School of Psychology, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, Malaysia.
School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
Eur J Neurosci. 2018 Sep;48(5):2259-2271. doi: 10.1111/ejn.14112.
Seeing a face being touched in spatial and temporal synchrony with the own face produces a bias in self-recognition, whereby the other face becomes more likely to be perceived as the self. The present study employed event-related potentials to explore whether this enfacement effect reflects initial face encoding, enhanced distinctiveness of the enfaced face, modified self-identity representations, or even later processing stages that are associated with the emotional processing of faces. Participants were stroked in synchrony or asynchrony with an unfamiliar face they observed on a monitor in front of them, in a situation approximating a mirror image. Subsequently, event-related potentials were recorded during the presentation of (a) a previously synchronously stimulated face, (b) an asynchronously stimulated face, (c) observers' own face, (d) filler faces, and (e) a to-be-detected target face, which required a response. Observers reported a consistent enfacement illusion after synchronous stimulation. Importantly, the synchronously stimulated face elicited more prominent N170 and P200 responses than the asynchronously stimulated face. By contrast, similar N250 and P300 responses were observed in these conditions. These results suggest that enfacement modulates early neural correlates of face encoding and facial prototypicality, rather than identity self-representations and associated emotional processes.
当自己的脸与另一个人的脸在空间和时间上同步被触摸时，会产生自我认知的偏差，使得另一个人的脸更容易被视为自己的脸。本研究采用事件相关电位技术来探究这种“同化效应”是否反映了最初的面部编码、增强了被同化面孔的独特性、改变了自我身份的表征，或者甚至是与面部情绪处理相关的后期加工阶段。参与者在观看显示器上的陌生面孔时，自己的脸与该面孔同步或不同步地被触摸，这种情况类似于镜像。随后，在呈现（a）先前同步刺激的面孔、（b）异步刺激的面孔、（c）观察者自己的面孔、（d）填充面孔和（e）需要做出反应的待检测目标面孔时，记录了事件相关电位。在同步刺激后，观察者报告了一致的同化错觉。重要的是，与异步刺激的面孔相比，同步刺激的面孔引发了更明显的 N170 和 P200 反应。相比之下，在这些条件下观察到了相似的 N250 和 P300 反应。这些结果表明，同化效应调节了面部编码和面部典型性的早期神经相关性，而不是身份自我表征和相关的情绪处理。
