Spatially Filtered Emotional Faces Dominate during Binocular Rivalry

Abstract

The present investigation explores the role of bottom-up and top-down factors in the recognition of emotional facial expressions during binocular rivalry. We manipulated spatial frequencies (SF) and emotive features and asked subjects to indicate whether the emotional or the neutral expression was dominant during binocular rivalry. Controlling the bottom-up saliency with a computational model, physically comparable happy and fearful faces were presented dichoptically with neutral faces. The results showed the dominance of emotional faces over neutral ones. In particular, happy faces were reported more frequently as the first dominant percept even in the presence of coarse information (at a low SF level: 2–6 cycle/degree). Following current theories of emotion processing, the results provide further support for the influence of positive compared to negative meaning on binocular rivalry and, for the first time, showed that individuals perceive the affective quality of happiness even in the absence of details in the visual display. Furthermore, our findings represent an advance in knowledge regarding the association between the high- and low-level mechanisms behind binocular rivalry.

State-dependent alternations of implicit emotional dominance during binocular rivalry in subthreshold depression

“…3A). The further pairwise comparison suggested that the emotional dominance on the neutral-happy rivalry condition was signi cantly stronger than that on the neutral-fear rivalry condition (0.039 ± 0.167 vs. − 0.028 ± 0.117, p = 0.001) and on the neutral-sad rivalry condition (0.039 ± 0.167 vs. − 0.007 ± 0.136, p = 0.021), in consistent with previous reports demonstrating a more pronounced emotion bias for the happy expression in binocular rivalry (e.g., [12,21]). There is no a signi cant difference on the emotional dominance between the neutral-fear rivalry condition and the neutral-sad rivalry condition (− 0.028 ± 0.117 vs. − 0.007 ± 0.136, p = 0.275).…”

“…The alternations continue over time. Many previous studies have demonstrated that such temporal dynamics of binocular rivalry is affected not only by low-level physical properties of rivaling stimuli such as contrast (e.g., [16,17]) and spatial frequency (e.g., [18,19]) but also by high-level properties of rivaling stimuli such as emotionality (e.g., [20,21]).…”

“…To achieve the goal, a simple idea is to use emotional expressions as explicit rivaling stimuli during binocular rivalry tests (e.g., [20,21]). However, some previous studies have pointed out that no rivalry may appear when an emotional face and a neutral face were used as a pair of rivaling stimuli (e.g., [35,36]).…”

State‐dependent alterations of implicit emotional dominance during binocular rivalry in subthreshold depression

“…The switches would continue over time. Many previous studies have demonstrated that such temporal dynamics of binocular rivalry are affected not only by low‐level visual properties of rivaling stimuli, such as contrast (e.g., Hollins, 1980; Qiu et al, 2020) and spatial frequency (e.g., Piazza & Silver, 2017; Wade, 1975), but also by high‐level properties of rivaling stimuli, such as emotionality (e.g., Coren & Russell, 1992; Turano et al, 2020).…”

Mapping the Featural and Holistic Face Processing of Bad and Good Face Recognizers

“…Faces convey peculiar and biologically relevant information, providing a huge variety of socially relevant signals [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Given the fundamental information conveyed by faces (i.e., age, gender, identity, and mood), face recognition is essential for human social functioning throughout the entire lifespan.…”