Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2011 Sep;6(4):477-85. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq066. Epub 2010 Jul 2.
To examine the time course and automaticity of our attention bias towards attractive opposite sex faces, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 20 males and 20 females while they carried out a covert orienting task. Faces that were high, low or average in attractiveness, were presented in focus of attention, but were unrelated to task goals. Across the entire sample larger P2 amplitudes were found in response to both attractive and unattractive opposite sex faces, presumably reflecting early implicit selective attention to distinctive faces. In male but not female participants this was followed by an increased late slow wave for the attractive faces, signifying heightened processing linked to motivated attention. This latter finding is consistent with sexual strategy theory, which suggests that men and women have evolved to pursue different mating strategies with men being more attentive to cues such as facial beauty. In general, our ERP results suggest that, in addition to threat-related stimuli, other evolutionary-relevant information is also prioritized by our attention systems.
为了考察我们对有吸引力的异性面孔的注意偏向的时程和自动化程度，我们记录了 20 名男性和 20 名女性在执行隐蔽定向任务时的事件相关电位（ERP）。高、低或中等吸引力的面孔在注意焦点中呈现，但与任务目标无关。在整个样本中，对有吸引力和无吸引力的异性面孔的反应都发现 P2 振幅较大，这可能反映了对独特面孔的早期内隐选择性注意。在男性参与者中，但不是在女性参与者中，随后对有吸引力的面孔出现了增加的晚期慢波，表明与动机注意相关的处理增强。这一发现与性策略理论一致，该理论表明，男性和女性已经进化出不同的交配策略，男性更关注面部美丽等线索。总的来说，我们的 ERP 结果表明，除了与威胁相关的刺激外，我们的注意系统还优先处理其他与进化相关的信息。
