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Hinojosa JA, Guasch M, Montoro PR, Albert J, Fraga I, Ferré P. The bright side of words: Norms for 9000 Spanish words in seven discrete positive emotions. Behav Res Methods 2024; 56:4909-4929. [PMID: 37749425 PMCID: PMC11289151 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02229-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/29/2023] [Indexed: 09/27/2023]
Abstract
In recent years, assumptions about the existence of a single construct of happiness that accounts for all positive emotions have been questioned. Instead, several discrete positive emotions with their own neurobiological and psychological mechanisms have been proposed. Of note, the effects of positive emotions on language processing are not yet properly understood. Here we provide a database for a large set of 9000 Spanish words scored by 3437 participants in the positive emotions of awe, contentment, amusement, excitement, serenity, relief, and pleasure. We also report significant correlations between discrete positive emotions and several affective (e.g., valence, arousal, happiness, negative discrete emotions) and lexico-semantic (e.g., frequency of use, familiarity, concreteness, age of acquisition) characteristics of words. Finally, we analyze differences between words conveying a single emotion ("pure" emotion words) and those denoting more than one emotion ("mixed" emotion words). This study will provide researchers a rich source of information to do research that contributes to expanding the current knowledge on the role of positive emotions in language. The norms are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21533571.v2.
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Affiliation(s)
- José A Hinojosa
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
- Dpto. Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
- Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain.
| | - Marc Guasch
- Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
| | - Pedro R Montoro
- Departamento de Psicología Básica 1, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain
| | - Jacobo Albert
- Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Isabel Fraga
- Cognitive Processes & Behaviour Research Group, Department of Social Psychology, Basic Psychology & Methodology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Pilar Ferré
- Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
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2
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Li S, Zhang Y, Li H, Hao B, He W, Luo W. Is processing superiority a universal trait for all threats? Divergent impacts of fearful, angry, and disgusted faces on attentional capture. Cortex 2024; 177:37-52. [PMID: 38833819 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.05.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2023] [Revised: 03/14/2024] [Accepted: 05/15/2024] [Indexed: 06/06/2024]
Abstract
Fearful, angry, and disgusted facial expressions are evolutionarily salient and convey different types of threat signals. However, it remains unclear whether these three expressions impact sensory perception and attention in the same way. The present ERP study investigated the temporal dynamics underlying the processing of different types of threatening faces and the impact of attentional resources employed during a perceptual load task. Participants were asked to judge the length of bars superimposed over faces presented in the center of the screen. A mass univariate statistical approach was used to analyze the EEG data. Behaviorally, task accuracy was significantly reduced following exposure to fearful faces relative to neutral distractors, independent of perceptual load. The ERP results revealed that the P1 amplitude over the right hemisphere was found to be enhanced for fearful relative to disgusted faces, reflecting the rapid and coarse detection of fearful cues. The N170 responses elicited by fearful, angry, and disgusted faces were larger than those elicited by neutral faces, suggesting the largely automatic and preferential processing of threats. Furthermore, the early posterior negativity (EPN) component yielded increased responses to fearful and angry faces, indicating prioritized attention to stimuli representing acute threats. Additionally, perceptual load exerted a pronounced influence on the EPN and late positive potential (LPP), with larger responses observed in the low perceptual load condition, indicating goal-directed cognitive processing. Overall, the early sensory processing of fearful, angry, and disgusted faces is characterized by differential sensitivity in capturing attention automatically, despite the importance of these facial signals for survival. Fearful faces produce a strong interference effect and are processed with higher priority than angry and disgusted ones.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shuaixia Li
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian, China
| | - Yihan Zhang
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian, China
| | - Hui Li
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian, China
| | - Bin Hao
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian, China
| | - Weiqi He
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian, China.
| | - Wenbo Luo
- Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China; Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Province, Dalian, China.
