Cargando…

Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention?

In two experiments, we tested whether fearful facial expressions capture attention in an awareness-independent fashion. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a visible neutral face presented at one of two positions. Prior to the target, a backward-masked and, thus, invisible emotional (fearful/...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Baier, Diane, Kempkes, Marleen, Ditye, Thomas, Ansorge, Ulrich
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9039161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35496171
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840746
_version_ 1784694063283306496
author Baier, Diane
Kempkes, Marleen
Ditye, Thomas
Ansorge, Ulrich
author_facet Baier, Diane
Kempkes, Marleen
Ditye, Thomas
Ansorge, Ulrich
author_sort Baier, Diane
collection PubMed
description In two experiments, we tested whether fearful facial expressions capture attention in an awareness-independent fashion. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a visible neutral face presented at one of two positions. Prior to the target, a backward-masked and, thus, invisible emotional (fearful/disgusted) or neutral face was presented as a cue, either at target position or away from the target position. If negative emotional faces capture attention in a stimulus-driven way, we would have expected a cueing effect: better performance where fearful or disgusted facial cues were presented at target position than away from the target. However, no evidence of capture of attention was found, neither in behavior (response times or error rates), nor in event-related lateralizations (N2pc). In Experiment 2, we went one step further and used fearful faces as visible targets, too. Thereby, we sought to boost awareness-independent capture of attention by fearful faces. However, still, we found no significant attention-capture effect. Our results show that fearful facial expressions do not capture attention in an awareness-independent way. Results are discussed in light of existing theories.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9039161
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-90391612022-04-27 Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention? Baier, Diane Kempkes, Marleen Ditye, Thomas Ansorge, Ulrich Front Psychol Psychology In two experiments, we tested whether fearful facial expressions capture attention in an awareness-independent fashion. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a visible neutral face presented at one of two positions. Prior to the target, a backward-masked and, thus, invisible emotional (fearful/disgusted) or neutral face was presented as a cue, either at target position or away from the target position. If negative emotional faces capture attention in a stimulus-driven way, we would have expected a cueing effect: better performance where fearful or disgusted facial cues were presented at target position than away from the target. However, no evidence of capture of attention was found, neither in behavior (response times or error rates), nor in event-related lateralizations (N2pc). In Experiment 2, we went one step further and used fearful faces as visible targets, too. Thereby, we sought to boost awareness-independent capture of attention by fearful faces. However, still, we found no significant attention-capture effect. Our results show that fearful facial expressions do not capture attention in an awareness-independent way. Results are discussed in light of existing theories. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9039161/ /pubmed/35496171 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840746 Text en Copyright © 2022 Baier, Kempkes, Ditye and Ansorge. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Baier, Diane
Kempkes, Marleen
Ditye, Thomas
Ansorge, Ulrich
Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention?
title Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention?
title_full Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention?
title_fullStr Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention?
title_full_unstemmed Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention?
title_short Do Subliminal Fearful Facial Expressions Capture Attention?
title_sort do subliminal fearful facial expressions capture attention?
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9039161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35496171
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.840746
work_keys_str_mv AT baierdiane dosubliminalfearfulfacialexpressionscaptureattention
AT kempkesmarleen dosubliminalfearfulfacialexpressionscaptureattention
AT dityethomas dosubliminalfearfulfacialexpressionscaptureattention
AT ansorgeulrich dosubliminalfearfulfacialexpressionscaptureattention