Event-Related Potential Correlates of Facial Expression and Gaze Interactions

描述(申请人提供)：情绪表达和凝视方向是他人内心状态和意图的重要信号，对人类的社会体验至关重要。这些核心能力与其他非语言形式的交流相互作用，形成复杂的社会认知过程的基础，如心理理论(Baron-Cohen，1995)。}这些过程的中断与精神分裂症和自闭症等社会情感障碍有关并不令人惊讶。健康受试者的神经生理学证据表明，表情和凝视至少部分是由相同的大脑区域处理的。行为证据证实了这一点，并表明这些过程的时机对它们是否相互作用至关重要。反过来，时机又受到这些维度被区分的难易程度的影响。事件相关电位(ERPs)可以为这些关于凝视和表情处理相互作用的假说提供重要的证实，为更深入地了解社会智力的生物学基础提供了更深入的了解。}对健康成年人的凝视和情绪处理的了解为描绘这些过程如何被发育、疾病或损伤所干扰提供了基础。使用事件相关电位，将使用加纳干扰范式来检查健康成年人的表情和凝视知觉。这一范式通过确定感知者能够选择性地注意一个刺激维度(例如情绪)而忽略另一个维度(例如凝视)的程度，提供了一个加工相互依赖的指数。在实验1中，凝视和表情的交互作用将被用明确的恐惧和愤怒的表情以及直接和回避的凝视来检验。{行为证据表明，当表情很容易辨别时，受试者能够在不受凝视干扰的情况下进行表情判断，但不能在没有表情干扰的情况下做出凝视判断。}表情判断更快，这表明这种不对称干扰的产生是因为表情在凝视干预之前被处理。在实验2中，使用更微妙的面部表情将增加情绪辨别的难度。Graham和Labar已经证明，当表情更难辨别时，凝视会干扰情绪判断，反之亦然。这表明表情和凝视的互动受到辨别力的调节：表情通常会干扰凝视判断，而凝视只有在情绪辨别困难的情况下才会调节表情处理。{ERPs独一无二地准备好研究这些互动的处理速度，为健康的成年人大脑中这些互动的时间提供重要的确认。}关于其他人的想法和感觉的大量信息可以从情绪表情和凝视的方向中确定。这项研究旨在检测当人们看到情绪和凝视的面孔时，大脑的电活动。这个项目的目标是更好地理解社会智力的生物学基础，这是一种对健康人体功能至关重要的技能。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emotional expression and gaze direction are important signals of the internal states and intentions of others and are critical to the human social experience. {These core abilities interact with other nonverbal forms of communication to form the basis of complex social cognitive processes such as theory of mind (Baron- Cohen, 1995).} It is not surprising that the disruption of these processes is associated with socio-affective disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Neurophysiological evidence in healthy subjects suggests that expression and gaze are processed, at least in part, by the same brain areas. Behavioral evidence corroborates this, and suggests that the timing of these processes is crucial in whether or not they interact. Timing, in turn, is affected by how easily these dimensions can be discriminated. {Event-related potentials (ERPs) can provide important confirmation of these hypotheses regarding gaze and expression processing interactions, providing a more thorough understanding of the biological basis of social intelligence.} An understanding of gaze and emotion processing in healthy adults provides a basis for delineating how these processes might be disrupted by development, disease or injury. Using ERPs, expression and gaze perception in healthy adults will be examined with the Garner interference paradigm. This paradigm provides an index of processing interdependence by determining the extent to which perceivers can selectively attend to one stimulus dimension (e.g. emotion) while ignoring the other (e.g. gaze). In Experiment 1, gaze and expression interactions will be examined with unambiguous fearful and angry expressions and direct and averted gaze. {Behavioral evidence has demonstrated that when expressions are easily discriminated, subjects are able to perform expression judgments without interference from gaze, but unable to make gaze judgments without interference from expression.} Expression was judged more quickly, suggesting that this asymmetric interference arose because expression was processed before gaze could interfere. {ERPs could provide corroborating evidence regarding the timing of these processes.} In Experiment 2, the difficulty of emotion discrimination will be increased by using more subtle facial expressions. Graham & LaBar have shown that when expression was more difficult to discriminate, gaze interfered with emotion judgments and vice versa. This suggests that expression and gaze interactions are modulated by discriminability: whereas expression generally interferes with gaze judgments, gaze modulates expression processing only when emotion discrimination is difficult.{ ERPs are uniquely poised to examine such a speed-of-processing account of these interactions, providing important confirmation about the timing of these interactions in the healthy adult brain.} A great deal of information about others' thoughts and feelings can be determined from emotional expressions and direction of gaze. This research is designed to examine the electrical activity of the brain when individuals view emotional and gazing faces. The goal of this project is to provide a better understanding of the biological basis of social intelligence, a skill that critical to healthy human function.