Detecting emotional faces and features in a visual search paradigm: Are faces special?

Abstract

In 2 experiments, participants were presented schematic faces with emotional expressions (threatening, friendly) in a neutral-faces context or neutral expressions in an emotional-faces context. These conditions were compared with detection performance in displays containing key features of emotional faces not forming the perceptual gestalt of a face. Supporting the notion of a threat detection advantage, Experiment 1 found that threatening faces were faster detected than friendly faces, whereas no difference emerged between the corresponding feature conditions. Experiment 2 increased task difficulty with a backward masking procedure and found corresponding results. In neither of the studies was the threat detection advantage associated with reduced accuracy. However, features were, in general, detected faster than faces when task difficulty was high.

Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry: Volitional choices to act or inhibit are modulated by subliminal perception of emotional faces

“…Thus, threatening facial expressions likely have a processing advantage in terms of speed and automaticity (LeDoux, 2003). In line with this, when searching for one class of emotional face in distractor arrays of others, detection of angry faces is substantially faster (Fox et al, 2000), even when the search arrays are rendered difficult (but not subliminal) by backwards masking (Schubö et al, 2006). In addition, subliminally presented angry faces generate skin conductance responses compared to happy faces (Esteves, Dimberg, & Öhman, 1994), indicating automatic and nonconscious threat responses.…”

“…One possibility is that the socially relevant information provided by an angry face is one form of threat, and, moreover, a threat directed at you, and that such stimuli have access to dedicated neural systems associated with speed and automaticity of processing. Indeed, faces, especially certain emotional faces, are a privileged class of stimuli associated with specialised neural systems (Lamy, Amunts, & Bar-Haim, 2008;Schubö, Gendolla, Meinecke, & Abele, 2006). Moreover, environmental cues that are threatening to the individual are afforded privileged and rapid processing via dedicated perceptual systems (LeDoux, 2003), and this processing is often automatic, bypassing cognitive processes (Ohman & Mineka, 2001).…”

Visual search is not blind to emotion

“…It is possible that Williams et al's findings reflect differences in RT that result from processes that occur after the target becomes the focus of attention, which would not be expected to vary with set size. Various other investigators have found evidence for facilitated detection of emotional faces in crowds of distractors (e.g., Byrne & Eysenck, 1995;Fox & Damjanovic, 2006;Juth, Lundqvist, Karlsson, & Öhman, 2005;Schubö, Gendolla, Meinecke, & Abele, 2006), but these studies did not involve set size variance, which again makes the findings difficult to interpret.…”

Enhanced Repetition Blindness With Angry Emotional Faces

“…Thus, the ease of grouping the facial parts play an important role in face recognition. Other research has shown that the advantage of negative emotional face is only observed when the face is presented as a whole face (Schubo et al, 2006). And this emotional advantage is eliminated when the features alone are presented without the face contour.…”

“…These results suggest that a portion of a face is better recognized when presented as a face, than when presented as a portion of something other than a face. This is because faces are processed in holistic manner to a greater degree compared to other form of objects (Palmer, 1977;Tanaka & Farah, 1993;Schubo, Gendolla, Meinecke, & Abele, 2006). Thus, the ease of grouping the facial parts play an important role in face recognition.…”