Dissociations of subliminal and supraliminal self-face from other-face processing: behavioral and ERP evidence.
Self-related information has been found to be processed more quickly and accurately in studies with supraliminal self-stimuli and traditional paradigms such as masked priming. We conducted two experiments to investigate whether subliminal self-face processing enjoys this advantage and the neural correlates of processing self-faces at both subliminal and supraliminal levels. We found that self-faces were quicker than famous-other faces to gain dominance against dynamic noise patterns during prolonged interocular suppression to enter awareness (Experiment 1). Meanwhile, subliminal contrast of self- and famous-other face processing was reflected in a reduced early vertex positive potential (VPP) component, whereas supraliminal self-other face differentiation was reflected in an enhanced N170, as well as a more positive late component (300-580ms, Experiment 2) to the self-face. The clear dissociations of self- and other-face processing found across our two experiments validate the self advantage. Our findings also contribute to understandings of the mechanisms underlying self-face processing at different levels of awareness.
Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. Electronic address: hygeng@pku.edu.cn.
Haiyan
H
Geng
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI 53190, USA.
Shen
S
Zhang
Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Qi
Q
Li
Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Ran
R
Tao
Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Shan
S
Xu
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*