title: Reward Promotes Self-Face Processing: An Event-Related Potential Study.
abstract: The present study adopted a reward-priming paradigm to investigate whether and how monetary reward cues affected self-face processing. Event-related potentials were recorded during judgments of head orientation of target faces (self, friend, and stranger), with performance associated with a monetary reward. The results showed self-faces elicited larger N2 mean amplitudes than other-faces, and mean N2 amplitudes increased after monetary reward as compared with no reward cue. Moreover, an interaction effect between cue type and face type was observed for the P3 component, suggesting that both self-faces and friend-faces elicited larger P3 mean amplitudes than stranger-faces after no reward cue, with no significant difference between self-faces and friend-faces under this condition. However, self-faces elicited larger P3 mean amplitudes than friend-faces when monetary reward cues were provided. Interestingly, the enhancement of reward on friend-faces processing was observed at late positive potentials (LPP; 450-600 ms), suggesting that the LPP difference between friend-faces and stranger-faces was enhanced with monetary reward cues. Thus, we found that the enhancement effect of reward on self-relevant processing occurred at the later stages, but not at the early stage. These findings suggest that the activation of the reward expectations can enhance self-face processing, yielding a robust and sustained modulation over their overlapped brain areas where reward and self-relevant processing mechanisms may operate together.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China; Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China.
authors.forename: Youlong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China; Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Chengnan, Hunan First Normal University Changsha, China.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China; Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China; Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China.
authors.forename: Zilu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China; Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China; Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal UniversityChangsha, China.
authors.forename: Yiping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhong
keywords: ERP; LPP; P3; reward; self-face advantage; self-relevant processing