Department of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2013 Jun 19;7:283. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00283. eCollection 2013.
During emotion perception, context is an important source of information. Whether contextual cues from modalities other than vision or audition influence the perception of social emotional information has not been investigated. Thus, the present study aimed at testing emotion perception and regulation in response to fearful facial expressions presented in the context of chemosensory stimuli derived from sweat of anxious individuals. In groups of high (HSA) and low socially anxious (LSA) participants we recorded the startle reflex (Experiment I), and analysed event-related potentials (ERPs; Experiment II) while they viewed anxious facial expressions in the context of chemosensory anxiety signals and chemosensory control stimuli. Results revealed that N1/P1 and N170 amplitudes were larger while late positive potential (LPP) activity was smaller for facial expressions presented in the context of the anxiety and the chemosensory control stimulus as compared to facial expressions without a chemosensory context. Furthermore, HSA participants were highly sensitive to the contextual anxiety signals. They showed enhanced motivated attention allocation (LPP, Study II), as well as larger startle responses toward faces in the context of chemosensory anxiety signals than did LSA participants (Study I). Chemosensory context had no effect on emotion regulation, and both LSA and HSA participants showed effective emotion regulation (Study I and II). In conclusion, both anxiety and chemosensory sport context stimuli enhanced early attention allocation and structural encoding, but diminished motivated attention allocation to the facial expressions. The current results show that visual and chemosensory information is integrated on virtually all levels of stimulus processing and that socially anxious individuals might be especially sensitive to chemosensory contextual social information.
在情绪感知过程中，语境是一个重要的信息来源。视觉或听觉以外的模态的语境线索是否会影响对社会情绪信息的感知尚未得到研究。因此，本研究旨在测试在化学感觉刺激背景下，即来自焦虑个体汗液的化学感觉刺激，对恐惧面部表情的情绪感知和调节。在高社交焦虑（HSA）和低社交焦虑（LSA）参与者群体中，我们记录了惊跳反射（实验 I），并在他们观看焦虑面部表情的同时分析了事件相关电位（ERP；实验 II）在化学感觉焦虑信号和化学感觉控制刺激的背景下。结果表明，与没有化学感觉背景的面部表情相比，在化学感觉焦虑信号和化学感觉控制刺激的背景下呈现的面部表情，N1/P1 和 N170 振幅更大，而晚期正电位（LPP）活动更小。此外，HSA 参与者对语境焦虑信号非常敏感。他们表现出增强的动机注意力分配（LPP，研究 II），以及与 LSA 参与者相比，在化学感觉焦虑信号背景下对人脸的惊跳反应更大（研究 I）。化学感觉语境对情绪调节没有影响，LSA 和 HSA 参与者都表现出有效的情绪调节（研究 I 和 II）。总之，焦虑和化学感觉运动语境刺激都增强了早期注意力分配和结构编码，但减少了对面部表情的动机注意力分配。当前的结果表明，视觉和化学感觉信息在刺激处理的各个层面上都被整合，并且社交焦虑个体可能对化学感觉语境社会信息特别敏感。
