The late positive potential indexes a role for emotion during learning of trust from eye-gaze cues

Abstract

Gaze direction perception triggers rapid visuospatial orienting to the location observed by others. When this is congruent with the location of a target, reaction times are faster than when incongruent. Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies suggest that the non-joint attention induced by incongruent cues are experienced as more emotionally negative and this could relate to less favorable trust judgments of the faces when gaze-cues are contingent with identity. Here, we provide further support for these findings using time-resolved event-related potentials. In addition to replicating the effects of identity-contingent gaze-cues on reaction times and trust judgments, we discovered that the emotion-related late positive potential increased across blocks to incongruent compared to congruent faces before, during and after the gaze-cue, suggesting both learning and retrieval of emotion states associated with the face. We also discovered that the face-recognition-related N250 component appeared to localize to sources in anterior temporal areas. Our findings provide unique electrophysiological evidence for the role of emotion in learning trust from gaze-cues, suggesting that the retrieval of face evaluations during interaction may take around 1000 ms and that the N250 originates from anterior temporal face patches.

Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Infants' Sensitivity to the Trustworthiness of Faces

“…To find that this effect is lateralized to the right hemisphere is in line with prior work in adults, showing differential responses to trustworthiness from faces only in the right hemisphere (Manssuer, Roberts, & Tipper, 2015;Dzhelyova et al, 2012). Prior work with 7-month-old infants ( Jessen & Grossmann, 2015;Leppanen et al, 2007) shows that negative facial expressions elicit a larger P400 when compared with positive facial expressions.…”

The Effect of Trust on Gaze-Mediated Attentional Orienting

“…Results indicated trust learning, particularly for faces displaying positive emotions ( Bayliss et al, 2009 ). With a similar paradigm, Manssuer et al (2015) have also shown trust learning effects, using electrophysiology observed emotion-related potentials in association with unpredictive gaze-cues, suggesting a role for emotion in trust learning. Moreover, in a later study, Manssuer et al (2016) further explored the role of emotion using electromyography (EMG) and found evidence indicating that emotional reactions to the predictivity of the cue are necessary in order to observe trust learning.…”

The role of emotion in learning trustworthiness from eye-gaze: Evidence from facial electromyography

“…Faces were presented centrally at a pixel resolution of 300 × 385. The target stimuli were a set of 32 garage and 32 kitchen objects used in past studies (Bayliss et al, 2009 ; Bayliss & Tipper, 2006 ; Manssuer et al, 2015 ). There were 16 unique objects in each category, which were in two different orientations (left or right mirror reversed).…”

“…As we have noted, gaze-cueing effects do not differentiate between trust/no-trust participant groups whereas EMG does. In a separate study, EEG was used to measure the late positive potential (LPP), which is related to emotion processing (Manssuer et al, 2015 ). This measure did not detect differences between participants who produced trust and no-trust effects.…”

“…Faces that consistently gaze congruently become judged more trustworthy than faces that consistently gaze incongruently (Bayliss, Griffiths, & Tipper, 2009 ; Bayliss & Tipper, 2006 ). Recently, it has been shown with EEG that the emotion-related late positive potential (LPP) component tends to increase to incongruent faces throughout the identity-contingent gaze-cueing task as trust is learned, suggesting particular sensitivity to deception (Manssuer, Roberts, & Tipper, 2015 ). However, while the LPP is a sensitive index of emotion processing, it cannot provide information about the role embodied emotional states play in the learning of trust.…”