Emotional facial expressions and the attentional blink: Attenuated blink for angry and happy faces irrespective of social anxiety

Abstract

Although facial information is distributed over spatial as well as temporal domains, thus far research on selective attention to disapproving faces has concentrated predominantly on the spatial domain. This study examined the temporal characteristics of visual attention towards facial expressions by presenting a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) paradigm to high (n=33) and low (n=34) socially anxious women. Neutral letter stimuli (p, q, d, b) were presented as the first target (T1), and emotional faces (neutral, happy, angry) as the second target (T2). Irrespective of social anxiety, the attentional blink was attenuated for emotional faces. Emotional faces as T2 did not influence identification accuracy of a preceding (neutral) target. The relatively low threshold for the (explicit) identification of emotional expressions is consistent with the view that emotional facial expressions are processed relatively efficiently.

Keywords:

• Attentional bias
• Temporal attention
• Social phobia
• Facial expressions
• Attentional blink
• Emotional expressions

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Erik Moek, Dirk-Jan Eikema, Grace van der Klein, and Roelfina Grenneman for their contribution to the development of the present design as well as for taking care of the actual data acquisition, to Albert Hietkamp for designing the letter stimuli, and to Bert Hoekzema for his technical assistance.

Notes

¹Originally we included 37 high- and 36 low-anxious individuals. However, data for one high-anxious participant were lost due to apparatus failure. In addition, data from three high-anxious and two low-anxious individuals were removed since they failed to identify the T1s on more than 50% of the trials.

²Examples of how we modified the slides of the KDEF to remove irrelevant features that may unintentionally influence (facilitate) target detection independent of the emotional expression displayed on the target slides can be obtained from the first author.

³In the absence of correct identification of T1 it remains unclear whether incorrect identification of T2 can be attributed to the influence of T1; therefore the analyses in the AB literature usually rely on trials in which T1 is correctly identified.

⁴There was no lag-1 sparing, which is a common finding when T1 and T2 represent different categories of stimuli (in this study letters vs. faces). For a relevant review see Visser, Bischof, and Di Lollo (1999).