11/28/2023 0 Comments Examples of subliminal processing![]() ![]() In the current study, we picked up on this emotion-specificity to look closer into the processing of disgustedly looking faces (Experiments 1 and 2) and to compare their processing to that of fearful faces (Experiment 2). positive) valence of the affect accounted for the EEG differences and supporting instead an interpretation in terms of emotion-specific processing (see also, e.g., Willenbockel et al., 2012). Such EEG differences are impressive as they indicate that, even if not registered consciously, two facial expressions of different emotions but of the same negative affective valence recruit different brain areas, ruling out that negative (vs. What is particularly noteworthy about Smith’s study is that, although two types of masked faces contained negative expressions, there were some processing differences between these faces: The masked fearful faces produced greater activation in the frontal region when compared to the masked disgusted faces. The author found differences in activity patterns in the frontal and occipito-temporal brain regions, where visual backward masking by a stimulus following a face displaying an emotion prevented the face’s visibility. The participants were asked to categorize the masked faces for their expressions. For example, using electroencephalography (EEG), Smith (2012) studied the time-course of processing of fearful, disgusted, happy, and neutral facial expressions. In line with this reasoning, several studies provided evidence of even subliminal processing (i.e., processing of stimuli presented below the threshold of awareness) of human emotional expressions ( Whalen et al., 1998 de Gelder et al., 1999 Morris et al., 1999 Dimberg et al., 2000 Kiss and Eimer, 2008 Smith, 2012). This could be a unique effect of disgusted faces as compared to other emotional facial displays, at least under the conditions studied here.įrom a phylogenetic perspective, the quick and effortless recognition of human emotional facial expressions provided an evolutionary benefit: A high ability to recognize fearful or disgusting faces, for example, would have increased human sensitivity to potentially harmful threats in the environment that, if avoided, would have increased inclusive fitness ( Whalen, 1998). Based on our findings, we speculate that subliminal facial expressions of disgust could afford easy avoidance of these faces. In both experiments, we also tested for the dependence of the subliminal emotional face processing on spatial attention – with mixed results, suggesting an attention-independence in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2 –, and we found perfect masking of the face primes – that is, proof of the subliminality of the prime faces. In Experiment 2, we compared the influence of subliminal disgusted faces with that of subliminal fearful faces and demonstrated a behavioral performance difference between the two, pointing to an emotion-specific processing of the disgusted facial expressions. Whereas we found evidence for subliminal face congruence or priming effects, in particular, reverse priming by low spatial frequencies disgusted face primes, we did not find any support for a subcortical origin of the effect. In Experiment 1, we used differently filtered masked prime faces portraying emotionally neutral or disgusted expressions presented prior to clearly visible target faces to test if the masked primes exerted an influence on target processing nonetheless. Here, we investigated if this is also true for the processing of the subliminal facial display of disgust. Prior research has provided evidence for (1) subcortical processing of subliminal facial expressions of emotion and (2) for the emotion-specificity of these processes. ![]() 2Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.1Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany.
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