We investigated, in young healthy participants, how the affective content of subliminally presented priming images and their specific visual attributes impacted conscious perception of facial expressions. The priming images were broadly categorized as aggressive, pleasant, or neutral and further subcategorized by the presence of a face and by the centricity (egocentric or allocentric vantage-point) of the image content. Participants responded to the emotion portrayed in a pixelated target-face by indicating via key-press if the expression was angry or neutral. Response time to the neutral target face was significantly slower when preceded by face primes, compared to non-face primes (p < 0.05, Bonferroni corrected). In contrast, faster RTs were observed when angry target faces were preceded by face compared to non-face primes. In addition, participants’ performance was worse when a priming image contained an egocentric face compared to when it contained either an allocentric face or an egocentric non-face. The results suggest a significant impact of the visual features of the priming image on conscious perception of face expression.
References
[1]
Darwin, C. (1972) Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals. John Murray, London.
[2]
Ekman, P. (1970) Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion. California Mental Health Research Digest, 8, No. 4.
[3]
Ekman, P. and Oster, H. (1979) Facial Expressions of Emotion. Annual Review of Psychology, 30, 527-554. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.30.020179.002523
[4]
Frith, C. (2009) Role of Facial Expressions in Social Interactions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364, 3453-3458. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0142
[5]
Leopold, D.A. and Rhodes, G. (2010) A Comparative View of Face Perception. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 124, 233-251. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019460
[6]
Tsao, D.Y. and Livingstone, M.S. (2008) Mechanisms of Face Perception. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 31, 411-437. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.30.051606.094238
[7]
Tamietto, M. and de Gelder, B. (2010) Neural Bases of the Non-Conscious Perception of Emotional Signals. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, 697-709. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2889
[8]
Morris, J., Öhman, A. and Dolan, R. (1999) A Subcortical Pathway to the Right Amygdala Mediating “Unseen” Fear. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 96, 1680-1685. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.96.4.1680
[9]
Whalen, P.J., Rauch, S.L., Etcoff, N.L., McInerney, S.C., Lee, M.B., Jenike, M.A. (1998) Masked Presentations of Emotional Facial Expressions Modulate Amygdala Activity without Explicit Knowledge. The Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 411-418. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.18-01-00411.1998
[10]
de Gelder, B., Vroomen, J., Pourtois, G. and Weiskrantz, L. (1999) Non-Conscious Recognition of Affect in the Absence of Striate Cortex. Neuroreport, 10, 3759-3763. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001756-199912160-00007
[11]
Esteves, F., Dimberg, U. and Öhman, A. (1994) Automatically Elicited Fear: Conditioned Skin Conductance Responses to Masked Facial Expressions. Cognition & Emotion, 8, 393-413. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939408408949
[12]
Lähteenmäki, M., Hyönä, J., Koivisto, M. and Nummenmaa, L. (2015) Affective Processing Requires Awareness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 339-365. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000040
[13]
Pessoa, L., Kastner, S. and Ungerleider, L.G. (2002) Attentional Control of the Processing of Neutral and Emotional Stimuli. Cognitive Brain Research, 15, 31-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0926-6410(02)00214-8
[14]
Storbeck, J., Robinson, M.D. and McCourt, M.E. (2006) Semantic Processing Precedes Affect Retrieval: The Neurological Case for Cognitive Primacy in Visual Processing. Review of General Psychology, 10, 41-55. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.10.1.41
[15]
Nummenmaa, L., Hyönä, J. and Calvo, M.G. (2010) Semantic Categorization Precedes Affective Evaluation of Visual Scenes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139, 222-246. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018858
[16]
LeDoux, J.E. (1998) The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.
[17]
Zajonc, R.B. (1980) Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151-175. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.35.2.151
[18]
Dimberg, U., Thunberg, M. and Elmehed, K. (2000) Unconscious Facial Reactions to Emotional Facial Expressions. Psychological Science, 11, 86-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00221
[19]
Li, W., Zinbarg, R.E., Boehm, S.G. and Paller, K.A. (2008) Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Affective Priming from Unconsciously Perceived Emotional Facial Expressions and the Influence of Trait Anxiety. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 95-107. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20006
[20]
Murphy, S.T. and Zajonc, R.B. (1993) Affect, Cognition, and Awareness: Affective Priming with Optimal and Suboptimal Stimulus Exposures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 723-739. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.5.723
[21]
Lee, S.Y., Kang, J.I., Lee, E., Namkoong, K. and An, S.K. (2011) Differential Priming Effect for Subliminal Fear and Disgust Facial Expressions. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73, 473-481. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-010-0032-3
[22]
Kiesel, A., Kunde, W. and Hoffmann, J. (2008) Mechanisms of Subliminal Response Priming. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 3, 307-315.
