title: The subliminal affective priming effects of faces displaying various levels of arousal: an ERP study.
abstract: This study on the subliminal affective priming effects of faces displaying various levels of arousal employed event-related potentials (ERPs). The participants were asked to rate the arousal of ambiguous medium-arousing faces that were preceded by high- or low-arousing priming faces presented subliminally. The results revealed that the participants exhibited arousal-consistent variation in their arousal level ratings of the probe faces exclusively in the negative prime condition. Compared with high-arousing faces, the low-arousing faces tended to elicit greater late positive component (LPC, 450-660ms) and greater N400 (330-450ms) potentials. These findings support the following conclusions: (1) the effect of subliminal affective priming of faces can be detected in the affective arousal dimension; (2) valence may influence the subliminal affective priming effect of the arousal dimension of emotional stimuli; and (3) the subliminal affective priming effect of face arousal occurs when the prime stimulus affects late-stage processing of the probe.
authors.affiliation: Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China.
authors.forename: Tian-Tian
authors.initials: TT
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, China; Center of Cooperative Innovation for Assessment and Promotion of National Mental Health, Tianjin 300387, China. Electronic address: ly6312@163.com.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D004644:Emotions; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Arousal; Event-related potentials; Expression; Face; Subliminal affective priming