Interference between conscious and unconscious facial expression information.

Xing Ye,Yong Qiang Yu,Kai Wang,Sheng He,Ying Hu,Marcello Costantini

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0105156

Abstract

There is ample evidence to show that many types of visual information, including emotional information, could be processed in the absence of visual awareness. For example, it has been shown that masked subliminal facial expressions can induce priming and adaptation effects. However, stimulus made invisible in different ways could be processed to different extent and have differential effects. In this study, we adopted a flanker type behavioral method to investigate whether a flanker rendered invisible through Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) could induce a congruency effect on the discrimination of a visible target. Specifically, during the experiment, participants judged the expression (either happy or fearful) of a visible face in the presence of a nearby invisible face (with happy or fearful expression). Results show that participants were slower and less accurate in discriminating the expression of the visible face when the expression of the invisible flanker face was incongruent. Thus, facial expression information rendered invisible with CFS and presented a different spatial location could enhance or interfere with consciously processed facial expression information.

Highlights

Over the past several decades, experimental psychologists have demonstrated that a remarkably wide range of visual information processing can occur outside of awareness, which in turn significantly influence various aspects of human behavior [1,2,3]
It has been shown that emotional information from the face or the body can be processed in the absence of visual awareness [4]
Neuroimaging studies using backward masking [5,6], binocular rivalry [7,8,9] or Continuous Flash Suppression [10,11] have demonstrated that the haemodynamic responses of the amygdala, superior temporal sulcus face sensitive area, and anterior cingulate can be elicited by emotional stimuli rendered invisible

Summary

Introduction

Over the past several decades, experimental psychologists have demonstrated that a remarkably wide range of visual information processing can occur outside of awareness, which in turn significantly influence various aspects of human behavior [1,2,3]. It has been shown that emotional information (e.g., fearful, disgust, or happy expressions) from the face or the body can be processed in the absence of visual awareness [4]. Neuroimaging studies using backward masking [5,6], binocular rivalry [7,8,9] or Continuous Flash Suppression [10,11] have demonstrated that the haemodynamic responses of the amygdala, superior temporal sulcus face sensitive area, and anterior cingulate can be elicited by emotional stimuli rendered invisible. A number of studies using subliminal affective priming stimuli have shown the influence by subliminal presented prime on response toward supraliminal target including pleasant and unpleasant words [18,19], happy and sad/angry facial expression [14,16,17,20] and positive/ negative pictures [21,22]. Exposure to subliminal prime with words related to thirst increased participants’ beverages consumption [15]

Methods

Results

Conclusion