The language context effect in facial expressions processing and its mandatory characteristic

Background visual scenes in which faces are perceived provide contextual information for facial expression processing. One type of background information, the language context, has a vital influence on facial expression processing. The current study is aimed to investigate the effect of the language context on facial expression processing by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Experiment one adopted the facial expression categorization task to investigate the effects of different language contexts on emotional and non-emotional facial processing. Experiment two adopted the task-irrelevant paradigm to investigate whether the language context effect on facial expression processing was mandatory. The results found that (1) the language context affected facial expression processing. Facial expression processing was promoted when the language context was emotionally congruent with faces. Moreover, the language context had an evoking effect on neutral faces. To be detailed, neutral facial expressions were evoked to be judged as positive in the positive language context while as negative in the negative language context. (2) The language context effect still affected facial expression processing in a task-irrelevant paradigm. When the language context was emotionally incongruent with facial expressions, larger N170 and LPP amplitudes were elicited, indicating the inhibition of incongruent emotions. These findings prove that the language context effect on facial expression processing is mandatory.