The Effect of Unconscious Emotional Faces on Spatial Attention: an ERP Study

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The Effect of Unconscious Emotional Faces on Spatial Attention: an ERP Study Ling Li1*, Xianxian Kong1 and Zhenlan Jin1 1 University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, China Different emotional face may cause disparate influence to cognitive functions, including attention and working memory. We examined unconscious emotional effect (happy and fear faces) on spatial attention with a classical spatial selective attention task by measuring behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) responses. Emotional faces of big (2.7 by 2.3 degree) or small (2.1 by 1.8 degree) sizes were rapidly presented at the right or left visual field randomly while subjects attended to one visual field. Subjects were required to press a button at the detection of a small face in the attended visual field. Behavioral results showed lower accuracies of fear face detection than happy and neutral faces. Early ERP components (P1, N1) showed enhanced posterior activities in attended condition compared to unattended condition and increased activity to fear face compared to happy and neutral faces at the vertex area. In addition, early ERP showed the interaction between emotion and attention, in which neutral faces showed increased activity compared to fear faces at attended condition while emotional faces showed increased activity than neutral face at unattended condition at posterior area. Taken together these findings provide evidence that unconscious emotional faces can attract attention automatically, and positive and negative emotional valence may cause different effect on spatial attention. Unconscious fear emotion may disturb ongoing task more by distracting attentional resources. Keywords: emotion, unconscious, spatial attention, ERP, emotional face Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Attention Citation: Li L, Kong X and Jin Z (2015). The Effect of Unconscious Emotional Faces on Spatial Attention: an ERP Study. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00214 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Prof. Ling Li, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Chengdu, China, liling@uestc.edu.cn Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Ling Li Xianxian Kong Zhenlan Jin Google Ling Li Xianxian Kong Zhenlan Jin Google Scholar Ling Li Xianxian Kong Zhenlan Jin PubMed Ling Li Xianxian Kong Zhenlan Jin Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.