Faces and Awareness: Low-Level, Not Emotional Factors Determine Perceptual Dominance
Faces and Awareness: Low-Level, Not Emotional Factors Determine Perceptual Dominance
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DOI：
10.1037/a0031403
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发表时间：
2013-06-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
Garner, Matthew
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gray, Katie L. H.;Adams, Wendy J.;Garner, Matthew
与威胁相关的刺激，如恐惧的面孔，由人类视觉系统优先考虑。最近的研究表明，这种优先顺序开始于无意识处理：一个专门的（可能是皮层下）通路评估视觉输入的威胁相关性，导致优先获得对威胁刺激的意识。我们的数据挑战了这种说法。我们使用了连续闪光抑制（CFS）的范式，目前的意识之外的情绪面孔刺激。它已被证明使用CFS的显着（e。例如，在一个实施例中，高对比度）和可识别的刺激（面部、单词）比不太突出或不太可识别的刺激更快地变得可见。我们发现，尽管恐惧的面孔比其他面孔更快地从压抑中浮现出来，但这完全是由它们的低水平视觉特性而不是它们的情感内容来解释的。我们的结论是，在视觉意识的竞争中，视觉系统更喜欢和促进无意识的刺激，更像“脸”，但面部的情感内容对刺激的显着性没有影响。
Threat-relevant stimuli such as fear faces are prioritized by the human visual system. Recent research suggests that this prioritization begins during unconscious processing: A specialized (possibly subcortical) pathway evaluates the threat relevance of visual input, resulting in preferential access to awareness for threat stimuli. Our data challenge this claim. We used a continuous flash suppression (CFS) paradigm to present emotional face stimuli outside of awareness. It has been shown using CFS that salient (e. g., high contrast) and recognizable stimuli (faces, words) become visible more quickly than less salient or less recognizable stimuli. We found that although fearful faces emerge from suppression faster than other faces, this was wholly explained by their low-level visual properties, rather than their emotional content. We conclude that, in the competition for visual awareness, the visual system prefers and promotes unconscious stimuli that are more "face-like," but the emotional content of a face has no effect on stimulus salience.