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3
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Gao Y, Lin W, Liu J, Chen Y, Xiao C, Chen J, Mo L. Emotional contextual effects of face perception: a test of the affective realism hypothesis. THE JOURNAL OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 2024:1-28. [PMID: 39023941 DOI: 10.1080/00221309.2024.2378326] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2023] [Accepted: 06/25/2024] [Indexed: 07/20/2024]
Abstract
Affective feelings naturally infuse individuals' perceptions, serving as valid windows onto the real world. The affective realism hypothesis further explains how these feelings work: as properties of individuals' perceptual experiences, these feelings influence perception. Notably, this hypothesis based on affective feelings with different valences has been substantiated, whereas the existing evidence is not compelling enough. Moreover, whether specific affective feelings can be experienced as properties of target perception remains unclear. Addressing these two issues deepens our understanding of the nature of emotional representation. Hence, we investigated the affective realism hypothesis based on affective feelings with different valences and specific emotions, comparing it with the affective misattribution hypothesis. In Experiment 1, we examined the effects of affective feelings with various valences on targets' perception through the AM (1a) and CFS paradigms (1b). In Experiment 2, we investigated the effects of affective feelings with anger, sadness, and disgust using similar methods. Results from Experiments 1a and 1b consistently indicated significant differences in valence ratings of neutral faces under emotional contexts with varying valences. Experiment 2a revealed significant differences in specific emotion ratings of neutral faces under different specific emotional contexts in the AM paradigm, whereas such differences were not observed in the CFS paradigm in Experiment 2b. We concluded that affective feelings with different valences, rather than specific emotions, can be experienced as inherent properties of target perception, validating the affective realism hypothesis. These findings supported the view that the nature of emotional representation should be described as affective dimensions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuan Gao
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, China
| | - Wuji Lin
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, China
| | - Jiaxi Liu
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, China
| | - Yujie Chen
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, China
| | - Chunqian Xiao
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, China
| | - Jiexin Chen
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, China
| | - Lei Mo
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- School of Psychology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Guangzhou, China
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Yu L, Wang W, Li Z, Ren Y, Liu J, Jiao L, Xu Q. Alexithymia modulates emotion concept activation during facial expression processing. Cereb Cortex 2024; 34:bhae071. [PMID: 38466112 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae071] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2023] [Revised: 01/23/2024] [Accepted: 02/06/2024] [Indexed: 03/12/2024] Open
Abstract
Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in emotional information processing. However, the underlying reasons for emotional processing deficits in alexithymia are not fully understood. The present study aimed to investigate the mechanism underlying emotional deficits in alexithymia. Using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, we recruited college students with high alexithymia (n = 24) or low alexithymia (n = 24) in this study. Participants judged the emotional consistency of facial expressions and contextual sentences while recording their event-related potentials. Behaviorally, the high alexithymia group showed longer response times versus the low alexithymia group in processing facial expressions. The event-related potential results showed that the high alexithymia group had more negative-going N400 amplitudes compared with the low alexithymia group in the incongruent condition. More negative N400 amplitudes are also associated with slower responses to facial expressions. Furthermore, machine learning analyses based on N400 amplitudes could distinguish the high alexithymia group from the low alexithymia group in the incongruent condition. Overall, these findings suggest worse facial emotion perception for the high alexithymia group, potentially due to difficulty in spontaneously activating emotion concepts. Our findings have important implications for the affective science and clinical intervention of alexithymia-related affective disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linwei Yu
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
| | - Weihan Wang
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
| | - Zhiwei Li
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
| | - Yi Ren
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
| | - Jiabin Liu
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
| | - Lan Jiao
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
| | - Qiang Xu
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China
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Wada E, Ogawa K. Effect of Taste-Induced Mood on ERP and Emotional Assessment of Images. Percept Mot Skills 2023; 130:1852-1868. [PMID: 37335749 DOI: 10.1177/00315125231184370] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/21/2023]
Abstract
Tastes affect the body and our emotions. We used tasteless, sweet, and bitter stimuli to induce participants' moods, and we examined the effect of mood on an emotional evaluation of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant images using event-related potentials, N2, N400, and late positive potential (LPP), which reflect emotional evaluation in the brain. The results indicated that mood valence was most positive for sweetness and most negative for bitterness. Moreover, there was no significant mood effect on subjective valence ratings of emotional images. Furthermore, the N2 amplitude, which is related to the early semantic processing of preceding stimuli, was unaffected by the taste induced mood. In contrast, we found that the N400 amplitude, which is related to the mismatch of emotional valence between stimuli, increased significantly for unpleasant images when participants were in a positive rather than negative mood state. Also, the LPP amplitude, which is related to the emotional valence of images, showed only the main effect of the images' emotional valence. The N2's results suggest that the early semantic processing of taste stimuli might have had a negligible impact on emotional evaluation because taste stimuli minimize semantic processing that accompanies mood induction. In contrast, the N400 reflected the effects of the induced mood, and the LPP reflected the impact of the valence of emotional images. The use of taste stimuli to induce mood revealed different brain processing of taste-induced mood effects on emotional evaluation, including N2's involvement in semantic processing, N400's involvement in matching emotions between mood and stimuli, and LPP's involvement in subjective evaluations of stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erika Wada
