title: Judging emotional congruency: Explicit attention to situational context modulates processing of facial expressions of emotion.
abstract: The influence of explicit evaluative processes on the contextual integration of facial expressions of emotion was studied in a procedure that required the participants to judge the congruency of happy and angry faces with preceding sentences describing emotion-inducing situations. Judgments were faster on congruent trials in the case of happy faces and on incongruent trials in the case of angry faces. At the electrophysiological level, a congruency effect was observed in the face-sensitive N170 component that showed larger amplitudes on incongruent trials. An interactive effect of congruency and emotion appeared on the LPP (late positive potential), with larger amplitudes in response to happy faces that followed anger-inducing situations. These results show that the deliberate intention to judge the contextual congruency of facial expressions influences not only processes involved in affective evaluation such as those indexed by the LPP but also earlier processing stages that are involved in face perception.
authors.affiliation: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Teresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Diéguez-Risco
authors.affiliation: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: laguadoa@ucm.es.
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Aguado
authors.affiliation: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain; Instituto Pluridisciplinar, UCM, Spain.
authors.forename: Jacobo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Albert
authors.affiliation: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; Instituto Pluridisciplinar, UCM, Spain.
authors.forename: José Antonio
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Hinojosa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Congruency; Context; Facial expression; LPP; N170