I know how you feel: Task-irrelevant facial expressions are spontaneously processed at a semantic level

Preston, Stephanie D.; Stansfield, R. Brent

doi:10.3758/cabn.8.1.54

Cited by 49 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Emotion discrimination and labeling research helps to explain this across-age prioritization of negative information during free viewing as well as the developmental changes. Even when not asked to label emotions (as in the current study), adults automatically process the semantic meaning of emotional faces (Hofelich & Preston, 2012; Preston & Stansfield, 2008). On explicit labeling or matching tasks, happy faces elicit quicker and more accurate naming in both children and adults, with speed and correctness increasing with age (Gao & Maurer, 2009; Montirosso, Peverelli, Frigerio, Crespi, & Borgatti, 2010; Preston & Stansfield, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Try to look on the bright side: Children and adults can (sometimes) override their tendency to prioritize negative faces.

Lagattuta¹,

Kramer²

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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We used eye tracking to examine 4- to 10-year-olds’ and adults’ (N = 173) visual attention to negative (anger, fear, sadness, disgust) and neutral faces when paired with happy faces in 2 experimental conditions: free-viewing (“look at the faces”) and directed (“look only at the happy faces”). Regardless of instruction, all age groups more often looked first to negative versus positive faces (no age differences), suggesting that initial orienting is driven by bottom-up processes. In contrast, biases in more sustained attention—last looks and looking duration—varied by age and could be modified by top-down instruction. On the free-viewing task, all age groups exhibited a negativity bias which attenuated with age and remained stable across trials. When told to look only at happy faces (directed task), all age groups shifted to a positivity bias, with linear age-related improvements. This ability to implement the “look only at the happy faces” instruction, however, fatigued over time, with the decrement stronger for children. Controlling for age, individual differences in executive function (working memory and inhibitory control) had no relation to the free-viewing task; however, these variables explained substantial variance on the directed task, with children and adults higher in executive function showing better skill at looking last and looking longer at happy faces. Greater anxiety predicted more first looks to angry faces on the directed task. These findings advance theory and research on normative development and individual differences in the bias to prioritize negative information, including contributions of bottom-up salience and top-down control.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Try to look on the bright side: Children and adults can (sometimes) override their tendency to prioritize negative faces.

Lagattuta¹,

Kramer²

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Specifically, previous work has shown that the lateral PFC, and dorsal regions of the ACC are recruited during EF tasks such as the color-word Stroop task and versions of the emotional Stroop task (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2011, Banich, 2009, Etkin et al., 2011, Mohanty et al., 2007, Preston and Stansfield, 2008). Medial regions of the PFC, the basal ganglia, and limbic regions such as the hippocampus and amygdala are recruited in the processing of emotional information and activated during stress (Dedovic et al., 2009, Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009, McEwen et al., 2015).…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in frontal and limbic brain activation in a small sample of monozygotic twin pairs discordant for severe stressful life events

Godinez

McRae

Andrews‐Hanna

et al. 2016

Neurobiology of Stress

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Monozygotic twin pairs provide a valuable opportunity to control for genetic and shared environmental influences while studying the effects of nonshared environmental influences. The question we address with this design is whether monozygotic twins selected for discordance in exposure to severe stressful life events during development (before age 18) demonstrate differences in brain activation during performance of an emotional word-face Stroop task. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess brain activation in eighteen young adult twins who were discordant in exposure to severe stress such that one twin had two or more severe events compared to their control co-twin who had no severe events. Twins who experienced higher levels of stress during development, compared to their control co-twins with lower stress, exhibited significant clusters of greater activation in the ventrolateral and medial prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and limbic regions. The control co-twins showed only the more typical recruitment of frontoparietal regions thought to be important for executive control of attention and maintenance of task goals. Behavioral performance was not significantly different between twins within pairs, suggesting the twins with stress recruited additional neural resources associated with affective processing and updating working memory when performing at the same level. This study provides a powerful glimpse at the potential effects of stress during development while accounting for shared genetic and environmental influences.

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“…However, even when these phenomena are not subjectively experienced, at least part of the observer’s representations for feeling the observer’s state are assumed to be activated by our attended perception of him. This neural-level shared activation allows observers to cognitively understand how the other feels, which permits labeling their emotion and selecting the appropriate response (see also Preston and Stansfield, 2008; Buchanan et al, 2010; Hofelich and Preston, 2011). Thus, just as observing another person swinging a hammer activates part of your motor system that you use when swinging a hammer (Grafton et al, 1996), observing someone in pain (Singer et al, 2004) or imagining someone who is angry or afraid (Preston et al, 2007a) will activate common neural patterns developed through your personal past experiences with pain, anger, or fear.…”

Section: Possible Mechanisms For Stress-induced Altruistic Aidmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress leads to prosocial action in immediate need situations

Buchanan

Preston

2014

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

111

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Stress clearly influences decision making, but the effects are complex. This review focuses on the potential for stress to promote prosocial decisions, serving others at a temporary cost to the self. Recent work has shown altruistic responses under stress, particularly when the target’s need is salient. We discuss potential mechanisms for these effects, including emotional contagion and offspring care mechanisms. These neurobiological mechanisms may promote prosocial—even heroic—action, particularly when an observer knows the appropriate response and can respond to a target in need. The effects of stress on behavior are not only negative, they can be adaptive and altruistic under conditions that promote survival and well-being at the individual and group level.

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I know how you feel: Task-irrelevant facial expressions are spontaneously processed at a semantic level

Cited by 49 publications

References 60 publications

Try to look on the bright side: Children and adults can (sometimes) override their tendency to prioritize negative faces.

Try to look on the bright side: Children and adults can (sometimes) override their tendency to prioritize negative faces.

Differences in frontal and limbic brain activation in a small sample of monozygotic twin pairs discordant for severe stressful life events

Stress leads to prosocial action in immediate need situations

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