Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy; Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA.
Conscious Cogn. 2013 Sep;22(3):765-70. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.05.002. Epub 2013 May 28.
Successful interactions between people are dependent on rapid recognition of social cues. We investigated whether head direction--a powerful social signal--is processed in the absence of conscious awareness. We used continuous flash interocular suppression to render stimuli invisible and compared the reaction time for face detection when faces were turned towards the viewer and turned slightly away. We found that faces turned towards the viewer break through suppression faster than faces that are turned away, regardless of eye direction. Our results suggest that detection of a face with attention directed at the viewer occurs even in the absence of awareness of that face. While previous work has demonstrated that stimuli that signal threat are processed without awareness, our data suggest that the social relevance of a face, defined more broadly, is evaluated in the absence of awareness.
人与人之间的成功互动取决于对社会线索的快速识别。我们研究了头部方向——一种强大的社会信号——是否在无意识的情况下被处理。我们使用连续闪光眼间抑制使刺激不可见，并比较了当面对观众和稍微偏离时人脸检测的反应时间。我们发现，面对观众的脸比面对观众的脸更快地突破抑制，而不管眼睛的方向如何。我们的结果表明，即使没有意识到那张脸，注意力指向观众的脸的检测也会发生。虽然之前的工作已经表明，发出威胁信号的刺激在无意识的情况下也会被处理，但我们的数据表明，更广泛地说，脸的社会相关性是在无意识的情况下进行评估的。
