Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, 6207 Moore Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
Emotion. 2011 Dec;11(6):1425-33. doi: 10.1037/a0022993. Epub 2011 Jun 27.
Previous research suggests that neural and behavioral responses to surprised faces are modulated by explicit contexts (e.g., "He just found $500"). Here, we examined the effect of implicit contexts (i.e., valence of other frequently presented faces) on both valence ratings and ability to detect surprised faces (i.e., the infrequent target). In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that participants interpret surprised faces more positively when they are presented within a context of happy faces, as compared to a context of angry faces. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used the oddball paradigm to evaluate the effects of clearly valenced facial expressions (i.e., happy and angry) on default valence interpretations of surprised faces. We offer evidence that the default interpretation of surprise is negative, as participants were faster to detect surprised faces when presented within a happy context (Exp. 2). Finally, we kept the valence of the contexts constant (i.e., surprised faces) and showed that participants were faster to detect happy than angry faces (Exp. 3). Together, these experiments demonstrate the utility of the oddball paradigm to explore the default valence interpretation of presented facial expressions, particularly the ambiguously valenced facial expression of surprise.
先前的研究表明，对惊讶面孔的神经和行为反应受到明确语境（例如，“他刚刚发现了$500 美元”）的调节。在这里，我们研究了隐含语境（即，其他经常呈现的面孔的效价）对效价评分和发现惊讶面孔的能力（即，不常见的目标）的影响。在实验 1 中，我们证明了当惊讶面孔出现在快乐的面孔背景中时，与出现在愤怒面孔背景中相比，参与者对惊讶面孔的解释更为积极。在实验 2 和实验 3 中，我们使用了异类范式来评估明确效价的面部表情（即，快乐和愤怒）对惊讶面孔的默认效价解释的影响。我们提供的证据表明，惊讶的默认解释是消极的，因为当惊讶面孔出现在快乐的背景中时，参与者更快地检测到惊讶面孔（实验 2）。最后，我们保持语境的效价不变（即，惊讶面孔），并表明参与者更快地检测到快乐面孔而不是愤怒面孔（实验 3）。这些实验共同证明了异类范式在探索呈现的面部表情的默认效价解释中的有效性，特别是在惊讶这个效价模糊的面部表情上。
