McFadyen Jessica, Tsuchiya Naotsugu, Mattingley Jason B, Garrido Marta I
Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2022 May 13;16:797119. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.797119. eCollection 2022.
The folk psychological notion that "we see what we expect to see" is supported by evidence that we become consciously aware of visual stimuli that match our prior expectations more quickly than stimuli that violate our expectations. Similarly, "we see what we want to see," such that more biologically-relevant stimuli are also prioritised for conscious perception. How, then, is perception shaped by biologically-relevant stimuli that we did not expect? Here, we conducted two experiments using breaking continuous flash suppression (bCFS) to investigate how prior expectations modulated response times to neutral and fearful faces. In both experiments, we found that prior expectations for neutral faces hastened responses, whereas the opposite was true for fearful faces. This interaction between emotional expression and prior expectations was driven predominantly by participants with higher trait anxiety. Electroencephalography (EEG) data collected in Experiment 2 revealed an interaction evident in the earliest stages of sensory encoding, suggesting prediction errors expedite sensory encoding of fearful faces. These findings support a survival hypothesis, where biologically-relevant fearful stimuli are prioritised for conscious access even more so when unexpected, especially for people with high trait anxiety.
民间心理学概念“我们看到我们期望看到的东西”得到了证据支持，即我们会更快地有意识地察觉到与我们先前预期相符的视觉刺激，而不是那些违背我们预期的刺激。同样，“我们看到我们想要看到的东西”，因此与生物相关性更强的刺激也会在有意识感知中被优先处理。那么，我们没有预期到的与生物相关的刺激是如何塑造感知的呢？在这里，我们进行了两项实验，使用打破连续闪光抑制（bCFS）来研究先前预期如何调节对中性和恐惧面孔的反应时间。在两项实验中，我们发现对中性面孔的先前预期加快了反应，而对恐惧面孔则相反。情绪表达与先前预期之间的这种相互作用主要由特质焦虑较高的参与者驱动。实验2中收集的脑电图（EEG）数据显示，在感觉编码的最早阶段就存在明显的相互作用，这表明预测误差会加快对恐惧面孔的感觉编码。这些发现支持了一种生存假说，即与生物相关的恐惧刺激在意外出现时会更优先地进入意识，尤其是对于特质焦虑高的人。