- Integrated Arts and Human Sciences Program, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan
| | - Keiko Ogawa
- Integrated Arts and Human Sciences Program, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan
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Xu Q, Wang W, Yang Y, Li W. Effects of emotion words activation and satiation on facial expression perception: evidence from behavioral and ERP investigations. Front Psychiatry 2023; 14:1192450. [PMID: 37588024 PMCID: PMC10425554 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1192450] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/23/2023] [Accepted: 07/12/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Objective The present study investigated the impact of emotion concepts obtained from external environmental experiences on the perception of facial expressions by manipulating the activation and satiation of emotion words, which was based on the argument between basic emotion theory and constructed emotion theory. Methods Experiment 1 explored the effects of emotion activation on happy, disgusted, emotion-label words and emotion-laden words in a facial expression judgment task through behavioral experimentation. Experiment 2 explored the effect of semantic satiation on emotion-label words and emotion-laden words using the event-related potential technique. Results Experiment 1 found that facial expression perception was influenced by both types of emotion words and showed a significant emotional consistency effect. Experiment 2 found that N170 exhibited a more negative amplitude in the consistent condition compared to the inconsistent condition in the right hemisphere. More importantly, in the later stage of facial expression processing, emotion-label words and emotion-laden words both obstructed the perception of disgusted facial expressions and elicited more negative N400 amplitude in the emotion consistency condition, showing a reversed N400 effect. Conclusion These results suggested that emotion concepts in the form of language influenced the perception of facial expressions, but there were differences between happy and disgusted faces. Disgusted faces were more dependent on emotion concept information and showed different performances in semantic activation and satiation conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qiang Xu
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
| | - Weihan Wang
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
| | - Yaping Yang
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
| | - Wanyue Li
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
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7
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Cha WJ, Lee JH. Diminished ability to integrate target stimuli with context during emotional recognition in individuals with broad autism phenotype. Front Psychol 2022; 13:934385. [PMID: 36275254 PMCID: PMC9583922 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.934385] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/02/2022] [Accepted: 09/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Individuals with broad autism phenotype (BAP) have a tendency not to integrate emotional stimuli with the surrounding context. They have also shown different patterns and abilities in processing positive and negative emotions. This study aimed to examine whether the effect of context on target stimuli could vary depending on the type of target emotion in individuals with BAP. Based on the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ) and Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), 36 individuals with BAP and 33 healthy controls were selected. All the participants performed an overlap-emotional task consisting of six conditions: 2 (congruence: congruent and incongruent) × 3 (emotion: fearful, sad, and happy). Reaction time and accuracy were measured as dependent variables. The results revealed that the individuals with BAP showed no difference in reaction time between the condition of congruence and incongruence, but that the control group was faster to categorize facial expression on the condition of congruence than that of incongruence regardless of the type of target emotion. There were no differences between the two groups in any of the conditions with regard to accuracy. These findings indicate that individuals with BAP tend not to integrate target emotions with contextual information, a feature that could worsen the speed of emotional recognition in individuals with BAP. This study confirmed that the individuals with BAP have different cognition patterns in emotional recognition than the control group.
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Zheng Q. Efficient recognition of dynamic user emotions based on deep neural networks. Front Neurorobot 2022; 16:1006755. [PMID: 36247360 PMCID: PMC9559588 DOI: 10.3389/fnbot.2022.1006755] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2022] [Accepted: 08/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The key issue at this stage is how to mine the large amount of valuable user sentiment information from the massive amount of web text and create a suitable dynamic user text sentiment analysis technique. Hence, this study offers a writing feature abstraction process based on ON-LSTM and attention mechanism to address the problem that syntactic information is ignored in emotional text feature extraction. The study found that the Att-ON-LSTM improved the micro-average F1 value by 2.27% and the macro-average F value by 1.7% compared to the Bi-LSTM model with the added attentivity mechanisms. It is demonstrated that it can perform better extraction of semantic information and hierarchical structure information in emotional text and obtain more comprehensive emotional text features. In addition, the ON-LSTM-LS, a sentiment analysis model based on ON-LSTM and tag semantics, is planned to address the problem that tag semantics is ignored in the process of text sentiment analysis. The experimental consequences exposed that the accuracy of the ON-LSTM and labeled semantic sentiment analysis model on the test set is improved by 0.78% with the addition of labeled word directions compared to the model Att-ON-LSTM without the addition of labeled semantic information. The macro-averaged F1 value improved by 1.04%, which indicates that the sentiment analysis process based on ON-LSTM and tag semantics can effectively perform the text sentiment analysis task and improve the sentiment classification effect to some extent. In conclusion, deep learning models for dynamic user sentiment analysis possess high application capabilities.
