Perception of facial expression depends on prior attention

Abstract

Attending versus ignoring a stimulus can later determine how it will be affectively evaluated. Here, we asked whether attentional states could also modulate subsequent sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion. In a dual-task procedure, participants first rapidly searched for a gender-defined face among two briefly displayed neutral faces. Then a test face with the previously attended or ignored face's identity was presented, and participants judged whether it was emotionally expressive (happy, angry, or fearful) or neutral. Intensity of expression in the test face was varied so that an expression detection threshold could be determined. When fearful or angry expressions were judged, expression sensitivity was worse for faces bearing the same identity as a previously ignored versus attended face. When happy expressions were judged, sensitivity was unaffected by prior attention. These data support the notion that the motivational value of stimuli may be reduced by processes associated with selective ignoring.

A threatening face in the crowd: Effects of emotional singletons on visual working memory.

“…Perhaps, angry faces had greater motivational salience than happy faces in our study because they signal disapproval and carry an implicit instruction to alter behavior or “do better” to avoid unpleasant consequences, as opposed to the approval or signal to maintain current behavioral strategies implied by a smiling face. This motivational interpretation of expression information is consistent with the view that anger in another’s face or gesture activates approach responses (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009; Wilkowski & Meier, 2010) and also with a recent finding that an angry but not a happy or fearful expression can overcome attention-induced inhibition that dulls sensitivity to subtle facial expression (Gómez-Cuerva & Raymond, 2011). Additional support for the idea that motivation may play a role in WM was reported by Raymond and Thomas (2012), who showed that stimuli previously associated with high-reward value were better remembered in a WM task than stimuli previously associated with losses or no outcome.…”

Attentional Modulation of Emotional Conflict Processing with Flanker Tasks

“…Gomez-Cuerva and colleagues examined whether sensitivity of emotional expressions was influenced by prior attentional state in a dual-task [22]. Their results showed that sensitivity to negative expressions was significantly lower when the same identity with the negative expression was a distractor (to-be-ignored) in the previous trial than when it was a target (to-be-attended).…”

“…Many studies demonstrated that emotion processing was influenced by attention have mostly focused on spatial orientation of attention, for example the dot-probe task [30], visual search task [8], [31] and dual-task paradigm [22]. However, fewer studies have examined whether emotion processing was affected by attention in executive control.…”

Relationship between oxytocin receptor genotype and recognition of facial emotion.

“…Several variables are known to affect the precision in facial emotion recognition: It is known, for instance, that subjects suffering from schizophrenia, autism, or Alzheimer’s disease frequently exhibit difficulties in recognizing emotional expressions (e.g., Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001; Edwards, Pattison, Jackson, & Wales, 2001; Hargrave, Maddock, & Stone, 2002; Harms, Martin, & Wallace, 2010; Tsoi et al, 2008; Weiss et al, 2008). Other influences on the ability to recognize emotions in faces have been shown, for example, for age (Isaacowitz et al, 2007), gender of the observer or the presented face (McClure, 2000; Pixton, 2011), affective content (Becker & Detweiler-Bedell, 2009; Calvo & Marrero, 2009), saliency of specific facial features (Calvo & Nummenmaa, 2008), or prior attention (Gómez-Cuerva & Raymond, 2011).…”