The Effects of Prediction on the Perception for Own-Race and Other-Race Faces

Abstract

Human beings do not passively perceive important social features about others such as race and age in social interactions. Instead, it is proposed that humans might continuously generate predictions about these social features based on prior similar experiences. Pre-awareness of racial information conveyed by others' faces enables individuals to act in “culturally appropriate” ways, which is useful for interpersonal relations in different ethnicity groups. However, little is known about the effects of prediction on the perception for own-race and other-race faces. Here, we addressed this issue using high temporal resolution event-related potential techniques. In total, data from 24 participants (13 women and 11 men) were analyzed. It was found that the N170 amplitudes elicited by other-race faces, but not own-race faces, were significantly smaller in the predictable condition compared to the unpredictable condition, reflecting a switch to holistic processing of other-race faces when those faces were predictable. In this respect, top-down prediction about face race might contribute to the elimination of the other-race effect (one face recognition impairment). Furthermore, smaller P300 amplitudes were observed for the predictable than for unpredictable conditions, which suggested that the prediction of race reduced the neural responses of human brains.

The Impact of Top-Down Prediction on Emotional Face Processing in Social Anxiety

“…Similar to previous studies (e.g., Ran et al, 2014b), the effect of prediction on the N170 was obtained by subtracting the N170 peak amplitudes in the predictable condition to those in the unpredictable condition for happy and angry faces of each participant.…”

Facial Cosmetics Exert a Greater Influence on Processing of the Mouth Relative to the Eyes: Evidence from the N170 Event-Related Potential Component

“…Based on previous studies (Luo et al, 2013; Ran et al, 2014), the P1 component was analyzed via the following four electrode sites: O1/O2 and PO3/PO4. The amplitude of the positive peak of the EEG signal was quantified 50–110 ms after stimulus presentation.…”

The Perception of Facial Emotional Change in Social Anxiety: An ERP Study

“…The experimental procedure was organized by E-PRIME 2.0. The current experiment employed the S1-S2 paradigm, which was used by previous researchers to explore the recognition of emotional faces ( Ran et al, 2014a , c ). On each trial of the experiment ( Figure 2 ), a fixation cross was shown for 100 ms. After the cross disappeared, the first facial emotional change video (S1) was presented for 600 ms. Next, a stimulus of house picture (a mask stimulus) was depicted for 100 ms.…”

“…To test these hypotheses, we adopted a S1-S2 paradigm, which was used by previous researchers to explore the recognition of emotional faces ( Ran et al, 2014a , c ; Li et al, 2017 ). Participants with HSA and LSA were instructed to perform a task of facial identity recognition, and their brain responses were recorded using high temporal resolution ERP techniques.…”