title: Electrophysiological evidence for attentional capture by irrelevant angry facial expressions.
abstract: Attention is believed to be biased toward threatening objects or faces. Therefore, we tested whether angry face stimuli would capture attention even when they are irrelevant to the task. Observers searched for a neutral face with a tilted nose. On some trials, the target was shown together with an irrelevant angry or happy face and we measured the N2pc (an electrophysiological marker of attentional selectivity) to the distractor expression. We found that angry distractors triggered an N2pc, whereas happy distractors did not. Follow-up experiments explored the reliability of the N2pc to angry distractors using upright or inverted angry faces, the eye or mouth region of angry faces and face-like stimuli. We conclude that a threatening expression has a high attentional priority due to its emotional content and captures attention despite being irrelevant for the task.
authors: Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, Université de Genève, Switzerland. Electronic address: nicolas.burra@unige.ch.
authors: Nicolas
authors: N
authors: Burra
authors: Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, Université de Genève, Switzerland.
authors: Caroline
authors: C
authors: Barras
authors: Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, Université de Genève, Switzerland.
authors: Sélim Yahia
authors: SY
authors: Coll
authors: Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, Université de Genève, Switzerland.
authors: Dirk
authors: D
authors: Kerzel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Angry faces; Attentional capture; N2pc