Wang Hailing, Sun Pei, Ip Chengteng, Zhao Xin, Fu Shimin
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Brain Res. 2015 Mar 30;1602:75-84. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2015.01.017. Epub 2015 Jan 16.
It is widely reported that face recognition relies on two dissociable mechanisms, the featural and the configural processing. However, it is unclear whether these two processing types involve different neural mechanisms and are differently modulated by attentional resources. Using the attentional blink (AB) paradigm, we aimed to investigate the effect of attentional resources on configural and featural face processing by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The amount of attentional resources was manipulated as deficient or sufficient by presenting the second target (T2) in or out of the AB period, respectively. We found that in addition to a traditional P3 attention effect, the amplitude of N170/VPP to the T2 stimuli was also sensitive to attentional resources, suggesting that attention affects face processing at an earlier perceptual processing stage. More importantly, configural face processing elicited a larger posterior P1 compared to featural face processing, but only when the attentional resources were sufficient. In contrast, the anterior N1 was larger for configural relative to featural face processing only when the attentional resources were deficient. These results suggest that early stages of configural and featural face processing are differently modulated by attentional resources, possibly with different underlying mechanisms.
广泛报道称，人脸识别依赖于两种可分离的机制，即特征处理和构型处理。然而，尚不清楚这两种处理类型是否涉及不同的神经机制，以及是否受到注意力资源的不同调节。使用注意瞬脱（AB）范式，我们旨在通过记录事件相关电位（ERP）来研究注意力资源对构型和特征面部处理的影响。通过分别在AB期内或外呈现第二个目标（T2），将注意力资源的量操纵为不足或充足。我们发现，除了传统的P3注意效应外，T2刺激的N170/VPP振幅也对注意力资源敏感，这表明注意力在早期感知处理阶段就影响面部处理。更重要的是，与特征面部处理相比，构型面部处理仅在注意力资源充足时引发更大的后部P1。相反，仅在注意力资源不足时，构型面部处理相对于特征面部处理的前部N1更大。这些结果表明，构型和特征面部处理的早期阶段受到注意力资源的不同调节，可能具有不同的潜在机制。
