title: Race perception and gaze direction differently impair visual working memory for faces: An event-related potential study.
abstract: Humans are amazingly experts at processing and recognizing faces, however there are moderating factors of this ability. In the present study, we used the event-related potential technique to investigate the influence of both race and gaze direction on visual working memory (i.e., VWM) face representations. In a change detection task, we orthogonally manipulated race (own-race vs. other-race faces) and eye-gaze direction (direct gaze vs. averted gaze). Participants were required to encode identities of these faces. We quantified the amount of information encoded in VWM by monitoring the amplitude of the sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) time-locked to the faces. Notably, race and eye-gaze direction differently modulated SPCN amplitude such that other-race faces elicited reduced SPCN amplitudes compared with own-race faces only when displaying a direct gaze. On the other hand, faces displaying averted gaze, independently of their race, elicited increased SPCN amplitudes compared with faces displaying direct gaze. We interpret these findings as denoting that race and eye-gaze direction affect different face processing stages.
authors: a Department of Developmental Psychology , University of Padova , Padova , Italy.|b Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience , University of Padova , Padova , Italy.
authors: Paola
authors: P
authors: Sessa
authors: a Department of Developmental Psychology , University of Padova , Padova , Italy.
authors: Mario
authors: M
authors: Dalmaso
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005133:Eye Movements; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D044469:Racial Groups; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Event-related potentials; Eye-gaze direction; Face processing; Race; Visual working memory