Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS), Macquarie University, NSW, 2109 Australia.
Cogn Emot. 2011 Feb;25(2):369-79. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2010.488945.
Facial expressions are critical for effective social communication, and as such may be processed by the visual system even when it might be advantageous to ignore them. Previous research has shown that categorising emotional words was impaired when faces of a conflicting valence were simultaneously presented. In the present study, we examined whether emotional word categorisation would also be impaired when faces of the same (negative) valence but different emotional category (either angry, sad or fearful) were simultaneously presented. Behavioural results provided evidence for involuntary processing of basic emotional facial expression category, with slower word categorisation when the face and word categories were incongruent (e.g., angry word and sad face) than congruent (e.g., angry word and angry face). Event-related potentials (ERPs) time-locked to the presentation of the word-face pairs also revealed that emotional category congruency effects were evident from approximately 170 ms after stimulus onset.
面部表情对于有效的社交沟通至关重要，因此即使忽略它们可能是有利的，它们也可能会被视觉系统处理。先前的研究表明，当同时呈现具有冲突效价的面孔时，对情绪词汇进行分类的能力会受到损害。在本研究中，我们考察了当同时呈现相同（负面）效价但不同情绪类别（愤怒、悲伤或恐惧）的面孔时，情绪词汇分类是否也会受到损害。行为结果提供了证据表明对面部表情类别的基本情绪进行了无意识处理，当面孔和词汇类别不一致（例如，愤怒的词汇和悲伤的面孔）时，词汇分类的速度比一致（例如，愤怒的词汇和愤怒的面孔）时慢。与呈现词-面组合相关的事件相关电位（ERP）也表明，大约在刺激呈现后 170 毫秒，情绪类别一致性效应就很明显。