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Influence of affective verbal context on emotional facial expression perception of social anxiety. Int J Psychophysiol 2022; 181:141-149. [PMID: 36108800 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.09.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2021] [Revised: 08/18/2022] [Accepted: 09/07/2022] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
Previous studies have shown that the perception of ambiguous facial expressions for individuals with social anxiety was influenced by the affective verbal context. However, it is still unknown how emotional facial expressions are perceived by individuals with social anxiety in the context of the verbal context. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) technology to examine how individuals with social anxiety perceive emotional facial expressions in positive and negative contexts. The results showed that: (1) Within the negative verbal contexts, the amplitude of P1 induced by facial expressions in the social anxiety group was significantly higher than that induced by the healthy control group; The N170 amplitude induced by facial expressions in social anxiety group was less negative than that in the healthy control group, and was not affected by the context. (2) The social anxiety group had significantly higher LPP in negative contexts elicited by angry expressions than by happy expressions. This study proved that the perception of emotional facial expressions was influenced by top-down information in the early and late stages of visual perception for individuals with social anxiety.
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Gao Y, Lin W, Zhang M, Zheng L, Liu J, Zheng M, En Y, Chen Y, Mo L. Cognitive Mechanisms of the Face Context Effect: An Event Related Potential Study of the Effects of Emotional Contexts on Neutral Face Perception. Biol Psychol 2022; 175:108430. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108430] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2022] [Revised: 09/25/2022] [Accepted: 09/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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11
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Emotional violation of faces, emojis, and words: Evidence from N400. Biol Psychol 2022; 173:108405. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2022.108405] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/12/2022] [Revised: 07/28/2022] [Accepted: 08/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
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12
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Song S, Wu M, Feng C. Early Influence of Emotional Scenes on the Encoding of Fearful Expressions With Different Intensities: An Event-Related Potential Study. Front Hum Neurosci 2022; 16:866253. [PMID: 35652009 PMCID: PMC9150066 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.866253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2022] [Accepted: 04/26/2022] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Contextual affective information influences the processing of facial expressions at the relatively early stages of face processing, but the effect of the context on the processing of facial expressions with varying intensities remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the influence of emotional scenes (fearful, happy, and neutral) on the processing of fear expressions at different levels of intensity (high, medium, and low) during the early stages of facial recognition using event-related potential (ERP) technology. EEG data were collected while participants performed a fearful facial expression recognition task. The results showed that (1) the recognition of high-intensity fear expression was higher than that of medium- and low-intensity fear expressions. Facial expression recognition was the highest when faces appeared in fearful scenes. (2) Emotional scenes modulated the amplitudes of N170 for fear expressions with different intensities. Specifically, the N170 amplitude, induced by high-intensity fear expressions, was significantly higher than that induced by low-intensity fear expressions when faces appeared in both neutral and fearful scenes. No significant differences were found between the N170 amplitudes induced by high-, medium-, and low-intensity fear expressions when faces appeared in happy scenes. These results suggest that individuals may tend to allocate their attention resources to the processing of face information when the valence between emotional context and expression conflicts i.e., when the conflict is absent (fear scene and fearful faces) or is low (neutral scene and fearful faces).
