Fearful but not Angry Expressions Diffuse Attention to Peripheral Targets in an Attentional Blink Paradigm

摘要

We previously demonstrated that, within a passive viewing task, fearful facial expressions implicitly facilitate memory for contextual events, while angry facial expressions do not (). The current study sought to more directly address the implicit effect of fearful expressions on attention for contextual events within a classic attentional paradigm (i.e., the attentional blink) where memory is tested on a trial-by-trial basis, thereby providing subjects with a clear explicit attentional strategy. Neutral faces of a single gender were presented via rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) while bordered by four gray pound signs. Participants were told to watch for a gender change within the sequence (T1). Critically, the T1 face displayed either a neutral, fearful, or angry expression. Subjects were also told to detect a color change (i.e., gray to green; T2) at one of the four pound sign locations appearing after T1. This T2 color change could appear at one of six temporal positions. Participants were told to respond via button press immediately when a T2 target was presented. We found that fearful, compared to the neutral T1 faces, significantly increased target detection ability at four of the six temporal locations (all p’s < .05) while angry expressions showed no such effects. The results of this study suggest that fearful facial expressions can uniquely and implicitly enhance environmental monitoring above and beyond explicit attentional effects related to task instructions.