Contextual Valence and Sociality Jointly Influence the Early and Later Stages of Neutral Face Processing

Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated that face perception is influenced by emotional contextual information. However, because facial expressions are routinely decoded and understood during social communication, sociality should also be considered—that is, it seems necessary to explore whether emotional contextual effects are influenced by the sociality of contextual information. Furthermore, although one behavioral study has explored the effects of context on selective attention to faces, the exact underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Therefore, the current study investigated how valence and sociality of contextual information influenced the early and later stages of neutral face processing. We first employed an established affective learning procedure, wherein neutral faces were paired with verbal information that differed in valence (negative, neutral) and sociality (social, non-social), to manipulate contextual information. Then, to explore the effects of context on face perception, participants performed a face perception task, while the N170, early posterior negativity (EPN), and late positive potential (LPP) components were measured. Finally, to explore the effects of context on selective attention, participants performed a dot probe task while the N2pc was recorded. The results showed that, in the face perception task, faces paired with negative social information elicited greater EPN and LPP than did faces paired with neutral social information; no differences existed between faces paired with negative and neutral non-social information. In the dot probe task, faces paired with negative social information elicited a more negative N2pc amplitude (indicating attentional bias) than did faces paired with neutral social information; the N2pc did not differ between faces paired with negative and neutral non-social information. Together, these results suggest that contextual information influenced both face perception and selective attention, and these context effects were governed by the interaction between valence and sociality of contextual information.

Facial Expressions in Context: Electrophysiological Correlates of the Emotional Congruency of Facial Expressions and Background Scenes

“…In this situation their results showed that emotional scenes could affect the processes of facial expression at the early stages of face processing. Nevertheless, using verbal descriptions as a context cue, Xu et al (2016) found that there are no context effects for the N170 component, which was consistent with our findings. It seems that the features of context stimuli might play an important role in the studies regarding the context effects of face processing.…”

“…The results showed that the emotional content of verbal descriptions could modulate the amplitudes of the late positive potential (LPP), which demonstrated that the integration of facial expressions with verbal descriptions that provided contextual information occurred at a later stage of face processing. Furthermore, Xu et al (2016) used an established affective learning procedure to investigate the effects of verbal descriptions when used as context cues on face perception. It showed that faces that were paired with negative social information elicited larger LPPs than faces that were paired with neutral information.…”

Threat‐conditioned contexts modulate the late positive potential to faces—A mobile EEG/virtual reality study

“…In another paradigm, self‐ versus other‐related threatening imaginations enhanced the amplitudes of the P100 to subsequently presented angry faces (Muench, Westermann, Pizzagalli, Hofmann, & Mueller, ). It has further been demonstrated that the late positive potential (LPP) is enhanced in response to faces that follow self‐ versus other‐related (McCrackin & Itier, ; Wieser et al, ) as well as negative versus positive/neutral labels (Wieser & Moscovitch, ; Xu, Li, Diao, Fan, & Yang, ). From a functional perspective, the modulations of P100 and LPP amplitudes may reflect increased selective and sustained attention, respectively (Hajcak, MacNamara, & Olvet, ).…”

Detached and distracted: ERP correlates of altered attentional function in depersonalisation

“…Rather than concluding that DP is unrelated to greater distractibility, we suggest that such impairments occur only when the underlying neurophysiological changes exceed a certain threshold. Discrepancies between ERPs and behaviour like this are typically attributed to the greater sensitivity of ERP measures compared to behavioural responses (Bar-Haim, Lamy, & Glickman, 2005;Quaedflieg et al, 2013; see also Javitt & Freedman, 2014;Richards, 2000;Xu, Li, Diao, Fan, & Yang, 2016). Quaedflieg et al (2013) showed ERP effects related to early emotional processing differed between low and high DP groups, while the corresponding behavioural measure (emotion-induced blindness, EIB) did not.…”