Early Visual Processing Modulated By Fearful Face: An ERP Study

Facial expression is an important nonlinguistic form of interpersonal communication, which is an indispensable and important part of people’s social life. Previous studies have found that fearful face as a potential risk of information is easy to attract more attention resources, and promote the visual processing of fearful face and the visual information after the fearful face at the same position.Recent studies show that the promotion of visual stimuli after fearful face is selectively, it can improve the processing of low spatial frequency followed by fearful face presented, and impair the processing of high spatial frequency followed by fearful face presented. In this paper, we studied the time course of fearful face improve and impair the visual processing.In experiment 1, after both sides show the same neutral faces or fearful faces at the same time, the central visual field of vision is random and fast to show the low spatial frequency gabor or the high spatial frequency gabor, to analyze how faerful face improve and impair the visual processing. In experiment 2, after both sides present different facial faces(neutral face on oneside, fearful face on the other side) at the same time, or presenting both neutral faces, one side(left or right visual field) random and rapid present low spatial frequency gabor or high spatial frequency gabor, to analyze whether the effect of the fearful face improve and impair of visual processing affected by relative space position.Research findings:1. Behavioral results found: In experiment 1, the difference of the high spatial frequency gabor stimulus after the fearful face was significantly smaller than that of the high spatial frequency gabor after the neutral face, and the difference of the low spatial frequency gabor after fearful face was significantly larger than that of the high spatial frequency gabor after the neutral face. In experiment 2, whether the gabor is low spatial frequency or high spatial frequency, regardless of the same side or the opposite side the gabor pressent after the fearful face, there is no significant difference.2. The ERP results of experiment 1 found: In the visual processing of low spatial frequency, low spatial frequency gabor after fearful face evoked a larger P1 amplitude on occipital region than low spatial frequency gabor after neutral face; In the visual processing of high spatial frequency, high spatial frequency gabor after fearful face evoked a smaller P1 amplitude on occipital region than high spatial frequency gabor after neutral face.3. The ERP results of experiment 2 found: In the visual processing of low spatial frequency, the low spatial frequency gabor present after fearful face on the same side evoked a larger N1 on occipital region than the low spatial frequency gabor present after fearful face on the opposide side, and evoked a larger N1 than the low spatial frequency gabor present after both neutral faces. In the visual processing of high spatial frequency, the high spatial frequency gabor present after both neutral faces evoked a larger N1 on occipital region than the high spatial frequency gabor present after fearful face on the same side, and evoked a larger N1 than the high spatial frequency gabor present after fearful face on the opposite side. That is, the effect of the fearful face improve and impair of visual processing does not affected by relative space position.