Institute of Medical Psychology and Systems Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany; Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Muenster, Germany.
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy.
Biol Psychol. 2021 Apr;161:108056. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108056. Epub 2021 Feb 23.
High perceptual load is thought to impair already the early stages of visual processing of task-irrelevant visual stimuli. However, recent studies showed no effects of perceptual load on early ERPs in response to task-irrelevant emotional faces. In this preregistered EEG study (N = 40), we investigated the effects of continuous perceptual load on ERPs to fearful and neutral task-irrelevant faces and their phase-scrambled versions. Perceptual load did not modulate face or emotion effects for the P1 or N170. In contrast, larger face-scramble and fearful-neutral differentiation were found during low as compared to high load for the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN). Further, face-independent P1, but face-dependent N170 emotional modulations were observed. Taken together, our findings show that P1 and N170 face and emotional modulations are highly resistant to load manipulations, indicating a high degree of automaticity during this processing stage, whereas the EPN might represent a bottleneck in visual information processing.
高知觉负载被认为会损害对任务无关视觉刺激的早期视觉加工阶段。然而，最近的研究表明，知觉负载对任务无关情绪面孔的早期 ERP 没有影响。在这项预先注册的 EEG 研究中（N=40），我们调查了连续知觉负载对恐惧和中性任务无关面孔及其相位打乱版本的 ERP 的影响。对于 P1 或 N170，知觉负载并没有调节面孔或情绪效应。相比之下，在低负载下，与高负载相比，早期后负向波（EPN）的面孔混淆和恐惧-中性差异更大。此外，观察到了与面孔无关的 P1，但与面孔有关的 N170 情绪调制。总的来说，我们的发现表明，P1 和 N170 的面孔和情绪调制对负载操作具有高度的抗性，表明在这个处理阶段具有高度的自动性，而 EPN 可能代表视觉信息处理的瓶颈。
