Department of Psychology and Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, USA.
Emotion. 2010 Feb;10(1):136-40. doi: 10.1037/a0017814.
Fearful faces receive privileged access to awareness relative to happy and nonemotional faces. We investigated whether this advantage depends on currently available attentional resources. In an attentional blink paradigm, observers detected faces presented during the attentional blink period that could depict either a fearful or a happy expression. Perceptual load of the blink-inducing target was manipulated by increasing flanker interference. For the low-load condition, fearful faces were detected more often than happy faces, replicating previous reports. More important, this advantage for fearful faces disappeared for the high-load condition, during which fearful and happy faces were detected equally often. These results suggest that the privileged access of fearful faces to awareness does not occur mandatorily, but instead depends on attentional resources.
恐惧的面孔相对于快乐的和不带情绪的面孔，能够优先获得意识的注意。我们研究了这种优势是否取决于当前可用的注意力资源。在注意瞬脱范式中，观察者检测到在注意瞬脱期间呈现的面孔，这些面孔可以表现出恐惧或快乐表情。通过增加侧翼干扰来操纵瞬脱诱导目标的知觉负载。在低负载条件下，恐惧面孔比快乐面孔被检测到的频率更高，这与之前的报告一致。更重要的是，在高负载条件下，这种恐惧面孔的优势消失了，在高负载条件下，恐惧面孔和快乐面孔被检测到的频率相同。这些结果表明，恐惧面孔优先进入意识的情况并非强制性的，而是取决于注意力资源。
