Emotional conflict in facial expression processing during scene viewing: an ERP study.
Facial expressions are fundamental emotional stimuli as they convey important information in social interaction. In everyday life a face always appears in complex context. Scenes which faces are embedded in provided typical visual context. The aim of the present study was to investigate the processing of emotional conflict between facial expressions and emotional scenes by recording event-related potentials (ERPs). We found that when the scene was presented before the face-scene compound stimulus, the scene had an influence on facial expression processing. Specifically, emotionally incongruent (in conflict) face-scene compound stimuli elicited larger fronto-central N2 amplitude relative to the emotionally congruent face-scene compound stimuli. The effect occurred in the post-perceptual stage of facial expression processing and reflected emotional conflict monitoring between emotional scenes and facial expressions. The present findings emphasized the importance of emotional scenes as a context factor in the study of the processing of facial expressions.
Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China. Electronic address: xuqiang1117@163.com.
Qiang
Q
Xu
Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
Yaping
Y
Yang
College of Education and Science, Henan University, Kaifeng, China.
Entao
E
Zhang
School of Education and psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China.
Fuqiang
F
Qiao
School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Wenyi
W
Lin
School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: njliang@126.com.
Ningjian
N
Liang
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
Emotional scene; Event-related potentials (ERPs); Facial expression; N2