Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam.
Department of Psychology, Oberlin College.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2021 Aug;47(8):1043-1055. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000923.
It is widely believed that the emotional and movtivational value of social signals, such as faces, influences perception and attention. However, effects reported for stimuli with intrinsic affective value, such as emotional facial expressions, can often be explained by differences in low-level stimulus properties. To rule out such low-level effects, here we used a value-learning procedure, in which faces were associated with different probabilities of monetary gain and loss in a choice game. In three experiments involving 149 participants, we tested the influence of affective valence (win- vs. loss-associated faces) and motivational salience (probability of monetary gain or loss) on visual awareness, attention, and memory. Using continuous flash suppression and rapid serial visual presentation, we found no effects of affective valence or motivational salience on visual awareness of faces. Furthermore, in two experiments, there was no evidence for a modulation of the attentional blink, indicating that acquired emotional and motivational value does not influence attentional priority of faces. However, we found that motivational salience boosted recognition memory, and this effect was particularly pronounced for win-associated faces. These results indicate that acquired affective valence and motivational salience affect only later processing of faces related to memory but do not directly affect visual awareness and attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
人们普遍认为，社会信号（如面部表情）的情感和动机价值会影响感知和注意力。然而，对于具有内在情感价值的刺激（如情绪面部表情）的报告效应，往往可以通过低水平刺激属性的差异来解释。为了排除这种低水平的影响，我们在这里使用了一种价值学习程序，其中面部表情与选择游戏中金钱收益和损失的不同概率相关联。在涉及 149 名参与者的三个实验中，我们测试了情感效价（赢-输相关面孔）和动机显著性（金钱收益或损失的概率）对面孔视觉意识、注意力和记忆的影响。使用连续闪光抑制和快速序列视觉呈现，我们发现情感效价或动机显著性对面孔的视觉意识没有影响。此外，在两项实验中，没有证据表明注意力眨眼受到调节，这表明获得的情感和动机价值不会影响面孔的注意力优先级。然而，我们发现动机显著性提高了识别记忆，并且这种效应对于与赢相关的面孔尤为明显。这些结果表明，获得的情感效价和动机显著性仅影响与记忆相关的面孔的后续处理，而不会直接影响视觉意识和注意力。