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Affiliation(s)
- Sutao Song
- School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
- School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China
- *Correspondence: Sutao Song,
| | - Meiyun Wu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
| | - Chunliang Feng
- Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Chunliang Feng,
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Cao F, Zeng K, Li W, Liu S, Zhang L, Katembu S, Xu Q. Influence of scene-based expectation on facial expression perception: the moderating effect of cognitive load. Biol Psychol 2021; 168:108247. [PMID: 34968555 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108247] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2021] [Revised: 12/19/2021] [Accepted: 12/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
Prior expectations play an important role in the process of perception. In real life, facial expressions always appear within a scene, which enables individuals to generate predictions that affect facial expression judgments. In the present study, using event-related potentials, we investigated the influence of scene-based expectation on facial expression processing. In addition, we used a cognitive task to manipulate cognitive load to interfere with scene-based expectation. Results showed that under the condition of sufficient cognitive resources, faces elicited more negative N170 amplitudes and more positive N400 amplitudes when the emotional valence of the scenes and faces was congruent. However, in the condition of cognitive load, no such difference was observed. The findings suggested that the effect of expectation on facial expression recognition emerges during both the early and late stages of facial expression processing, and the effect is weakened when cognitive resources are occupied by unrelated tasks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Feizhen Cao
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
| | - Ke Zeng
- School of Medical Humanities, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
| | - Wanyue Li
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Shen Liu
- School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
| | - Lin Zhang
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China
| | - Stephen Katembu
- Department of Psychology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Qiang Xu
- Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
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Rodríguez-Gómez P, Romero-Ferreiro V, Pozo MA, Hinojosa JA, Moreno EM. Facing stereotypes: ERP responses to male and female faces after gender-stereotyped statements. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2020; 15:928-940. [PMID: 32901810 PMCID: PMC7647374 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsaa117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/22/2020] [Revised: 08/03/2020] [Accepted: 09/02/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite gender is a salient feature in face recognition, the question of whether stereotyping modulates face processing remains unexplored. Event-related potentials from 40 participants (20 female) was recorded as male and female faces matched or mismatched previous gender-stereotyped statements and were compared with those elicited by faces preceded by gender-unbiased statements. We conducted linear mixed-effects models to account for possible random effects from both participants and the strength of the gender bias. The amplitude of the N170 to faces was larger following stereotyped relative to gender-unbiased statements in both male and female participants, although the effect was larger for males. This result reveals that stereotyping exerts an early effect in face processing and that the impact is higher in men. In later time windows, male faces after female-stereotyped statements elicited large late positivity potential (LPP) responses in both men and women, indicating that the violation of male stereotypes induces a post-perceptual reevaluation of a salient or conflicting event. Besides, the largest LPP amplitude in women was elicited when they encountered a female face after a female-stereotyped statement. The later result is discussed from the perspective of recent claims on the evolution of women self-identification with traditionally held female roles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pablo Rodríguez-Gómez
- Human Brain Mapping Unit, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Processes and Speech Therapy, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
| | - Verónica Romero-Ferreiro
- Human Brain Mapping Unit, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Biomedical Research Center in Mental Health Network CIBERSAM, Spain
| | - Miguel A Pozo
- Human Brain Mapping Unit, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - José Antonio Hinojosa
- Human Brain Mapping Unit, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Department of Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Processes and Speech Therapy, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
- Languages and Education Department, Universidad de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
| | - Eva M Moreno
- Human Brain Mapping Unit, Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Biomedical Research Center in Mental Health Network CIBERSAM, Spain
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Yang Q, Zhang Y, Wang J, Wu Y. Processing Facial Expressions That Conflict With Their Meanings to an Observer: An Event Related Potential Study. Front Psychol 2020; 11:1273. [PMID: 32625149 PMCID: PMC7311664 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01273] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2020] [Accepted: 05/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
As social signals, identical facial expressions can be perceived differently, even oppositely, depending on the circumstances. Fast and accurate understanding of the information conveyed by others’ facial expressions is crucial for successful social interaction. In the current study, we used electroencephalographic analysis of several event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how the brain processes the facial expressions of others when they indicate different self-outcomes. In half of the trial blocks, a happy face indicated “Win” and an angry face indicated “Lose.” In the other half of the blocks, the rule was reversed. The results showed that the N170 could distinguish expression valence and the N300 could distinguish outcome valence. The valence of the expression (happy or angry) and the valence of the outcome (Win or Loss) interacted with each other in the early, automatic perceptual processing stage (N1) as well as in the later, cognitive evaluation stage (P300). Standardized Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (sLORETA) results indicated that the N1 modulation only occurred for happy faces, which may relate to automatic emotion regulation, while the interaction on P300 was significant only for angry faces, which might be associated with the regulation of negative emotions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qiwei Yang
- Sichuan Research Center of Applied Psychology, Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, China
| | - Yuping Zhang
- Sichuan Research Center of Applied Psychology, Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, China
| | - Jianfeng Wang
- Sichuan Research Center of Applied Psychology, Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, China
| | - Yan Wu
- Sichuan Research Center of Applied Psychology, Chengdu Medical College, Chengdu, China
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