Wieser Matthias J, Gerdes Antje B M, Büngel Inga, Schwarz Katharina A, Mühlberger Andreas, Pauli Paul
University of Würzburg, Department of Psychology, Germany.
University of Mannheim, Department of Psychology, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2014 May 15;92:74-82. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.01.022. Epub 2014 Jan 22.
Our first impression of others is highly influenced by their facial appearance. However, the perception and evaluation of faces is not only guided by internal features such as facial expressions, but also highly dependent on contextual information such as secondhand information (verbal descriptions) about the target person. To investigate the time course of contextual influences on cortical face processing, event-related brain potentials were investigated in response to neutral faces, which were preceded by brief verbal descriptions containing cues of affective valence (negative, neutral, positive) and self-reference (self-related vs. other-related). ERP analysis demonstrated that early and late stages of face processing are enhanced by negative and positive as well as self-relevant descriptions, although faces per se did not differ perceptually. Affective ratings of the faces confirmed these findings. Altogether, these results demonstrate for the first time both on an electrocortical and behavioral level how contextual information modifies early visual perception in a top-down manner.
我们对他人的第一印象很大程度上受到其面部外观的影响。然而，对面部的感知和评价不仅受面部表情等内在特征的引导，还高度依赖于情境信息，如关于目标人物的二手信息（言语描述）。为了研究情境对皮质面部处理的影响的时间进程，我们针对中性面孔进行了事件相关脑电位研究，这些中性面孔之前有包含情感效价线索（负面、中性、正面）和自我参照（与自我相关 vs. 与他人相关）的简短言语描述。ERP分析表明，尽管面孔本身在感知上没有差异，但面部处理的早期和晚期阶段会因负面和正面以及与自我相关的描述而增强。对面孔的情感评分证实了这些发现。总之，这些结果首次在脑电皮层和行为层面上证明了情境信息如何以自上而下的方式改变早期视觉感知。
