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Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value

BACKGROUND: Rapid detection of faces with emotional meaning is essential for understanding the emotions of others, possibly promoting successful interpersonal relationships. Although few studies have examined sex differences in the ability to detect emotional faces, it remains unclear whether faces...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Saito, Akie, Sato, Wataru, Yoshikawa, Sakiko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10644416/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37964327
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13293-023-00567-y
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author Saito, Akie
Sato, Wataru
Yoshikawa, Sakiko
author_facet Saito, Akie
Sato, Wataru
Yoshikawa, Sakiko
author_sort Saito, Akie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Rapid detection of faces with emotional meaning is essential for understanding the emotions of others, possibly promoting successful interpersonal relationships. Although few studies have examined sex differences in the ability to detect emotional faces, it remains unclear whether faces with emotional meaning capture the attention of females and males differently, because emotional faces have visual saliency that modulates visual attention. To overcome this issue, we tested the rapid detection of the neutral faces associated with and without learned emotional value, which are all regarded as free from visual saliency. We examined sex differences in the rapid detection of the neutral female and male faces associated with emotional value. METHODS: First, young adult female and male participants completed an associative learning task in which neutral faces were associated with either monetary rewards, monetary punishments, or no monetary outcomes, such that the neutral faces acquired positive, negative, and no emotional value, respectively. Then, they engaged in a visual search task in which previously learned neutral faces were presented as discrepant faces among newly presented neutral distractor faces. During the visual search task, the participants were required to rapidly identify discrepant faces. RESULTS: Female and male participants exhibited comparable learning abilities. The visual search results demonstrated that female participants achieved rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value irrespective of the sex of the faces presented, whereas male participants showed this ability only for male faces. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrated that sex differences in the ability to rapidly detect neutral faces with emotional value were modulated by the sex of those faces. The results suggest greater sensitivity to faces with emotional significance in females, which might enrich interpersonal communication, regardless of sex. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13293-023-00567-y.
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spelling pubmed-106444162023-11-14 Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value Saito, Akie Sato, Wataru Yoshikawa, Sakiko Biol Sex Differ Research BACKGROUND: Rapid detection of faces with emotional meaning is essential for understanding the emotions of others, possibly promoting successful interpersonal relationships. Although few studies have examined sex differences in the ability to detect emotional faces, it remains unclear whether faces with emotional meaning capture the attention of females and males differently, because emotional faces have visual saliency that modulates visual attention. To overcome this issue, we tested the rapid detection of the neutral faces associated with and without learned emotional value, which are all regarded as free from visual saliency. We examined sex differences in the rapid detection of the neutral female and male faces associated with emotional value. METHODS: First, young adult female and male participants completed an associative learning task in which neutral faces were associated with either monetary rewards, monetary punishments, or no monetary outcomes, such that the neutral faces acquired positive, negative, and no emotional value, respectively. Then, they engaged in a visual search task in which previously learned neutral faces were presented as discrepant faces among newly presented neutral distractor faces. During the visual search task, the participants were required to rapidly identify discrepant faces. RESULTS: Female and male participants exhibited comparable learning abilities. The visual search results demonstrated that female participants achieved rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value irrespective of the sex of the faces presented, whereas male participants showed this ability only for male faces. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrated that sex differences in the ability to rapidly detect neutral faces with emotional value were modulated by the sex of those faces. The results suggest greater sensitivity to faces with emotional significance in females, which might enrich interpersonal communication, regardless of sex. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13293-023-00567-y. BioMed Central 2023-11-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10644416/ /pubmed/37964327 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13293-023-00567-y Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Saito, Akie
Sato, Wataru
Yoshikawa, Sakiko
Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value
title Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value
title_full Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value
title_fullStr Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value
title_full_unstemmed Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value
title_short Sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value
title_sort sex differences in the rapid detection of neutral faces associated with emotional value
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10644416/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37964327
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13293-023-00567-y
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