[23]
Greenwald, A.G., Klinger, M.R. and Liu, T.J. (1989) Unconscious Processing of Dichoptically Masked Words. Memory & Cognition, 17, 35-47. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199555
[24]
Klinger, M.R., Burton, P.C. and Pitts, G.S. (2000) Mechanisms of Unconscious Priming: I. Response Competition, Not Spreading Activation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 441-455. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.26.2.441
[25]
Neumann, R. and Lozo, L. (2012) Priming the Activation of Fear and Disgust: Evidence for Semantic Processing. Emotion, 12, 223-228. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026500
[26]
Otten, S. and Wentura, D. (1999) About the Impact of Automaticity in the Minimal Group Paradigm: Evidence from Affective Priming Tasks. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 1049-1071. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199912)29:8<1049::AID-EJSP985>3.0.CO;2-Q
[27]
Hermans, D., Spruyt, A., De Houwer, J. and Eelen, P. (2003) Affective Priming with Subliminally Presented Pictures. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale, 57, 97-114.
[28]
Andrews, V., Lipp, O., Mallan, K. and König, S. (2011) No Evidence for Subliminal Affective Priming with Emotional Facial Expression Primes. Motivation & Emotion, 35, 33-43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-010-9196-3
[29]
Aguado, L., Garcia-Gutierrez, A., Castañeda, E. and Saugar, C. (2007) Effects of Prime Task on Affective Priming by Facial Expressions of Emotion. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 10, 209-217. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1138741600006478
[30]
Axelrod, V., Bar, M. and Rees, G. (2015) Exploring the Unconscious Using Faces. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19, 35-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.003
[31]
Banse, R. (2001) Affective Priming with Liked and Disliked Persons: Prime Visibility Determines Congruency and Incongruency Effects. Cognition & Emotion, 15, 501-520. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930126251
[32]
Haneda, K., Nomura, M., Iidaka, T. and Ohira, H. (2003) Interaction of Prime and Target in the Subliminal Affective Priming Effect. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 96, 695-702. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.2003.96.2.695
[33]
Wagenbreth, C., Rieger, J., Heinze, H.-J. and Zaehle, T. (2014) Seeing Emotions in the Eyes—Inverse Priming Effects Induced by Eyes Expressing Mental States. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1039. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01039
[34]
Grill-Spector, K., Weiner, K.S., Kay, K. and Gomez, J. (2017) The Functional Neuroanatomy of Human Face Perception. Annual Review of Vision Science, 3, 167-196. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-vision-102016-061214
[35]
Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J. and Chun, M.M. (1997) The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception. The Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 4302-4311. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.17-11-04302.1997
[36]
McKone, E., Kanwisher, N. and Duchaine, B.C. (2007) Can Generic Expertise Explain Special Processing for Faces? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 8-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.002
[37]
Vaina, L.M., Rana, K.D., Cotos, I., Chen, L.-Y., Huang, M.A. and Podea, D. (2014) When Does Subliminal Affective Image Priming Influence the Ability of Schizophrenic Patients to Perceive Emotions? Medical Science Monitor, 20, 2788-2798. https://doi.org/10.12659/MSM.893118
Kleiner, M., Brainard, D., Pelli, D., Ingling, A., Murray, R. and Broussard, C. (2007) What’s New in Psychtoolbox-3? Perception, 36, 1-16.
[40]
Pelli, D.G. (1997) The VideoToolbox Software for Visual Psychophysics: Transforming Numbers into Movies. Spatial Vision, 10, 437-442. https://doi.org/10.1163/156856897X00366
[41]
Lang, P.J., Bradley, M.M. and Cuthbert, B.N. (1998) International Affective Picture System (IAPS): Technical Manual and Affective Ratings. The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
[42]
Willenbockel, V., Sadr, J., Fiset, D., Horne, G., Gosselin, F. and Tanaka, J. (2010) Controlling Low-Level Image Properties: The SHINE Toolbox. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 671-684. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.42.3.671
[43]
Goeleven, E., De Raedt, R., Leyman, L. and Verschuere, B. (2008) The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces: A Validation Study. Cognition and Emotion, 22, 1094-1118. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930701626582
[44]
Lundqvist, D., Flykt, A. and Öhman, A. (1998) The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF). Department of Neurosciences, Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm.
[45]
Langton, S.R., Law, A.S., Burton, A.M. and Schweinberger, S.R. (2008) Attention Capture by Faces. Cognition, 107, 330-342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.012
[46]
Theeuwes, J. and Van der Stigchel, S. (2006) Faces Capture Attention: Evidence from Inhibition of Return. Visual Cognition, 13, 657-665. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506280500410949
