Joint Modulation of Facial Expression Processing by Contextual Congruency and Task Demands.

Luis Aguado,Karisa Parkington,Roxane Itier,Teresa Dieguez-Risco,José Hinojosa

doi:10.3390/brainsci9050116

Abstract

Faces showing expressions of happiness or anger were presented together with sentences that described happiness-inducing or anger-inducing situations. Two main variables were manipulated: (i) congruency between contexts and expressions (congruent/incongruent) and (ii) the task assigned to the participant, discriminating the emotion shown by the target face (emotion task) or judging whether the expression shown by the face was congruent or not with the context (congruency task). Behavioral and electrophysiological results (event-related potentials (ERP)) showed that processing facial expressions was jointly influenced by congruency and task demands. ERP results revealed task effects at frontal sites, with larger positive amplitudes between 250–450 ms in the congruency task, reflecting the higher cognitive effort required by this task. Effects of congruency appeared at latencies and locations corresponding to the early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) components that have previously been found to be sensitive to emotion and affective congruency. The magnitude and spatial distribution of the congruency effects varied depending on the task and the target expression. These results are discussed in terms of the modulatory role of context on facial expression processing and the different mechanisms underlying the processing of expressions of positive and negative emotions.

Highlights

Facial expressions of emotion are highly relevant stimuli in human social interactions
The results reported in the present study confirm the modulatory role of situational contexts on the processing of target facial expressions of emotion
These effects were especially prominent in the late positive potential (LPP)-like component that is modulated by emotional content and has been previously found to be sensitive to affective congruency [7,17,18,19]

Summary

Introduction

Facial expressions of emotion are highly relevant stimuli in human social interactions. It is not surprising that the cognitive and neural underpinnings of their processing have been the object of many studies. We rarely perceive facial expressions of our conspecifics isolated from any other stimuli. Facial expressions are typically perceived in the context of specific social interactions that include many other relevant clues about the event itself and the person expressing the emotion. In most experimental studies facial expressions have been presented alone in the absence of any contextual information. There is still limited evidence regarding the way in which contextual information modulates the processing of facial expressions of emotion

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion