper–lower visual field effect. This
should also be seen regardless of whether eyes are present or absent
from the face. Contrary to this expectation, we found that the N170
was largest when fixation was on the eyes compared to the other fixations
and this was seen in both upright and inverted faces, ruling out a
simple upper versus lower visual field effect and supporting a special
sensitivity to eyes. Crucially, this eye sensitivity disappeared in eyeless
faces, demonstrating that it was due to the presence of eyes at fovea.
In other words, the sensitivity for eyes was present beyond the classic
N170 FIE. However, for eyeless faces, the inversion effect interacted
with fixation location such that when fixation was on the mouth, a
normal inversion effect was seen while the FIE was maximally reduced
when fixation was around the eyes, as reported before (Itier et al.,
2007). These findings suggest that eyes do play a role in the inversion
effect but only when they are in fovea. We propose a new mechanism
to explain this set of data and the N170 FIE. We discuss these findings
and their implication for understanding early face perception and in
particular holistic versus featural processing.