title: Configural and featural face processing are differently modulated by attentional resources at early stages: an event-related potential study with rapid serial visual presentation.
abstract: It is widely reported that face recognition relies on two dissociable mechanisms, the featural and the configural processing. However, it is unclear whether these two processing types involve different neural mechanisms and are differently modulated by attentional resources. Using the attentional blink (AB) paradigm, we aimed to investigate the effect of attentional resources on configural and featural face processing by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). The amount of attentional resources was manipulated as deficient or sufficient by presenting the second target (T2) in or out of the AB period, respectively. We found that in addition to a traditional P3 attention effect, the amplitude of N170/VPP to the T2 stimuli was also sensitive to attentional resources, suggesting that attention affects face processing at an earlier perceptual processing stage. More importantly, configural face processing elicited a larger posterior P1 compared to featural face processing, but only when the attentional resources were sufficient. In contrast, the anterior N1 was larger for configural relative to featural face processing only when the attentional resources were deficient. These results suggest that early stages of configural and featural face processing are differently modulated by attentional resources, possibly with different underlying mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Hailing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Pei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Chengteng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ip
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: sfu@tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Shimin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attentional resource; Event-related potential (ERP); Face processing; N170; P1