Abstract
The present research investigated metacognitive awareness of emotional stimuli and its psychophysiological correlates. We used a backward masking task presenting participants with fearful or neutral faces. We asked participants for face discrimination and then probed their metacognitive awareness with confidence rating (CR) and post-decision wagering (PDW) scales. We also analysed psychophysiological correlates of awareness with event-related potential (ERP) components: P1, N170, early posterior negativity (EPN), and P3. We have not observed any differences between PDW and CR conditions in the emotion identification task. However, the "aware" ratings were associated with increased accuracy performance. This effect was more pronounced in PDW, especially for fearful faces, suggesting that emotional stimuli awareness may be enhanced by monetary incentives. EEG analysis showed larger N170, EPN and P3 amplitudes in aware compared to unaware trials. It also appeared that both EPN and P3 ERP components were more pronounced in the PDW condition, especially when emotional faces were presented. Taken together, our ERP findings suggest that metacognitive awareness of emotional stimuli depends on the effectiveness of both early and late visual information processing. Our study also indicates that awareness of emotional stimuli can be enhanced by the motivation induced by wagering.
Highlights
Recent years have brought a vast body of empirical studies and theoretical models investigating neural correlates of consciousness (NCC, see e.g. [1,2,3,4] for the review)
eventrelated potential (ERP) elicited by fearful faces differed from ERPs measured in response to neutral stimuli in the post-decision wagering (PDW) task
The present study investigated electrophysiological correlates of awareness by examining ERP components registered under the backward masking task
Summary
Recent years have brought a vast body of empirical studies and theoretical models investigating neural correlates of consciousness (NCC, see e.g. [1,2,3,4] for the review). Recent years have brought a vast body of empirical studies and theoretical models investigating neural correlates of consciousness [1,2,3,4] for the review). Most research has focused on the identification of either the brain structures or brain networks responsible for conscious processing This research programme is supported by EEG studies that allow a more finely tuned analysis of the time course of brain activity evoked by conscious perception and observed with neuroimaging technics A vivid discussion on electrophysiological NCCs has arisen (see: [8,9] for the review). PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0159516 August 4, 2016
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