A very interesting study over at UsableWorld illustrates how images used in articles that have faces can have unusual effects on what people look at. Depending on the direction the faces are turned it changes the way people read the page.
In this first example the face of the baby is looking straight forward. You can see people spend a lot of time on the actual face of the child to the detriment of the actual content to the right.
Baby Looking forward, content to the right
In the second example the baby is looking towards the content on the right. You can see that this layout produces a more evenly dispersed set of hot areas.
Baby with face towards the content